Aftertaste - Meredith Mileti [146]
There’s also a ton of Jake’s stuff.
After the police had carted me away in handcuffs the night I discovered them in flagrante, Jake had come home and packed a single duffle bag of clothes before moving in with Nicola. At some point, I’d expected him to ask me for something, anything—his electric toothbrush, a razor, his fleece slippers when the weather turned cold—but he never did. Apparently, anything that had been in our apartment and shared by me was tainted and needed to be abandoned posthaste, like nuclear waste or anthrax-tainted stationery.
When I finally realized Jake wasn’t coming back, I’d packed up every trace of him, his books, tools, high school yearbook, childhood photos, the boutonniere from his senior prom (he’d taken Lindsay, a mousy blonde), even his high school track jersey, half intending to put it out on the curb with the trash, but I never had the guts to follow through. At the time, the fact that he could walk away from years of accumulated memories both amazed and horrified me, but now, knee-deep in the murky basement, where, in the pauses in my work, I think I hear ominous scurrying coming from the deep recesses of the storage unit, abandonment definitely seems like the better part of valor.
Hope invites me in for coffee around two o’clock and offers me a sandwich—bologna and cheese, which I thought nobody ate anymore—and I eat it sitting at my own dining table, which Hope has covered with a red and white plastic-coated picnic cloth. In all the disruption surrounding Richard’s accident, I’d never arranged to have it shipped.
“I suppose you’re going to want this back,” she sighs, lifting the corner of the tablecloth to reveal a provocative flash of sleek, walnut table leg. I’ve just finished telling her about my meeting with AEL and the likelihood that Chloe and I will be moving back soon. Understandably, she’s skittish about my being back in the apartment; I know she’s afraid I’m going to want to cancel our sublet agreement.
“I’m not sure,” I tell her. “You can keep it for a while.”
“My subletters can’t move out before the end of the summer,” she finally says, offering me a plate of fudge stripe cookies.
“I know,” I tell her.
After lunch I cart the boxes to the dumpster in the alleyway. I’ve saved only the two boxes of Jake’s stuff and one box of old Gourmet magazines, thinking they might be collector’s items one day. I’ll tell Jake tonight that he has one last chance to reclaim his memories or they will be gone with the next trash. I take the stairs, trudging up the four flights to place the key into Hope’s itching palm. “Here,” I tell her, taking her hand and closing it tightly around the key. “It’s yours. Stay as long as you like,” and for the first time all day, Hope’s face relaxes into a smile.
And I mean it. Chloe and I will find a new place to live. A pretty, light-filled apartment in a different neighborhood, a place to make a fresh start. Together, Chloe and I will find a new favorite coffee bar, a dry cleaner, a grocery store, and especially a happy day care center. I haven’t accumulated too much in Pittsburgh; other than the apartment, which shouldn’t be too hard to sell now that all the other units are taken, there really isn’t much to tie me there. My dad can visit of course, and soon Richard will be mobile again, back to his own house and his work. For the first time, I understand something like the sense of freedom Jake must have felt at walking away from everything—voluntarily—and starting over.
I take my time heading back to the hotel, winding in and out of the streets of the West Village, scoping apartments, writing down the phone numbers of rental agencies, and taking notes on which sections to avoid. The phone rings in my bag. It’s Ruth.
“Hey. Everything okay?”
“Where are you? Didn’t you get our message? Can you believe it?”
“What message?” I look down at my phone and see the tiny