House Rules

The dishes were stacked and the kitchen still smelled like the roast. I poured the last of the coffee into his mug and sat down with my tea. Lionel had his tablet flat on the table, both hands on it, and he would not look at me.

“You’re going to wear a hole in that screen,” I said.

He turned it around and pushed it across. His fingers left damp marks on the case. The headline sat in the middle of the page in ordinary type: a long piece about female-led relationships, the kind of thing he usually closed before I could see the title.

I laughed. It came out before I could stop it, short and surprised.

“You reading self-help now?” I said. “Is the shop going under?”

He didn’t smile. The laugh died in my mouth. His eyes stayed on the table edge. The tablet shook once, a small rattle against the wood, and he set his palm down to still it.

“Lionel.”

“I wanted you to see it,” he said. His voice was thin. “I’ve been carrying it around for three days.”

I turned the tablet off. The screen went black and I could see both of us in it, him small, me leaning in.

“All right,” I said. “What do you actually want?”

He swallowed. The coffee sat untouched between us.

“For you to decide things,” he said. “At home. Dinner. The evening. What I do with it. And for me to do as I’m told.” He risked a look at my face and dropped it again. “Not at the shop. Here. Just here. If you wanted to try.”

The refrigerator hummed. Outside, the maple in the yard was putting out new leaves, pale against the dark window.

“How long have you been sitting on this?” I asked.

“A while.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Years,” he said. “I didn’t know how to say it without sounding foolish.”

I drank my tea. It had gone lukewarm. I thought about the way he ran the shop, the way he chose the buckets, the prices, the hours, the woman who came in at six and expected him to have an opinion about every stem. I thought about how quiet he was when he came home, and how I had never once asked him to be quieter.

“I’ll give it a week,” I said. “Starting tomorrow. If I hate it, we stop. If you hate it, you say so. We talk. We don’t sign anything. We don’t write it down.”

His shoulders dropped. He nodded at the table.

“Say it out loud,” I said.

“A week,” he said. “You decide.”

I reached over and turned his mug so the handle faced him. He drank. His hands had steadied.

The next evening I came in from the station with my boots in one hand and found him already changed, standing in the kitchen like a man waiting for a weather report. I set the boots by the door and looked at him.

“Gray shirt,” I said. “The soft one. Not that one. And lose the shoes. You’re home.”

He went upstairs without arguing. I heard the closet door. When he came back the gray shirt hung loose on him, and his feet were bare on the tile. He looked oddly calm, as if someone had taken a list out of his pocket.

“Dinner is the leftover roast and the green beans,” I said. “You’re on the beans. I’m on the plates. We eat at the counter.”

“Not the table?”

“Counter.”

He smiled, a small one, and got the pan out. We worked without much talk. I watched him salt the beans and stop himself from asking how much. He glanced at me. I nodded. He kept going.

After we ate I took the remote off the arm of the couch and sat with it in my lap.

“The one about the river,” I said. “Not the news. You’ve had enough of other people’s problems.”

He sat where I pointed, the far cushion, and didn’t reach for his phone. Halfway through the opening credits I noticed the phone was still face-down on the hall table, where he’d left it when he changed. He didn’t get up for it. He didn’t pat his pocket. His hands stayed on his knees, and once, when the man on the screen missed a turn, Lionel made a quiet sound and looked at me to see if I’d heard it too.

“Bed at ten,” I said, when the credits rolled. “Both of us. Lights out. No scrolling in the dark.”

“It’s nine-forty.”

“Then you’ve got twenty minutes to brush your teeth and stop negotiating.”

He laughed under his breath and went. I followed a few minutes later and found him already under the sheet, the lamp off on his side. I got in. He didn’t reach for me. He lay on his back and waited, and the waiting was so plain I almost laughed again.

“Good night, Lionel,” I said.

“Good night.”

I turned my lamp off. In the dark I listened to him breathe, steady, and I was more entertained than I had any right to be. A week of this, I thought. I could do a week standing on my head.

By the fourth day the week had a shape. I chose the oatmeal. I chose the walk after work, the long way past the closed nursery, because the air was soft and I wanted him out of the shop smell. I chose the blue shirt on Wednesday and told him to leave the collar open. He did it. He stopped checking the phone at dinner. He asked me, once, whether the fern on the landing needed water, and when I said I’d already done it he looked relieved in a way that sat wrong with me all afternoon.

That night I put the kettle on and didn’t turn around until it clicked off.

“I’m enjoying this,” I said. “More than I expected. It unsettles me.”

He was at the counter, drying a mug that was already dry. He set it down.

“Why?”

“Because I like telling you what to do,” I said. “I like that you do it. I came home today and thought about the collar on that shirt before I thought about the incident report. That’s new. I don’t know what to do with it.”

He pulled out a chair and sat, then stood up again, as if sitting had been a decision he didn’t want to make.

“Can I tell you why I asked?”

“That’s why I brought it up.”

“Thirty years,” he said. “Thirty years of deciding everything for everyone. Which roses. Which hours. Which window. The woman at the register waits for me to say what we cut. The delivery man waits for me to say where the van goes. I do it well. I like the shop. I just want one place where I don’t have to.” He looked at the kettle. “I want you to have it. I wanted that before I knew there was a word for it.”

I poured the water. Steam rose between us. I handed him his mug and kept mine.

“Then we need a word,” I said. “Something that stops it. Any time. No questions from me until you’ve had a minute. You say it, we sit down, we talk like we always have. Same if I say it.”

He thought. His thumb moved on the mug handle.

“Crocus,” he said. “They’re up in the bed by the steps. I see them every morning. I won’t say it by accident.”

“Crocus,” I said. “All right.”

He nodded. Some of the tightness left his mouth. I wanted to put my hand on his wrist and didn’t yet. The want sat in the room with the tea, plain as the mugs.

“Finish that,” I said. “Then bed. I’m reading. You’re not.”

“Yes,” he said, and the word came easy.

Three more days went like that. I sent him to the market for oranges and tea and told him to skip the bakery. I had him wear the gray shirt again because I liked the way the cotton sat on his shoulder when he reached for a glass. He caught me looking, once, and went still, and I held the look until he flushed and turned back to the sink. His phone stayed in the hall. At night he waited for me to say when the light went out, and I started saying it later, just to watch him stay awake and not complain.

On the seventh evening the kitchen was warm from the oven and the window was open an inch to the spring dark. He stood at the counter with a glass of water, sleeves pushed up, waiting to be told whether we were done with the day. I crossed the tile and stopped in front of him. Close enough that I could see the line the glasses left on his nose.

I put my hand flat on his chest. His heart beat under my palm. He didn’t step back.

I kissed him. He made a small sound and kissed me back, his mouth warm, the water glass set down blind beside the faucet. His hand came up to my face and stayed there. I slid my fingers into his hair, shorter than it used to be, and felt him lean into it. His other hand found my wrist, to hold on. I took that hand and pressed it to the counter, my fingers over his, and kissed him again, slower, until the want in it was obvious to both of us.

When I drew back, his eyes were open and fixed on me.

“The week’s been extended,” I said.

He stopped breathing. My hand was still on his chest.

“And tonight,” I said, “I decide every—”

“Yes,” Lionel said, before I finished the sentence.