Page 8 of The Seven Year Slip

After two rings, Mom answered with a “Tell yourfatherthat it is perfectly acceptable to finally move my exercise bike into your old room!”

“I haven’t lived there in eleven years, so it’s absolutely okay,” I said, dodging around a couple looking at Google Maps on their phone.

Mom shouted, making me wince, “SEE, FRED! Itoldyou she wouldn’t care!”

“What?” my dad called faintly in the background. The next I knew, he was picking up the phone from what I assumed was the kitchen. “But what if you come home, baby girl? What if you need it again?”

“Shewon’t,” Mom replied, “and if she does, she can take the couch.” I massaged the bridge of my nose. Even though I’d been moved out since I was eighteen, Dad hated change. My mom loved repetition. They were a match made in heaven. “Isn’t that right?”

Dad argued, “But what if—”

I interrupted, “You can turn my room into anything you want. Even a red room, if you want.”

“A red...?” Mom began.

Dad said, “Is that the sex dungeon in that movie?”

“FRED!” Mom shrieked, and then said, “Well, thatisan idea...”

My father said, with a sigh that weighed about as much as all thirty-five years of their marriage, “Fine. You can put your exercise bike in there—butwe’re keeping the bed.”

I kicked a piece of trash on the sidewalk. “You really don’t have to.”

“But wewantto,” Dad replied. I didn’t have the courage to admit to my dad thathomewasn’t their two-story blue vinyl house on Long Island anymore. Hadn’t been for a while. But it also wasn’tthe apartment I was walking to—slower and slower by the minute, as if I didn’t really want to go at all. “So how was your day, baby girl?”

“Fine,” I replied quickly. Too quickly. “Actually... I think Rhonda is retiring at the end of the summer, and she wants to promote me to director of publicity.”

My parents gasped. “Congrats, sweetheart!” Mom cried. “Oh, we aresoproud of you!”

“And in only seven years!” Dad added. “That’s gotta be a record! Why, it took me eighteen years to make partner at the architecture firm!”

“And it’sjustin time for your thirtieth birthday, too!” Mom agreed happily. “Oh, we are going tohaveto celebrate—”

“I don’t have the job yet,” I quickly reiterated, crossing the street to the block where my aunt’s apartment was. “I’m sure there will be other people in the running.”

“How do you feel about it?” Dad asked. He could always read me in this alarming way that my mom absolutely couldn’t.

Mom scoffed. “How do youthinkshe feels, Fred? She’s ecstatic!”

“It’s just aquestion, Martha. An easy one.”

It was an easy question, wasn’t it? I should feel excited, obviously—but my stomach just couldn’t seem to unknot itself. “I think I’ll be more thrilled when I finally finish moving in,” I said. “There’s just a few more boxes I have to situate.”

“If you want, we can come this weekend to help,” Mom suggested. “I know my sister probably left a lot of junk hidden places...”

“No, no, it’s fine. Besides, I’m working this weekend.” Which probably wasn’t a lie—I’d find some work to do this weekend. “Anyway, I’m almost home. I’ll talk to you later. Love you,” Iadded, and hung up as I turned the corner and the towering building of the Monroe came into full view. A building that housed a small apartment that once upon a time belonged to my aunt.

And now, against my will, it belonged to me.

I tried to stay out of it for as long as possible, but when my landlord said my rent would be increasing in the apartment I leased in Greenpoint, I didn’t have much of a choice—here was my aunt’s apartment, sitting empty in one of the most sought-after buildings on the Upper East Side, willed to me.

So I packed all my things into tiny boxes, sold my couch, and moved in.

The Monroe looked like every other century-old apartment building in this city—a skeleton of windows and doors, having housed people long dead and long forgotten. A bone-white exterior with detailed trim work that looked vaguely mid-century, winged lions chiseled into the eaves and placed at the entrance with missing ears and teeth, and a tired-looking greeter just inside the revolving doors. He’d been there for as long as I could remember, and tonight he was sitting at the welcome desk, his hat slightly askew, as he read the newest James Patterson novel. He looked up as I came in and his face lit up—

“Clementine!” he cried. “Welcome home.”

“Good evening, Earl. How’re you? How’s the book?”

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