Chapter_19

She couldn’t keep track of what Dylan was saying. Sill rot, water table, sump pit, flashing, vapor barrier, frost line. The words were unfamiliar, and together they seemed to mean the house would soon cave in. Dylan showed them that the dining room cabinet Rosie liked for its asymmetry was a symptom of a sagging floor, which was the final problem in a line of dire structural failures that somehow started on the roof.

The windows, as nice as they looked, would soon be letting in the bitter winter air, exacerbating a mold problem they did not know they had. “So try to keep the temperature low,” Dylan said, leading them through the kitchen, “which shouldn’t be a challenge. Your walls aren’t insulated.” They learned that the roots of a forsythia bush had grown into their stone foundation and become so impacted that to rip out the plant could cause the house to collapse. The siding should have been replaced fifteen years before. There was evidence of termites and carpenter ants, and it was unclear if the infestations were active. A rodent appeared to have built an advanced civilization in the attic.

“So...” Jordan pulled his phone out of his pocket and started typing. “Exterminator, mold guy, window guy...”

“You’re going to want to find a general contractor who can see the big picture.” Dylan ran a hand through her hair. She wore the well-waxed canvas pants whose details Rosie had come to know; the brass hardware that fastened the reinforced knees, the dots of pale blue paint along the inseam. “These aren’t isolated problems. You’ll want to tackle them in the right order.”

“And if we do nothing?” Jordan glanced up at her.

Dylan looked as if he’d suddenly spoken in Gaelic. “That won’t end well for you or this house. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you.”

“What about you? Could we hire you?” Rosie asked.

“No,” Jordan answered for her. “We’ll find someone.”

“I could help you with a few things in my free time, but it’s a big job, and now that it’s getting cold, it’ll be hard,” Dylan said. “Most of the work will have to wait until spring.”

Jordan crossed his arms. “So we’ll be methodical. We’ll make a checklist and work through it.”

“Living here will be a labor of love,” Dylan said. “It’s kind of its own lifestyle, being the steward of a historic property. These aren’t problems that you fix once and forget about. It’s going to take ongoing hard work, like real work. Not to mention money. I know things are tight right now.” She directed this last point to Jordan, who laughed through his nose.

“We’re doing fine,” he said, turning to Rosie. “Let’s just take care of the pests before Bridey visits so she doesn’t have a nervous breakdown.”

“Before she what? When?”

“The end of the month,” Jordan said. “I think I mentioned that.”

“No, you didn’t,” Rosie said.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Why is she coming?”

“What do you mean, why?” He searched her face. “Because she’s my mom. She wants to see the house. Your mom would be welcome anytime, too.”

Rosie stared at the floor. She couldn’t imagine her mother showing up any more than she could imagine the pope on her doorstep. She turned to Dylan and sighed. “Thanks for the rundown.”

That night the temperature outside dropped below freezing. Rosie and Jordan huddled under a blanket on the couch while the reality show streamed. They’d forgotten to cover their wood pile, and the logs were frozen, which made them hiss and smoke. Rosie went to the kitchen for Oreos and let out a small, involuntary shriek when she saw mouse droppings in the packaging.

“You OK?” Jordan called from the living room.

“Yep.” She wrapped herself tightly in her sweater. The tiles were freezing against her feet. Away from the fire, the house seemed to have its own wind patterns.

“We’re out of Oreos,” Rosie said, climbing back under the blanket. On the reality show, one of the men seduced his fiancée with a confusing meal he’d assembled from baby carrots, garlic, and a meat substitute that Rosie could not identify. Over the uncanny flickering of a fake candle, he told her he’d known from the second—he used that word, “second”—they saw each other that she was the one. The woman glowed approvingly.

“Oh, please,” Rosie said.

Jordan laughed. “It’s sweet!”

“He clearly just likes her butt.”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t seem so impossible to me to fall in love really fast.” He reached an arm around her. “Speaking from firsthand experience.”

Rosie thought back to the beginning of their relationship. After their second date, Jordan had reached for her hand as they walked to his apartment, and by their fourth date, he was using the words “we” and “us” when he talked about his future. Rosie had been drawn to his certainty, his lack of anxiety about the speed with which they committed to each other. She knew he would take care of her and that her life, finally, would be bigger.

In the confessional footage, the woman claimed to be impressed by her fiancé’s effort with the meal but disappointed that he had set her place mat with a small dessert fork. She was waffling over whether to say yes or no at the altar, which was the final element of the show. She required a partner who understood how to set a table, which was something she’d specifically shared with him on one of their first dates, back when there was a wall between them.

“I still can’t believe her,” Jordan said.

“She is weirdly obsessed with silverware.”

“I mean Dylan.”

“What about Dylan?”

“She said I don’t work hard.”

“When?”

“Earlier. She said I don’t do real work. To my face! In my own house!”

“I don’t think that’s what she said.” Rosie tried to remember Dylan’s exact words.

“It was implied. And why was she looking at me when she said it? It’s going to take ongoing hard work. So patronizing!”

“Maybe your work is a little more opaque to her? Like, she can’t see what you’re actually up to?”

“Opaque? I’m getting a business off the ground with Noguchi and his friend’s uncle’s friend, and yet I get written off as being some kind of lazy househusband. What is she even doing? She said she could help in her free time. All her time is free time. And don’t say she’s a maker.”

“She does, you know, make stuff. And she watches that toddler.”

“She clearly enjoys how fucked we are.”

Rosie laughed. “You are spiraling. You didn’t seem that worried about it when she gave us the misery tour earlier.”

“I was faking being relaxed,” Jordan said. “I hate the thought of her seeing me ruffled.” He kissed her on the top of her head. “I want to bury myself alive in the front yard.”

