Chapter 6

Ihad planned to stay in bed for a few more hours, asleep or unconscious—either was fine with me. But somehow, my eyes had popped open much, much earlier than I expected them to. I lay quietly and let them close, but then I heard another noise coming from downstairs. It wasn’t the gentle clinks of Jude making himself coffee, or even the crash and then muffled swearing that had happened one morning when he’d dropped the carafe on his foot (I’d gone down and determined that nothing was broken, bones or coffee pot). Then I’d fallen back asleep on the couch and he kept the swearing at a whisper as he left the house for the woodshop.

Today was Sunday…at least, I thought it was Sunday, and if that were true then he wouldn’t be going into work. He usually liked to sleep in, too. That was because, I assumed, he was going out on Saturday nights. I didn’t like that idea at all. His statement about not getting over the problems that had driven him to drink…that had really shaken my confidence in his ability to remain sober. Right now, I was in no position to monitor him. I was trying to pick up more shifts to make up for some of the money that Eddie had lost in the robbery and on top of that, I’d had the car repairs. Luckily, Jude had taken my car to the guy that Sergio had—

There was that noise again. It was a whirring, and now I definitely heard a soft buzz of conversation, lowered voices that seemed to be coming from the kitchen. I got up and swayed on my feet for a moment, holding on to the old plant stand/chair that I no longer used to block my door. Then I swept my hair into a knot, put on a bra for decency’s sake, donned my glasses for safety’s sake, and went downstairs.

I heard the whirring sound much more clearly and it was definitely accompanied by conversation. “Righty tighty, lefty loosey,” Jude spoke quietly. “It means that you have to turn it in the other direction. Wait, do you know which way is left?”

“I’m almost ten!” an offended voice answered.

“Then push over this switch…and now the drill will turn in reverse. It will spin to the left and the screw will come out.” More whirring followed those words.

What? I wondered what was going on and then I turned the corner and entered the kitchen. And it was…chaos.

“What?” I croaked aloud, and as I took in the destruction, I put my hands over my mouth in horror.

The little girl from across the street jumped off the stool she’d been sitting on. She held up her arms and grinned widely. “Surprise!” she told me. “I love surprises.”

It was a surprise, that was true. Two kids I hardly knew were in my kitchen with my renter and the room was destroyed. I was so surprised that I wanted to scream, in fact, but I had been rendered temporarily mute.

We all stared at each other and time seemed to stretch. “Nicola,” Jude finally started off, but at that moment I found my voice and was also speaking.

“What did you do? Why? Why have you ruined my kitchen? Everything—everything is everywhere!” I picked up one of my mixing bowls from the floor—the floor! It was sitting on a towel, yes, but also sitting on the floor and next to it were my knives! And my mugs! Everything was out of every cupboard and the cupboards themselves were in pieces. The doors were off and the drawers were out of their slots and had also been emptied. I couldn’t even see where my dishes had gone—my grandmother’s dishes, and my glasses, and my—

Anger ran through my body and furious words rose up in my throat, which started to ache when I repressed them. And my eyes started to burn, too, that feeling as if I’d gotten something into them, like rubbing alcohol or chlorine. I blinked quickly.

“Oh, shit,” Jude said and Michael, the boy from across the street, frowned at him. “Nicola, please don’t cry.”

“I’m not!” I told them all. “What have you done to my house?”

“I’m going to fix your cabinets so that all the doors stay shut and don’t stick when you try to open them, and I’m going to fix the drawers so that you don’t have to yank on them all the time. I was getting tools out of my car when the kids saw me…why don’t you guys run on home for now?” he suggested to them. “I’ll come by later today and we can talk ice cream.”

Michael nodded solemnly and the girl seemed to want to argue, but her brother angled her out the door.

“I’m sorry you had to come down to such a mess,” Jude said when they were gone. “I wanted to surprise you, like Tamara said.”

I was trying to pick up the things from the floor. “Just put it back,” I said as I grabbed a colander and my glass measuring cup. “Can you put it back?”

“I will right now,” he said, and immediately fitted a drawer into its original spot. He had to hit it with a mallet to force it to close, since that one was so hard to deal with. I couldn’t even open it and had left it empty.

