“Why?”
“Because. I’m a public school teacher. We’ve had to fight and scratch and claw just to be sort of not broke. Like, of course I don’t belong here, in a neighborhood like this. What was I thinking?”
Arthur winced at his own words. He had grown up in a neighborhood like this. Of course, then it wasn’t a place for elites with generational wealth. It was just a neighborhood where normal families lived. But still, how was it possible that he was actually goingbackwardin his life?
He lifted his head up, caught sight in the mirror of an impression of the steering wheel pressed into his forehead. “Great.”
“You know what?” Wren said. “Fuck ’em. We don’t need ’em.”
“We have to live somewhere.”
“Yeah, but here, with these pretentious assholes? You just know this is one of those neighborhoods with a psycho HOA—quiet hours, fines for visible trash cans, palettes of approved mulch colors. Is that really us? I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be one of those people.”
She was ever so gently rubbing it in his face that she had been right all along.
“I know how you feel about the burbs. And you’re not wrong about the HOAs. But sometimes you have to put up with it to be around other families with young kids. That’s what we need, what the baby will need. Friends, comfort, normalcy.”
“We have kids in our apartment building.”
“That weird guy who claims to live with his mom upstairs does not count. He’s, like, our age and I’ve never seenthis mom of his. I’m starting to think it’s a Norman Bates situation.”
Wren paused, thought for a moment, and then spoke. “Either way, we agree that this one isn’t right for us?”
“Not unless you’re OK living in a zero bed zero bath.”
“OK, good. Because I just remembered something that I’ve always wanted to do and never had the chance to.”
She yanked on the handle and flung the door open, then stepped outside.
“Where— What—” Arthur called out, but she was moving too fast. Before he knew it, she was behind the car, rummaging around in the trunk.
“Oh no.”
He clambered out to try to stop her.
By the time he got there, she was already armed with a roll of toilet paper in each hand.
“No, no,” he said, placing himself between her and the house. “We are not doing this.”
“Why not? No one lives here, obviously. Who cares?”
“I care! Maybe this house isn’t for us. But I still think this is the kind of place I want us to eventually end up. I don’t want to spit in the face of that.”
“Have you ever tried spitting in someone’s face? It’s incredibly satisfying, especially when they deserve it, and I’m pretty sure the people who live in houses like this deserve it,” she said, offering him one of the rolls. “Now, come on. You with me?”
He looked at her hand, at the free end of toilet paper flapping in the gentle wind. It was cocked and ready to go.
“Is this on the list?”
“Not officially,” she said. “But if you say no, I’m still naming our child Princess. Even if it’s a boy.”
“All right,” he groaned. “Gimme.”
Maybe she was right, but for the wrong reasons. Maybe theydidn’tbelong here, but not because they were better than these people, but because they weren’t good enough.Hewasn’t good enough.
In another world, another time, they would have bought a house like this in their early twenties. He’d have been a wildly successful door-to-door vacuum salesman, and she’d have been—an operator, or something? He supposed that the sexism was a pretty good reason not to idealize the past. That and the rampant racism, and the war.
He was tying himself in knots. There was no one to blame but himself.