Eventually, what can you do? More. Or less. Leave or stay.
“I know I said this before but . . . we should really go to bed,” he suggested. “The sun’s coming up.”
“I am not allowed to have boys in my bed,” I said.
“Okay,” he said. And lay down on his back, and I lay down on his front (it really is a very small bed) and slept for the first time in days.
Not very many hours later, I snuck back into bed with Katie while Ethan—and everyone else—was still asleep. I tried very hard to stay in my half-sleep place, lightly buzzed from predawn kissing and its swirling implications, lightly numb as well and so holding my grandmother, Jill, Atlas at bay, ready to slip back into that bright sleep you find on summer mornings when it’s already fully light and yet still entirely too early to be up. Having finally slept, my body remembered what it was like and wanted more. It was not to be. I slipped into bed, laid my head on the pillow, closed my eyes, and would have been asleep again within moments except Katie was having none of it. Up on one elbow, she whisper-hissed over my gratefully closing eyes, “Janey, what is going on with you and Ethan?”
I lay perfectly still and would not open my eyes, feigning the very edges of sleep, trying still to keep them with me. “What brought that up at this hour of the morning?”
“You did when you snuck into bed like I wouldn’t notice at five A.M. Where else would you be?”
“Really?”
“Yeah really.”
“I could have been in the garden crying. I could have been downstairs watching TV, unable to sleep. I could have been in the kitchen having a snack.”
“You don’t eat when you’re upset. The window’s open so I would have heard you crying in the garden. Lucas and Jason are on the sofa in the TV room downstairs. Also, clearly something is going on between you and Ethan.”
I kept my eyes clamped shut. But I couldn’t help giggling. “What makes you think so?”
She flung herself back against the pillows, also giggling. “The last month of my life. Looking at him looking at you. Looking at you looking at him. Living in the house with you. Being alive in the world.”
I explained to her about my grandmother’s box, about opening it in the middle of the night, about the watch and my sudden need to deliver it right away. “Then he kissed me.”
Katie squealed. Loudly. I clamped a hand over her mouth.
“How was it?”
“You know. You kissed him.”
“I forget,” she said. “Tell me everything.”
“No.” Then, “It was nice.” Then, “He is very nice.”
“What does this mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything.” Then, “I don’t know what it means.” Then, “I’m sorry, Katie.”
“Why?”
“I kissed your ex-boyfriend. That’s the number one rule of dating. Don’t kiss your friends’ ex-boyfriends.”
“That’s your number one rule, not mine. I believe in vetting my friends’ boyfriends first.”
“Still.”
“If it weren’t for not dating Ethan, I would never have gotten to date Peter.”
“Still.”
“I think it’s great. I’m really happy for you.” Then she added, “Both!”
“If it makes you uncomfortable, I’ll stop right away. I don’t have to do it again.” She looked at me skeptically like I was an addict who claimed to be able to stop anytime. “I can’t lose another friend. You’re my best friend too. Nothing’s worth losing you too.”
“You haven’t lost Jill,” Katie said. Then she added, “We.”
“Then why has she taken Atlas we don’t know where?”
“She’s freaking out,” said Katie. “But it’s not because we’ve lost her. And you could never lose me. Definitely not over a boy.” She was quiet. I thought we might go back to sleep then, but instead she asked, “Why did your grandmother leave him a watch?”
“It has a baseball on it.” Then, “It was my grandfather’s.” Then, “She thinks we’re getting married.”
Katie squealed again. “We could have a double wedding!”
“Katie, you are actually insane,” I said.
There was a soft knock on our door. Jason stuck his head in.
“I heard squealing,” he said. “I came up to get the dirt.” He climbed in bed with us.
“Go away,” I said. “There is no dirt. We’re trying to sleep.”
“You hooked up with Ethan,” he guessed.
“No!” I said. Then, “We kissed.” Then, “How did you know?”
“Oh Janey, it’s so obvious.” He rolled his eyes. “Even Lucas knew. Tell me everything.”
There was a soft knock on our door. Ethan stuck his head in, eyes blurry, hair sticking up in a thousand directions, squinting at us. “What’s going on? Why are you guys so loud? It’s five o’clock in the morning.”
Thirty-seven
Not very many hours later, Ethan went home to meet with his students. Katie and Peter and Jason and Lucas went home as well—to work, to cook, to plan a wedding, to cover my class, to otherwise get back to their lives. Though Katie was missing Atlas and promised to talk to Jill and demand . . . something, I could also already see him, us, ebbing from her life. She was getting married in a week, beginning a new life, starting to think about having children of her own. Since getting married—to a man and not her roommates—had never been in doubt for her, since having babies of her own—and not her roommate’s—hadn’t either, maybe she was more willing to let all of this go. She loved Atlas like a babysitter? She loved me and Jill like roommates? She could put all this behind her for a guy she’d known for a month? It seemed unthinkable to me.
Unthinkable like impossible. But also unthinkable like I couldn’t think about it. I had another life to pack up as well. Though my dad argued for renting my grandmother’s apartment for another month to give us time before we had to either find a place for or toss everything my grandmother had owned, my mother wanted to get it done right away, not drag it out, add searing pain to searing pain rather than what would be, in a month or so, searing pain to miserable absence, numb resignation, and regret. It was horrible.
Things don’t seem like novels, but they are. If I’d been at school, I’d have been explaining this to my students. Since I wasn’t, I distracted myself with these ruminations while I packed. Things don’t exist on their own. They don’t exist at all without being owned. And in being owned, they have a story. Some are remarkable of course. “My father brought these candlesticks back for her from Paris when he was stationed there during the war,” my mother told me as she packed them up in bubble wrap. “He used to remember, laughing, how everyone else bought perfume or jewelry for their girls and they teased him, but he told them how beautiful my mother looked by candlelight, and even though they were big and heavy, he carried them throughout his time there, picturing how they would light her face when he got them finally home.”