I waved the measuring cup at him. “No! Stop, I have to wash that,” I said. “I have to wash all this. It was on the floor and those kids were here and I don’t know what they were touching.”

“I was very careful. I put all your stuff on towels.”

“On the floor! And there’s already sawdust and your tools…” I picked up a frying pan and almost dropped the colander.

Jude took the measuring cup from my hands and set it on the counter. “Ok. You know what? Let me put this back together and then I’ll help you wash everything.”

“No, you don’t…” I had wanted to fix up this kitchen since I’d moved in and yet here I was, hugging a frying pan to my chest and saying no to Jude doing it for me? “I know it’s crud,” I started again. “I’m glad that you’re—thank you, but—”

“I need to stop surprising you with things,” he said. “I, personally, like to be surprised, but I know that you don’t and this was a mistake. I should have talked to you about it.”

Yes. I nodded. “I’m not trying to be ungrateful. I’m not. I’m not blind to the flaws of this kitchen, either.” I paused. “Why aren’t you mad?”

“Mad?”

“Because now I’ve done it twice. You did something nice to help me and both times I reacted wrong.”

“I don’t usually get very mad,” he said, “which you may have noticed.”

“But is that you just pretending that you don’t have any negative emotions? You said you used to deal with things by not dealing with them, and when that didn’t work, you turned to alcohol. Am I going to drive you to drink because of this?” Because of my cabinets? Because of how I reacted to his help, because of my rules, because of me? What would push him back into it?

“The only person who would make me drink again is me. Not you, not Cal because he starts dumb arguments about how thick a tenon has to be, and not the guy in the red car who runs the stop sign at the corner and has almost caused two accidents right in front of me. I can handle myself without turning to alcohol.”

Those were all the right words but I tried to determine if they were true. He was making eye contact, for one thing, and his voice sounded normal. I shook my head, uncertain.

Jude took the frying pan and the colander from me. “What if we leave this for a while and go for a walk? It’s a beautiful day outside.”

I looked toward the window. “What day is it again?”

“Sunday. You told me that you’re on call but you’re not on the schedule at either hospital.”

With my hands now free, I could rub my eyes, which were still burning. “Then I have other things to do.”

“Let’s walk first,” he said, and kind of without thinking about it, I went back upstairs and added to the items that I’d first put on that morning so that I was street ready.

He was right that it was a nice day. The two kids were playing in their yard but watching my house as they did. “I’ll be back in a little bit,” Jude called when it looked like they were going to join us. “See you soon.”

“Are you hanging out with them?” I asked as we moved down the block.

“Sometimes. Not in your house or on your property,” he added quickly. “Today was the first time they’ve been inside and I’m sorry I broke the rule.”

I did have the regulations about visitors but I didn’t like to hear him say that. I started to tell him that I actually didn’t care. “They can…” But hadn’t I just pitched a fit about them being in my kitchen? Obviously I did care, so I stopped.

“It’s really spring,” he said, and stopped to point to a green thing coming out of the ground. “That’s a crocus. There will be flowers everywhere pretty soon.”

“My sister Addie is into plants. When we were kids, she was always trying to have a garden.”

“You talk about them a lot. You talk about your sisters,” he clarified. “Sometimes you mention your brother, too.”

I turned my head in surprise. “I do? No, I don’t,” I disagreed, but he nodded.

“You do. When are they going to come over? Do you go to see them instead?”

“I mostly see my family at holidays, if I have the time off. I did last July for the Fourth. Then Addie came over for my birthday but I don’t like that much.”

“You seem to like her when you talk about her.”

“No, it’s not about her particularly. I don’t like them to come to my house,” I explained. “It’s in such disrepair and I don’t want them to see it.” My eyes were stinging again. “I’m shooting myself in the foot, aren’t I? I want the house to be nicer but when you try to fix things, I get mad.”

“I think you got upset because of the shock of it. If I had told you first and we had planned it together, then you wouldn’t have minded.”

I considered the idea. “That’s probably true. I like to prepare.”

“Like the life plans you do. By the way, I’ve been running more and I took your suggestion about measuring my distance. I’m trying for five miles.”

“That’s a lot,” I said. “I wish I had more time to exercise.”

“This is a good start,” he pointed out, and I breathed deeply and agreed. “What were you planning for today besides sleeping?”

