Page 43 of The Progressions

“As soon as I unpacked, I knew that you didn’t really need me to do anything. Maybe some help would have been good, because you’re busy with football,” I acknowledged. “But you acted like you couldn’t do it by yourself. Then I opened the moving boxes and I saw how organized you were. I saw your kitchen stuff and I watched you cooking your meals with it all, and you obviously could have gotten your own groceries without me ordering them. When you needed to move out Shay Galton’s stuff, you did it without any issues. You even shipped off the casket, and I don’t know how you managed that. You said that you wanted me to come to your game to help your mom, but she didn’t need me, either.”

Tyler sat down next to me. “It would have taken me forever to go through all the shit in this place if you hadn’t done it.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but you would have accomplished it. And now, you could find a place for Iva, but I don’t want to make my boss’s life your problem. Maybe I could start paying you for help like you did for me, but since I don’t have any money, it would have to be more of a barter thing.”

His eyebrows lifted. “What are you bartering?”

“Um, how about poetry?” I suggested. “I still have all my old journals from high school. Before my dad’s stroke, I thought that I would be a writer. There are pages and pages of terrible verse.” I shook my head as I remembered some of it. “I thought my style was like razor blades, very cutting and sharp. It was more safety scissors, though, along with a mouthful of honey. That bad.”

“I’ll pass on your poetry,” he answered, and he hadn’t been the first. “You better talk to Iva about that ‘coming soon’ sign before she gets home and sees it.”

I did call her and it was terrible. “What?” she kept asking and when I explained, she would say, “No, I don’t think that Dominic would do that.”

He had already done it. “Iva, this is happening,” I finally told her. “We need to make immediate plans for the future. I’ve been reading a little bit and they can’t just come in and toss you out to the curb, but—”

“Dominic wouldn’t do this,” she repeated.

“He left you and his baby and you don’t even have a forwarding address. I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t put anything past him. You can stay with me until you find your own place,” I said. “I know it’s far away and run-down, and I know there’s only one bedroom, but you always have that as an option.”

There was silence on her end and I got the feeling that she was so horrified by the idea that she couldn’t immediately speak. The whole situation was totally horrifying, and living with me would have been mud icing on a dirt cake. But then she thanked me and said that she was going to try to contact the real estate agent. “I love that house,” she told us. “I paid to remodel the kitchen and I painted the whole exterior, one wall at a time.”

I remembered, because it had taken her forever. “Iva...hold on.” I turned to Tyler, who was gesturing, pointing at himself and the floor. “What are you trying to say?” I whispered.

“She can stay here. Tell her that she can stay here.”

“There are empty units, but—”

“No, she can stayhere,” he repeated, emphasizing the last word and pointing at the floor again. “I have two other bedrooms. It’s a great feature that each one has its own attached bath.”

That was one of my lines when I gave tours. Did he remember me saying that? “No,” I told him, but he was nodding.

“If that shithead boyfriend wants her out of his house, then it’s better for her to leave. Is she going to pay a lawyer and fight to stay where she’s not wanted?” he asked me.

I had put my hand over the phone as soon as I’d heard “shithead boyfriend” and I shook my head at him. “She just gave birth and stupid Dominic left her!” I hissed. “Let’s not call him names. I don’t want her to hear.”

“Kasia, you put me on speaker by mistake,” Iva’s voice told us from the phone. “I can hear everything.”

“Oh…”

“That’s a real offer,” Tyler told her. “You can come here, rent-free. My mother’s staying with me and she’d love to have some company. I should probably pay you.”

“No, I couldn’t,” Iva told him. “They just told me that the baby will be discharged soon and I need a safe, stable place…” She stopped and we both heard a sob through the speaker.

“You can both come here,” he stated. “My mom loves babies. She’d be happy to have…what’s his name?”

I was shaking my head again and I broke in before we could delve too far into the topic of waiting for stupid Dominic to showup so that they could name baby Balderston together. “He’s really getting discharged, Iva? That’s great!”

It was, but she was also terrified to have him on her own without the amazing nurses there with her. “My mom can help,” Tyler put in, and we all talked more, going back and forth until she wore down.

“Maybe it would work, for a little while,” Iva finally said. “I don’t want to be in that house if some agent is giving tours and bringing in strangers and their germs.”

“I told you how nice Miss Gail is. Just wait until you meet her in person,” I encouraged. But Iva would only say maybe, and she needed to think.

We hung up and I stared at Tyler. “You don’t know her,” I noted.

“Sure, I met her when I came in the first time. Iva was in the office.”

“Do you really remember or do you just remember me telling you that?”

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