If We Lived Here

by Lindsey Palmer

  “Eh.” Gen wrinkled her nose. “I’m over men for now—I feel like a guy would just get in the way of my career.”

  Emma smiled, thinking about how Gen had spoken just last week about yearning for a boyfriend. She watched her friend move manically about the office, showing Emma the research she’d done on scripts, and what to wear for auditions, and which non-seedy L.A. neighborhoods had the cheapest rent. Gen looked happier than she’d seemed in months, back from a thousand whims to the inevitable place of trying to make her dreams come true. It was her one constant. This made Emma realize that Gen’s attention on Nick had likely been just another fleeting fancy, a momentary conceit in a whirlwind of changeable passions and interests. In that moment she forgave her friend.

  Plus, Emma thought of the conversations she’d had with Nick since she discovered his deceit. They existed in what she thought of as their relationship vault—that private cache of intimacy shared by the two of them and no one else. Genevieve had no place there. In a weird way, Emma had felt closer to Nick in the past couple of days; she’d realized they were stronger than she’d known.

  “So what do you think?” Gen flashed her bright eyes.

  “Sorry, repeat that.”

  “I was just saying I think The Genevieve has the potential to be as big as The Rachel from Friends.” Gen was vamping, tossing her hair from side to side and batting her eyelashes. Emma giggled, thinking her friend was delusional, if always optimistic.

  “Sure, Gen, I can see it. Everyone with long blond hair, very elegant.”

  “A girl can dream, right?”

  “Absolutely.” Emma glanced at the pile of audition notices on Gen’s desk. “Hmm, this evening I’m casting for a story of female friendship, a comedy, but one with heart. Would you be interested in the role of dinner date? It’s a hot part, and many young ingénues are vying for it. Your costar’s a relative unknown, though there’s a lot of buzz about her potential to blow up big-time.”

  “You’re such a dork,” Gen said. “I’d be delighted.” She hooked her arm into Emma’s, and they left 1, 2, 3 … Ivies, off to dine à deux. As they strolled together through Midtown, Emma found herself caught up in Gen’s dream, spotting several women with long bleached hair and imagining them mimicking the look of TV megastar Genevieve Pine. It felt good to fantasize with her friend.

  Chapter 30

  The next evening, Emma got a call from a man who identified himself as a mold-and-water-damage expert. Apparently he was a friend of Max’s and said he owed her brother a favor. Max had arranged for him to come assess their apartment, and to provide cleanup and restoration. “You can wait for the building owner to take care of it, but experience tells me they’ll be squabbling over FEMA funding for months. So as long as your landlord’s okay with it, I can handle the cleanup much sooner.”

  Emma thought of Shelley, and how this would be a favor to her as well as to Nick and herself. “Great, let’s do it.” They made an appointment for that weekend.

  A series of horn honks sounded from outside, and Emma leaned out the window to see Annie hanging from the door of a taxi, the annoyed-looking driver slumped at her side. “Get Nick,” she called up. “I need help, fast! The meter’s running.”

  Nick and Emma found Annie by the curb, pointing to an espresso machine secured with a seat belt in the cab’s backseat. “Ta-da,” she said.

  “You know, you don’t have to transport your own supplies out here to get a latte,” said Nick. “Coffee shops do exist outside of Manhattan.”

  “Ha ha. Eli made the same joke. But, guys, this is your housewarming gift.”

  “Oh, sweet.” Nick gave her a high five. “Thanks, Annie.”

  “Seriously?” said Emma. “Is it the same one you and Eli have?”

  “Yeah, except this one’s got a built-in bean grinder, and some sort of laser-fast heating technology, plus all kinds of other features that Eli could talk your ear off about.”

  “Annie, it’s too much.” Emma’s idea of a housewarming gift was a basil plant or a bottle of wine. Leave it to her friend to show up with a luxury appliance probably worth thousands of dollars.

  Annie waved her off. “We got it as a wedding gift, but we already have one. Plus, I’m off caffeine for the next eight months, which is a total tragedy.” She patted her belly.

  The cab driver cleared his throat, and Nick went to lift the load. “Jesus.”

  “Yeah, it’s ninety-two pounds. But on the bright side, you get to show off how strong you are.”

  Inside the apartment, Nick set the sparkling new machine down on the kitchen counter. Annie perused the wreckage. “Well, I won’t say it fits right in.” She and Emma burst into laughter.

