House Rules

by Ruby Lang

  She, on the other hand, was pretty sure she’d fallen for him again.

  She could admit this to herself now. But to say the words to him—it seemed almost overwhelming, given the weight of everything they had been to each other. It seemed too soon to bring up separation or commitment, to articulate clearly what she wanted from him when she wasn’t sure herself, to ask him what he wanted from her. No, that wasn’t true. Then again, as everyone kept pointing out, what did too soon mean when they’d already been married and divorced?

  They would have to talk. She would have to ask for what she wanted, because that’s what she had promised herself she’d do from now on. But it was going to take time to work up to it. Probably because she was so afraid of the answer. And didn’t being afraid mean she already cared too much?

  The lights of the 2 train were harsh and although it was almost empty, it seemed narrow. She had a headache. Probably the two sips of alcohol she’d had. Definitely the alcohol, and not the worry that long ago Simon had refused to give up any of his dreams so she could pursue hers.

  Early February

  Lana had to work on the first day of the Lunar New Year, and although she hadn’t made a big deal of celebrating when they were together, Simon decided to try to cook for her. She’d started her period again, and while it wasn’t as bad as last time, she was clearly tired and uncomfortable. He wanted to do something for her.

  But even as soon as he formed the plan he felt...somewhat daunted. She was a professional chef and she worked at a Pan-Asian restaurant; he wasn’t going to attempt anything like that. But he could make some kind of dumpling. A ravioli? He fell down an internet hole of pasta shapes for an hour, leaving him unprepared for the class he was supposed to teach. He got through it by relying on muscle memory and letting the chattier students drone on for longer than usual. When class was over he promptly started looking at the internet again in his office.

  But Abena and Dion knocked on his door and barreled in, as they usually did.

  Abena stopped short. “Are you browsing recipes?”

  Simon closed the lid of his laptop.

  His interns glanced at each other and grinned.

  “Was there something in particular we needed to discuss?”

  “No, it’s more that we’ve been getting emails about the kids not being able to access their practice pages,” Dion said.

  “Oh, shit.”

  They looked at each other again as Simon pulled up the website.

  “You don’t usually swear in front of us, Simon,” Abena ventured.

  “I’m a little on edge.”

  He’d absentmindedly left off the extension of the file he’d uploaded this morning. It wasn’t the first time he’d done this, of course. Abena and Dion were constantly sending him texts he’d forget to read about some sort of broken link or other. He wasn’t exactly the quickest at adapting to technology, so of course that had led to numerous little irritations but—“Why are you both here?”

  “You haven’t been checking your messages again, obviously, and we wanted to see how you were.”

  “You know we haven’t talked much since the concert.”

  “To which you brought your ex-wife.”

  Simon fought the urge to fidget. After all, he had wanted to show her his work, and he wanted everyone to see her. But...he didn’t want to answer questions about it. He opened the laptop again and let Abena take over. She said over her shoulder, “And now we find you planning some sort of Valentine’s Day surprise.”

  “It’s not for Valentine’s Day.”

  They all watched the music file upload.

  Dion said, “It’s just you haven’t seemed quite as present as you usually are and we were wondering if you could shed some light.”

  Classic Dion, trying to be tactful while extracting information. Even Abena was smirking at Dion’s efforts.

  “This isn’t really appropriate.” Simon sighed.

  Abena leaned in. “Please. We’re your interns and apparently we know nothing. The whole department is gossiping about you. Some of the old-timers remember your wife—”

  Guess that made him an old-timer.

  “And they have opinions. You have to give us something. Are you officially back together? Have you forgiven each other for the things that drove you apart to begin with?”

  “One of the old admins, Ms. Frey, she said your ex was jealous of your success.”

  Simon snorted. “Jealous of what success? Lana was amazingly talented.”

  “No one remembers that part.”

  He paused. He remembered. He felt an irrational flare of resentment against Ms. Frey, who was the only one who could ever produce an extra ream of paper from the supply room, and who was a whiz at figuring out what was wrong with his iPad. No, it wasn’t Ms. Frey’s fault that she half-remembered something about some silly kids from long ago. People’s personalities, their talents, their quirks and the things that made them who they were—they were flattened by memory. Even he had done the same thing in some ways with Lana. And he’d known her better than he’d known anyone.

  Now she didn’t play the piano at all anymore. She didn’t consider herself a musician. She’d said it didn’t make her happy. But he hadn’t asked her why it made her unhappy. At the time he’d assumed it was a product of being around him. Maybe that hadn’t been the problem at all.

  He said aloud, “She was really talented. I spent a lot of time trying to get her to see how good she was.”

  Abena and Dion raised their eyebrows at each other.

  “She’s doing a different thing entirely and she loves it. She’s very good.”

  Abena frowned. Dion smirked.

  “I don’t understand. Why are you both looking at me like that?”

