I get dressed in the frail morning light and creep onto the landing.
Nicholas’s door is ajar, so I tiptoe closer. His bed is empty, the comforter printed with palm leaves peeled back. I know what that blanket feels like against my bare skin. I regard it like an old friend I haven’t seen in a long time, along with the headboard we picked out together. The curtains we picked out together. In those early days we would say yes to anything, floating on the high of trying to make each other happy. I would have slept on a sleeping bag if that was what he wanted.
His new bedroom is arranged the same way as our old one. The mattress is new, since I took our other one. Throwing a quick glance at the door, I sit down on the bed and do a little bounce. This mattress is so much better than mine. My room contains leftovers—the curtains that used to hang in our old kitchen, which means they’re too short and don’t block out enough light. My bedspread is a Christmas throw blanket.
I study the empty space beside his dresser and imagine mine next to it.
My nightstand should sit on the right side of the bed, and its absence turns the whole room wrong. He keeps one of his pillows in the space where my head should lie.
It’s a bad idea, lingering in here, but I’m too nosy for my own good. I rummage through his closet, touching all his crewnecks and dry-cleaned suits. The ivory button-down he wore at our disastrous engagement photo shoot. Our smiles were forced in every picture. Between takes, we muttered under our breath and accused the other one of not trying, of not wanting to be there.
One of those pictures is supposed to be in a frame on his nightstand.
The nightstand contains only a lamp. My heart plummets, but then I spot the frame hanging on the wall. He’s switched out the engagement photo neither of us was trying in and replaced it with a memory that takes me back to this past winter, days after he proposed. It’s a bit blurry, and my arm is disproportionately wide because I’m holding it out to snap the picture.
According to the red paint in the background, we’re in his friend Derek’s kitchen. It’s Derek’s housewarming party, and as a gag we got him a gun that shoots marshmallows. Nicholas is right beside me, head on my shoulder. At the last second our eye contact abandons the camera, noticing a marshmallow stuck to the ceiling above us. My hand unconsciously strokes through his hair and holds his head to the cradle of my neck in what strikes me as an affectionate gesture I haven’t done in forever. Just like that, a posed picture becomes a candid one.
As soon as the flash went off, that marshmallow fell on Nicholas’s head, and everyone laughed. Did you get that?
No, I got the moment just before.
Too bad.
I wonder when Nicholas had this picture printed. Why this particular shot, out of the hundreds we’ve taken of ourselves? Why would he want it on his wall? Until now, I thought it existed only on my Instagram. Looking at the picture now, feeling these emotions, solidifies into a memory of its own.
I’ve already spent too long in his bedroom—his, not ours—and I need to slip out before I’m caught, but I need to know more. I’m on a mission to closely examine this man’s belongings, the things he touches daily. I’ve seen it all so many times that I’m numb to it, so I have to focus. See through new Naomi’s eyes.
I rummage in his nightstand, fingering each object. His contacts case and bottle of solution. A case for his glasses. Lube, which I might as well throw away at this point. An old charger that’s no longer compatible with his current phone is next. Skittles. A pen and notepad from a Holiday Inn, top sheet containing a smiley face I drew. I pick up a disposable straw wrapper and am about to drop it when I see that the ends are tied together.
And I remember.
A few months ago, Leon went and got take-out Chinese food for everyone at the Junk Yard. Nicholas stopped by while we were eating, odd man out in his fancy black blazer and wingtips. I think the teasing he gets for his typically Rose-esque wardrobe is why he clings to the khakis: See!
I can be casual, too.
He’d planned to take me out to dinner as a surprise and didn’t understand that I didn’t want to put aside cheap take-out that wasn’t even that good in favor of driving an hour to an upscale restaurant. I was part of something here, this Junk Yard family. He was the outsider, annoyed that I’d undermined his plans. Annoyed that I had a new family and he wasn’t invited in.
With the surprise dinner thwarted, he wasn’t sure whether we wanted him hanging around. He strolled awkwardly about the shop for a few minutes, clearly tense, shooting us looks whenever we laughed. I didn’t join him while he meandered through the aisles, painfully aware that half of my coworkers didn’t like him. I didn’t want them to tar me with the same brush. Joining Nicholas would be like declaring my allegiance to him, and then I’d be the odd man out, too.
So I stayed where I was and didn’t try to alleviate his awkwardness.
Didn’t try to bring him into our conversation. I took everybody’s straw wrappers and tied them into bracelets, which we all put on, even Melissa.
