The Leaving Supper

Jonah came back from Denver with a signed job offer and three souvenir pens.

“One each,” he said, laying them on the office counter. “Don’t say I never bring presents.”

Britta tested hers on the edge of a booking form. It didn’t write.

“A symbol of your commitment to this establishment.”

“You can have mine.”

“You haven’t brought yourself one.”

For a moment nobody spoke. Then Jonah laughed, too loudly, and took the faulty pen apart.

I understood the mistake. He was beginning to imagine a place at which he no longer needed a desk. I was beginning to understand that being happy for him wouldn’t make it painless.

His job began in July. He would leave in three weeks, return for the sale when the terms were settled, and stop behaving as if Denver were only a long errand. He wanted a leaving supper on Saturday, at the picnic tables beside the marina office. Nothing fancy. Britta, the two seasonal workers who were finishing early, Nate and me.

“No speeches,” Jonah said.

“You’ve just given one,” I told him.

“No others, then.”

I offered to order food before I thought about it. My brother’s relief arrived so quickly I felt both useful and trapped.

“And perhaps you could say a few words,” he added. “You’ve always been better at that.”

“You just said no speeches.”

“Not a speech. Just something to make it feel less like I’m abandoning everyone.”

There it was: the work I had done so often neither of us noticed it arriving. I would make his leaving sound generous. I would say the place was in good hands, that he deserved this, that nothing essential would change. Some of it would be true. Some of it would be an assurance I had no right to give.

Nate was across the office doorway, carrying an empty crate. He stopped when he heard the request. I saw him wanting to say something and choosing not to answer for me.

“I can say I’m happy for you,” I told Jonah. “I can’t tell everyone the summer will be painless.”

“I wasn’t asking you to.”

“You were, a little.”

He looked embarrassed, which made me want to take the words back. I made myself leave them.

Nate set the crate down and went outside. The door stayed open. His restraint was a kind of care, and it cost me the comfort of having him fight my argument.

“It’s only a supper,” Jonah said.

“Then let it be one.”

“I’ll do the food,” Britta said.

“You don’t have to.”

“I know. That’s what makes it volunteering.”

I shut my mouth. She wrote a number on the back of an envelope with the pen which now worked, apparently out of spite.

· · ·Scene break

Nate and I hadn’t kissed at work. We hadn’t been cold either. He came to my flat on Wednesday; I walked with him after supper on Thursday, our hands finding each other on the dark stretch behind the hardware store. We were not hiding so much as learning how to be near one another without using every minute to prove something.

On Friday afternoon I passed his workshop and saw Jonah standing inside. Nate had set down his tools. Neither man was leaning on the bench.

I kept walking.

It was one of the more difficult things I had done that week.

At six Jonah came to the office while I was counting the till. He waited until Britta had gone to the stockroom.

“Nate told me.”

“What did he tell you?”

“That he wants to date you.”

“He asked you to approve?”

“No.” Jonah looked irritated enough that I believed him. “He was very clear about that.”

I set down the coins.

“He should have been clear fourteen months ago. So should you.”

“I didn’t mean you couldn’t choose for yourself.”

“What did you mean?”

My brother took the spare chair and sat down. The same chair Nate had occupied the day I came back. It made a small squeak under Jonah’s weight.

“I meant I didn’t want to lose my friend if you two hurt each other. I meant I didn’t want the place becoming two votes before I’d even opened my mouth.”

“That second part is fair. The first isn’t something you can insure.”

He looked at the coins I had left in stacks.

“I know.”

I hadn’t expected him to say that. It took some of the force out of my next sentence, which was probably fortunate.

“I’m not going to stop having opinions because I kiss him.”

Jonah winced.

“You can survive that sentence.”

“I’d prefer to survive it less often.”

I smiled despite myself. He didn’t. Not yet.

“I am happy in Denver,” he said. “I like the work. I like being paid the same amount whether it rains or not. And I feel as if I’ve only just admitted it, and already you two are going to make a life here that works better without me.”

There was the thing under the promise. Not an excuse for it. A grief with an ordinary shape.

“We don’t know what we’re making,” I said. “You don’t get replaced because you leave.”

“Tell me that when I’m not here to argue about the fuel invoice.”

“I will call you and argue about something else.”

He rubbed his eyes. “Please don’t.”

We sat for another minute. I did not offer to keep his chair empty. I did not promise that nothing would change.

When he left, he put the repaired pen beside my till.

· · ·Scene break

Nate was waiting outside my flat that evening, hands in his pockets, holding no food and no broken object.

