It’s all my laundry, except for the green sweatpants and hoodie of Vin’s that I wore home from Raff’s last weekend. He’s still in the shower, so now is as good a time as any. I force myself to move forward, get this task done.
Even though it means walking into the guest bedroom. Which used to be Raff’s room. But of course, before it was ever a guest bedroom it was actuallymybedroom.
So I should probably explain about the apartment. And in particular, I should probably explain how the hell two middle-class New Yorkers afford a two-bedroom in the West Village.
Let me tell you a little tale.
Once there was a girl (me) aged fourteen, growing up in Bay Ridge. And one day, the girl’s mother came into her roomwhile she was working on an English paper and said the following: “You’re moving in with Aunt Therese.”
Aunt Therese is actually Great-Aunt Therese. A rich old bat who wore fur to the grocery store, could make Tony Soprano cry, and taught me how to cook at knifepoint.
You see, Aunt Therese was the proud occupant of a rent-controlled apartment (you know you’re a true New Yorker when those words turn you on) and had been since her mother literally gave birth to her in the main bedroom. Here’s the thing about rent-controlled apartments: the lease has to be bequeathed to someone who already lives there in order to stay rent-controlled.
My mother, ever the penny-pincher—and certain Aunt Therese was going to croak any moment—couldn’t stand to see it go. So she sent me, unwillingly, to go inherit the lease.
Aunt Therese took me in with many a grumble. But she then proceeded to feed me gorgeously homemade meals every night and dropped a water balloon filled with olive oil on my first boyfriend’s head from our fifth-floor apartment as he was walking out after dumping me.
For quite a while, Aunt Therese refused to kick the bucket, probably just to spite my mother. We were pretty happy roommates until I was twenty-eight, when Aunt Therese decided she’d rather die without me sobbing into her hair and moved into an assisted living facility, and then, a few months later, hospice, and two weeks after that, the family plot on Long Island. She donated every single penny of her money to the youth center on the corner that she always used to complain played music too loud and left me a note saying people should make their own futures and not inherit them.
Once I finally got the gumption to move my things from the little bedroom to the big bedroom, I opened up her ancient(read: antique) set of drawers and found a string of pearls rolling around in there. There was a Post-it note stuck to them in her handwriting:for you, my heart.
I was determined—determined—to pull an Aunt Therese and grow old on my own in this apartment. Eventually choosing some darling young foundling to leave the apartment (and the pearls) to.
But then I met Vin.
And I was seized with the desire to share my life and space and bed and blah, blah, blah. We’ve all been there with a beautiful man who knows how to swing a hammer.
Anyways, we fell in graphic, heart-stopping love, made sincere proclamations about eternity, tried (three or four times a week) to turn our bodies into one thing…and on the weekends Vin did things like grout and caulk and varnish our charmingly decrepit apartment.
I did things like find old curtains at the Housing Works on Broadway and take them home and turn them into throw pillows.
Our apartment was a home. And then our apartment was Raffi’s home too.
And soon, apparently, I’ll live here alone once again.
Anyways. Over there is the main bedroom. Then, yes, here is the guest bedroom. Vin’s room. The door between is the bathroom (where Vin is currently scrubbing the day, and our conversation, off himself). And then there, obviously, the living room and kitchen are one big space. But how about those gigantic windows, huh? And the hardwood floors? Vin wasn’t sure about emerald green for the living room, but once I hung up those paintings (that St. Michel framed), he finally agreed it was nice. I think, really, at the end of the day, I’d just like to live inside a patchwork quilt. And my decorating aesthetic obviously reflects that.
The clawfoot tub leaks if you take a bath, by the way.
But enough of memory lane. I walk into the guest room with Vin’s folded clothes in my hand. His scent is all around me. His words are all around me. The anniversary is coming up and I can’t even hear the wordaccidentwithout shivering. Meanwhile, Vin wants to go to Brooklyn and meet the guy who…the other guy who was injured. Who was there with us that day. Rode the ambulances.
No.
I stare at his closet, filled with new clothes. A step into a new life.
I need this to be over,he said. His old life, he meant.
The truth hits me.
Vin and I are going in different directions. No, that’s not quite it. Vin is moving on and I’m standing still.
I dash tears out of my eyes. I don’t want to stand still. I don’t want to be stuck here any more than he does.
The shower shuts off and I jolt. I can’t let him find me in his room, crying over his laundry. In fact, I can’t let him find me at all.
I skitter out of his room and into mine. I’m applying makeup with a vengeance (and a shaky hand). I quickly change my clothes and grab my purse. Before I think twice I’ve got one hand on our front door knob.
I’m going to do things too. I’m going to move on too. I’m going to sprint in a direction just like him. I’m out the door.
