The Kitchen Step

Anouk knocked before she could turn the visit into another walk round the block. Orson opened the door wearing the same worried expression she had seen in her own reflection, which was an unkind comfort.

“I’ve brought the container back,” she said.

He looked at her empty hands.

“No, I haven’t. I’ve left it by the sink.”

“Then we’ll have to manage without it.”

She smiled, and he stood aside. The house smelled of toast. One plate waited on the kitchen table, with a knife laid across it and a second slice cooling beside the first. He had not set a place for her. She was grateful for that, and hurt by it, and understood that both feelings belonged to her.

“Have you eaten?” he asked.

“Not yet.”

“Would you like something?”

“In a minute.”

He nodded. She stayed on the kitchen step, one hand against the frame, looking at the man who had asked her for an answer and then allowed her to leave with it.

“I want you to expect me in December,” she said.

Orson put down the tea towel.

“The third,” she continued. “I’m back in England on the second. I was going to spend a few days deciding where to be. I’d like to come here on the third instead. To the town. To see you. I won’t assume your house.”

He was quiet long enough for her to feel every word she’d offered.

“Yes,” he said.

The relief was so physical she had to take her hand off the frame and put it against her chest.

“That was quite difficult.”

“I know.”

“I don’t mean you should be grateful.”

“I am, though.”

She laughed, a little unsteadily. He crossed the room, but stopped before touching her.

“May I?”

“Yes. Please.”

He held her, and for a few moments neither said anything. Anouk rested her forehead against his shoulder. She had expected commitment to feel like a door closing. This felt more like being allowed to put down something heavy without somebody immediately claiming it.

“I don’t know whether we’ll be good at it,” she said.

“Neither do I.”

“I’ll need to work. You’ll need to work. I won’t always have a charming story.”

“I’d be suspicious if you did.”

She drew back enough to look at him. “What do you need?”

He considered, and she waited. This was part of the answer too: not rushing to supply a version of his needs that she could more easily meet.

“To know when we’ll speak. Not all day. I don’t want to spend my life waiting for the phone to decide it’s evening.”

“All right.”

“And if we need to change a plan, we say so. Before, if we can.”

“Yes.”

“What do you need?”

She looked at the plate on the table. “To be allowed to enjoy being there. Without every good day sounding like evidence that I don’t miss you.”

His expression tightened. Then he nodded.

“I can understand that.”

“Can you do it?”

“I’ll have to find out. I won’t ask you to make yourself miserable for my reassurance.”

She touched his cheek. “Thank you.”

They sat down. He made more toast. It was astonishing that a person could make a decision like this and then need breakfast, but she did, urgently.

Over tea they worked out two evenings a week when they could speak without either abandoning a standing commitment. They chose Sunday as well, if they wanted it, and said that ordinary messages did not have to be answered immediately. None of it sounded romantic. Anouk found it romantic enough to have trouble looking directly at him.

“What about visiting?” she asked.

“I have a week in October I haven’t used.”

“Don’t promise all of it yet.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

She gave him a look.

“I was considering it,” he admitted.

“Consider three or four days. Then see if you still like my company in another kitchen.”

“Is the kitchen terrible?”

“Moderately.”

“That will help. I’ll feel superior.”

She laughed. He reached across the table for her hand.

They did not make rules about who they were allowed to be when apart. They did say, plainly, that they wanted this to be a relationship, exclusive and intentional, and that if either stopped wanting it they would tell the other rather than drift into politeness. It was harder to say than dates. Anouk said her part first because she had been the one who needed the night.

“I don’t want to keep my options open with other people,” she said. “I want to see what happens with you.”

Orson’s thumb moved once over her fingers.

“So do I.”

At half past nine he had to leave for the community building. They washed their cups together. This time the ordinary task did not make her feel as if she’d accidentally stepped into somebody else’s life. She was standing in a life she had asked to share a portion of, with her eyes open.

At the door he kissed her slowly, then once more because she caught the front of his shirt.

“Come tonight,” he said.