“I have chores to do. Weekly chores.”

“At the house?”

“No.” I hesitated. “I help out a guy named Eddie. He’s elderly and disabled and he needs a hand, so I go.”

“I didn’t know you volunteered.”

“It’s not a volunteer thing.” It was difficult to explain. “I’ve known him for a while and…” I ended up repeating myself, saying words which were not much of an explanation at all. “He needs a hand, so I go.”

“What does he need help with?”

I didn’t have the list in my journal to jog my memory, but I had enough at the top of my mind to name quite a few things that I did for him and I concluded with a number of projects that were currently without solutions. “I’m worried about his roof. I worried all winter and it held up, but it won’t for much longer. I need to paint the exterior and fix up his yard, because his house almost looks abandoned. It makes him a bigger target and he just got robbed.”

“Fuck, the poor guy,” Jude commiserated. “It’s the most useless, shitty feeling to have to turn over your stuff to someone who doesn’t deserve it.”

“Eddie shot at them and he thinks he clipped one in the leg, so I watched to see if anyone came into the hospital with an unexplained gunshot wound. He didn’t tell the police that part, though. He didn’t want them in his business but his neighbors heard the shot and called, so he had to deal with them.”

“He sounds…”

“He is,” I agreed. “He’s stubborn and he thinks he’s right all the time, too. People like that can be hard to handle.”

“I can’t imagine.”

I looked up at him, wondering why his voice had sounded funny, but he only returned my gaze very placidly.

“So that’s where you’re going today?” Jude asked me, and I nodded.

“After I put the kitchen back…” I hesitated. “Maybe it would be better just to continue with it. You know, since it’s already torn up, it doesn’t make sense to return it to how it was.”

“It doesn’t make a lot of sense to recreate something that was already broken,” he agreed. “I have a few other ideas about your house if you want to hear them.”

I did, and he had more than a few ideas. I got the impression that when he’d been a homeowner himself, he’d worked on projects all the time. He seemed excited, not daunted, when discussing a reclaimed brick walkway, a portico over the front door, a new toilet in the bathroom that would save water, and not just revamped doors and repaired drawers but entirely new cabinets altogether.

“It sounds great.” My words brimmed with doubt.

“The materials all cost plenty of money,” he said, “but the labor would cheap.” He patted his chest. “It would actually be free of charge, and I’m not trying to make you cut my rent or anything.”

Again, those words made me feel icky. “It’s not fair to have you provide free labor,” I answered. “We would have to take it out of your rent. Anyway, you should use your time to increase the distance on your runs or to work on your cooking or furniture, improvements for your own life.”

“There’s plenty of time for everything,” Jude said, and I wished that were true. I wished that the days were actually forty or fifty hours long so I could fit everything in—another shift at work, definitely more cleaning, extra time at Eddie’s. But the walk did help me to feel calmer and when we returned home, I was able to pass through the rooms without having another fit, not even when I saw my dishes piled on the couch. They were on a towel, but still.

By the time I got back from completing my chores at Eddie’s house, though, my kitchen was working a lot better. All the doors were reattached and stayed closed without tape, the drawers slid much more easily, and most of the implements were back into their places.

“I washed the stuff that was on the floor, but I thought you may want to check it yourself before I put it away,” Jude said.

I looked at him and felt a funny surge of emotion.

“What?” he asked me.

“You have chocolate on your mouth,” I answered, and pointed to the side of my own lips so that he could triangulate the issue. “Ice cream?”

“Yep. I took a little break with Shannon and the kids. Did I get it?”

I studied his face. “He’s a looker,” that was what the security guard at Midtown General had said. The more I was around him, the more I agreed with her. Maybe it was because his face had filled out as he’d eaten more? Maybe it was the jogging, or how his hair had grown? I’d thought that his eyes always looked sad, but I’d come to believe that they were thoughtful. It was because when he looked at you, he was so focused. He really listened and heard what you said. It wasn’t just his brown eyes that were beautiful, though, because I’d also come to believe that every feature of his face was exceptionally attractive. I remembered thinking that he might have been cute, but he was more than that—so had he changed, or it had been there all along and somehow I’d missed it?

“You got it,” I agreed. “Thank you for fixing my kitchen.”