I had to grip the stair rail for a moment when I saw him. There was something almost unbearable about a man who had come only because he wanted to see me.

“Jonah spoke to you,” he said.

“Yes.”

“He isn’t delighted with me.”

“He isn’t delighted with change. You are currently a convenient representative.”

Nate breathed out a laugh, then glanced toward the road.

“I told him I was sorry for making the promise. Not for wanting you.”

“Good.”

“I should have told him before Wednesday. I kept finding an extra job.”

“You and your ladders.”

He looked back at me. “Yes.”

I reached for his hand. He held mine, thumb moving once over the knuckles.

“I want to take you to the supper tomorrow,” he said.

“I’m already going.”

“I know. I want to go with you. Pick you up here. Sit beside you because we’re on a date, not because somebody gave us the same job.”

I looked at him. The invitation wasn’t grand. It was a picnic table I had sat at for years, my brother at the end of it, paper plates and food I wouldn’t have ordered. That was what made it frightening. No new restaurant could tell me who I was meant to be. That table could.

“Jonah is selling,” I said. “You want the second bay. I’m the other vote.”

“You still are.”

“Will it feel that way to him?”

“Probably not at first. We’ll have to make it true anyway.”

I wanted to say yes immediately. I also wanted to retreat upstairs and reorganise something until there was no decision left to make.

“You can say no,” Nate said. “We can wait until the sale is done. I’m asking because I don’t want my first honest conversation with him to be followed by pretending I don’t know where I want to sit.”

“Do you know what I usually do at these things?” I asked.

“Make sure everyone else enjoys them.”

“I explain Jonah to people. I explain people to Jonah. I make it easy to like us. If I come with you, every time I defend your plan somebody can wonder whether I’m doing it because I want you. Every time I disagree with you, they’ll wonder whether we’ve quarrelled.”

“They might.”

He didn’t promise that we could be so sensible nobody would gossip. I was grateful, and wished he had given me the easier answer.

“I won’t be the neutral one any more,” I said.

“Were you ever neutral about your own life?”

The question was gentle. It reached further than any argument would have.

I thought of all the times I’d called something a practical choice because I couldn’t bear to admit I wanted it. Coming back to the lake. Keeping the flat. Finding a reason to pass his workshop. If I went to that supper as his date, I would be allowing people to see me want a man who might not want me forever. There would be no competence to hide behind if it hurt.

“I’m frightened of being the person everyone feels sorry for if this goes wrong,” I said.

His hand moved toward me, then stopped.

“Can I hold you?”

I stepped into him.

He put his arms around me, warm and firm, his cheek against my temple. The street was quiet. I could hear water running in a flat above us and a bicycle changing gears as it passed. Nothing dramatic sheltered the intimacy of standing there in daylight, being comforted for a fear I had actually named.

“I can’t promise nobody will ever see us hurt,” he said. “I can promise I won’t call you foolish for having wanted me.”

I closed my eyes. That was the thing I had been unable to ask.

I lifted my face and kissed him. He answered slowly at first, then with a need that made me grip his shirt. His hand spread at my back; I felt the roughness of his jaw beneath my fingers, the quick breath he drew when I came closer. I wanted to pull him upstairs, close my own door and let the whole town cease to matter for an hour.

He would have come if I asked. I knew that now. The knowledge was powerful enough to make choosing time feel like a real choice rather than another postponement imposed on me.

I drew back. He loosened his arms at once, staying near without holding me there.

“I want you,” I said. “That isn’t the part I’m deciding.”

“I know.”

“I want to be sure I’m not using a private yes to avoid a public one.”

He brushed his thumb along my cheek, then let his hand fall.

“Take the time.”

I let go of his hand, gently.

“I need tonight to think.”

He nodded. It cost him; I could see it. He gave me the time anyway.

“Tell me by four tomorrow. If you want to go together, I’ll come here at five.”

“All right.”

He kissed my cheek when I offered it and walked home without trying to improve his case.

Upstairs, I put my work bag beside the door. Inside it were the proposed workshop figures and Jonah’s valuation estimate, two futures waiting for me to be sensible.

My mouth still held the warmth of his. I touched it with my fingertips, remembering how his breath had caught when I’d stepped closer. I could no longer pretend that this was something happening to me, an inconvenience introduced into a well-ordered summer. I had reached for him. I had asked him to stay near.

Tomorrow I would have to decide whether I could let that wanting have a place at the table where I had always made myself useful instead.

I left them there. For once I had a question which couldn’t be answered by opening the bag.