Nicholas walked over while I was tying an extra straw wrapper, so I handed it to him. An afterthought.
And he’d kept it. He easily could have thrown it out when we moved, but here it sits. Nicholas’s secret sentimentality.
My throat burns. My fingers curl around the piece of trash, preserved in this drawer like a precious treasure. I hear a fit of coughing from downstairs and return the straw wrapper bracelet to where I found it, then hurry from the room.
When I descend the stairs, I find Nicholas sprawled on the couch, coughing in his sleep. Used tissues clump on the coffee table and floor.
He’s twisted up in the blankets like he’s been tossing and turning, shirt riding up to expose a gap of stomach. His hair’s a mess and his glasses are askew on his face. He looks young and flushed and sweet.
I carefully remove his glasses and put them on the coffee table, then feel his forehead. He’s clammy, but no fever. He doesn’t know I’m watching him, which gives me free rein to have a closer look. His bone structure is so elegant, I almost hate him for it. He swerved all of Harold’s genes while developing as an embryo and he’s only going to get more distinguished-looking as he ages.
The tissue box is empty, so I go pull down a fresh one from a closet.
Then I see he’s had quite a night down here by himself, drugstore paraphernalia scattered all over the counter under the cabinet where we keep antacids and allergy tablets and the like. There’s a plastic medicine cup in the sink with a drop of cherry-red liquid in it. It hits me that he probably slept downstairs so that his coughing wouldn’t wake me up, and my heart makes a little tick, rolling over.
I root through the cabinets and come up with a bag of cough drops, so I leave those on the table for him, too.
“Just had to get that canoe, didn’t you,” I murmur to myself, padding into the drawing room. I sneak behind his desk to look outside and almost gasp.
It’s a wonderland out there. A good four inches of shimmering white covers everything, even the pond, which means that canoe isn’t going anywhere. It’s stranded in the middle, surrounded by ice. The forest is breathtakingly beautiful with sunrise glowing up over the edge of the world, coloring the spaces between branches like stained glass.
I wish Nicholas were awake to see this, but then again, snow isn’t as magical to him as it is to me. For him, snow means he has to go and—
Oh, crap.
My joy explodes to dust. Nicholas once left me in a bookstore to drive to his parents’ house and carry groceries in from Deborah’s trunk in the pouring rain. He did this because she called and asked him to. He mows their grass and fixes things around their house and worries about their memories and medical appointments and finances. He’s incurably concerned, and will baby them for as long as he lives even if they don’t necessarily need it.
I stare at his miserable form on the couch, back convulsing off the cushions with each coughing jag. He’s so exhausted, the coughing doesn’t even wake him up. This man is sick, but that’s not going to stop him from going over to his parents’ house this morning and shoveling their driveway. That’s just Nicholas. He’s That Guy.
I glance outside again at the snow, at the thermometer on the other side of the window that declares it’s nineteen degrees, and I think with a vehemence that jolts me: No.
No way in hell.
There’s only one way to stop him, so that’s the way I’ve got to go. I reach for my coat and hat in the closet but see his coveralls and raise an eyebrow in consideration. It might not be a bad idea to wear something a little more heavy-duty. After I tug my Ghostbuster gear on and roll up the pant legs about a mile until the cuffs no longer drag, I decide to go the whole hog and grab his hideous earflap hat, too. It smells like him, which is oddly comforting even though he’s right here, and the fleece is so soft and comfortable.
I need to get me one of these.
Once I’m all bundled up, I grab the keys to his Jeep and throw three different shovels into the back. Three shovels, because they’re different sizes and I’m ashamed to say I’ve never shoveled snow before so I don’t know which I’ll want to use. Nicholas does all our shoveling. I don’t think that’s a fact I’ve appreciated until now: he always shoveled a pathway from our porch to my car when we lived at the old house. He never asked me to do it instead, not even once.
As a matter of fact, he scraped ice off my doors and wind-shields, too.
He did it before he left for work, before I woke up.
Shame burns my face. When’s the last time I thanked him for that?
When’s the last time I noticed he even did these little things for me and didn’t simply take them for granted? I’ve been so hung up on him doing this for his mom and dad that I kind of forgot he does it for us, too.
I drive very, very slowly to Mr. and Mrs. Rose’s house on Sycamore Lane. Only the main road has been visited by a salt truck, but the Jeep is a total champ and never slides. I am behind the wheel of Nicholas’s Jeep that he bought without telling me and have entirely too much time alone with the disturbing revelation that I’m an asshole.
