5
963 Words
The furniture arrived while I was sitting on the floor scrolling through clinic listings on my phone.
I had been at it for almost twenty minutes, cycling through the same three search results, reading the same brief descriptions without really taking any of them in. The apartment was empty except for my two suitcases and the sound of the city coming through the window I had cracked open this morning, and I was trying to be very practical and very clear-headed about the whole thing.
Aldenvale Women's Health Clinic. Confidential services. No referral required.
I clicked on it. Closed it. Opened it again.
The knock at the door pulled me out of it.
I wasn't expecting anyone. I wasn't expecting anything. But when I opened the door there were two women in the hallway in matching grey uniforms, and behind them, visible through the open elevator doors, were a sofa and a coffee table and what looked like a bed frame wrapped in moving blankets.
"Miss Morgan?" one of them said, checking a clipboard. "Delivery for unit four-twelve."
I looked at the furniture. Then at her. "I didn't order anything."
"No, ma'am. It's been arranged already. We just need a signature."
They brought it all up in pieces. A sofa in a deep olive green. A bed frame in pale ash wood, clean-lined and simple. A coffee table, two side tables, a small dining set, a bookshelf, a set of lamps. All of it careful and considered, nothing mismatched, everything chosen by someone who either had very good taste or had paid someone else to have it on their behalf.
I signed the clipboard without thinking much about it, my eyes moving automatically to the sender field.
I stopped.
The signature was small and slightly angular, written the way someone writes when they've been signing their name on important documents since they were young enough to be handed a pen and told to practice. I had seen it before, years ago, on the edge of a birthday card left at the door of my room. Not for me. He had mixed up the rooms.
Victor.
My older brother. Half-brother. The one who looked through me at family gatherings the way you look through a window when there's nothing interesting outside.
I stood in the middle of my new living room surrounded by furniture he had sent me without a note, without a message, without any indication that he wanted me to know it was from him at all. I had only recognized the signature because of that one misdirected birthday card, years ago, and because my memory does things like that without asking my permission first.
The delivery women said goodbye. I closed the door.
I stood there for a moment looking at everything.
The sofa was exactly the kind I would have chosen if I had the money for it. The bookshelf was the right height. The lamps were warm-toned. None of it was wrong.
That was what was strange about it.
I got down on my knees and checked underneath the sofa, then the coffee table, running my fingers along the undersides and into the corners. I pulled out the drawers of the side tables and looked inside them. I checked the lamp bases. I didn't find anything no small devices, no fitted hardware, nothing that looked like it didn't belong. Just furniture.
I sat back on my heels and looked around the room.
A family that has never needed to do anything for me, I thought. A brother who has never once looked at me directly. Sending furniture to a city I just moved to, unprompted, with no note, in a delivery timed well enough that it arrived the morning after I did.
I sat down on the sofa. It was very comfortable.
Something is coming, I thought. They're setting something up. They're building credit with me so they can spend it later. That was how this family worked. Generosity was always a down payment. The invoice would arrive when I least expected it.
But the rent in this area was more than I made in a month, and I was sleeping on something tonight that hadn't cost me anything, and there was a very real possibility that I was going to need money in ways I hadn't fully accounted for yet.
So, I thought. As long as I'm getting something out of it. These people are not worth more than that.
I picked up my phone and went back to the clinic listing.
The form was short. Name, date of birth, reason for visit I chose the general option from the dropdown. Preferred date. I picked Friday afternoon, which gave me tomorrow to get through my first day of work and Thursday to get through my second, and then Friday it would be done and I could stop carrying this around in the back of my mind like something I kept almost putting down.
My finger hovered over the confirm button for longer than it needed to.
What are you doing? I thought, at myself, sharply. This is a complication. That's all it is. A complication that you cannot afford and did not choose and that will not fit into the life you are trying to build. Stop hovering and press confirm.
I pressed confirm.
The screen showed me a little green checkmark and a confirmation number and the address of the clinic, which was twelve minutes away by cab.
I set the phone face-down on the new coffee table and sat back against the new sofa cushions and looked at the ceiling.
Friday, I told myself. And then it's done, and you move forward.
I was good at moving forward. I had been doing it my entire life.
- Writer
