“So, how is it?” Tom asks me as we huddle around the center island in his kitchen.
“Technically, it’s probably horrible,” I say with a shrug. “But I’m doing okay with it. I may have to set aside some money for a chiropractor when all is said and done, but it’s not completely crap.”
I can say this now, as the second unit I opened after sealing off the first was far less crowded and filled with things like plastic boxes of dishes and old tools. The stuff was heavy, but it was all stacked and orderly and made the rest of my day go smoothly. I was able to lock down that unit by the time the sun started to disappear, which made me feel pretty accomplished after the debacle that was yesterday.
“That’s good,” he says, taking a sip of wine. With a small laugh, he adds, “I didn’t think you’d stick with it.”
I want to unleash outrage on him, but I can’t muster the energy for it. “Yeah, me either.” I steal his wineglass and take a deep drink. “But hey, I’m in it now. I couldn’t leave Brutus behind. He’s my pal.”
“Who’s Brutus?”
“The truck.”
“The truck?”
“The big orange diesel pickup I have to drive to the dump at night,” I clarify. “We spend a lot of time together, and I figured that if I gave it a name, it might be nicer to me when I’m trying not to die in rush-hour traffic driving what is essentially a trash-filled battering ram.”
“Whatever works.” Tom laughs as he fills himself a new glass and tops off the one I stole.
“And tonight, I will sit on Gertrude in there and scour any and all websites listing job openings, and I will also send annoying check-in emails to everyone I know, to see if anyone has any bites. I have officially reached the point where I am not above begging for favors.”
“That’s the spirit,” he says, and clinks his glass to mine. “Also... Gertrude?”
I shrug again. “The couch.”
“You named our couch?”
“I really did.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Should I be alarmed by your new fascination with naming inanimate objects?”
“Likely so. But don’t stop me. It’s working, so I’m rolling with it.”
“Fair enough.”
We take a moment of silence to sip our wine. Or maybe I’m sipping wine and he’s mentally rating what level of lunacy naming his couch actually counts as.
“So,” he says, his voice dragging out the word. “Mom called today.”
I whine. Yes, I’m thirty years old, and I just whined.
“Is she still mad?”
“Yep.”
Our mother is currently not speaking with me due to my refusal to return home during my current job/living situation crisis. I’ve tried to explain the irreversible damage my limping home as a failed adult would cause to my psyche, but she remains unconvinced. She maintains that no matter my age, I’m her child and should be sitting on her couch eating PB&J with the crusts cut off while she makes passive-aggressive comments on all my life choices.
“I’m not going back to Buffalo,” I declare. “I’m actually scared that when we go home for Thanksgiving, she’s going to lock me in the basement.”
Tom considers this. “That’s a genuine risk. But cut her a bit of slack. Our entire family has lived within fifty miles of each other for at least four generations. The fact that we both moved away is like the highest sin we could have committed.”
“We’re still in the same state. It’s not like we emigrated.”
“Might as well have,” he says, assuming a scandalized expression that eerily resembles our mother’s. “I mean, we aren’t birthing children to be raised in the school system where Uncle Jack is a vice principal! We’re as good as shunned!”
“No one should ever have to go to a school where their uncle is the vice principal.” I shudder. “You’d think he’d go easier on family, but Uncle Jack was all hell-bent on proving he wasn’t nepotistic.”
“How many times did we get detention from him in high school?”
I try to calculate. “I honestly lost count. Remember when he gave you one because you were walking on the wrong side of the hallway between classes?”
Tom snorts. “Oh god, I’d forgotten that.”
I take another sip. “It’s a special type of hell to see Veep Uncle Jack the Hard-Ass at school, followed by sweet old Uncle Jack who gave us better presents than Mom and Dad at Christmas. All through freshman year, I thought he had dual personalities.”
“Looking back, I think it was his way of apologizing. He had a reputation to maintain,” Tom offers.
I shrug. “I prefer the Dr. Jack/Uncle Hyde approach.”
“It’s nice to see unemployment hasn’t damaged your grounding in reality at all,” my brother says.
I hear the sound of the front door opening, and a few seconds later Trina is standing in the kitchen with us, holding giant take-out bags from Pandora Dragon.
She gives us both a giant smile. “Cooking is for suckers.”
“I knew I was marrying you for all the right reasons,” Tom says, relieving her of the Chinese food and giving her a kiss. I pointedly stare at the bags and realize it’s a lot weirder seeing your little bro smooching his intended inside their own home than it is literally anywhere else. I feel very intrusive.
We take our food and feast while piled on Gertrude watching Friends, because sometimes you just have to embrace being a cliché.
After dinner, we lounge about, and I check my email on my phone. Not a single response to any of the résumés I’ve sent out. It’s only been a few months, but the creeping fear of never finding another editing job is growing. I certainly wouldn’t be the first person thrust out of their chosen profession and into the horrors of having to pick a new career.
I’m not particularly sure I’m qualified to do anything else, though. What do you do with a master’s in English Lit besides working in publishing, or maybe teaching?
Oh god, I’d be the worst teacher ever. Not only am I strangely terrified of teenagers, but I can’t imagine having to teach little kids anything. How do you impart knowledge on small people? It’s genuinely scary. I’d probably be the teacher who tried to inspire them to love reading and wound up inciting a riot over banned books or something.
Actually, that doesn’t sound too bad. We can call that plan B.
“So,” Trina says with a yawn as we finish stashing leftovers in the fridge and remnants in the trash. “What kind of units are you doing tomorrow?”
“I don’t look until I’m ready to start cleaning,” I answer.
“Why not?” Tom asks.
“Because if I looked in them, I’d have to spend all night panicking about the hell that’s waiting for me in the morning. And right now, the worst thing in my head is sex couches and beet smell.” I shudder. “This way I can pretend that’s as bad as it’s gonna get.”
Some things are best left to be lived in the moment. Like falling in love.
Or, you know, stumbling onto dead snakes.