Chapter 15: The Apartment Where the Table Is Mine
The table was not dark wood. It was pine, light and a little uneven, something I'd found at a thrift store off the highway and carried up two flights with Ethan. I sanded the top down myself on a Saturday afternoon and put two coats of sealant on it that made the whole studio smell like chemicals for a day. It wobbled once if you leaned on it. I didn't mind.
That first Saturday night I hosted dinner, I wiped it down three times before they came. I set out three plates that didn't match, forks from the dollar store, and paper napkins. Ethan brought a cheap bottle of wine and a bag of salad. Chloe arrived twenty minutes after him, by herself, knocking softly like she wasn't sure she was supposed to be there.
"I wasn't sure what bus to take," she said when I opened the door. She held a small container of cookies. "Mom didn't — I mean. I told her I was coming here."
"You came because you wanted to," I said.
She nodded. "Yeah."
Ethan had hung his jacket over the back of my desk chair. He stood at the little counter cutting bread while I stirred pasta. The kitchen was just a strip beside the window, but the light from the parking lot came in and made it warm enough. Chloe sat at the pine table and tucked her hands under her legs.
"This is nice," she said quietly, looking around. "It's really yours."
"It is," I said.
We ate and the conversation didn't try to be anything big. Ethan asked Chloe about school and she talked about a teacher she liked. I asked about the soccer tryouts she hadn't mentioned in weeks. At one point Chloe laughed and almost knocked over her water glass — a simple one, thick and clear, not crystal — and we all reached for it at once. Ethan caught it. We laughed, and the sound stayed in the room.
After we ate, Chloe helped me wash the dishes in the tiny sink. She dried.
"You know I didn't ask for your room," she said, not looking at me, her voice low enough Ethan couldn't hear over the faucet.
"I know," I said.
"She already started turning it into some kind of yoga office thing. For herself," Chloe said. "It's weird."
That was the inversion I hadn't expected. It was never really about Chloe at all.
Later, after Ethan started packing up the leftovers and Chloe zipped her backpack, my phone lit up on the counter. Diane.
I let it ring once before I picked up. Chloe watched me.
"Hi," I said.
"Hi, honey," Diane said. Her voice sounded different, thinner. I could hear the house behind her, quiet. "Are you busy?"
"I'm having dinner. Ethan and Chloe are here."
A pause. "Oh. Good. I'm glad she's there."
I waited.
"I was calling about Thanksgiving," she said. "I know it's a few weeks away. I wanted to ask if you'd come. As our guest. Not — not because you have to. I'd like you to come if you want to."
The old wording would have been an instruction, an assumption. This was a question.
I leaned against the counter. Ethan glanced over but didn't come closer.
"I can come," I said. "But I have a condition."
"Okay."
"Chloe keeps the bedroom. That's done. But my old room doesn't become your office or a storage shrine or whatever you were planning. If it's not Chloe's, it stays neutral. A guest room. An office. Not a way to pretend I didn't live there."
Another long pause. I heard her breathe.
"That's fair," she said finally. "We cleared it out. It can be a guest room. For when you visit. If you visit."
"And I decide when I stay over and when I don't," I said.
"Yes," she said. "Of course."
It wasn't an apology. I didn't need one that night. It was a boundary heard and repeated, which was more useful. We set a time, early afternoon, and I said I'd bring a pie. She said thank you.
When we hung up, Chloe was still holding her dish towel. "Are you going?" she asked.
"Yeah," I said. "For dinner. Then I'm coming back here."
She smiled, relieved, like the answer gave her permission too.
They left around nine. Ethan kissed my forehead at the door and said he'd text when he got home. Chloe hugged me, quick and tight, and said the pasta was better than Mom's. I locked the deadbolt after them and stood in the quiet.
My apartment was small enough I could see everything from where I stood — the pine table with crumbs still on it, the sink with one pan soaking, the bed in the corner made neatly, the window with the sheer curtain I'd bought for six dollars that let the streetlight through. On the shelf by the stove I kept one thing I'd bought for myself the week I signed the lease.
A cut crystal water glass.
Not the same one from the formal dining room, but close enough that it caught the light and threw little prisms on the wall when the sun hit it at the right angle. I'd seen it at an estate sale and picked it up for four dollars. The woman at the table had said it was heavy for its size. It was.
I picked it up that night and rinsed it even though it was clean. I set it back down and ran my thumb along the pattern.
May you like
Then I turned off the main light, left the little lamp over the stove on, and locked the door again just to feel the click. The sound was solid. My own lock, my own key on the hook by the door, my own table. I wasn't waiting for someone to tell me I could stay.
I got into bed and listened to the building settle and the cars pass on the road outside, and I felt, finally, rooted not in that big dark-wood house, but right here.
