House Rules

by Ruby Lang

  No, the thing that people became irate about was the fact that he didn’t check his messages often enough.

  He had a flurry of texts from Maxine, as well as a message or two. Some of them were probably from Ronnie, who now asked constantly for pictures of Muffin. Simon didn’t like texting, but he did know how to attach photos. He’d take a few when the cat was asleep, because otherwise she was a scratching, complaining whirlwind. He had a slew of voicemails from unknown numbers that were probably telemarketers. Lately a lot of his calls had been in Mandarin. He also had a couple from Lana.

  But he was in a department meeting and couldn’t really check the messages now. Of course, being bored by his colleagues’ sniping was why he’d found himself glancing at them for the first time today.

  He sighed. The New Year’s dinner had not gone according to plan. Not only had he failed to stay up, he’d been so deep into sleep he didn’t even remember Lana rousing him and leading him to bed, where she hadn’t bothered taking off his clothing and had let him curl up into her with his shirt and khakis still on.

  It was maybe a little dismaying to find out he didn’t look noticeably more rumpled when he’d slept in his clothes. It was, however, very dismaying he and Lana had not managed to have their romantic dinner. They also hadn’t managed to talk.

  “Simon, do you have anything to add?” Nancy Charles-Dubois, the interim head of the department asked, interrupting his reverie.

  Ugh. Teachers.

  “Nothing at this time. Thanks.”

  He was full of thoughts, but none to do with the plan for their relocating offices while his floor was being renovated. Luckily, he didn’t keep as much there as he did at home, otherwise yet another move in less than three months would have distressed him.

  But his thoughts were preoccupied with Lana. When he’d asked her why she hadn’t woken him, she’d told him she would’ve had to prop him up at the table, and he very clearly needed to sleep. And as he yawned his way through the rest of this meeting—his office neighbors were not happy with their temporary quarters—he realized Lana was right. He was still exhausted. He checked some of the messages on the way home, but it was windy, and everything sounded garbled, and he was already irritated by his long-winded colleagues, and the fact that Lana was probably already at work, which meant he’d hardly seen her this week, which meant he missed her and—well, that was something to think about later. He was faintly and irrationally annoyed, and tired, and angry with himself that not so long ago he’d have been able to concentrate on his work, make love to Lana, plan and eat late dinners, run, feel sure about his future, not miss his wife when he hadn’t seen her for a few hours, and above all, not be tired from missing a couple of weeks of sleep.

  He fell into bed almost as soon as he got home and woke up late at night, disoriented. Lana wasn’t home yet.

  He got the sudden urge for a strong cup of coffee. He could still drink at all hours, couldn’t he? After this night, he felt like he had to prove it. But his frankly terrible single cup coffee maker wasn’t what he wanted. He had the sudden longing for one of those thick Turkish coffees in a small cup. He hadn’t had one for months, not since he’d moved, and he decided he’d make the coffee and stay up with Lana and make her something to eat if she needed something. They could talk and it would sort of make him feel better about how Lunar New Year had turned out.

  The Turkish coffee maker was behind this teapot that had been a wedding gift. He was sure Lana and he never used it, but Lana recognized it the minute she’d opened the cabinet. He’d kept it all these years, and he wasn’t sure why he had bothered unboxing it to bring to this new place. Optimism, he supposed. Maybe he’d imagined they could sip tea together because she was off coffee nowadays. Plus, tea seemed to imply the kind of hands off, formal relationship he’d envisioned with her. But of course, they never drank tea and they’d definitely not kept their hands to themselves, and what they shared most often was water from the same glass that he brought to her in bed after they’d been kissing and fucking and whispering to each other in the night.

  They’d put the teapot on a high shelf. It would be safer there, he’d reasoned. Now it was in his way.

  He reached up, just able to feel the cold handle of the coffee maker. If he could move the teapot’s spout sideways he’d be able to—and with a crash the surprisingly heavy piece of crockery fell, bouncing off the edge of the cabinet where it still seemed miraculously whole, and then when he unthinkingly reached out to grab it with both his hands in a last-ditch attempt to save it, it fell apart under his palms, the body of it disintegrating as it shattered into the dish rack in a pile of shards.

  He stood there a minute and let the adrenaline course through him before he unbent his fingers. At least he hadn’t cut himself.

  God, he was stupid. He could’ve hurt his hands trying to catch it. He might have brained himself trying to get it down in the first place. And now he was going to have to clean the dishes it had fallen into, the counter, and the floor.

  He picked gingerly through the clean plates and cups to see if the teapot had broken any of the other glassware in the rack. Miraculously, it seemed it hadn’t.

  Fuck.

  He took another minute to breathe.

  When Lana returned home, he was still cleaning.

  He heard her come through the door in a rush, straight to the kitchen where the light was on.

  “Good, you’re still up,” she said coming straight into the kitchen.

  She looked worried and tired. He noted that she’d come into the kitchen without taking off her jacket and scarves and bag. She’d kicked her boots off, though.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, holding up the two fragments he’d just found.

  “No, I’m sorry,” she said, pulling the hat off her head and shaking out her hair. “I feel like this is all my fault.”