“Please don’t do that,” Rosie said. “Then I’ll have to host your mom by myself.”

Jordan opened his mouth to say something but stopped himself. He looked stricken. “How could you say something like that? That’s so mean.”

“I’m sorry,” Rosie said. “It’s just—she’s a little intense.” She rubbed his chest. “Look, I’m stressed about the house, too. But it sounds like there’s not much we can do until spring, and maybe by then this thing with Noguchi will have launched?”

“Is a gut renovation really what we want to be doing? I mean especially if you’re pregnant by then, and—”

“Who said I’ll be pregnant by then?”

“I said if,” Jordan said. “Will you relax? I’m just thinking about our future.”

Rosie turned back to the TV. Each of the couples were preparing for their wedding day. Some of the grooms had written letters to their new fiancées, reminiscing about the previous six weeks, which they referred to as “the experiment.” One groom had gone off-script and written a letter to himself—a pep talk in shockingly childlike handwriting—in which he reminded himself that there was no wrong decision to make. This seemed categorically false to Rosie. He would either say yes or no at the altar, and surely only one was the right answer.

Hey, guys, the family friend said. Want me to pick upOvulation Tests Home Fertility Predictor Kit for Women with Urine Cup, Clear Accurate Rapid Result Tracker Helps Get Timing Right While Planning for Baby Total Accuracy 30 Count?

“No,” Rosie said.

“Not at this moment,” Jordan said.

Cool, cool, just let me know.

At dawn each day the ground was coated in frost. Rosie had traded in a paycheck for a pair of tall rubber boots, which she wore with thick wool socks. The sun baked off the last of the dampness by eleven, leading to glorious, cool afternoons. She liked to drive the long way home, with her windows down. Each night the images of the day passed through her mind: bright pink chicken lungs, purple livers, pale yellow feet, the cord-like esophagus.

She no longer looked away when Hank drew the knife across the chickens’ throats. He’d given her the worst chores—hosing down guts, worming the chickens, mucking their coop—which Rosie carried out dutifully, desperate for approval. The chickens seemed always to be laughing at her, shrieking hysterically. But each time Hank handed her the knife, she balked. He’d begun calling her “Ferdinand,” after the children’s book bull who refused to fight. Rosie liked having a nickname because it made her feel included, but she didn’t like having a reputation for being a wimp, and so she resolved to kill a chicken by the end of the season.

Sometimes she stared at the list of the house’s many problems, now that they’d been spelled out: the discoloration of the siding; the gutter that jutted away from the roofline; the bounce of the floors. To combat the mice, their grains went into jars, whose uniformity made Rosie privately happy. Pantry items that could not fit into jars went in a large plastic bin.

“How was the chicken assassination?” Jordan asked one morning, rummaging in the bin. He pulled out a box of cereal and sat at the kitchen table in his pajamas with his laptop open.

“Sorry to say many chickens were harmed, and in fact killed, in the making of this morning,” Rosie said. She filled the sink basin with hot, soapy water, which made her hands prickle, and dipped dirty plates and mugs beneath the surface. When she finished drying, she made her way to Jordan. He quickly closed a browser window.

“What are you looking at?”

“Nothing.”

“Was that porn?”

“Yes,” Jordan said dryly. “I’m sitting in the middle of the kitchen, eating cereal while you do dishes, watching porn.”

“What were you closing out of so quickly?”

“It was a work thing for Noguchi.” He stood and closed his laptop. “We’re putting together another fundraising round. We have a couple of investor leads, including the VC firm that invested in Grubhub.” He slid a warm hand up her shirt.

“That feels nice,” Rosie said. She closed her eyes and placed her hand over his. He looked at Rosie and raised his eyebrows, then kissed her, pushing her against the counter, his breath slightly sweet from the cereal milk.

The sound of someone at the front door interrupted them. “OK if I come in?” Dylan asked. “Door was open.”

Rosie pulled away from Jordan. “Of course,” she said hastily. “We didn’t hear you.”

“Hey.” Dylan leaned a hand against the door frame and took in the scene. There was no trace of embarrassment on her face; instead, Rosie found something between amusement and curiosity. White paint flecked her red hair. “I had some free time, so I thought I’d come by to fix your gutters, if you wanted.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Jordan said. His hand was still on Rosie’s waist.

“I can come back later,” Dylan said.

“No, no,” Rosie said, removing his hand. “Now is great. We’re not doing anything.”

“Well, that’s not totally true,” Jordan said with a short laugh.

Dylan leveled her gaze at him. “I’ll be quick. I’m waiting for the paint to dry on the coop.”

“Can we—can we pay you?” Rosie asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” Dylan said.

Through the kitchen window, Rosie and Jordan watched her set her ladder against the house and climb until only her boots were visible.

“Why did you take my hand away?” Jordan said.

“What are you talking about?”

“When Dylan came in. You took my hand away from your waist.”

“Oh—” Rosie took his hand. “I’m sorry. I just got shy, I guess.” She placed his palm back on her waist.

“Did you not want her to see?”

“I wasn’t really thinking about it. I just— I’m private. I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable.” She kissed him tenderly on the cheek.

Jordan smiled at her politely, his hurt feelings on display. “I should call Noguchi anyway.” He put in his AirPods and kissed Rosie on the forehead, then swiped on his phone. “Hey, man,” he said, walking into the living room. “You got a pitch for me?”

Rosie leaned against the counters guiltily. She listened to Jordan’s end of the conversation—Absolutely, and honestly, we can fit the fine print on the packaging—and the sound of Dylan scraping the gutters clean, her boots thudding gently against the roof.