“THE CLOSET IS DEFENDING ITSELF.”
Meanwhile, I had already finished my closets and started with the clothes.
When someone suggested folding a sheet, Patricia seemed personally betrayed on the Internet.
Then someone asked us to clean the extractor bells.
It took only a few seconds for mine.
Patricia cleaned hers twice, but the cloth was still coming out of fat brown.
I raised my clean cloth and laughed.
“Patricia, do you want me to pretend I haven’t seen that?”
She’s not laughing.
That’s when Patricia stopped acting.
His bright Facebook smile disappeared.
The little speeches about how things had to be done were also missing.
He just stood there, holding the dirty cloth as the comments quickly passed through the screen.
“I don’t know why everyone is turning against me,” he said.
But it didn’t sound angry anymore.
Then I noticed that his hand was shaking.
“Patricia,” I said. Forget the comments. Finish the task.
He looked at me through the screen.
I can’t.
“What do you mean?
Patricia slowly dropped to the kitchen floor.
I mean I can’t do any of this, Claire. I never could.
The comments suddenly stopped.
“You and Nathan have this… this life. Your house, your work, the prepared food. You make everything seem so easy.
He wiped his face.
“Every time I went to your house, I was looking for something that was wrong. Dust. The food. The clothes. Anything. Because if I found something you were failing at, I didn’t have to feel ashamed of what I was failing here in.
I stared at her.
Did you look for reasons to judge me?
“I was looking for reason not to judge myself.
He looked around his kitchen.
“And when I saw you in bed that day, I finally had something I could use against you. So I did.
Suddenly, eight years of small “mmm”, inspections, corrections and impossible expectations made sense.
They had never really had to do with my house.
They had to do with theirs.
I looked at Patricia’s picture on the screen.
Three days before, I wanted to humiliate her.
Ten minutes earlier he wanted to beat him in his own game.
Now he had won.
And suddenly, I didn’t mind winning anymore.
“Nathan,” I said. Finish the transmission.
Patricia looked up.
—Claire…
“We’re done.
An hour later, Nathan and I were back in front of Patricia’s house.
This time we knocked on the door.
Nathan quietly removed our emergency key from Patricia’s keychain.
“You’ll come when you’re invited,” she said. Not before.
She nodded.
She looked smaller somehow.
Tired.
Then he looked down.
I’m sorry, Claire.
I waited.
Patricia had already apologized before: for being “too honest”, for “hurting my feelings”, for things that somehow always ended up becoming my fault.
This time he didn’t add anything.
“Thank you,” I said. It’s a beginning.
During the journey home, Nathan reached out and took mine.
“Are you okay?”
I thought of that little “mmm” of Patricia and in all the years that I had spent trying to avoid hearing it.
“Yes,” I replied. I’m not gonna try to impress your mother anymore.
Nathan smiled.
-Okay.
And for once, that was enough.
