Page 129 of Almost Not Quite Engaged

“You were about to ask,” he says.

“I was going to use chopsticks.”

“No you weren’t.”

He’s right. I take the fork.

We eat in silence. It happens a lot. We’re peopled out at the end of these days. The cavalcade of family, friends, doctors and siblings. There’s always someone who needs us or expects us to break the tension or liven up the table or room. There are always plans, reservations and appointments to be made by us. The expectations sit on us like lead shoulder pads. So we retreat and eat in silence, filling up our wells so they can deplete us again tomorrow. We don’t have a lot left over for each other.

The refrigerator hums. Someone’s television is on in the apartment above us. Outside, Boston is doing its Boston thing, wet street sounds, a distant siren, laughter and joy of people stumbling about or just coming home.

He refills my water without being asked. I look at him again.

“You were dehydrated,” he says. “You always forget to drink water when you’re worried.”

I don’t know how he knows that. I don’t know when I became the kind of person someone knows things about without being told. I shovel noodles in my mouth instead of saying anything about that. I hop up onto the kitchen island and he leans on the counter across from me.

“Tell me something about him,” I say. “Something that isn’t about his health or business.”

He thinks about it for longer than I expected and leans over to give me a light kiss.

“He used to take me fishing,” he says. “Every August. Just the two of us, Nate and Sweetie never wanted to go. We’d drive up to Maine the night before and stay in this terrible motel my mother would never stay in. We’d eat takeout burgers in our beds and watch whatever was on the couple channels.” He pauses. “He never talked much on those trips. But I did. I’d fill the space around us and make him laugh. But when we’d get to the boat we were quiet. He’d hand me things: the bait, a sandwich, a soda, and I thought it was boring at the time.”

He’s quiet. “It wasn’t boring,” he says and looks off towards a noise on the street then shakes off the moment.

I set down my fork. “Tell me something terrible about your mother.”

He laughs, the real one, the one that takes over his whole face, the one I vowed to follow. “I’ve missed that laugh.”

He leans over and kisses me. “Me too. My mom reorganizes people’s kitchens when she visits. She’ll just start moving things. You come back into the room from setting down appetizers at a dinner party and your entire cabinet situation has been rearranged.”

“Ginny told me she did it to the Little Bird bar area. Colin took it in stride but she redid the entire liquor shelves and then worked on the tchotchkes around the room.”

I miss Ginny. She’s swamped with work, and I’m here. Court and Ben came for an afternoon and we went to the Aquarium for a change of pace. But it was all stilted and strange. I have no real life. I’m simply a supporting character.

“It’s not just cabinets.” He interrupts my thoughts continuing on about his mother.

“I really want her to go to my mom’s house and be there to see her reaction when she reorgs Nan.”

He looks at me. “She reorganized you. Last week when she was here while you were in the shower. I watched her do it.”

I think about this. “What did she move?”

“Your camera bag. She moved a small table from my office and put it by the door then put your camera bag on it.”

“So it would be easier to grab on the way out and had its own space.”

“Yes.”

We look at each other. There’s something in that small fact neither of us knows what to do with. Birdie moved my camera bag toward the door. Like she knew I was getting itchy and needed to have a quick getaway ready.

I slide down the cabinet until I’m sitting on his kitchen floor. After a moment he slides down next to me. We sit with our legs outstretched on the tile and eat the rest of our meal, passing containers back and forth, our shoulders touching.

“My mother,” I say, “has never once in my life asked me what I wanted to do. She’s asked what I was going to do. What I was planning. Whether I’d thought about the consequences. Never once what I wanted.”

“What did you want?”

I think about it. “I wanted pierced ears when I was seven. I wanted to live in the wildflower field near this barn that looks like four different barns smashed together. I wanted to paint my room royal blue. I wanted to wear UGGs every day. I wanted to take French. I wanted to take pictures of things. I wanted to go places. I wanted to find the story inside the regular story.” I look at him. “I think I always knew that. I just let everyone talk me out of it.”