Walnut Street

There was a way to love a moving man.

Kate couldn’t say she’d ever learned what that way was, but she knew there had to be a technique. After living in New York for most of her twenties, she thought the one bright spot about moving back to her small hometown might be the lack of coming and going. People loved New York, but all the upwardly mobile men she met had their sights set on settling in Europe or Dubai. It wasn’t rare for a guy to take her out, buy her a disgusting drink, and then tell her “New York is over.”

She wanted to meet someone who was, if not thrilled with their life, at least content with it. Someone with a job instead of a “career.” A man who didn’t see anything wrong with going to the same bars, the same restaurants, and having the same friends over on the same night of the week to watch football and eat pizza. Kate knew that most of her friends were taught by movies and tv shows to loathe that kind of life, because she had grown up with the same movies, and that’s how she wound up in Astoria paying way too much for an apartment she hated trying to find a husband with light blonde hair and a suit that cost as much as a car payment.

Her Hallmark moment happened a year earlier when she came home for Christmas and had a four-day fling with a bartender named Roddy. Even though Roddy’s politics made it impossible for her to see a future with him, she could now see a future in her past. Her mother was only slightly irritated at the thought of having Kate back at home in her old bedroom, and even though most of her high school friends had fled the town right after graduation. It wasn’t a bad place to live, but it was a place you were born, and as such, it was a place you left. It could also be a place you returned to, but that carried with it a certain amount of shame. A sense of failure. The only way to spin the narrative was to find a happy ending. That’s what Kate was determined to do.

She’d be the person who returned to her roots. The one who discovered that happiness was at home all along. A Dorothy with red shoes like the movie, not silver like the books, because who wants to wear silver shoes and who wants to live life the way they do in books? Kate loved the movies. She wanted a movie ending. In books, they weren’t scared to end it all on a bad note. That’s why nobody liked to read, but everybody loved going to the movies.

Most of her friends back in the city thought the entire endeavor was pitiable. Her most honest friend was a tattoo artist named Gulvy, who told her that the best case scenario would be her meeting another guy with the same politics as Roddy with a bigger belly or less hair.

“You’ll settle,” Gulvy says, “That’s what looking for a settled man is, Kate. It’s settling.”

Kate thought to herself that it would be nice to have friends with normal names again. Friends named Allison or Michelle, instead of Gulvy and Tissue. She didn’t heed what was being said, but she knew that was because any concerns her friends had were based out of resentment and jealousy. Why would she take advice from people who willingly rode the subway every day with lunatics who screamed Bible verses at them? That used to be Kate’s life, but it wouldn’t be anymore. Now, she’d have fresh air and coffee from a lovely coffee shop run by older women instead of twenty-four year-olds with gauges and coral hair.

By the time Kate met Eric, she had been home for a few months and found that building a life where you had previously torn one down was trickier than one would think. She’d left her job working as an assistant for a woman who had been the star of several, low-rated reality shows. She was now living off savings that were rapidly dwindling. While that should have been her main focus, she decided that love would lead to prosperity in all areas.

Online dating apps failed her almost immediately, and word-of-mouth failed shortly thereafter. Women in this town hoarded men even after finding their own, because you never knew who would eventually break up with you, and you needed a back-up just in case. Whereas her friends in New York were thrilled to recommend eligible bachelors, the two or three friends she managed to make at the walking club she joined were tight-lipped about where available men might be hiding. Fate stepped in when Eric joined the walking club right after New Year’s Day. The walks were shortened during the winter months due to the cold, but afterwards everyone would go back to the bar and socialize, and Kate had the advantage of being one of the only women in the group without a boyfriend. That meant she was right in Eric’s line of sight just as he was in hers.

They made a plan to get dinner the day after meeting, and Kate loved that he was the kind of man who was open to getting dinner on a Monday night since so many men her age were now going to bed at nine so they could get up at five before work and go work out with the goal of having a perfect body only the most elite women would be allowed to touch. Eric had a normal body, but he was still fit. He was an engineer for the navy, and he could take as much time off as he wanted, which was nice. That’s why a Monday could be dedicated to a date, and he could take her out and close the bar down if he wanted to. She was trying not to get ahead of herself, but it occurred to her that somebody married to an engineer like him might consider being a stay-at-home wife or mother. The thought of childbirth terrified Kate, but if that meant she could put her feet up all day, then why not?

