Stories | Autumn 2022

Homemaking

by Elizabeth Wenger

My sophomore year I decided to take a room where the streets were quieter and the yards better kept.

I found a place far from the campus and bars—a two-bedroom apartment in a subdivided Victorian. Something about the age of the house made up for its wonky dimensions and clear structural issues. To close the bathroom door, you had to straddle the toilet, or else your knees would get in the way. One of the kitchen cupboards opened on a small staircase that ascended to an attic crawl space. The floor in the whole apartment was ever-so-slightly slanted. I wouldn’t have noticed, except for the time I dropped an orange and watched it roll down the slim slope of the wood. 

The other bedroom of the apartment was already occupied by a doctoral student named Isak. He was from Sweden, but, mixing up the two countries, I often referred to him as “my Swiss roommate.”

Isak stood some 6 feet and a few inches, and had to duck his head to enter rooms lest he hit it on the doorframes. However, owing to either his meekness or his thin figure, he seemed to shrink in one’s memory so that when you recalled a conversation with him, you’d remember looking down, not up to meet his eyes.

He’d already been in the apartment for two years by the time I moved in. At first, I felt as though I were intruding. He was impeccably clean, constantly sweeping the floors and wiping down the surfaces. All the kitchenware was his, as well as the living room furnishings and a few gorgeous watercolors he’d done—mostly landscapes of back home. I’d often stare at the picturesque scenes of mountains or verdant valleys with crystalline rivers running through them and pity poor Isak. Our college was wedged right in the heart of America’s breadbasket. Though the fields turned golden in fall and could look like an ocean of sun when the light hit them just right, the beauty was nothing like Isak’s homeland. 

As for myself, I had nothing to offer the space. I moved in with a mattress and my clothing, a single plate, bowl, cup, and set of cutlery. These were the only things to my name. I had no pictures of home since I felt no nostalgia for it, since I grew up only two hours from our college. I had lived in the region long enough to realize that most midwestern towns have eerily similar features, so that hopping from one to another has the effect of staying in one place, only the street names have been swapped out and the Walmart and Dollar Tree have been relocated.

Any worries I had about imposing on Isak’s space were quickly dispelled by his timid, amiable disposition. Our interactions were usually brief hello-how-are-you’s in the hall.

When he wasn’t in his room, Isak was in the kitchen cooking Swedish dishes, which he never failed to offer me. I always insisted on cleaning up, but the moment I began gathering the plates, he would take them and rush to the sink. It never struck me as odd—his quiet, meticulous housekeeping, nor that I knew almost nothing about him other than his Nordic origins. To me, he was a simple, if guarded man, with whom I lived well. 

I began seeing a girl, Zara, sometime into the second quarter. Isak was gracious when I asked his permission to have her over, never prying into the nature of our relationship. He even seemed to sense, without my having to ask, when I wanted the space alone with her. On those occasions, he just seemed to disappear, as if his body turned to dust and slipped through the cracks of our floorboards. 

It was not long into our relationship that I noticed Zara eyeing Isak suspiciously.

“He’s like that guy from American Psycho,” she said. “I can just picture him in that room, doing 1,000 crunches a day.”

She couldn't say concretely why she felt this way. It was just, she explained, that he was too quiet, too clean. I said that it was likely a cultural thing, something lost in translation, but she shook her head. Part of what bothered her was that he always referred to her as my “friend.” 

“It’s 2019,” she complained to me. “It’s homophobic not to call me your girlfriend.” 

It was the first time she’d called herself my girlfriend. Zara was always hesitant to discuss labels or terms. It was only when Isak was around that she wished for an elevation of status. 

“Why?” she once asked when I broached the subject of monogamy. “Is there someone else? Isak maybe?” We were sitting on the couch drinking wine, and my face turned the color of my rosé, worried that Isak might have heard her accusation. 

“What? No,” I rejoined. “I just want to know what you want.” 

“Let’s take a bit more time to figure it out,” she said, then kissed me before I could object. But as she did, I spilled a small puddle of wine onto Isak’s couch. 

“I’ve got to clean this up,” I said. But Zara kept kissing me, saying she wanted me, right then. She took me by the hand and tugged me to my bedroom. 

“You can clean that up later.” 

And later I tried, but by then the wine had soaked into the fabric and stained. I offered Isak money to get it reupholstered or professionally cleaned, but he shooed my hand away saying, “No, no. It makes it more homey to have stains.” 

One evening, weeks after I stained the couch, Zara and I were in the living room watching television when Isak came in and went straight to the kitchen with groceries to put away. Suddenly, Zara jumped onto my lap, straddling me and kissing my cheeks, my neck with a passion that bordered on aggression. 

“Stop,” I whispered, “He’s right there.”

She continued as if we were playing a game, then—right as he entered the room—she kissed me squarely on the mouth, shoving her tongue between my lips. 

“Stop,” I said and pushed her off. Isak rushed into his room and closed his door.

“Ha! So he is homophobic,” she said as if his discomfort were confirmation. “Did you see how quick he ran out?”

“I would too if I were him.” 

“I feel like you don’t want him to know we’re together.” She crossed her arms and slid to the far corner of the couch. 

“He knows we’re dating.”

“You want to fuck him.” 

“No, Zara.” She was silent. “I’m sorry,” I said. 

Upon hearing my apology, she smiled and dropped the subject entirely. Another few weeks passed before she raised the question again. We were high in my bedroom one night kissing, when she got up abruptly to search the room for cameras, convinced Isak was spying on us. 

“Stop it, Zara,” I said, too stoned to deal with her paranoia. 

“I’m telling you, there’s something not right about him,” she said. 

“He’s fine, he’s just quiet,” I defended. But it was already spoiled. Something about the weed and Zara’s persistence had weaseled its way deep into my wiring. 

We found no cameras but, for a while after that night, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. I checked the bathroom for holes where he might peek through. I began to change in my bedroom under the covers, worried he had found a way to see through the vents. For a time, I stopped eating his food, always coming up with some excuse. Eventually, he stopped offering, and later, stopped cooking. 

I would eat out or else, take microwaved trays to my room to eat alone. Eventually I’d dismissed my earlier fears as weed-induced paranoia. But by then my cold-shouldering had done its job too well. He had disappeared. I wondered if he had started sneaking in late at night when I’d already retired to my bedroom and left for campus before I woke. 

I missed seeing his long, thin frame bent over a pot or scurrying around the apartment like an oversized mouse.

Much later, Zara took all the clothes she’d left at my apartment. She said her classes were getting harder and she needed to spend more time studying. She stopped answering my texts. Worried something horrible had happened, I called her. She picked up and said, “Let’s be mature, it’s over” then hung up.

It was only when I stopped crying, and a heavy silence surrounded me, that I realized I hadn't seen Isak in weeks. I knocked on his bedroom door. When no answer came, I opened it. He wasn’t there. I called his number. It had been disconnected.

I couldn’t figure out why he wouldn’t tell me where he’d gone until I went to open the fridge and saw a note taped to the empty shelf, so plainly I couldn’t believe I’d missed it. 

“Got a bit lonely,” it read. “Heading home. Wish you the best.” 

He’d left his dishes, furniture, even some clothes. The only thing he took were his watercolors. The walls were bare.

Elizabeth J. Wenger is a writer from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Currently an MFA student at Iowa State University, she has work published or forthcoming in The Hopper, Orange Peel Literary Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine, and essaydaily.org.