The Cohabitants 17

Friday morning, drinking coffee, he was thinking ahead to his plans for the weekend. 

“It’s been a week. When are we going to get your stuff in Portland?”

“I’m going to hire a moving company,” she replied.

“Don’t do that. I’ll come and get it.”

Oh. That’s so sweet.

No way.

He wants to take care of you.

I can take care of myself.

You’re being a bit extreme, don’t you think?

I’m just not going to give him that much control over my life.

He doesn’t want control; he wants to be your mule.

I don’t need a mule.

Yes, you do.

“It’s too much for one person,” she said.

“I’ll get a friend to help me. We’ll rent the truck here, drive up to Portland in the morning, load the truck, come here and unload it, and return the truck.”

Shit.

“I’m not going to keep my stuff here. I got a storage space downtown near campus.”

She hadn’t told him about this. During the wildfire smoke and Covid lockdown, she had researched storage spaces to find one that was safe and climate controlled. The rows of garage doors in low buildings along the highway were not for her. Rodents and moisture could wreck her stuff, and it was too easy to be jumped or robbed or disappeared. She wasn’t going to become a mark for predators by putting herself in a predictable location without security. This kind of thinking was built into her from girlhood, but it was foreign to him. He was a man who had never been jumped, grabbed, or dragged. Her fears seemed like paranoia to him, but to her they were just common-sense. So, her storage space would have 24-hour security, and she would pay a higher price for it.

He was surprised. “That’s expensive. The place down the road is closer and cheaper.”

Precisely.

“I want an indoor, climate-controlled space with twenty-four-hour security.”

In case I have to leave here in the middle of the night.

There was another fear she harbored that made a storage space the obvious option for keeping her stuff close without putting it in his house. She had only known him face-to-face for three months. His home, soon to become her home, was isolated in the forest on top of a steep hill with a gate the required a passcode. Sex made her dizzy, but not stupid. Many relationships went haywire, collapsed under the weight of unmet expectations, and turned hostile, even vengeful. This man was adorable. They had joyful chemistry. She was glad to be with him. But she had seen enough of life to know shit happens. Keeping everything she owned at his house gave him too much leverage over her. She wasn’t going to do it.

He pushed his chair away from the table and gave her a sharp side eye. “We have a huge garage.”

He’s kidding, right?

Why not just keep my stuff in a landfill?

“No thanks. I want to put my stuff in a storage space.”

“Why?” He was exasperated.

Don’t say it.

She had to say it. “That way when the shit goes down, it will be right where I need it.”

His face contorted. “What shit?”

“You know, the usual shit. When this thing we have going here falls apart and I have to suddenly move out.”

He was horrified. “There isn’t going to be any shit!”  

Abruptly on his feet, he marched outside and disappeared.

Told you.

He left for work without saying goodbye. No Disney princess kisses. She was fine with that. On the subject of freedom and control, there would be no compromise.

Three weeks after the Holiday Farm Fire began, she finally drove back to Portland to pack her apartment. Then just like he said he would, the man came with a rented truck and a young friend, and the two guys moved her worldly possessions to her deluxe storage space in the center of town on the university campus. It soothed her anxiety to see her boxes and furniture gathered safe in a cinderblock cubicle in a concrete building. 

These things were all she had left after a life of abundance in a big farmhouse with a barn she used as a walk-in closet. The process of downsizing was painful, and these were her last remaining treasures, everything from her mother’s Bible to her favorite omelet pan. Her possessions were evidence she had a life before him and she would have a life after him. Widowhood casts a long shadow. Men have a shorter lifespan. Her husband’s passing was her own near-death experience. If that happened again, she wasn’t going to be washed away in a torrent of grief. Longevity was in her genes. She could live another thirty years. This 8×10 box of boxes was her emotional safety net. She re-stacked her books with the heaviest boxes on the bottom, opened her crate of journals just to touch them, and held a box of photos to feel the scroll of time.

The man had a different view of the arrangement. For him, her storage space was a trap door in the floor of their lives. She could gloss over it, hide it with a cushion of tenderness, soften the feel of it, but he knew it was there and he couldn’t get comfortable with it. He made jokes about her being a man hater. When she purchased a new metal trash can with a lid to put in the corner of the kitchen to hold his bags of birdseed, he frowned. In the can, he saw his twenty-pound bag of sunflower seeds with his five-pound bag of thistle seeds with his ten-pound bag of wild bird mix and a big plastic scoop. She was lifting heavy things without him.

“Who needs a man?” His sarcasm held a subtle note of sadness.

“Am I doing too much by myself?” She put her arms around him and gave him a hug.

He laughed. “I’m just not used to things getting done without me.”

She winced. “I need the seeds to be in a metal can to keep the critters out of the house.”

He kissed her forehead and sighed. “Do what you need to do.”

Minutes later he was singing in the garage. She’s climbing the stairway to heaven.