Someone, Differently — Page 28

Jan and August in the kitchen on a Saturday evening

#01

The Cooking, Badly

Insisted, against good evidence, that the cooking would go fine.

August said: I should mention I am not great at cooking. I said I know, I've seen your kitchen. A simple pasta with garlic and broccoli and lemon. The garlic burned in the first attempt. Started over. Burned slightly less in the second. August said the second-best version of this exists. The first-best was at the restaurant by his apartment I hadn't yet been to. Finished the bottle of wine. Too tannic for this dish, in retrospect, he said, kindly. I laughed so suddenly a tiny bit of wine came out of my nose. He pretended not to notice.

#02

Mim's Détente

Mim got on August's lap on the fourth weekend.

Three months of exactly one pet each visit, and then — done. He was on the couch reading a small book of essays I'd given him. Mim walked over, sat at his foot for ninety seconds, looked up once, and decided. Got on his lap without asking. August didn't move. Kept reading. Hand on the book, other hand across the cat's back, lightly. Mim stayed forty-three minutes. I walked in at minute eleven, stopped in the doorway, took out my phone to photograph it, realized how unhinged that would look, put it away. He looked up and saw all of this on my face. He smirked. He was in.

#03

The Book Left

August left his book on Sunday night.

Pond, Claire-Louise Bennett. He texted Monday: I think I left my book at yours. I said yes. He said I'll grab it Tuesday. Picked it up Monday evening. Dog-eared in three places. Pencil notes: yes beside a line about silence, no beside a description of weather. On page 42, beside a passage about a woman cooking alone — the word Jan. He'd written my name in the margin of a book I hadn't read. Closed it. Left it where he'd set it. The side table became his book's place. The first object in the apartment that wasn't, technically, mine.

#04

Reading on the Same Couch

Hadn't, in any prior year, been able to read on the same couch as another person for an hour without one of us breaking.

At minute thirty-eight I looked up and registered we were both still reading. He hadn't checked on me. The not-checking was the thing — the freedom of being read alongside without being read at. Returned to the page. Read for another twenty-two minutes. The cat didn't move. Finished at slightly different times and then, in the manner of two adults who'd been reading for an hour, set the books down and said what should we eat?

Sunday afternoon, Jan at the window holding her tea (the canonical pose)

#05

The First Sunday at Four with Someone

The first Sunday at four with someone else in the room was a Sunday in early October.

Wondered if it would change things. The answer: not exactly. The light was still the light. The Monday-feeling still in the next room. The peace, with a quiet body on the couch, was the same peace plus one — a math I hadn't, on any prior Sunday, been able to compute. Drank the tea. He read the book. Wrote him into the notebook, the Wednesday after: Sunday at four. The light was the same. He was on the couch reading. The peace was the peace.

Jan's apartment, the evening of October 22

#06

The Birthday, October 22

Turned 31 on October 22.

Not a big year-number. Priya insisted on a small thing: four people, a badly-made lemon cake, four candles, Mom on FaceTime from Hangzhou. Mom held up something from her kitchen and said I made dumplings, you would have liked these. August was instructed to help blow out the candles — not a thing two people had been asked to do at the same moment before. Candles out. Priya cheered. Ana clapped. Mom said eat well. The cake was lemon and slightly under-baked. The cake was real.

Jan and August walking down a tree-lined Greenpoint side street on a late-October afternoon — the leaves are doing the October thing, half-yellow, half-gold, half-still-on-the-tree

#07

The Walk in October

Walked home from the market on a Saturday in late October.

The trees were doing the October thing, so reliable as to almost be unremarkable, and yet always remarkable. Had—on the walk—said three things and August said three things and they were, mostly, about cheese. The cheese was from the market on Manhattan Ave. The cheese was a good cheese, by August's audit, which meant a very good cheese. Talked about cheese. Talked about the way leaves looked. Talked about whether Mim ate her breakfast (yes). Nothing that mattered in any loud way. The not-needing-to-talk-about-things was, by some margin, my favorite new fact about being-with-someone. We walked the rest of the way home without it.

Close-up of Jan's front-door coat hooks, evening

#08

The Two Coats

The coat hooks by the front door had, for four years, held two coats and one tote.

This October: two coats, one mine, one his. The second coat appeared gradually. The first time was the cooking-badly Saturday — he hung it himself, on his way in. Took it home. The next Tuesday he hung it again. Took it home. By the third Tuesday it stayed, for the four nights between Tuesdays. By October it was on the hook more than off it. Some weeks I noticed. Some weeks I didn't. It occasionally knocked my chore jacket onto the floor when I was rushing out. I didn't care. The hooks were no longer a curated display. They were a traffic jam. Not declared. Just there.

Wednesday morning, the kitchen table, the rust cardigan on

#09

The Wednesday-After (Notebook)

Wrote it down on a Wednesday morning.

The notebook page: the cat got on his lap. the book has a side table. the peace was the peace plus one. there are two coats on the hooks. someone, differently. someone with a shape. Read it back. Didn't edit it. Not a declaration. A small accurate list. Closed the notebook. The lamp off. The cat on the chair. The list was the truest thing in the apartment. I'll leave it there.