“This is a temporary step until I start building the cabinets. Someday, with a lot of discussion first,” he added. “What did you do at your friend’s house and what’s in that bag?”

“I cleaned and helped him with his medication, mostly.” I’d also made his weekly dinners and in order to accomplish that, I’d gone grocery shopping. I’d picked up some other things too, and I held up that bag on my arm to demonstrate. “I’m going to cook tonight.”

“I thought you said that didn’t know how.”

“I probably said that I don’t cook for myself. I don’t like to waste the time to do that, but I would like to cook for you. And me, together,” I amended. “For both of us.”

“This is something I’d like to see,” he stated, so he watched as I carefully measured and chopped, separating ingredients and straightening up appropriately as I went, and disposing of my sterile gloves at the very end when our meal was ready. It was always stressful to cook but it was also much easier to use the kitchen now that I could open and close everything.

“This looks and smells amazing, and there isn’t a pile of crap in the sink,” he complimented. “And while you were doing all that, I was wondering about your stance on dishwashers.”

That led us into a discussion of proper water temperature and where we might place that appliance in this room while we each consumed our dinners, and then he consumed what was left of mine. It was a very nice way to spend the end of a day that hadn’t started out very well, when I’d flown off the handle about such a nice thing.

“I’m sorry.”

“I thought it was delicious,” Jude told me.

“I’m sorry about how I acted. How I got so upset at you in front of the kids,” I explained.

“Do you think my reputation with them took a hit? How can I make myself look cool again?” he asked seriously.

“I mean it. I’m really sorry. I’ll try not to do that anymore.”

“Nicola, you are who you are,” he said, and I’d always thought the same thing.

This was me, Nicola Curran, a woman who was thirty years old and had a life that she hadn’t exactly chosen, but here it was: there was no changing it. I’d always told myself that if people didn’t like me, it was their problem. I considered it to be a lack of taste and common sense. If I offended you because you were soft? Too bad. If I hurt your feelings by telling you the truth? Well…so what?

“I’m sorry anyway,” I told him.

When I went to bed that night, there was a lot that I should have written about because it felt as if so much had happened. Instead, I looked at the blank page and wasn’t sure where to start. With the repaired kitchen? That was really nice. With how I’d flipped out about it? With how understanding Jude was, how he’d said, “You are who you are, Nicola,” and that had made me feel even worse about everything? How about if I started by describing the rush of emotion that I’d experienced when I’d walked back into the kitchen and seen him standing there?

I didn’t know what to write about any of that so the questions stayed in my mind over the next few days, and new ones arose too. That was why I called my sister.

“What do you mean?” Addie sounded so perplexed that she repeated herself. “What do you mean, Nicola?”

I glanced down at the phone and frowned at the screen. I had called her to get a quick response but this was turning into more of a discussion than I wanted it to be.

“If the invitation was addressed only to you, then it’s only for you,” she said and yes, I knew that already. “Mine said ‘Adela Curran’ and it didn’t say ‘plus one’ after it. Did it say that on yours?”

“No,” I said.

“Then why would you ask if you could bring someone else to the wedding? Who would you bring?”

“Just a friend, but never mind.” I wanted to shut down this conversation. Liv’s wedding was approaching fast and she was more than just my former housemate. She had been our neighbor, a family friend, my sister Juliet’s best friend in high school, and my brother Patrick’s former fiancée…which made everything a little weird. All of us (except for my brother) had been invited to witness her marry her new fiancé and we were planning to drive four hours north together for the ceremony at her house. It sounded like it would be fun—not the forced togetherness with my family, but the party afterwards. I had heard a few details about the plans from my old friend Ava, Liv’s big sister, because I’d been reaching out to her a little. She seemed to have forgiven me for my overpopulation remark in regard to her having a third child.

I had been thinking that a lot of people would appreciate the chance to head up north for a short vacation. “I have a friend and I thought that person might want to go,” I told Addie. “Just to get out of the city for a little. Forget it.” I had switched around my shifts at Presbyterian Hospital and taken my first day off ever from MGMC in order to make the trip happen and I was looking forward to it, slightly. But I did think that it would have been even more enjoyable if Jude could have come, because he was really a fun person. I didn’t get to see him as much as I would have liked because I was always running off to do something and he was busy too. If we drove to northern Michigan together for this wedding, then we would have several hours of uninterrupted time. I knew that there was going to be music at the reception and good food…and, of course, drinking. Maybe it wouldn’t have been—

“Hello?” my sister’s voice asked from my phone. “I know we didn’t get cut off because I can hear your turn signal, so are you being silent because you don’t want to answer?”