  “How could it be? I’m the one who was careless.”

  She’d been preoccupied with putting down her bag and unwinding her outer scarf, and she frowned up at him.

  “I shouldn’t have unpacked it,” he said. “I knew we wouldn’t use it. But I’m sure I can replace it by tomorrow. We’d probably be able to find another on eBay.”

  She stared at him. “There’s no point in replacing it, not right away.”

  “Well, it’s not urgent but you loved it and—”

  “Simon, haven’t you gotten any of the messages?”

  She was still in her jacket. He wanted to take it off her shoulders, but for some reason he felt like she wanted him to touch her. Instead, he looked down at the two shards in his hands. “What do you mean?”

  She huffed out a breath. Was she irritated or was she sad? Either way, once again, he was having to catch up with her on bad news. “Our landlord. Raoul? The one in New Zealand? He says he’s selling the apartment. We’re being evicted.”

  He blinked. He understood all the words, but together they didn’t make any sense. He stared at the pieces of crockery in his hands and for a moment thought about how they’d never fit together again. “But he said we’d have at least a year. He told us he’d be coming back. This was supposed to be a temporary job.”

  “He got an offer on the apartment he couldn’t refuse. From the downstairs neighbor. She wants to restore the whole house to its original glory.”

  “What original glory? Is she going to rip out all the plumbing and heating and put in lead pipes? Move in a bunch of cats and trash?”

  His voice had become too loud. He could tell from the way she narrowed her eyes and winced. But he was frustrated and tired and the only sleep he’d gotten lately had been at the expense of a dinner he’d planned with the help of two of his interns who weren’t paid for that sort of thing, and that he’d cooked and let congeal while he snored on the couch. And all he wanted was to simply settle down in this apartment he loved with this woman he loved, an
d he couldn’t even spend one goddamn minute of peace with her before he broke things and was kicked out.

  “I’ve already moved once in the last few months. Isn’t that enough for one decade? I hate change. I hate it.”

  Something like frustration flashed across her face, but her tone remained patient. “I know.”

  He was behaving badly, and he couldn’t help but agree that Lana was right for getting annoyed with him.

  “If you’d checked your messages—”

  “You’re blaming me?”

  “No, of course not. But at least I wouldn’t have to deal with you being this way after a long night if you did.”

  She turned away.

  God dammit.

  He watched her shoulders go up and down. She was tired, and she’d had to sit with this knowledge this whole time, and he hadn’t made it any better for her. Instead, he’d yelled and it wasn’t even her fault. He was an asshole.

  An about-to-be-homeless asshole.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  He finally put the fragments down and moved toward her. He pulled her to him and she came willingly into his arms. He kissed her forehead and her cheek, and her chin, and unzipped her jacket and unknotted the scarf around her neck.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t better at checking my messages and that I got angry—”

  “You’re allowed to be annoyed. I was.”

  “But there’s a place and time and you’re already stressed enough.”

  He pulled the jacket off her arms and hastily put it on the counter behind him without turning around, then he ran his hands up and down her body as if to check for injuries, to make sure she was still here and intact and he hadn’t done some other damage through his carelessness. The important thing was that she was still with him, after all.

  This had been the best thing to come out of moving. They’d gotten together again because of this apartment—and that’s why he loved it, and why he didn’t want to leave it.

  “Maybe we could buy it,” he said aloud. “I wonder how much the downstairs neighbor paid for it. Maybe I could ask Raoul if he’d consider another offer. How far along is the sale? I mean, even if they’re in contract—”

  “We’re not going to be able to buy it, Simon.”

  “I have savings, and I’m sure that you—”

  “No. I don’t have any money, really, Simon. Not that kind. I could never afford this neighborhood.”

  He pulled her in again, he sighed. “Who’d have thought all those years ago that Central Harlem would turn into a hot zone? I guess it was always beautiful, though.” He smiled ruefully. “But now a bunch of gentrifying jerks like us figured it out.”

  “Like us,” she agreed, her voice muffled.

  He took a deep breath. Concentrate on Lana, on their new relationship. That was more than enough to give him strength.

  At least he hadn’t moved all of his stuff in. “How long do we have?”

  “Around two months.”

  “So it’s not that bad. We have some time to find another place, hopefully in this neighborhood.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  This was the moment to tell Simon—no, talk to him about it.

  It was the worst time.

  “I don’t know if I can stay here, in the city, I mean.”

  Lana pulled back to look at his face. He was confused, but that wasn’t even the worst—they hadn’t gotten to the hardest part yet.

  “What do you mean? Oh, is it about not being able to afford rent? That doesn’t matter to me. I can probably afford it. Or we could try another neighborhood. But we can—” He stopped for the first time to look at her. To really look at her. “If we’re together...”

  He held her gaze and said, “We are together, aren’t we?”

  “I want us to be.”

  He stepped back. His hands left her arms slowly, as if he were already letting go. “But?”

  She tried to swallow the rising panic in her throat. She hadn’t said anything and already she didn’t like the way Simon was taking this. “But. I was offered a job, a little upstate, at a cooking school.”

  Her breath was too loud in the silent kitchen.

