The Engagement We Sold

The woman buying our dining table asked how long we'd been married, and my pretend husband said, “Until Sunday.”

I dropped the furniture polish.

Sam caught it before the bottle hit our market stall, then looked at me as though catching things was still enough to make us fine.

“Anniversary Sunday,” I told the customer. “He's terrible with dates.”

We weren't married. We restored furniture together on weekends, and my aunt had decided we were engaged after seeing him carry a wardrobe into my apartment. For reasons that looked cowardly in daylight, I had let her believe it. Sam agreed to play along through the neighborhood market, where she chaired the sellers' committee and had already printed a sign saying THE HAPPY COUPLE'S WORKSHOP.

The sign got us customers. It also got me out of a family dinner arranged around a man my aunt considered suitable. Sam said he needed the same shield from his own relatives. We set Sunday as the date we'd admit we'd broken up.

Now Sunday was tomorrow.

The table customer offered half our asking price. I began negotiating. Sam said no, politely, and explained the cost of the replaced legs. She bought it at our price.

“You're getting assertive,” I said after she left.

“You make it sound contagious.”

“I hoped it was.”

He smiled, but he didn't touch my shoulder as he usually did when passing behind me.

For six months our Saturdays smelled of sawdust, orange oil, and the sandwiches he made without asking whether I had remembered lunch. He listened when I described a chair's history. I listened when he explained why a joint failed. We could disagree about varnish for twenty minutes without either of us becoming unkind.

I had dated men who couldn't manage that about dinner.

At noon my aunt arrived with an envelope. A shop on the high street was seeking a pair of makers to share a short lease. She had told the owner all about us. We only had to meet him Monday.

“An actual workshop,” I said.

Sam put down his sanding block.

“We should discuss it,” he said.

“That's why Monday's a meeting, not a wedding.” My aunt laughed at her own joke. “Though one thing at a time.”

After she left, I put the envelope beside our cash tin. Sam moved it away from a damp rag with excessive care.

A customer asked whether we could deliver her bookcase after eight. Sam checked his watch and offered Sunday morning instead. I almost volunteered us for tonight. Then I remembered the last late delivery, when he had driven home so quietly I kept asking whether I had given the buyer too much discount. He said the price was fine. The time was the problem. I hadn't asked what he was late for.

“You don't want it.”

“I want you to want it for the right reasons.”

“That sounds like something people say before leaving.”

He didn't deny it.

A folded bus timetable slipped out when he reached for his wallet. Route forty-three, the one that ended near the rehabilitation center. I'd seen the same timetable pinned above his kitchen sink. He told me the bus was easier than parking, but never said where he went.

I had invented another woman, briefly, then rejected the idea because jealousy felt presumptuous in a relationship we announced mainly to sell secondhand furniture.

That afternoon a cabinet maker offered Sam a trial placement across town. He declined before the man finished describing the hours.

“You said you wanted to do this full time,” I told him.

“Eventually.”

“Eventually isn't a date.”

“Neither was Sunday, apparently.”

We stood on opposite sides of a sideboard we had spent three weekends restoring. I wanted to kick it, which would have injured me more than the oak.

At closing, I helped him load the van. Beneath a moving blanket sat an insulated bag full of meals, each labeled with a date and reheating instructions. His handwriting, smaller than usual. Low salt. No mushrooms. Tuesday.

My aunt called to say the shop owner could see us now instead of Monday. He was waiting nearby with the keys. I almost accepted for both of us, the way she'd accepted our engagement for me.

Instead I asked for ten minutes and held out Sam's timetable.

“Tell me what I need to know before I answer.”

“My dad had a stroke in February,” he said. “He's home now. My sister and I split the evenings. I can't take a shop lease that depends on me being available whenever a customer wants.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“Because every time I tell someone, they make me either heroic or tragic. You asked whether I thought the drawers needed new runners.”

He leaned against the van. I let him finish.

“My relatives keep suggesting a wife who'll help. Your aunt thinks you need someone to settle you down. I liked having one place where we could both say we were handled.”

“And now?”

“Now I like you. Which means I can't keep letting you plan around a man who looks freer than he is.”

His secret wasn't another woman. It was the cost of a life he thought I would consider too small.

I told him about the solo workshop offer I had received the previous week. A one-person bench in a shared space. I'd hidden it because accepting seemed like admitting there was no us.

“You should take it,” he said, too quickly.

“Don't decide that for me either.”

He looked down, then nodded.

I called the shop owner and explained that my aunt had misunderstood our plans. I would not attend as half a business partnership I hadn't discussed. Then I called the shared workshop and arranged to visit their bench on Monday.

Sam rubbed a spot of varnish off his thumb. “So Sunday?”

“Tomorrow we tell them the engagement was fake. Then, if you want, we could have dinner without an audience.”

“At my place? Dad's there this week.”

“I'd like that. But I won't arrive as your future unpaid caregiver.”

He laughed, with relief and a little shame. “He'll ask your opinion about his sideboard.”

“Then we'll get along.”

My aunt was furious about the sign. She was more furious about being made the last person to know a story she had invented. I apologized for letting it grow and paid for a replacement: RESTORED FURNITURE, REASONABLE ARGUMENTS.

On Sunday we sold the oak sideboard to a couple who argued affectionately over where it would go. Sam gave me my share of the money. I put some aside for the workshop deposit.

Dinner was baked potatoes and a lengthy discussion of drawer runners. His father interrupted us twice and went to bed early.

When Sam finally kissed me beside the drying rack, there was no ring to remove and no customer to reassure. I had orange oil beneath my nails. He had forgotten to put the kettle on. We stood there smiling until the potatoes went cold.