By Leah Hareg Kaleb, Art by Sarah Valiante
Part One: Margaret
It wasn’t her plan to be an interior designer. Not exactly. Actually, if you’d have asked her seventeen years ago, she’d have told you she was going to be a lawyer. So typical, almost banal. She was, back then. Spectacularly boring. If nothing else, she’s more interesting now. Life has a way of subverting your expectations, and she’s getting paid enough anyway, so what does it matter? The money mom and dad send over is helpful, but mostly, she gets on well enough. Or she did. She’s not alone anymore.
Meeting him was like remembering some forgotten hope for what life could be. Not to be overdramatic, but she felt pretty damaged before, so much so she didn’t feel much at all. But it’s better now. That world’s become a memory now, and she’s better for it.
The couple she’s meeting today, she can’t remember their names. She pulls out the manila envelope. Anne. Richard. Okay. Simple names. Boring names. Probably, simple people, boring people.
She meets a lot of people. Most of them, she thinks, are boring. Not exactly an insult to think this – she was bored too, for a really long time. Perpetually boring. Actually, that’s the default for most people. Hard to be interested in society. Society. Something to do with Capitalism? Conformity? Maybe both. One or the other, or those two together. Everyone, she believes, is motivated, relatively speaking, by the same things. One or the other. Our hierarchy of needs. Money. Not a bad thing, to her way of thinking. Just the way it goes.
She walks up the stairs to the apartment. Expensive. This part of New York.
Absent-mindedly she tucks and untucks her hair behind her ear. She knows she is pretty. Benefits from it, actually, in this type of work, but she tries not to place too much value in it. Difficult, considering sexism, patriarchy and capitalism. Fine lines have started developing on her face. She’s 35 now. Doesn’t feel that way. She’s felt 25 for the last ten years. There was a time she couldn’t imagine herself surpassing 25. But she has. And now, all that there is, feels startling.
Anne is beautiful. Probably her own age. The man is handsome, too. Both blonde, athletic looking. Sort of like Barbie and Ken dolls. The type of couple that runs 5k’s on Thanksgiving morning together.
She sticks out her hand first to Anne. “Hello, it’s a pleasure to meet you. My name is Margaret.”
“Hello,” Anne says, “Thank you for meeting with us.” Anne puts a hand to her hair. Fixing it. Already perfect. Margaret likes her.
She shakes hands with the husband next. Pleasantries are exchanged. She likes him too.
The apartment itself is elegant. Daydreams about herself and him living in a place like this. Thinks, no, it doesn’t really matter where we are.. Maybe it would, to a younger version of her. To that aspiring lawyer, it would have mattered. But the fetters of her mind have fallen. New perspective. New dreams. A new way of thinking.
She wants to build a home with him. It’s a new instinct. She feels like her mother. One of those traditional women with domestic desires. Used to judge her mother for it. Probably shouldn’t have.
Whatever. Not like mom was a saint.
“It’s a beautiful space,” Richard says, “But what’s the pricing looking at?” She says the number. He whistles. “That’s uh.. A little over our budget.”
Anne frowns. “We need the space for the kids.”
“You have kids?”
Terse silent.
“Ah, well–” Richard begins.
“In the future.” Anne says, “Near future.” Right, Margaret thinks, because time is running out. Body’s clock. A mind still twenty, but a body that hasn’t been twenty in a really long time. It was actually a surprise, to look in the mirror, see the way her body has changed. Is changing. Restlessness to use and do with, before expiration.
Richard, older than Anne, but a man. What was she thinking about? About the patriarchy. Anne. Margaret. Holding up hope against or despite biology.
Terse silence. Anne looks very small. Margaret clicks her pen. Click. Click. Click.