“Is that a request?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Yes.”

· · ·Scene break

He spent the day with an unreasonable tenderness towards objects. A stool that needed tightening. The crooked coat hook near the sink. The mug a student had finally finished after three failed attempts. Nothing had changed in them. Something in him had stopped bracing for a small, inevitable loss.

He knew better than to confuse a promise with its fulfilment. December was months away. Anouk had said yes to trying, not to becoming a woman whose greatest pleasure was his kitchen. He repeated that to himself while wiping the table, and found that it did not diminish his happiness.

Zadie was on her front step when he got home, wrestling with a pot that had become too heavy to move comfortably.

“Not the cupboard again?” he asked.

“Don’t mention the cupboard.”

“Do you want a hand?”

“Yes. For once, when I say yes, I mean lift it.”

They moved the pot to the sunnier side of the step. Zadie straightened, rubbing her back.

“You look pleased.”

“I am.”

“Good.”

He waited for questions. She didn’t ask any. Instead she told him that next Saturday she would be out all day and would not be available to take in his delivery. He apologised for assuming she might.

“You hadn’t asked,” she said. “I’m preventing a future assumption. Very efficient of me.”

He smiled. “It is.”

At home he changed the sheets without arguing with himself about the hope involved. He put a second plate on the table. Then he took it off again, not from fear but because they had agreed to eat at Anouk’s first. Happiness, apparently, did not improve his memory.

She arrived carrying a bag and the forgotten container.

“Evidence that I keep my promises,” she said.

“An excellent start.”

They walked to her flat and ate leftover vegetables with eggs in her small kitchen, then walked back to his house as the light thinned. She held his hand openly. At the corner she stopped to read a notice in a window, and he waited without looking at his watch.

“There’s a furniture sale,” she said.

“Are you buying furniture?”

“No. I’m interested in the astonishing photograph of that chair.”

He leaned closer. The chair appeared to have been upholstered in something that had once frightened a horse.

“I could offer you a cushion.”

“You could offer me escape.”

He kissed her at the corner, and she laughed against his mouth. A woman passing with a shopping trolley smiled at them. Anouk did not pull away.

Inside, she put her bag down and turned towards him before he could offer tea.

“I want to be here,” she said.

“I know.”

“No. I mean now. Tonight. Not as a reward for being reasonable this morning.”

He felt his chest tighten.

“Come here,” he said, and she did.

The urgency between them no longer needed to prove itself. He could feel it in the way she pressed close, in the firm hand at the back of his neck, in the soft impatient laugh when his shirt caught against her bracelet. They freed it together. The little interruption became part of the pleasure instead of a failure of grace.

Upstairs she drew him down beside her. He kissed the warm skin at her shoulder, paused when she shivered, and heard her quiet, unmistakable encouragement. There was no need to hurry past the moments in which they could look at each other. She wanted those too. He was beginning to believe it.

At one point she placed his hand over hers and held it there, their fingers tangled against the sheet.

“Don’t disappear into taking care of me,” she whispered.

He looked at her.

“I want you here as well.”

The words reached the place in him that had learned to be useful when wanting became dangerous. He let himself answer, with his voice and the closeness she welcomed. The night became less careful and more trusting. When they rested afterwards, her cheek against his chest, he could still feel the strength of her choice in the simple weight of her.

They talked in the dark. Not about plans. About the first music each had bought, the embarrassing food he liked when alone, a coat she had carried through three countries because she couldn’t bear to admit it was impractical. He laughed until she had to tell him to be quiet or she’d retract the story.

Later she got up for water. He heard her moving through the house without asking where everything was. When she returned, she set a glass on his side of the bed as well as hers.

“You looked thirsty,” she said.

“I was asleep.”

“Very expressive sleep.”

He made room for her. She settled with a sigh, then reached across the small space and found his hand.

December had not become easy. The autumn ahead was still the autumn ahead. But when he woke briefly in the night, her fingers were loose in his, and he did not tighten them to keep her there.