House Rules

by Ruby Lang

  “I guess it’s okay with me. I never thought of—I suppose pets weren’t allowed in my old place, and it would’ve been too cramped. I put it out of my mind.”

  “So you’d be fine with it.”

  “I think so.”

  “Thank you. Maybe I’ll try to find a cat who’s older, more settled. One who won’t want to go running all over the apartment at all hours.”

  “Right.”

  He picked up an orange peel.

  If she wanted a cat, maybe she was feeling more settled than he was. Maybe this meant she was going to stay.

  He should not feel a burst of joy from thinking of it. But he wasn’t supposed to like seeing Lana in her pajamas in the kitchen in bare feet, to be aware of the subtle curl of her toes, to wonder how they’d feel brushing up his leg.

  Of course she was going to settle here. That was part of the agreement. He was the one who had to move out after four months if he didn’t like it. This apartment was supposed to be the next step in a new him, one who didn’t get stuck, one who tried new things.

  But as he dropped the peels in the freezer compost and tried to calm his unruly body, he couldn’t help thinking that if he had to stay here with her, he wouldn’t mind. He wouldn’t mind at all.

  Christmas Eve

  “I wasn’t planning on asking if I could adopt until after the holidays. But he came into the apartment looking like I remembered, just while I was thinking of all the ways I’d changed. So I blurted it out. So much for never apologize, never explain.”

  Julia snorted. “Who said that?”

  “Some rich white person, no doubt.”

  Julia had called Lana up to ask her to help with her baking. Lana reminded her cousin she wasn’t a baker and didn’t make pastry, but Julia sounded desperate and Lana did owe her for all the weeks on the couch, so she’d pulled herself out of her bed on her day off and slumped down to Hell’s Kitchen, her tired body cursing her all the way as she thought of the shift she’d agreed to pick up tomorrow.

  But so far this was all right. Julia’s apartment was warm, probably too warm for pastry making, and Lana had installed herself on the couch and was looking through a pet adoption site while “coaching” Julia through the dough.

  Julia raised a flour-and-butter-covered hand and rubbed her forehead with her wrist. “Is Simon coming to the shelter with you to pick out the cat?”

  “No. It’s not like we’re a couple or something.”

  Julia pursed her lips in disappointment. Or maybe she was concentrating on the butter and flour.

  “That might be easier with the food processor.”

  “I hate cleaning that thing. Plus doesn’t making it in the food processor make it tough?”

  The glutens were probably already overworked, but Lana didn’t say anything. Instead she told Julia to add more ice water.

  Fear of a tough crust wasn’t going to divert her cousin from her favorite subject, though. “What’s Simon doing for Christmas? Does he celebrate?”

  “He doesn’t, but he’s planning to go to Westchester to see his aunt Rose. He’s got a lot of cousins. They usually go see a movie and order takeout.”

  “So you two won’t be trapped together in the apartment with a big snowstorm blowing outside.”

  “It’s supposed to be 45 tomorrow. Practically balmy.”

  “The fire roaring. A blackout threatening...”

  “The fireplace doesn’t function.”

  “He slowly takes off his button-down shirt and puts it on you to keep you warm.”

  Lana snorted.

  Julia inspected her work, her face a mask of innocence. “It’s just the unresolved sexual tension coming off of you two.”

  “What are you talking about? We were married. There’s nothing unresolved about it.”

  “Ah, so you admit there is sexual tension.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to be a criminal defense lawyer, Perry Mason?”

  “Who’s that?”

  “I think my hip just broke from the old.”

  “Anyway,” Julia was saying, “it’s clear when you’re in a room together. That’s all. He’s very aware of you.”

  Well, Lana was certainly alert to him, too. They’d stopped avoiding each other since that last encounter, and it was much better this way. The most awkward part of living together seemed to be over. But still there was tension, as Julia called it, a not-unpleasant pull that she felt for him. When they were both in the apartment’s shared spaces, she involuntarily tracked what he was doing. She watched him hum quietly to himself when he was going over a score, thinking about how the slight buzz of his breath might feel against her skin. Her eyes would flick to his hands, his elegant fingers, swiping over a tablet. It was usually a short distraction. Then she would get back to doing whatever it was she was doing: making her to-do list, checking her messages, getting her jacket on before she ran off to work. Her small fascinations weren’t something she wanted to admit out loud, but there they were. It was only natural wasn’t it? His face was still beautiful and elegant, if a little careworn, and it had been some time since she’d left. The reasons why they’d gotten divorced were long over, and memory had dulled her guilt. Plus, they had more breathing space, both in the apartment and because they didn’t work in the same field. Of course she was going to have a tiny crush. Except could she call it a crush when it was her ex-husband?

  Admitting she still had those kinds of physical reactions didn’t prevent her from knowing they’d separated for good reasons.

  She cleared her throat and tried to change the subject. “How about this tuxedo cat?” she asked holding up the screen. “His name is James Bond, but we wouldn’t have to keep it.”

  “It’s just everyone wants to know why it happened,” Julia burst out.

  “Everyone?”

  “Everyone in the family. You know how they are.”

