Lease

The Long Saturday

Chapter 46: Lease

Apartment hunting is proof that civilization has not earned its confidence.

"Charming historic duplex," Norah reads from her phone in the church parking lot. "Abundant natural light. Flexible dining space."

"That means the kitchen is narrow and the windows leak."

"Obviously."

We are looking for a place to live after the wedding, which is one of those sentences that still sometimes arrives in my body a full second before it reaches my mind.

After the wedding.

Our place.

Not metaphor. Plumbing.

Not moving in early. Jude would die theatrically and probably schedule his own resurrection. Just choosing the ground our marriage will have to stand on, which turns out to involve more mildew than theology.

The first place is over a barber shop on Main.

The landlord keeps calling the windows "European," which means they do not close with conviction.

The bathroom light buzzes like an insect trying to repent.

The bedroom is so small the bed would have to become a moral philosophy.

"Cozy," the landlord says.

"Aggressive," Norah says after we leave.

The second place has beautiful floors and the emotional atmosphere of an abandoned dentist.

The third is nearly right except for the kitchen, which appears to have been designed by a man who hated pots.

By the fourth showing we are both sun-stupid and overcaffeinated.

"Maybe," I say, pulling into the gravel lot of yet another rental, "marriage was meant to happen entirely outdoors."

"Excellent. We'll register for tarps."

The house on Alder is the one neither of us expected.

Small yellow bungalow.

Crooked front steps.

Maple tree out front.

Kitchen in the back with two windows over the sink and enough cabinet space to suggest optimism rather than deceit.

The living room is plain. The bedroom modest. The bathroom is morally intact. There is a second room barely large enough to call an office and too useful to dismiss.

"Studio overflow," Norah says immediately.

"Books and sermon panic," I say.

"Both."

The landlord is a retired mail carrier who distrusts everyone under forty but likes our shoes.

"You church?" he asks me on the walkthrough.

"Yes."

"Pottery?" he asks Norah.

"Yes."

He nods like this combination falls within his acceptable national range.

When he leaves us alone for a minute in the kitchen, neither of us says anything at first.

The late January light through the back windows is thin but honest. The sink is old porcelain, slightly scarred. There is room for a small table under the left window. I can already see a kettle there. Her apron on a hook. My keys in a bowl. Mail accumulating with moral menace.

"Well," Norah says.

"Dangerous opener."

"Yes."

She turns slowly in the middle of the room, ring catching once in the light.

"I can imagine us here."

I walk to the counter. Open a cabinet. Close it again for no reason except I need my hands to behave like I have not just been pierced clean through by an ordinary future.

"Me too," I say.

She leans one hip against the sink.

"We should probably talk about the actual question."

"Rent?"

"No."

Of course not.

She looks down at the ring, then back at me.

"I mean the dead."

"Okay," I say.

"I don't want Daniel to become a ghost in a closet because I am trying to be tasteful," she says. "And I don't want Micah to turn into a saint on a shelf because we're scared to touch his actual stuff."

The kitchen holds still around us.

"Neither do I."

"Good."

She glances toward the little second room.

"I was thinking maybe the photo of Daniel on the bookshelf. Not central. Not hidden."

"Yeah."

"And whatever of Micah's feels true to have nearby."

I think of the laminated route card.

The green thermos at Mom's.

The chalk bag.

The notebook with Leadville things and the Sunday line crossed out into love.

"The route card by the desk," I say. "Maybe."

"Good."

"And we are not making a shrine."

"Absolutely not."

"And we are also not pretending our lives began when we met."

She nods once.

"Exactly."

The retired mail carrier comes back in with the application.

"You want it?" he says.

Norah and I look at each other once, the way people do when the answer arrived before the form.

"Yes," we say.

He seems suspicious of unanimity but accepts the paperwork anyway.

We fill out the application sitting on the front steps because the kitchen has already become too full of future to behave neutrally.

On the income line Norah writes "studio / classes / sales" in the compact furious script of a woman refusing vagueness.

On mine I write "Grace Community Church" and feel something in my chest settle one notch lower, closer to ground.

When it's done, the landlord takes the papers and says he'll call by tomorrow "assuming neither of you are fugitives."

"Reasonable standard," Norah says.

He leaves.

We stay on the steps.

The maple branches above us are bare. Somewhere down the block a dog is barking at a shovel for reasons known only to itself. The neighborhood feels neither romantic nor sad. Just inhabited.

"You know what's embarrassing?" I say.

"Several things about you."

"Cruel."

"Continue."

"I am weirdly emotional about the sink."

She leans into my shoulder.

"Good sink," she says.

"Excellent sink."

"A marriage can survive a lot on a decent sink."

"That sounds like one of Jude's unpublished letters."

"He'd steal it."

I laugh and put one arm around her because the step is cold and because this is mine to do now.

The phone rings in my coat pocket while we sit there.

Mom.

I answer on speaker.

"Well?" she says.

"You are an invasive species."

"Correct. Did you find one?"

Norah answers before I can.

"We found a sink."

Mom is quiet one beat.

"Excellent," she says. "Then the rest is logistics."

When I hang up, Norah smiles into my coat sleeve.

"You realize," she says, "we are becoming people with opinions about windows."

"Too late."

We sit another minute on the front steps of the house that is almost ours.

Then we stand and lock the door behind us like people practicing for a life we mean to enter on purpose.