"So what did the mortgage guy say?"
Tabbatha leans against her couch, all expectant, seemingly pleased to discover I may have heard good news. She and I were scheduled to go look at a duplex this morning. Not that we're getting back together, oh Lord no, but we're both eager to get out of our current living arrangements. We'd been discussing some kind of roommate situation, and we'd found a place with separate upstairs and downstairs living quarters.
But the landlord finked out and didn't answer his phone, even though I'd scheduled an appointment to look at the place. In the meantime, on a whim I'd called a mortgage guy and told him I was thinking about buying a house. Which I hadn't been, actually, but Tabbatha had mentioned the idea to me, and for some reason, it stuck.
I shrug and tell her what he said, which is basically that my credit isn't great, but it's not bad. Seems likely he could help me find a place, down payment and closing costs included, for about what I'm paying for rent. That'd include taxes and insurance, too.
"You'll do it, right?"
I shrug.
"Why wouldn't you?"
Well, it means...it means I'd be admitting I'm staying put.
"So? You want to settle down. That's what you told me."
No. I mean, I never wanted to settle down until...until I met you. But you're out of the equation now, so...
"So what? You're not some nineteen-year-old, you're forty-three!" She shakes her head, like her logic is impeccable and my qualms unbelievable. "What's wrong with staying put?"
I shrug again.
She's right, I suppose. I just hate to admit it.
When I moved into this tiny apartment--my God--more than half a decade ago, it was not supposed to be permanent. The landlord tried to talk me into signing a year's lease, but I'd only agree to a six-month, because I wasn't planning to be here that long. Here in this apartment, or here in Des Moines.
I'm from this area. I grew up on a farm about an hour away from here, and lived much of my life in a small town forty minutes from here. Des Moines was the place I'd always go for fun and entertainment, but always somewhere in the back of my mind flashed nebulous visions of Something More.
Not that I'd never made any moves away from the immediate area. Not until I met Sue Ellen, and made a crazy leap of faith. Marriage, for one, but the bigger jump was moving so far away from home. Technically, only halfway across the state, but Iowa City is a whole different world from Des Moines, culturally diverse, politically aware, physically beautiful. If not quite my ideal, closer to it. Then we moved to Washington, DC, and I became the east-coaster I always thought I was should be.
The marriage collapsed. I lived with my brother and my mom for short periods, mere stations along the way, as this apartment was supposed to be, a place to live but nothing permanent, maybe I'd never know permanence, maybe I was always meant to drift.
And if I did settle, surely it would be someplace else, Minneapolis, maybe, or Madison, hell, maybe even Portland or Seattle, someplace artsy and progressive, someplace to match my temperament, someplace I could call home. Not here. Never here.
But...here is where I am. My mom's death threw me for a loop, and in the wake of that, I met Tabbatha, and maybe more to the point, Paul, and together they represented something I'd never quite seen myself being part of: a family. And suddenly that became a possibility, and the prospect was inviting.
And okay, it didn't happen, and isn't going to, at least not with Tabbatha. (Though don't tell that to Paul, who still seems to be working Parent Trap-style to get us back together.) That's thrown me for another loop--the things I wanted don't seem to be happening, and I'm stumbling blind yet crippled by stasis. What do I want?
My hesitations dismissed, Tabbatha is on her laptop, trying to find houses for me. She highlights a couple and I think, yeah, maybe. This could be the point where my life, whatever else it may be, finally becomes my own.