  She did. But it didn’t stop her from narrowing her eyes. “Don’t put this on all the relatives.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They aren’t here. You haven’t texted at all this afternoon. This is you. You are really pushing some sort of reconciliation hard. I want to know why.”

  Julia appeared as though she were about to argue. It came naturally to her. But then her head dropped. “I don’t even really know. Because all of this happened to you and Simon when I was a kid, and I feel left out of the discussion like I don’t know something important. Because he’s cute and you’re cute, and you’re both single. That’s what we’re supposed to do, isn’t it? I know I sound like all of the aunties and uncles when I push you together. They all have this black and white idea of what it’s like, not marriage itself but staying. But I also know it’s more complicated than that—you keep saying. Maybe I want to know why love doesn’t work out, or that it does. Maybe I want that story.”

  Lana put down her phone. She sat at the table and started helping Julia peel fruit. She had to stop thinking about Julia as her baby cousin.

  “Are you interested in someone?” Lana asked carefully.

  “I had a thing with a classmate in law school,” Julia said. “We even lived together for a while. I didn’t tell Dad. He wouldn’t have approved. You know how they are.”

  Lana thought of her churchy older relatives and nodded.

  “We ended it because school is hard, and we didn’t know where we’d end up going. But I think I told myself we’d get together again after we had our careers a little more mapped out. I dated and all. I got over it, except maybe I didn’t because now he’s engaged, and all I have is this hard pastry disc and a pile of unpeeled pears I’m supposed to make into a pie.”

  “Oh, honey.”

  “I’m fine. At least I’m not over thirty and alone.”

  Lana very carefully put the knife she’d been using down so that she di
dn’t accidentally commit the terrible crime of infanticide.

  Julia, blissfully unaware of her tactlessness, added, “It’s so hard to meet people when all I do is work. Which is why I’m making this pie. To take to church on a Christmas Eve.”

  “For all the hot religious singles?”

  “Something like that. It’s not that I’m competing with the ex. I want to feel like I have something of my own going on.”

  Lana nodded.

  She picked up the knife again. “I was floundering back then when I was your age. Simon knew exactly what he wanted to do, and I wasn’t quite as sure. Not only that, everyone else was there for him. There aren’t as many men studying to be music teachers, or there weren’t when I was in school. They tended to stand out.”

  “Oh wait, are you saying all these people fawned over him?”

  “Some people did. People tended to smooth the path for him.”

  “Did you catch his attention by being the person who didn’t giggle and swoon? Was that why he noticed you?”

  “No. I was wild about Simon from the first. But even the people who were cooler toward him, they listened to him. The department administrators laughed at all of his jokes no matter how corny, and people tended to be quiet when he spoke up. He wasn’t a jerk about it. He didn’t talk over people. But it was easier for him to be heard. That’s a measure of his personality, too. He’s single-minded when he wants something. But also I think the two go together. It’s easier for people to pay attention to him, and it makes it easier for him to talk to them. I mean, I worked hard but even my own supervisors seemed to praise Simon to me when it came time to evaluate my work. It made me feel...”

  “Invisible.”

  “Yeah. It’s funny, because now it’s pretty clear that being a music educator wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life. But Simon was convinced I was good. The more he tried to put me forward and encourage me, the more painful the whole program became. I don’t know how to explain without sounding like I’m jealous, even though it wasn’t what I wanted to do, even though it wasn’t for me. Maybe I was, a little. Or maybe a lot. It’s sort of like you said, it wasn’t that I was competing with him. It was a tough position for both of us. This is so much easier to understand now. At the time, the only thing I felt was like I had to get out of that tiny apartment, out of that life, because I was all wrong. I couldn’t figure out how to right myself while I was there.”

  “Please, I get it. It’s starting to sound like law school. Or, like, real life.”

  “Well, yeah. It’s not like professional kitchens are less sexist. But I’m not married to another chef, so my life is slightly less complicated in that way at least.”

  They were quiet for a couple of minutes, both probably remembering their own stories.

  She had been jealous. She could admit it to herself now. She’d envied her own husband, his skill, but even more, his assurance. He knew what he wanted. He didn’t have doubts. She’d held that helpless lump of fury about him even as she’d been proud of him. Now it was easier to articulate those feelings, now that she wasn’t married to him or in that apartment sleeping next to him. She didn’t have to convince herself to rise from a bed she shared with him anymore, and go out and face another day with increasing dread. But it felt different saying it to another person. Maybe she’d have cared less if she’d been happier with her own work at the time. But because their lives had been mixed in that particular way, there was almost no path to untangle herself from the accumulated hurts and insecurity without letting go of him.

  “Sounds like you made the right decision for you at the time.”

  “I think so.” Lana was surprised by Julia’s support. She blinked away the sudden and completely unnecessary tears. “No one has ever told me that.”

  “Did you ever explain it to anyone else?”

  “A couple of years ago, I talked a little to my dad after he’d brought what up Simon was up to for the umpteenth time.”

  “You picked the worst person to try to tell.”

  “Well, I chose better this time.”

  Julia smiled briefly. Then she looked at the mess of fruit in the bowl in front of her. “Ugh. I’m not going to get to the church dinner in time,” she said.