  Nick said he’d get the machine set up, and the girls decided to go for a walk. They were subdued, passing a supply drop-off full of down-and-out-looking hordes. Annie pulled Emma into a playground up the block. “God, was that depressing,” she said as they hopped onto side-by-side swings. “We really should sign up to volunteer.”

  “We should.” Emma pumped her legs, relishing the funny feeling in her stomach as she soared above the sand. She’d spent a lot of time this past week feeling sorry for herself, but not everyone had a friend who would gift them a luxury coffeemaker, or a brother who could call in a favor and potentially solve their storm damage. Although Emma was fairly certain the favor was really from Max, who was probably paying full price for the supposedly free restoration.

  “The donation drives are a good excuse to go through my closet and pare down.” Annie swung in arcs higher than Emma’s. “I’m sure it won’t be long before I don’t fit into any of my clothes.”

  “Nah, you’ll probably be one of those annoying pregnant women who gains, like, ten pounds, then loses it within a month of giving birth.”

  “Let’s hope. Eli’s hot little secretary put one of my OB appointments into his calendar, so now she knows about the baby. I’m sure she’s having a ball imagining me blow up like a blimp.”

  “So this pregnancy is really real, huh?” Emma let her legs go limp and hovered idly above the sand.

  “Yep. And really terrifying.”

  Emma felt a pang, remembering the overjoyed e-mail Annie had written to her mother. “But it’s not all terrifying, right?”

  “I’ll put it this way.” Annie swooped past her and up into the air. “I was on the subway the other day, sitting across from this woman with a baby. Of course as soon as the baby looked in my direction, I started playing peek-a-boo and making those little kissy faces. What is that, some kind of biological impulse? You never see men doing it—it’s only women of prime baby-making age. Anyway, I’m thinking, like, oh, right, this is great, I’m gonna adore being a mom. But then it got old after, like, two minutes, and I felt like an idiot for making all these dumb expressions in public. And then I was panicking, like, is this what the next few years of my life are going to be like, making stupid faces at a drooling person with a brain the size of a pea? Will I never again be able to take the subway and play Candy Crush in peace?”

  “First of all, babies’ brains are larger than a pea.” Emma began pumping her legs again and caught up with her friend. “And secondly, I can’t exactly picture you riding the subway with a baby.”

  “Good point. I’ll definitely be an Uber mom. But anyway, then the baby cooed up at his mom and she kissed him on the head, and my heart totally swelled, like practically burst open right there on the Q train. My hormones are bonkers, if you can’t tell. Within five minutes, I went from having a complete crisis over becoming a mom to, like, praising the heavens that I was with child.”

  “Oh, Annie. It’ll all be fine.”

  “I know it will. Or at least I hope. I’m just so happy I can talk to you about this. With everyone else I have to be like, ‘This is the most thrilling news in the universe!’ because otherwise I seem like some kind of heartless bitch. And it is exciting, but it’s also horrifying.” So Nick had been right about that.

  �
��I’ll babysit whenever you need a break.”

  “Even on New Year’s?”

  “Well …”

  “I thought so.”

  “Just promise me you won’t move to the suburbs, at least not for, like, five years.”

  “Are you kidding? Eli would have to drag me by my hair out of Manhattan. But I’ll tell you one thing, because only you won’t think I’m being obnoxious. Though it’ll be hard for you to understand, since you’re always so good at everything—”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Oh, come on, when did you ever even get an A-minus in school? And every career you try you’re immediately the best. I’ve never had that. And now it’s sort of worse being married, like everyone’s always saying ‘Eli’s wife’ and ‘Mrs. Silber’ and I’m thinking, Wait, is that me? What happened to ‘Annie Blum’? Who am I, and all that crap. But, my point is, I think I’m really going to kick ass at this motherhood thing. Think about it, I’m awesome at multitasking, I love to puree food, and I genuinely enjoy playing all kinds of silly, stupid games. Also I’m a pro at picking out adorable clothes.”

  “And you’re a rock star on four hours of sleep.”

  “I am!”

  “You’re gonna kill it, no question.”

  “You’re the best, Ems.”

  “No, you’re the best, bubeleh.” She said it in her best Jewish grandma voice.

