‘Noooooo,’ she offers, all ‘duh’. ‘Why would I? He was in elementary school when I was in high school. By the time he got to sophomore year, I’d graduated college.’
The mention of Ted in high school makes me dizzy. Thinking of him trying to take over his step-sister’s room. Her refusing to give up the space to him. Sibling in-fighting.
‘I dunno,’ I say, trying to be casual. ‘Not even in your twenties, when you were both out of college?’
She is irritated that we are still talking about this.
‘We ran in entirely different circles,’ she finally explains. This small detail breathes life into me, and it’s more than she’s given me in ages. I am afraid to blink in case she decides to close the door shut again. ‘Dating with your step-brother… ew, no,’ she says.
She walks to the closet in the hallway and pulls out fresh bedding. ‘I’m beat,’ she says. Quickly, I move to take the linens from her.
‘You know, a buddy of mine might have a room coming up in the financial district in the next few weeks,’ she says slowly. ‘I’m not sure if it would be a permanent thing, and it’s a little out of the way of the action, but it would definitely get you through to summer, until you… y’know, find your feet properly. Say, if you are sticking around.’ And there it fucking is. Now she’s no longer in need of a live-in therapist.
‘Oh, sure. I mean, I really don’t want to be a burden here or anything.’
‘No, no, not a burden,’ Naomi counters, a catch in her voice. ‘It’s just that… well, I’m sure you didn’t move here all the way from London to be out here in the ’burbs with me, right? Like, life is just out there, waiting to be lived.’
A small part of me wants to tell her that I’m exactly where I am meant to be.
So, Ted, a reporter will ask. You seem really content these days. Happy in your skin. For the first time in a long time.
Well, that is all down to my incredible wife. It’s a funny story, really. This beautiful, smart woman from Ireland had helped my sister through a very tough time, and one night I just came over, and there she was, making dinner for everyone. It was like a thunderbolt. Acoup de foudre, as we might say at home. In any case, it was wonderful.
‘In fact, now that I think of it,’ Naomi adds, trying to sound as if she hasn’t been trying to bring this up for some time. ‘I can show you it on Craigslist. You can get a feel for the space.’
She pulls open my laptop on the desk and, to my horror,the screen is still open on the Tedettes’ forum. Ted’s photo stares right back at us. Fuck. My stomach feels as though it’s running to the four corners of my torso. I stand behind her, waiting for her to go a bit postal about exactly why I might be looking at websites with her brother’s face on them. I close my eyes, waiting for the detonation.
Instead, she is peering so closely at the keyboard, over her glasses, trying to find and type in the letters C, R, A, I… that she seems to miss what’s on the screen entirely. I exhale a little as she presses return. Ted’s face disappears and she focuses in on finding the goddam house listing.
I drive up to the Craigslist condo, where Jesse, the anaesthetist that Naomi is friends with, is standing outside. He has sandy hair and the sort of jawline that somehow screams ‘popular in high school’. The vibe is decidedly ‘I came from money, and an absolute ton of it’. In another life, I might have been attracted to someone like Jesse. I could look at him on a daily basis, cooking dinner or watching sports on TV or walking out of our lavishly spacious shared bathroom. But, alas, not in this life. My dance card is already full.
‘You must be Esther,’ he says warmly as we shake hands. His smile is extremely… orthodontic. We walk briskly towards the building. ‘How’s she doing anyway?’ He speaks with genuine concern for her.
‘She’s OK. In love, I think. And this new guy Stevie seems like a good person,’ I say, hoping that I’m not divulging too much.
‘And you’re writing a book,’ Jesse says.
Christ, did I say book? ‘It’s more like a play, I think,’ I tell him. My head is still on Ted, but I guess there’s no harm in impressing this dude, either. ‘Like a comedy project.’
‘Oh, right… it’s just that Naomi said it was a thing about grieving?’ Jesse says, confused.
‘It is and it isn’t. Gallows humour and all that,’ I clarify, although I am stumped when it comes to offering him more detail than that.
We take the lift to a very high floor.
‘So the good news is that the super is on the first floor, if there’s ever a problem,’ he explains. ‘Luckily, the lift is never out of service– you can see why that’s a lucky thing. The stairs to the eighteenth floor would not be considered friends.’
I am nodding with interest, but his words are landing on me like fluttery moths, because there is no way at all I am moving here. It’s going to take a lot more for Naomi to dislodge me than hinting about someone else’s spare room.
‘Rent is nine hundred dollars a month, which is actually pretty good for the area,’ Jesse is explaining. There’s not a fart’s hope in hell I could afford that, even if I wanted to. I’m going to have to throw the deal.
As I open wardrobes and look inside washing machines, I think back to the awful flatmates I had when I first moved to London. There was Jones, who lied about being a journalist on a glossy magazine, full of false promises about free shampoos and moisturizers. On the first weekend Ruthie the dog-groomer moved in, I went into the shared bathroom to find three guys wearing nothing but cowboy hats, taking a shower together. After her there was Nathan, who was minimalist to the point that I jokingly referred to him as a serial killer. He moved out not long after, taking his extremely meagre belongings with him.
Jesse is showing off a huge TV mounted on the wall. ‘Plasma… all the channels…’ He’s starting to sound like the teacher on the old Peanuts cartoon. Wah-wah-wah.
‘Oh,’ I tell him. ‘The TV would be a problem. I’ll probably be spending a lot of time writing.’ A pause for effect. ‘Aboutdeath.’
‘Well,’ he says, ready for negotiation, ‘I don’t really watch it that much. It won’t be too much of a problem. I could maybe move it into my room.’