  “I’ll finish and bake it off while you get ready.”

  “Thank you, thank you! I knew I could count on you!”

  Lana sighed and preheated the oven. She made the streusel topping and piled it onto the pears and cranberries. Julia was singing “Silent Night” loudly and making herself beautiful. Lana had no doubt her cousin would bounce back from her sadness; in a way, it seemed she already had.

  As for Lana, she’d get over her temporary crush on her ex. After all, she’d done it before. She could do it again.

  Chapter Six

  January

  The cat had arrived three days ago. But, like all of Simon’s roommates, it seemed she was too skittish to come out of hiding. The cat was a little messier than Lana. The tabby left trails of grit from the litterbox in the bathroom, and slopped water on the kitchen floor. Simon didn’t mind, though. In truth, he was more curious about the cat than the cat seemed about him.

  “At least she’s eating,” he observed.

  “She seemed so friendly and outgoing at the shelter,” Lana said, bending to wipe up bits of cat food with a paper towel.

  “Give it time.”

  Simon watched her from his side of the counter. She seemed tired and anxious. He felt slightly and irrationally annoyed with the cat for worrying Lana, but telling Lana wouldn’t exactly help, so he tried to inject some joviality into his voice. “Maybe she’s still getting used to these grand surroundings.”

  Lana washed her hands. She did that a lot these days. She kept a basil-scented lotion beside the bathroom and kitchen sinks, and he had to admit he loved the scent of it.

  Oh God, he was not going to start perving on his ex-wife briskly rubbing lotion into her hands.

  “I think she’s interested in the piano. Or the sound. A couple of times, I’ve been working and she’d sneak out to listen.”

  Lana didn’t even look at the Steinway or at him. “Maybe a really smelly treat. One of those fishy tube things. I could pick one up at the pet store.”

  He thought about this for a moment. If she could ignore his words, he could ignore hers. He went over to the piano and opened the lid. He realized he hadn’t played in front of Lana in years. For some reason, he avoided music when she was around, and clearly so did she.

  He pressed a couple of chords, soft and easy, the piano’s tone shimmering tautly in the air. Then he dipped his fingers into one of the songs the chorus would be singing in their next concert, a melody that was probably unfamiliar to Lana, something new. And as he played, he could feel it working. He could feel her creeping closer, the warmth of her presence moving toward him like the sun in the morning. Except it was never the sun that moved, was it? He sounded the deep resonant notes of the bridge, pulling her closer, but the tune was almost done, the final chorus already rolling through under his fingers. Then it was over as quietly as it began.

  He stayed very still.

  A scrabble of claws told him the cat had come out, if only for a moment. And when Lana spoke, her voice was quiet and low. Nearby. “Well, I guess your music worked.”

  “I’ll try and play more to lure her out from wherever she is.”

  More distantly, “You don’t have to do that.”

  He looked up again, but she had moved to the hallway and was smoothing her hair back. He loved watching her run through her set of checks and measures before she left for work, the way she pulled back her hair into its shiny, black braid, the way she stared intently and dispassionately at her face before she checked her bag. Keys, wallet, phone, water. He could almost hear her going through her list. Next came the first scarf, a wisp of a thing that s
he wound around her neck. He always wanted to reach out and help her with that one, to touch it, to feel it grow warm under his fingers. Next came her boots, and he admired each leg as she turned them and zipped them matter-of-factly, then the soft marshmallow of a jacket, the slouchy hat, the second woollier scarf, which, depending on the weather, she knotted or tied around her nose. Finally, a pair of soft leather gloves that he had handed her once or twice.

  Then came the slightly awkward part. Because he was so often near the door when she was leaving, because he frequently made up an excuse to linger near the hallway, there was the goodbye. If she was in a hurry, she called out a soft farewell, and scampered out the door and down the stairs. If she seemed to be feeling shy, she quirked up her lips and waved, and it was both the most adorable and least satisfying of the iterations. If he managed to look a little busy at her departure, she’d touch his arm, his bare wrist. Sometimes he held the door open for her, as a courtesy, of course. Sometimes he watched her walk away, her head and shoulders disappearing as she went down each step. The downstairs neighbor had caught him staring after Lana once, and now Mrs. Pierre’s eyes twinkled at Simon whenever they ran into each other.

  More embarrassing things had happened to him in his life. Probably.

  But today he stayed at the piano bench. He watched Lana go down, heard the heavy door slam. He wondered briefly what the hell he was doing, playing for her, trying to seduce her like a goddamn siren.

  He got up and opened and shut the door more firmly, locked it. Right. Time to get down to business. If he worked, he wouldn’t think about Lana. This was the perfect time to make progress on his damn book. He’d already told himself he wasn’t going to go out today. He wasn’t allowed to read, or listen to any music, or clean the cabinets until he’d organized his notes, and finished writing the chapter he’d been working on for the last week.

  Simon settled himself at the small table near the kitchen, his laptop in order, his coffee in front of him in his favorite mug, his noise-canceling headphones at the ready, not that he needed them in this apartment. He’d even opened his document.