The lights are on when I nose up the driveway, which means Deborah’s awake. Harold’s got at least until noon before he rolls face-first onto the floor.
The beautiful, untouched snow blanketing their driveway sets me off.
They’ve got no problem hiring people to power-wash their house and prune their rosebushes and arrange rock structures in the flower beds. And yet for whatever arbitrary reason, they depend on Nicholas to make this particular problem go away. They expect it. They say he’s so good, so kind, and that pressure is a ten-ton weight, making sure he’ll never stop doing it.
If he does, they’ll withdraw all their approval. He won’t be the good, kind son anymore. He’s heard the way they talk about Heather and knows that with one misstep, they’ll be talking about him the same way.
I snarl at the snow, at the warm, glowing windows and Deborah’s silhouette peeking out. Her maternal pleasure radiates.
Nicky is here to take care of everything! He loves to help us and feel useful.
Not today, dickheads! Today you’re getting a substitute who’s incompetent at best when it comes to manual labor, and you can just deal.
Their driveway is personally cruel to me right away, a crust of ice eating one of my shovels. I dig back in, nose dripping like a faucet, face a frozen block of “Why, god, why” while the rest of my body melts like a candle in these coveralls. This is the pits. This is some goddamn bullshit. I call my present situation every curse word I can come up with. Sometimes Nicholas is over here well before he has to go to work, and I mentally run through that timeline. In order to shower and get to Rise and Smile at seven, that means he’s doing this in the dark. I’m so pissed on his behalf that I shovel faster.
It’s frankly amazing that he has any goodwill left in his heart toward his parents. I want to drag them outside and bury them with my shovel.
There’s so much snow to clear, I’m too daunted to be methodical about it and scoop at random, flinging it over my shoulder. Deborah and Harold aren’t getting neat borders of snow on either side of the drive. They’re getting carnage. It occurs to me that if I come back again next time it snows and do another piss-poor job, Nicholas will be off the hook. Mr. and Mrs. Rose will beg me to stop. They’ll hire a snowplow guy.
When I’m about halfway finished, the front door opens and Deborah trundles out in a fur coat that’s probably fashioned solely from baby animals, steaming mug in hand. She hustles over, a big smile on her face, until she gets up close and realizes that the person in coveralls and a hideous hat is me.
“Oh!”
Her horror is invigorating. I want to have it made into perfume.
Clothing. Bath bombs.
“Naomi,” she says gravely, like she’s just heard the most terrible news.
“I wasn’t expecting …”
“Is that for me?” I reach for the mug. It’s hot chocolate. Before Deborah can reply, I take it from her and sip. There are mini marshmallows swimming at the top, and I’d stake my soul she put in thirty-two of them, one for each year of Nicholas’s life. This hot chocolate tastes better than the kind she supplies me with during winter visits, confirming my paranoid suspicions that Nicholas gets the good stuff while I’m offered store-brand.
Her mouth is a round O as she watches me drink. “Thanks,” I say when I’m finished, handing the mug back.
“Is Nicholas feeling well?”
I’m not subjecting him to a pop-in visit from Mommie Dearest and chicken soup cooked by “the woman.” “He’s terrific,” I tell her cheerfully.
“Well, I better get back to it. Gotta lotta work to do!”
The rest of the driveway practically shovels itself as I zone out, thinking about Nicholas. Next time he comes over here to shovel, I should tag along to help out. We’ll get it done in half the time.
Whatever muscles aren’t numb are aching when I climb into the Jeep.
I’ve been here for two hours. I’m positive it doesn’t take Nicholas longer than an hour to achieve the same, if not better, results. When I pull out of the driveway, I honk twice for good-bye because I imagine that’s what Nicholas probably does.
The journey back home is better than the journey out, since snowplows have cleared the roads. I can’t wait to get home and shower, but I think about Nicholas’s rough night. His coughing fit, and how he’ll wake up hungry and pitiful with no motivation to cook for himself.
Most food joints around here are closed on Sunday mornings, but Blue Tulip Café, the coffee shop Brandy’s sister owns, is thrilled when I pull up.
None of the tables have patrons and there are no gaps between pastries in the display case, which means I’m the first customer of the day. This place is going to go the way of the Junk Yard and we all know it, so I buy extra.
Breakfast sandwiches, soup, coffee. One of the workers helps me haul it all out to my car.
I make one more stop to restock on cold and flu medicine before heading home. For the first time since we moved, I visualize the house in the woods when I think the word home instead of the white rental on Cole Street.