  Annie did her analogous impression: “Oy, I’m kvelling!”

  They began swinging in synch. “What did we used to say, that if you stay in tandem you’ll end up married, right?”

  “Or how about best friends?” said Annie. “Ready? One, two, three.” And then, just as they’d been doing for the past twenty-five years, they leaped off their swings and landed together in a heap in the sand.

  A navy envelope stamped in yellow block letters with “IKEA” slid out of Annie’s pocket. “Oh, right,” she said. “I got something else for you guys. I know you’ll have to get rid of a lot of your stuff, so hopefully this will help with redecorating. It’s another wedding gift, from one of my mom’s friends.”

  “No! She got you a gift certificate to IKEA? Eli must’ve been outraged.”

  “Exactly. I don’t think he would’ve stepped foot in IKEA even to furnish his college dorm room. What a snob, right?”

  “A snob with beautiful leather furniture, soft like buttah.” Emma revived the Yiddish accent.

  “Like buttah! Only the best for my little prince.” Annie rolled her eyes lovingly. “Anyway, hopefully you can use it.” She handed over the envelope.

  “Thanks, Annie. You’re always here for me.”

  “You know it, Ems.” And then they both spotted the seesaw, and ran like lunatics over to play.

  Carrying the gently used clothing and books that his students had collected, Nick followed the directions on Shelley’s card to the nearest donation drop-off. He’d instituted a show-and-tell in his class, giving each student five minutes to share a hurricane story. Normally the kids would’ve dismissed the activity as too childish, but they’d gotten into it. They’d passed around the two-liter bottle one kid had filled with storm water, and a photo of the fish that had ended up in another kid’s kitchen, and a comic book one boy had read with a flashlight when his electricity was out—“the first book I ever finished,” he said, taunting Nick with his grin. Mostly they’d been fine, living in Upper Manhattan, and when Nick shared a news article about the kids in the projects in his neighborhood and how they’d lost everything—yes, even their cell phones and favorite kicks—the class had decided to organize a donation drive. Nick was proud of them.

  Along the main stretch of Van Brunt Street, where most storefronts were still shuttered post-storm, Nick came across a small jewelry stand. Its owner, a man perched on a stool making earrings, paused his work to take in Nick. “Howdy, my man,” he said. “All profits go to Sandy relief. Take what you like; give what you can afford.”

  It turned out the man was a local artist, and most of his soldering studio had been destroyed. “I’m taking the opportunity to scale down my operation,” he said, stringing a glassy bead onto a wire. “Back to basics.”

  Nick homed in on a smattering of silver charms. Among the hearts and moons and stars he spotted an umbrella, its handle a red hook—the same symbol he’d spotted all over his new neighborhood. “I’ll take that one,” he said, and dropped a twenty-dollar bill in the metal can. The man wrapped the trinket in finely woven fish netting, and Nick tucked it into his pocket. “Thanks, buddy.”

  Walking home, Nick considered the charm bracelet he’d been assembling for Emma, piece by piece, over the course of their whole relationship. He knew the bracelet was quaint, the sort of thing girls wore back when he was a kid, and by now Emma’s had become heavy and cluttered, not exactly practical for wearing. But it meant a lot to Nick, and he hoped to Emma, too; he could remember the reasoning for selecting each charm, what had been going on between the two of them when he’d given it to her. Nick had never been a big fan of fancy jewelry, but the idea of the charm bracelet appealed to him. It was a slow amassing, like their relationship had been, a growing and building and accumulating of stories and emotion and quirk. The bracelet had character and it even made a noise—sometimes the delicate ringing of a bell, sometimes an uglier clanking—plus it required the upkeep of frequent polishing or it started to go dull and tinny. It seemed to Nick like the opposite of the diamond rings so many guys gave to propose marriage, the betrothed’s ring finger at first bare and then—boom!—glimmering with a big, showy rock, their relationship suddenly switched from boyfriend-girlfriend—so juvenile sounding—to affianced—a word so frilly and French it seemed fake. That transformation struck Nick as unnatural. He much preferred the gradual giving of small symbols of his love to Emma. Might someone accuse him of being cheap or timid or safe in his preferences? He supposed so, but he didn’t see it that way.