She and Eric went on dates a couple of times a week until summer arrived, and then he explained to her that he was going to have to do some traveling for work that would take him away until Labor Day, and possibly longer. That kind of thing could have derailed another relationship, but Kate had already invested so much that she knew there was no reason to be nervous. If anything, it was a good sign that Eric was so important to his job that they were sending him on such a long trip. While she had been serious about not wanting a man with a career, Eric was still strictly a nine-to-five guy. He maintained a good sense of work-life balance, and their Monday dates had become a regular feature of their love story. Although she didn’t talk to her friends back in the city, she constructed light friendships with the women in the walking club, and they teased her about the lack of physical intimacy between her and Eric. While Kate didn’t think of herself as old-fashioned, she thought it was endearing that Eric wanted to wait before taking that step with a woman. When he got back from his work trip in the fall, Kate decided she would signal to him that it was all right to propose. It had been less than a year, but she was tired of living with her mother, who kept making passive aggressive statements about not getting rent and having Kate come in late at night during the week. A whirlwind love affair was still a reality even in a modern world, and Kate was ready to be taken by the wind.

That summer, after sending off another text message to follow the four unanswered ones she’d sent to Eric already, she decided to go by his house and make sure his landlord had fixed his screen door, because Eric had complained about it to her. If she found the door was still broken, she’d take it upon herself to reach out to the landlord, and Eric would be so pleased when he returned home to find it repaired. Another sign that he should reward her with a ring.

He lived on Walnut Street, which was only a few blocks over from her mother’s house. It looked like a summer rain might drop in during the afternoon, so Kate brought an umbrella with her, because she wasn’t going to wait to check up on the door. Even without a boyfriend in town, Kate was busy creating a life that would make her even more worthy of Eric than she already was. She’d gotten a job as an administrative associate at a real estate company in town. She’d joined a book club that was reading a novel about a group of college friends who all hated each other. On the weekends, she went dancing at the Blues Cafe or at Pelham with the women from the walking club. They asked her how Eric was doing, and she told them that the two of them talked everyday, even though it was more like once a week, or every other week. Since it was none of their business anyway, Kate didn’t feel bad about lying to them. Eric was occupied with work, and she was becoming swamped herself. She decided that when Eric came home, she’d scale back her hours at the real estate company. She’d need the extra time to begin planning the wedding anyway.

As she approached Eric’s house, she asked herself if it was the kind of place she’d like to live in after her wedding. It was suitable for a single man, but a couple would need a bigger place. The house was a simple one-bedroom attached to a dentist’s office, and Kate felt inexplicably embarrassed by this. Not that she thought Eric should be embarrassed, but a move would be needed all the same.

She went around the side of the house to check out the screen door, and that’s when she saw him. He was sitting in the yard on a lawn chair with sunglasses on and a bright blue bathing suit. The sprinkler was going, but only the periphery of its spray was touching him at the ankles. He looked so happy; so at peace. Kate knew right away what was going on.

He came home early to surprise me, she thought. This sweet man shortened a work trip just to be home with me and give the two of us a little bit of the summer together. He must have just gotten home, and he’s jet-lagged and fell asleep right here in the yard before he could text me back to tell me the good news. Maybe he was going to surprise me at Mom’s house. I should’ve known better. I should have known he couldn’t stay away from me that long.

As the sprinkler christened the lawn and Eric began to snore, Kate took note of the screen door being fixed. She was somewhat irked that there was one less thing for her to take care of, but that was fine. There would be other things Eric needed her for, and they would be things only she could remedy. Eric’s life was stagnant in so many ways. Not in the ways that Kate was interested in when she moved in. Stagnant in ways that needed to be adjusted. A person had to move even if it meant going from one end of a room to another. One block over or one weeknight to another. A little movement could be a good thing, and she could be the inspiration for him to move.

The next day was Monday, and she would talk to him about it over dinner. They would close down the bar if they had to until their future was all worked out. She could always call out of work on Tuesday. Her boyfriend told her he’d be gone for months, and now here he was sleeping in his yard as though the whole thing had been an elaborate story he cooked up.

Kate had given up on being surprised when she moved home, but here she was, astounded. Wasn’t that nice? Wasn’t it nice to find that the unexpected could follow her all the way home.