“Right. Well, this space is perfect for children. One,… could fit two if they were willing to share a room.” She had done so, growing up. Her and her sister. She hadn’t called her sister in a while. If she called, she’d have to listen to the same old proselytizing. Her sister disapproves of her relationship, which is fine, because Margaret disapproves of her sister in general. Margaret’s sister is superior to Margaret in almost every respect, except that she is less beautiful, which arguably, is the most important thing you can be. At least, with the current material state of things. It equalizes them, in the current case of things.
“Let me show you the master bedroom.” Margaret wonders about the sex life of Anne and Richard. Again, there’s the matter of biology and appetite. Hasn’t become a problem for Margaret yet. But eventually, it will.
The kitchen, then. Margaret cooks for him. Her fiance. Not a problem. She cleans too. Doesn’t mind. Sometimes feels like his mother. The case for all women, though, she supposes. Used to get angry about it. Her sister would. Not worth it. Not worth the energy. Maybe that’s what it takes, anyhow, to make a home.
The evening light pours through bay windows. She touches the back of her hand to her face, feeling suddenly warm and flushed.
Anne and Richard stand slightly apart. Arms gesticulating in discord. Polite anger, those two. Margaret goes outside to smoke. Another thing her sister disapproves of. Someone honks. Someone screams something intelligible. Someone’s child is crying. Everything’s singing.
Cigarette smoke. Earthly delights. Simple pleasure. Vice. All there is. And love, of course. But in between the love, this.
She can’t help her thoughts. going to Richard and Anne. Thinks about herself and him. Her fiance. Who is she? In some ways, obviously, she’s Anne. Both women. Similar age. But, there’s the obvious thing. Richard’s older. She is too. Older than her fiance. She’s twelve years older. He’s 23. Out of college, she told her sister. Still, much younger, her sister said. A condescending tone of voice. Well, so what. Margaret had said.
Margaret was not impassive to the immorality of it all, so to speak. But all these very human desires. A man, at her side, to share a home. The conditions of it all unbearable, before him.
She lights another cigarette.
Thinks back to her own college years, when she dated a man much older. Fine, it was. Just fine. Same judgment then, inverted.
Anne comes outside.
“Sorry.” Margaret says.
“Don’t be,” Anne replies. “Can I?” she gestures to the cigarette.
“Sure.”
The cigarette in Anne’s fingers appears precarious, delicate. “Sorry about all that.” She laughs, “We don’t usually fight like that.” Another drag. “Publicly, that is.”
“Oh, it’s no problem. I see it all the time.”
October air. Sharp. Cold. “What’s the issue? If it’s the money, I can find a cheaper place. It’s just the location.”
“Ah, no. It’s…. When we met I was so young. Recently finished college. He was older. Seemed smarter than the other guys I knew then.”
Margaret puts her hand to her face again. Licks her lip. Swallows. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. But now I’m older. And with everything that’s happened, a lot different. And he’s still the same.”
“Right.”
An ugly feeling takes root inside of Margaret. She walks home alone.
Part Two: Anne
Anne puts out the cigarette, thanks the woman, walks back inside.
This enterprise, buying a home, was an attempt to linger despite knowing this cannot go on much longer. The fear of it. Divorce. But also, the liberation. To wipe her hands of him.
His own desire, too, to be free of it. Of her. Likely so he can chase another woman, younger. Her surprising impassiveness.
Only lately has she begun to feel as though she exists. Before only an idea, a concept of a person. Now, taking root, fully forming. Every beautiful thing she has ever thought. Every ugly thing, too.
She wants a home of her own. Her own space, not crowded with thoughts of him. Clear the shelves of him, of their life. Start again. Hope. Meets his gaze when she walks back in. A knowingness. Could say anything. Chooses to say nothing at all.
A home. The anatomy of a home. What is it? Under what circumstances do we consider ourselves at home? From now on, apart from him.
Does she want to live this life? Not anymore.
Every beautiful thing she has been.. every ugly thing. No need to run from it anymore. Can face it. Face herself. Can walk away. So easy, the temptation to hide inside of another. Not necessary anymore. Home, she thinks, something’s pulling her there. She’s chasing it.