  “It’s just that we’ve heard this before. You always say things like, I want them to know how good they are. You see the best in people, Simon. No, that’s not the right way of putting it. You see how people can be their best. You see the potential. Of course, you’re fine at critically evaluating people, but it also makes you push sometimes. You believe so fervently that it takes a big personality to push back.”

  All right, maybe that described him, but he often knew what was best. “Lana is very strong.”

  “Saying she can take it doesn’t mean we ought to always force it.”

  This was getting far too personal when really his assessment of her talent shouldn’t be. But he wasn’t about to get into that with his interns.

  He glared at them.

  “Anyway, he’s clearly trying to win her back,” Dion said, turning to Abena.

  Was he? He did want her, but that phrase held a lot of possible meanings.

  “I approve of the way he’s going about it, at least. Cooking is so nurturing.”

  Was he even here?

  “It’s better than yelling at her about her talent and potential.”

  “I didn’t do that. I don’t do that.”

  “No, it’s like The Parent Trap.”

  “This is nothing like The Parent Trap. We’re not parents. You two are not Hayley Mills.”

  “Who is Hayley Mills?”

  “I think you mean Lindsay Lohan.”

  A pause. “Right. Of course.”

  “Although who knows if it was a good idea for those parents to get back together,” Abena said.

  “No, the bad idea was for each parent to take one twin and not tell the other. That’s the real fucked-up thing about that movie.”

  “Good point, Dion. So can you really trust the judgment of people like that?”

  Simon interrupted their delightful trip down pop culture memory lane. “But do you think that Lana and I should get back together?”

  “Yes!” Dion said. “Finally, you’re asking for our opinion. A thousand times, yes!”

  A
bena, however, blinked. “It’s clearly what you want,” she said cautiously. “So I support that.”

  “But?”

  “But I don’t have all the information.”

  “I don’t know that I do, either.”

  “Well then, I think what you really have to do here is prove you can listen.”

  “I can listen. Of course I can listen. I’m a musician. What is so funny?”

  Dion couldn’t even answer, they were giggling so hard.

  “It’s just—it’s—you’re such a conductor,” Abena finally said.

  Like she wasn’t one.

  Dion shook their head and wiped their eyes. “Thanks for that laugh, Simon. Now open up that laptop. Let us help you woo her.”

  What was he was doing? He wanted to do something special for her. He needed to show her he appreciated her. How could he signal a new start? Was that why he was worried about messing up the symbolism of the meal?

  And if he was wooing her, did that mean he was afraid he hadn’t won her back? Would he always be afraid of that? “This is inappropriate. I am not taking advantage of you in this way.”

  “Think of it as us taking advantage of you.”

  “You’ll be satisfying our nosiness and we’ll be propelled to the top of the grad student gossip tree. Win-win for your interns who aren’t paid enough.”

  Simon groaned. “I’m working on that. Believe me.”

  “We know.”

  “You are not helping ‘woo her’ as you put it. But if you could let me bounce some ideas off of you.”

  Dion clapped their hands and Abena beamed. “First thing you need is a haircut.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I hope we’re all ready for Asian Saint Patrick’s Day.”

  Standing next to Lana, Talia muttered, “That doesn’t even make sense.”

  The only thing Lana was ready to do was to roll her eyes at the fact her bosses had come up with another reason to get people trashed and spending money in February.

  Apparently, they were debuting a new drink in honor of Lunar New Year, and they seemed gleeful about charging a lot for some cranberry juice, a splash of an alcohol they hadn’t been able to move, and one of those little umbrellas. But at least someone sensible had convinced them no one wanted to drink a bright red beer. There was a special menu involving spicy fried chicken wings and soft-shell crab with a batter spun out to look like a dragon—to her it seemed more like a spider, but she wasn’t about to say anything about that. She concentrated on her noodles—at least no one had suggested she dip them in gold or something—and tried to avoid thinking about how the smell of the deep fry was going to be really hard to get out of her hair.

  But other than that, it was just another work day. Maybe she should be thankful to have a job at all.

  Lana half expected Simon to appear at the restaurant tonight. He made it a habit now of showing up at least once a week, usually on a Wednesday. But raising her head and peering into the main room, she could see why he might have chosen to listen to her and skip tonight.

  She was tempted to do the same. She kept rolling Hester’s offer around in her mind, like a heavy, shining pinball. Maybe if she moved it around long enough, she wouldn’t have to make a decision. Then again, she thought, wincing at the crashing sound coming from the front, she was pretty sure she didn’t want to stick around Lore to suffer through an Asian Bastille Day.

  She watched another elaborate deep fried creation being ferried out, then put her head down and tried to concentrate on her own work. Today people were supposed to eat Long Life noodles, drawing the strands up from a bowl with their chopsticks. The longer the noodle, the longer you lived.

  Well, her noodles were a lot of things, but metaphors for life, they were not. Especially not her own existence, which was lumpy and many-stranded and which could definitely not be pulled up from a bowl in a single, smooth movement.