“What was the question?”

“I was reminding you that all of us girls are supposed to share a room at the motel,” she said, and because this was Addie she repeated herself cheerfully and without making a rude remark about hearing loss or senility like some of our other siblings would have. “Dad booked it for us and I think it’s going to be a squeeze, so where would your friend go? Would she care about sharing a bed?”

“Share a bed with…my friend,” I said aloud. Sharing a bed with Jude. I knew he slept shirtless, because I’d spotted him early in the morning when I came home. He probably slept in his boxers because he didn’t have enough clothes to designate any as specific nightwear. Or maybe he had put on those boxers just to come out of his room, which would have meant that he was…was he sleeping every night totally naked?

“Nicola?”

“No, that wouldn’t work,” I answered, the words coming fast. “I have to go. It was nothing, so never mind.”

Addie was unconvinced. “I don’t understand this whole conversation,” she said. “Which friend is this? Someone from the hospital? JuJu told me that you’re working at a new place.”

And I was making “friends” there, just as I was at my other place of employment. Operation Fake Friend was still rolling along.

My sister was also rolling along. “That so great, Nic! I’m so happy for you! And I know that I told you how Pluto is moving into your seventh house—”

“Addie, do you hear that siren? It’s because I’m at the ER,” I lied. I was fortunate to be driving next to a fire station because I really, really didn’t want to get into where Pluto was moving for me.

“That’s going to affect your relationships,” she kept right on telling me, “but then when it moves into the eighth house—”

“I have to go,” I told her. My sister still wanted to talk about our wedding outfits but I told her to text me, and I drove home with my thoughts full of people who slept naked. I’d never had a boyfriend do that, but it was because I’d always insisted that they immediately shower and clothe themselves after whatever had happened between us. But I hadn’t invited a guy over to my house in…well, it hadn’t been a decade like my mom had claimed, but it had been seven years. They had been years of happily being alone because I didn’t want someone getting in my way and draping all over me, not even after he’d taken a four-minute shower.

But there was a possibility that my housemate (right across the hall and that hall was narrow) was sleeping in nothing at all, which was not appealing in a sanitary way but somehow made me have to roll down the car windows. It was a nice afternoon so that was fine, and thanks to Sergio having an acquaintance who did repairs for cheaper, I’d been able to get my car fixed for a pretty modest cost. I didn’t hear any weird noises at all.

I did hear children screaming as I turned the corner onto my street, though, but the sound was full of laughter. I saw what was happening as I drew closer: Tamara and Michael were playing in a sprinkler (and probably shivering, because there was a sharp breeze) with their mom standing close by and watching them. She laughed and shook her blonde and blue hair. She held a hose that was pouring water out onto the ground although I was fairly sure that she paid for the utilities in that rented house. I watched her point it into the air, straight up over her own head, and then the water poured directly down onto her.

Well, that was a dumb move, I thought as I slowed to a crawl. Did the woman not understand how gravity worked? Sure enough, she was soon soaked, with her t-shirt totally wet and plastered to her body. It wasn’t warm enough for that kind of behavior.

“Oops!” she called, and I thought she might have been the dumbest person alive. She shook her hair again, leaning back so that her chest stuck out…oh, holy Mary, was she wearing a bra? It sure didn’t look like it, because I could see everything! What was she doing, running a wet t-shirt contest in her front yard in front of her children? Wow, she looked great, but the woman had no sense of—

“Do you need a towel?” a male voice asked.

It was Jude’s voice. My head swung around in horror to see him sitting in a lawn chair that had been obscured by her car, and I forgot to watch the road. I narrowly missed hitting my own mailbox but I regained enough composure to pull into the driveway and to open the garage door instead of plowing through it. Then I parked and sat for a moment, blinking in the half-light.