When the Jeep shivers up the driveway, I can see Nicholas waiting for me behind the screen door. As I start to carry in the food and medicine, he runs out in his slippers.
“Get back inside!” I order.
“You need help.”
“You need to sit down. You’re sick.”
He takes the coffee and soup from me, anyway. I’m amused at the way he keeps gaping at me, completely boggled. Deborah must have called him already with a full report. Hills of snow all over the yard now, she just tossed it anywhere. And then she drank all your hot chocolate! The good kind! “You didn’t have to do that,” he tells me when we get inside. “Shovel my parents’ driveway. Why did you?”
“If nobody showed up to shovel their driveway, your mom might be forced to do it herself. Deborah’s Gucci pantsuits? In this snow?” I chuckle dryly. “What a catastrophe. So I said, ‘Not on my watch, snow.’”
His eyes are huge. If he thought I was a changeling before, I shudder to think what he imagines I am now. I pester him to go wait on the couch and bring him his breakfast, then test his forehead to make sure he doesn’t have a fever. It’s adorable how his hair is sticking out in every direction, and I run my fingers through it. He’s speechless and I’m basically Mrs.
Cleaver. I think I could get used to this whole surprising-him-and-making-him-speechless thing. It’s delightful.
“Looks pretty out there,” he manages after a couple bites of his breakfast sandwich, with a nod at the window. His voice is a touch hoarse, probably exacerbated by Deborah making him talk on the phone. It’ll take a century to undo all the damage she’s done to him, but I’ll start with Vicks VapoRub and a humidifier. “All the snow. Like a holiday postcard.”
He would think that, all warm and cozy in his flannel and slippers. I have no positive opinions about snow at the moment. Screw snow. I wish global warming would hurry up and abolish the whole season. I grunt noncommittally and trudge past him, shedding my layers as I go.
“I’m going to take a shower and maybe a quick nap,” I say. “Will you be all right?”
He nods, still stunned. He shouldn’t be this stunned by a nice gesture. It should be a given, but it’s not, and that’s my fault. I’ve been withholding nice gestures to punish him for not giving me enough nice gestures, and just look at how well that attitude’s panned out for us.
I end up napping longer than I intended because my alarm never goes off. Maybe I imagined setting it. When I heave my sore body downstairs, Nicholas cries from another room, “Not yet! Hold on.”
He clamps his hands over my eyes and nudges me into the kitchen, where I’m forced to wait in stupefied silence for ten minutes until he shouts hoarsely, “Okay! You can come in now.”
“You need to save your voice,” I say as I walk toward the sound of his shuffling. I stop dead in the doorway of the drawing room.
He’s rearranged it: taken out the TV and relocated his desk to a different wall. My desk is in here, too, flush with his rather than squashed into a drafty living room corner. It doesn’t resemble his personal office anymore, but a shared space. My shoes stacked beside his. My candles. His model train. His filing cabinet. My bookshelf, with a blend of my fiction and his non, his collection of fountain pens and my menagerie of Junk Yard curiosities. A marriage of personalities.
His eyes track me, absorbing every intricate change of my expression, so he notices when my gaze lands on the fireplace and my throat closes up.
I feel a pressure in my sinuses, a punch to the chest.
There’s a nutcracker on the mantel.
I picture him digging through our tubs of Christmas decorations in storage, remembering my throwaway comment, blowing the dust off Mr.
Nutcracker’s glossy black hat. How his mouth would kick up at the corner in satisfaction— There you are. What a silly thing to tear up over, a nutcracker. But I do.
“I’m taking tomorrow off work,” he tells me. “We’ll go pick out a sofa to put right here in front of the window, so we can look out at the view.”
Then he adds, “If that’s, uh, okay with you?”
My head bobs a yes. It’s my turn to be speechless. He smiles, and I think he likes doing this, too. Shocking me with an act of goodness.
Nicholas is feeling much better by the time evening rolls around, but he decides he doesn’t want to push his luck by going out in this weather, so we cancel dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Rose. I make grilled cheese, he heats up tomato soup, and we sit side by side on the couch to eat and watch The Office. It’s the best meal I’ve ever tasted.
Late that night, I wake up and need to get something to drink. When I pass his door, I reach out on impulse and touch the knob. I turn it—just to check—and find it locked. I’m not sure I’d go inside, if given the chance. I can’t blame him for protecting himself from me because I’ve been doing the same, but right now our system of measure-for-measure doesn’t infuriate or energize me. It disappoints, cutting deeper than any insult.