  Maybe on her next day off she could make a celebration dinner for Simon. They’d skip the Long Life thing, but she would tell him about the job offer. He’d also clearly had something on his mind for the last few days: determinedly cleaning and trying to be unobtrusive about it, shutting the lid of his computer when she came in the room, or simply observing her.

  It made her oddly happy he was keeping a secret from her—from her specifically, a secret that made him grin when she thought he wasn’t looking, a secret that made him watch her carefully. He wanted to surprise her and he was terrible at it. Partly because his song choices always gave him away. The other day he’d been smiling to himself and singing “You Did It” from My Fair Lady under his breath. This morning while he was cooking eggs, he’d hummed “Hey, Big Spender.”

  It was adorable, and later as she left work she couldn’t help mentioning it to Julia, who’d called her to wish her a happy new year.

  “He’s going to propose again!” Julia immediately squealed.

  “No.”

  Was he?

  She paused at the entrance of the subway.

  It didn’t make any sense. After all, they were, as he’d put it so casually and sleepily, on a trial period. He hadn’t moved all of his belongings into the apartment. And sure, she hadn’t loved the reminder, although later on she’d appreciated it. Because she had to be realistic.

  “After the concert he was introducing you to his colleagues. He had his hand on your back. He was looking at you adoringly. That’s practically a public declaration.”

  “We haven’t talked about marriage. It sounds romantic but we haven’t thought it through. That was part of our problem last time. We ought to be sensible.”

  “Screw sensible!”

  “Aren’t you supposed to say something lawyerly like, You of all people should go into this with your eyes open, or Get stuff in writing?”

  “Your eyes are open. Annoyingly so. And besides, your problem last time was that you were doing the same things, and okay, you needed to figure yourself out. But you did it. And now you have a job and enviable muscle tone for a woman your age. Plus, being sensible isn’t passionate or interesting!”

  “We’re different people now, which is why we have to talk about it. Plus, we don’t have to worry about the passionate part.”

  Or about being interesting, considering how curious people seemed about the two of them.

  “Do tell,” Julia said. “You never give me any of the sexy bits. And it sounds like there are plenty of those.”

  “I’m not saying anything. I refuse to corrupt your innocent mind in the new year.”

  “You’re making that rule up. There are a lot of rules for this celebration, but that’s not one of them.”

  “Go to bed, Julia. Happy new year.”

  “You’re no fun. Happy new year.”

  On the subway ride home, Lana allowed herself the brief fantasy of marrying him again. Not the ceremony. They’d gone to City Hall the first time, and then shared French fries in the park. Simon had to fend off an especially aggressive city squirrel that had developed a taste for fast food. That had seemed quite romantic enough at the time, and nothing could touch that memory.

  But she could entertain the dream of being married again, of being sure of him, of knowing no matter how much furniture he had in storage, he wasn’t about to move out. Of someone who might care for her when she got sick, of having his health insurance. Maybe if they were together, she could quit Lore and stay in the city. She wouldn’t have to go upstate. She could start up her own modest restaurant. Or a food truck. And she could be with him at regular hours. They’d stay in his bed and sleep-in once in a while. To be well-rested and have sex? She could so easily slide into the role of faculty wife, attend his concerts. She’d have the right to feel proud of him.

  The living room lamps were still on when she got home. When she’d taken off her boots and coat and scarves, she saw why. Simo
n was sprawled asleep on the couch, the cat tucked beside him. On the counter were covered dishes and two place settings, unlit candles, matches, a bottle of rosé swimming in a bucket of melted ice. She picked up the lids to see what was under them: a glistening filet of salmon with slivers of golden ginger, two small meatballs in a nest of red sauce and pasta, a simple salad.

  It was a New Year’s meal. This was her surprise. And he’d fallen asleep before he could deliver it.

  She should probably put her coat on again and make a lot of noise to wake him and pretend to be astonished. But instead, she sat down gently on the sofa beside him and fitted herself under his arm. His hair was different. Shorter. He’d had it trimmed. She reached up to touch it, and despite the severity and newness of the cut it felt as soft as ever, He didn’t wake up. Neither did the cat.

  The things she’d dreamed about, the feeling of security—well, she’d been married to him and that hadn’t prevented her from doubting herself and him. Now they were unmarried. Curled up underneath his arm, she was aware at that moment she felt more secure right here, right now than she ever had before. And with that realization, she knew she loved him. She didn’t still love him. She simply loved him, and it was like a new wound on top of the old, a fresh surge of love where there’d been a scar.

  All that feeling must have made her twitch. Or maybe it was the breath that she was struggling to take with this wonderful, horrible realization. Because Simon woke briefly, his long lashes fluttering, special dinner clearly forgotten. He smiled at her as if she’d always been there and pulled them both down in that uncomfortable position on the couch to sleep again.

  * * *

  Simon knew he had a failing—several, actually. But the one most people seemed to focus on was not the fact that he was always the last to get his grades into the system, or that his shirts were perpetually wrinkled, or that he was maybe too hard on his sister.