He had known her name. I remembered that now, how I had said that I had met the kids’ mom and he had already known that her name was Shannon. And when he’d gone to get ice cream the night that he’d fixed the cabinets, he’d mentioned her name again—he’d told me that he’d taken a break with Shannon and the kids. I knew that he’d been hanging out with Michael and Tamara. Their mother must have been there too, their pretty mother who seemed to have a lot of time to work out (or had just been blessed with that body naturally, which seemed so unfair). I could still hear the kids screaming with hilarity from my position inside this garage, because they were all having so much fun together. I got out of the car and stood staring across the street before I walked to the front door and went inside.

A moment later, the door closed again. “Hi,” Jude called to me. “I didn’t know you would be home tonight.”

Would he have been out there playing inappropriate games in front of children if he had known it? “I traded around shifts because I’m going to the wedding up north,” I said. It meant that my schedule was even crazier than normal but it also meant that I was home tonight, and I had planned to make dinner for us as a surprise. He liked surprises, I remembered him saying. He’d just had one in my neighbor’s yard: surprise! There are Shannon’s nipples!

He came into the kitchen. “Are you cooking?”

“I was going to.” I paused and turned. “Why?”

“I wish I’d known that you’d be here,” he said. “I already had dinner across the street. Shannon had the night off, too.”

“Right,” I said. I picked up a glass from the dish drying rack and held it to the light, and then I put it back into the sink. I myself had washed it earlier but I’d done a poor job, very sloppy. I would need to do it again. “That’s fine. Are you going back over there, or did she head inside to put on something decent? I mean, something dry?” I could hear that my voice had changed from the way I usually spoke to him.

He’d heard it too. “All three of them went in. Nicola, are you upset about something?”

The truth was always better. You had to be honest with people.

“I think that this is a time when you’re making a bad choice,” I stated. I remembered the list that I’d made in my journal of all his poor decisions and his mistakes. “This is definitely another bad choice.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You told me that you hesitated about moving into my house because you were worried about your decision-making. You said that since you’d lit a match to everything good in your life, you weren’t sure about trusting yourself. Well, I’m telling you that whatever you have going on with Shannon, it’s a bad choice. You don’t seem to see that yourself but to an outsider like me, it’s very clear.”

He stared. “Why would you think that you could say that to me? What I have going on with Shannon is none of your business.”

His response stung enough that it made my eyes hurt. “I’m being objective when I tell you that the woman is a mess. She’s clearly an exhibitionist. She neglects her kids.”

“She works two jobs, just like you do, to take care of them.”

“Where’s their dad? Or should I have used a plural there?”

“He passed away several years ago, just after Tamara was born,” Jude said calmly. “She doesn’t have any family, either, so she’s doing the best that she can.”

I swallowed. “It’s not good enough.”

“She’s aware of that, and she’s trying. Why shouldn’t I help her?”

“Oh, is that all you’re doing? Are you really so blind? Soon enough, you’ll be moving across the street into that crappy rental and Tamara and Michael will be your kids. That’s obviously what she wants from you! Do you want to be a dad? Are you prepared to be a father?”

There was a short silence. He had said that he didn’t often get mad, and from what I’d seen of his past behavior, that was true. Right now, though, his cheeks flushed with anger and his eyes glared down at me. He’d even clenched his hands into fists, which I didn’t take as a sign that he would try to hit me, but I watched just in case.

“What happens with me and that family is not your concern,” he stated. “If I want have dinner with them, then I’ll do that. If I want to be the father to those kids, then I will.”

I gasped. “Are you kidding? Do you have any idea what you’re saying?”

“I understand perfectly. I made bad decisions but I’m not a fucking idiot, Nicola. Don’t treat me like I am.”

“If you don’t see how you’re being manipulated and you can’t listen to the truth, then you are,” I told him. “If you only see what you want and refuse to change your behavior, then you really are. I get people like that on every one of my shifts, and they’re beyond help.”

“Is that what you still think of me? As the guy who’s throwing up in a hospital bed?” he asked. “Is that why you don’t believe that I can be an adult?”

“No!” I told him, but then I had to add, “It’s normal for someone to be afraid that an addict will slip—where are you going?”

“Out.Goodbye.”

“Wait,” I said, and started to follow him. Was he going over to her house again? Would she still be wearing that transparent shirt? I hoped she’d become hypothermic. “Wait, you don’t understand.”

“I do,” Jude told me, then he was gone.