“Because you can’t do microwave meals or instant noodles every night. It’s not good money management and it’s high sodium.” To my horror, my voice cracks. I’ve revealed way too much. The fact that I give a shit about Vin’s sodium intake makes me feel so transparently injured. But who could blame me? I just found moving boxes after being pounded with a serrated mallet all week and I’m weak with it, tender and sore andmad.A very dangerous combination.
I expect him to read the flashing neonshark sighted!signs and stay the fuck out of the water, but to my surprise, he wades in. He swallows a mouthful of chicken and loads up his fork. “I cook,” he says. “Which you know. Because I used to feedmyself before I met you. Just like you can change a lightbulb. Like you used to do before you met me.”
“Cooking is way harder than changing a lightbulb!” I say, but all the iron in my tone is oxidizing in my chest. “But fine! I guess you’ll just be fine. I’ll die falling off a stepladder trying to change a lightbulb. But you’ll still be eating home-cooked meals. So, fine. You’ll be fine.”
He chews and swallows, eyes on his plate. “Do you really think,” he says finally, “that if I moved out I wouldn’t come back to change the lightbulbs?”
And how,howcould he say that to me right now?
It all piles up on me. The goldfish he bought his brother, him wiping beer off my shirt, the chicken he made and pretended it was Marcia’s so that I’d accept it,Let me, baby,and him posing for my drawings.
But that lease is still up on our fridge. Space, he says.
I’m out here dying for infinity and he’s buying moving boxes.
“Do I really think you wouldn’t come back to change the lightbulbs?” I say slowly.
He stops eating. Like he’s finally sensed the danger.
“If you’redivorcingme, then yes! Vin! I think you probably won’t come back to change the lightbulbs!”
He’s breathing hard, he’s staring right through the table. “Who said divorce?” he says in a low voice.
“Well, not you! So I’m out here guessing! And it didn’t take Sherlock, Vin, to see a lease on the kitchen counter, left out for me to find, with a move-in date. It wasn’t exactly a stumper to findmoving boxes in your bedroom and figure out what they’re for.I get that you are moving out. Okay, I get it. This is fuckingdevastatingfor me but it isn’tconfusing.”
“Baby.” He’s standing, so I stand too.
“No! Let me finish. Because this part?” I point at mydrawing pad on the counter. “Thisis the part that’s confusing me. What the fuck is this model thing you’re doing, Vin? You’re posing for me? You’re letting me draw you and calling me baby and carrying the laundry and food for me? You’re sharing a glass of orange wine on a Tuesday with me? Whatisthis? You’re trying to make sure I’m all right before you go? Because if that’s the case then I’d really, really rather you just left. Because this is not making sure I’m all right, this is screwing me up before you leave. So just go and let me take care of myself.”
“Roz—” He is moving toward me slowly, sucking oxygen, his eyes intense like—like—like I don’t even know what because I can’t see his fucking face through the beard. “They’re for the last of Raffi’s things. The boxes. He asked me to bring over the books and picture frames and shit he has in the corner of the room still.”
“What?” I need him to repeat that.
“The boxes are not for me.” He’s standing directly in front of me and now I’m the one who’s sucking oxygen. He seems to have used the trip to my side of the table to get perfectly calm and…tender? I can’t tell. “And…I didn’t know you’ve been devastated.”
This sentiment, said from his lips on a warm Saturday night in July, with our set dinner table and this familiar living room lighting,doesstab me through the heart.
The boxes are not for him. They are not for him.
I feel sick with relief. Emphasis onsick.“Didn’t know I’ve been devastated?”
“You’re doing art classes. Going out with friends. Laughing with Raff. You—” His eyes flick to the fridge but he cuts himself off. “I know this has been confusing. I’ve been trying to communicate. And to show you…But things have just gotten…so far…off track.”
Okay. Well. When he puts it that way, I guess I have beentrying to hide my pain from him at every turn. It just didn’t occur to me that it wasworking.
“What if…” I’m hanging off a skyscraper, my nail polish chipping as I hold on for dear life. “What if I asked you all the questions I need to ask and I…could assume you’d answer me.”
He looks very concerned. “You don’t already assume that?”
“I mean the whole answer, Vin.”
His brow comes down. “Ah. Well. I’m working on it. But I don’t alwaysknowthe whole answer.”
“Then just say that! Tell me as much as you can and then report back when you figure out the rest!”
“Okay.”
He’s agreed to this so readily I can’t help but be humbled. I’ve been thinking this whole time that my questions are obvious and that Vin just hasn’t willingly answered them. But laying it out like that, having him say “okay” immediately…if I’m really thinking about it, when Vin understands what I need…he gives it to me. No hesitation.
