“I’m going away forever,” Jim says, standing at the foot of the stairs and holding his travel mug of peppermint tea in one hand and the lid in the other hand (the mugs seal so well that the lid must be left off for a time if one wants to drink the tea in under three hours without scalding one’s tongue).
“Okay,” I say, half looking up from my novel. I have a cold and am giving myself permission to re-read my favorite Dorothy Sayers mysteries (the ones with Harriet Vane). “Have a nice life.”
“You too,” he says. “It’s been nice knowing you.”
“Mm-hm,” I say, turning back to my book.
He does this nearly every time he comes downstairs and goes back up (he is working from home, so there are many opportunities). It is the upshot of a conversation that was almost an argument, and would have been a fight if it had happened any later in the evening. The conversation happened after Lucy was asleep. Jim had gone to work out, and was getting back.
“Do you mind if I shower?” he asked.
“No,” I said, from my reading chair. I had asked him, however, to help me with planning the next day, which was an especially complicated one involving lots of packing Lucy up and taking her to different places. I felt the cold coming on and was feeling foggy-headed and wanted help thinking through the logistics. So when he did not come back down after the shower, I eventually went upstairs. I found him online, buying ham radio supplies.
“So, question.”
“Yeah?”
“Why do you ask whether I mind if you shower, and then after you shower, you disappear indefinitely?”
“If there is anyone in the room, I ask permission for doing anything. It is a nervous polite thing.”
I nodded, scrolling through the past. “That’s true. You do. You ask permission to go to the bathroom, even.”
“Yeah. It’s ridiculous.” He grinned.
“But it sounds like you don’t mean anything by it,” I said. “When you ask, I always think that you mean you are going to come back down afterwards.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Well, why else would you ask whether you can shower? You’re a grownup.”
“Yeah, like I said, it’s a nervous thing. I’m not really asking. I’m going to do it either way. But I’m checking in, giving you a chance to let me know if you want anything.”
“So what you’re really saying is ‘I’m taking off and if you want me you should speak now or you’ll have to come dig me out of the computer.’”
“What I’m really saying is ‘I’m getting the hell out of here. I’m leaving forever. This is it.’” He paused. “Wanna see the cool stuff I found? The Amazon reviews are so helpful. I got these awesome cheap electrical pliers, and everyone says they totally get the job done.”
Later on we still had a fight about the planning, but this part of the evening was fun. And it is one of those gifts that is keeping on giving. He’ll be down soon for lunch.