The Rainbow (Frerard) [underwater_sky]

April - The Flood (Part One)

            Gerard was nervous to move. He had been doing it so much in the past year that I figured he would be used to it by now. We had never really unpacked much at Vivian's, knowing the inevitability of our departure. Our clothing was still haphazardly slotted into the bookshelf, most of my personal effects in a backpack, and our books in boxes. Not all the books, and most of the cardboard was now torn in the corners from weight or our hands tearing through to try and find this one about light or Jackson Pollock in the middle of the night, anyway. We were going to need to pack them all again. Gerard had been doing most of the packing and list-making, while Jasmine and I had taken care of a lot of the legal paperwork and bank statements for the new house. I had been spending most of my evenings at her place and while she pored over forms, which she would then read aloud and ask me questions about as I began to pack her heavier items. We realized that she was going to be pretty much inert when we moved in because of her pregnancy, so she took on the heady task of organizing and understanding the housing market and our new mortgage. I was her nervous soundboard and her packer, while Gerard was doing what little packing there was for us. He was a lot more tedious and arduous than I was; he was actually labelling boxes and keeping them arranged a certain way in the basement, in addition to the lists he had been making.

            "Bear with me, Frank," he told me the first morning when I nearly tripped and knocked over his tall tower of cardboard. "I'm an old man and stuck in my ways. This is the easiest thing for me to do." Ever since getting the lecture job, he had begun to take copious amounts of notes. I had been so used to him free-styling the lectures he would give me, but I figured that when the option of going down on someone if you forgot your next point was removed, it was good to keep notes. Vivian had probably also swayed him in this direction, and this type of proficiency was spilling over to this task as well. Each night before he went to bed, he would write lists for the morning. He had begun to keep a notepad by the bed, with the date for the next day already on it and ready to go. It struck me as something so unlike him, but endearing. He really was getting old, though I rebutted that remark each time he made it. I told him he was beautiful, and then remembering his apprehension with Degas, that he was not a fraud in whatever he did.

            "Thank you," was all he said every time, but he held me closer, in a way I was not prepared for.

            "Thank you. This packing makes everything so much easier." The exhaustion was clearly present in my voice, and we both got back to work. Gerard with his new somewhat cryptic system, and me onto my next shift at work. On top of packing Jasmine's boxes, I also had to pack and unpack boxes for my last two shifts at the drug store.

            I had ended up quitting, although Mel was sad to see me go. He did try to offer me a day position, but that just wasn't cutting it anymore. As soon as I realized I could leave anytime I wanted to, the walls began to look drab and dull, the people annoying and insulting, and everything else just depressing. I stopped thinking that I could help people who walked in by being kind and friendly and I didn't like being in the dark so much anymore. Switching to the daytime wouldn't change things, especially since our new house was even farther away than Vivian's was. When I had first applied, this drug store was ten minutes from the old apartment by foot. But now, by car from the new place it was twenty and that was just not good enough. It seemed that my new life was pushing me further away from where I had begun, and I needed to let it go.

            It was going to be hard living in a new place, a big one like that, and with a mortgage rather than rent. It was a huge deal, and yet, it didn't feel like we alone owned the house. Jasmine and Gerard and I owned it - all of our names went on that lease and we were all responsible for that money. All of this made living with the two of them not feel too isolating or daunting. We each would have our own floor in that house, and then there would be a bottom floor, too for guests and a kitchen. We were living in a small apartment complex that we own, that was our own, that we could paint and put nails in the wall and do whatever we wanted. Without getting evicted, that was the key attribute, I told myself. We were safe from eviction here: the mortgage that we were paying, though it would be a long time before it would end, it would eventually end. We would be able to own this place in less than ten years if we really wanted to. I didn't want to move again ever in my life and I was becoming so overwhelmed with all the changes that were happening around me. As soon as I got in that house, I was never coming out again. I wanted to pay and see that my money actually went somewhere; I wanted to own something, something that I could really call my own, and have that be it. I hoped that the others felt that way as well. I could tell by Gerard's finicky behavior over the boxes that he wanted all of this to be over too. He was not meant to pack boxes - he was meant to do art. If he endeavoured into anything else, it made him feel like a fake. That was what his emotional response was directed at, that was where it came from. The anxieties about his age still plagued him once in awhile, but not enough to change his habits like I had been seeing. I was pretty sure, by the way he had thanked me, that he wanted to own something with me, too.