  “You want to go back to teaching?”

  “It’s not quite that. I don’t know how much longer I can keep up with the restaurant job. It’s not because of the endometriosis. It hasn’t stopped me before. I’ve worked through it. But I’m getting older and slower. And the kids who are doing this, they’re so young. They can take the long hours, and they stay on their feet, and they can cope with...with the constant stress. This job, it has better benefits. It means regular hours. No more night work. And I can still practice my craft. I can still learn and teach and do what I want to do.”

  “You can teach. You want to go back to teaching. Well, you could’ve stayed in school if you wanted to do that? Why didn’t you finish your degree? Why didn’t you—”

  Why didn’t you stay with me?

  “It’s not the same, Simon.”

  He gave a short laugh. “It feels the same. No, it feels worse. Because I knew this would happen. Because Maxine warned me and I was stupid and I fell for it again. I fell for you. I love you, and you don’t love me enough. Again.”

  She struggled to talk at a moment when she really needed him to understand. “Simon, I loved you then and I love you now, but we can do something different this time. I love what you’ve become, what you’ve done with your life and we can work with this. I wouldn’t be so far from the city. Hester says on a good day, you can get into Manhattan in an hour and a half. I could get a car with the money I save on living here. We could have weekends. I’d actually have Saturdays and Sundays free sometimes! Or you could come with me.”

  His mouth pressed in a tight line. “I am not going anywhere upstate. I’m not moving again. My entire life is here.”

  Her shoulders drooped. “I know. And you’ve worked hard for it.”

  “I have.”

  “But what about weekends? And now it’s easier to stay in touch. We can Skype and my hours are going to be like yours.”

  He was shaking his head, not looking at her. “These things never work, Lana. I’ve seen this with my colleagues. They get married, and then they reside in different states—”

  “It’s the same state!”

  “And after a couple of years, they get divorced. I guess I should thank you because at least you left before we could try out something that untenable. Saved me a lot of time.”

  “You’re being unfair.”

  She couldn’t help it. He’d retreated to the far end of the kitchen. He was gripping the edge of the counter. And she was still standing in the middle, under the light, barely able to keep her hands from reaching out to him.

  “Am I being unfair?”

  He wouldn’t look at her.

  “Back then, it wasn’t about you at all, Simon. I asked you to leave with me. I had to find something else to do with my life. I was suffocating.”

  “You’re saying I was suffocating you.”

  “You aren’t listening, I was trying to be someone who I wasn’t! I needed to find the thing I wanted to do, because being the person I thought everyone else wanted me to be was killing me.”

  “And it turns out that what everyone else wanted you to be was a teacher, which is what you want to do now.”

  “You keep making this the same thing when it’s different. I’ve changed and you have, too, even if you think you’re not. I thought you saw how much I’d grown, and were happy about it. You seemed excited I’d learned new skills, that I’d found a thing I was capable of doing better. But maybe I’m wrong.”

  She was furious at him, so angry and so mixed up in her ball of love and frustration and hurt. She’d handled this badly. Was there another way? It didn’t matter. She had to focu
s. She didn’t want to let him go, the fucker. She refused to let go without a real fight this time, because this time she was stronger. She didn’t want him to be hurt, or worried, but goddamn him for being stubborn and hurt and worried. “Things do not have to end between us. I love you.”

  “Well, I love you more than I thought possible. I love you and can you blame me for not being happy at the idea of being separated from you, because now I know what it’s like to have you back in my life?”

  He turned around. He couldn’t even face her. “I’m an idiot.”

  “No. Simon.”

  “How can I help loving you? But it doesn’t do me much good, does it? You know, all those things you worry about, if you’d just asked me I could give them to you. I’m not rich or anything, but we could have health insurance. You wouldn’t have to work. But you’d rather swing noodles around.”

  “My work is not swinging noodles around any more than yours is telling teens to sing pretty songs.”

  She tried to make herself sound softer. Calmer. But the frustration cracked through each syllable. “I am asking you to try and work this through. I wanted you to do that back then, too. We have more now. Simon, we could make this work if you’d just try.”

  “No, you’re asking me to change who I am.”

  “If that’s true, then you’re demanding the same of me.”

  She wanted to sink down onto the kitchen floor. Her legs were strong. She’d run miles and miles over the years. She was so much more than the last time she’d faced Simon down. Her back, her entire core, had been strengthened with constant work. Her arms were full of muscles she hadn’t even known she possessed. She could make things. She’d fashioned her own life on her own terms. But right now, those legs and arms felt numb and weak. She knew they would haul her up again eventually. They didn’t want to do it right now.

  It would have been so easy to take him up on his offer, to have him carry her.

  It was past midnight. She was tired and heartsick, and she could see from the bowed lines of his back that he felt the same. But his voice, when he spoke again, was unwavering. “You’re right, Lana. It’s not like last time. Now we’re older. We’re supposed to have learned our lessons. At least last time, I had a place to stay when you left me. At this point, you want to leave again, you want to live away from me, but I have to haul up my life and find somewhere to make my home, too. The only thing that’s changed is this time you didn’t make any promises.”