  In his pocket now Nick carried the latest charm, an umbrella with a red hook. He remembered that old Rihanna song, “Umbrella”; he’d found it sort of catchy despite its clunky lyrics, and during the hurricane he and Emma really had been each other’s umbrellas, and in its aftermath, too. Nick also liked the idea of the flash of red on the otherwise silver chain—this moment in their life, their coming together to share a home, captured by a bold streak, the color of passion and love.

  When he stepped in the apartment door, Emma charged at him, holding out the IKEA gift card from Annie. “I opened it,” she said. “It’s five thousand dollars.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There are three zeros after the five; I double-checked the decimal point. For five thousand bucks we can buy all of IKEA!”

  “Emma, we can’t take that kind of money from Annie and Eli. Especially since you know that wasn’t just some wedding gift.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, come on.” Surely Emma wasn’t that naïve.

  “Well, I know it’s a lot, but for them it’s practically nothing,” Emma said. That was a fair point. “And we could have all new furniture to replace the rotten stuff. Granted it’ll be made of clapboard and probably take us months to put together, but we have time, right?” She explained that a neighbor had told her about a moving company doing volunteer work, taking away furniture that had been ruined by the hurricane, recycling what they could, and dumping the rest, all free of charge.

  Nick felt himself slowly giving in to the idea of accepting charity. His sense of pride, and his resentment toward Eli and all of his money, were fading into a simple appreciation for their friends’ generosity. He felt himself readjust to this new position of acceptance. It was an adjustment he recognized—it happened to his students when they finally set their minds to learning a new concept or when a grammar rule suddenly clicked: that moment of understanding, followed quickly by a sense of wonder that they hadn’t known it all along. Nick could already see their apartment furnished with the affordable Swedish pieces, and he could
picture the party he and Emma would eventually throw in honor of their benefactors: They’d serve Swedish vodka and lingonberry juice, cabbage rolls and meatballs, and they’d play old-school Ace of Base and ABBA. It would be right up Annie’s alley and mean much more to her than a check of reimbursement. Nick agreed to visit the furniture warehouse that weekend.

  Of course Emma knew all the jokes about couples on outings to IKEA, how the store guaranteed a fight, how it was responsible for more breakups than Internet porno. But to Emma, IKEA felt magical, offering up every possible iteration of home, every fantasy of cohabitation one could dream of. As she and Nick traversed the showrooms, wandering through this beachy bedroom and that sleek kitchen, this modern living room and that cozy reading nook, Emma imagined it all. It was all for the taking—literally, in that a five-thousand-dollar credit was tucked snugly in her pocket, but also in a larger sense. Emma and Nick could create any of these homes and build any kind of future together. They were pure potential.

  The store was set up according to life stages. When they’d walked past the dorm accessories—pop art posters and corkboards for photo collages—but hadn’t yet made it to the baby stuff—cribs and diaper pails and pastel blankies—Nick and Emma nearly smacked into a sign advertising the store’s new wedding registry. A saleswoman lured them over. “It’s fun and easy,” she said. “I can give you the scanner to try. Everything you beep automatically uploads to your list. See, it makes this cute little sound.” The woman touched the contraption to a pillow’s tag and it emitted a badoop that was admittedly adorable. She cooed with delight, doing an admirable job of acting like this was the first time she’d heard it. Emma was nearly taken in—it did look fun and easy.

  “No thanks,” Nick said, pulling Emma away. He smirked. “Lucky us, we can get a bunch of free stuff and we don’t even have to throw a wedding.”

  She laughed. “Lucky us.”

  For a while they entertained each other mock-fighting about what to buy, bickering about whether to get the EKTORP or the POÄNG or the SÖDERHAMN, enjoying the feel of the unfamiliar sounds on their tongues. Emma thought this could be a funny kind of foreplay. But when it came to picking out a couch for real, Emma was surprised to discover that they really weren’t on the same page—that Nick’s preference for the EKTORP over the SÖDERHAMN was genuine and not a joke. To Emma the EKTORP looked boxy and old-fashioned, not at all what she imagined for their home. They agreed on several mirrors and compromised on throw pillows, finding a pair they both felt good but not great about—“B-plus,” Nick said—but even after a break for cinnamon buns, they made no further progress on the couch. It occurred to Emma that one trip to the store, and one appointment later that day with the storm restoration guy, wouldn’t be enough to make over their apartment into somewhere settled and comfortable, a real home. It would take time.