Dear Priscilla, Never Mind the Furnace

Dear Priscilla,

My boyfriend and I have been together two years, and lately he's been talking about moving in together. I love him, but I'm nervous about combining finances, schedules, and — most of all — closet space. How do I know if we're really ready to live together, and how do we even start that conversation without it turning into a fight?

— Renee, Boise, Idaho

A lovely question, Renee. It reminds me of the autumn of 2004, when I too believed that a shared address was simply two toothbrushes in one cup and nothing more sinister than that.

His name was Desmond, and he did not so much move in with me as annex me, the way certain landlocked countries eye a nice stretch of coastline. It began innocently — a duffel bag "just for the weekend," which stayed until Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then, inexplicably, my birthday, at which point I realized the duffel bag had a name and the name was Gerald and Gerald had opinions about where the spice rack should live. I did not question this. I was in love, Renee, and love, as you may already be learning, is a mildew that grows fastest in the dark, unventilated corners of a person's better judgment.

Do not make my mistake, Renee. Ask him now, before the lease is signed, before the toothbrushes multiply: does he have a spice rack philosophy? Because Desmond did, and it was fascism, plain and simple. Alphabetical, Renee. He alphabetized the spice rack and then, when I quietly moved the cardamom two slots to the left for reasons of simple domestic poetry, he filed what I can only describe as a grievance. A written grievance. On stationery. He had had stationery made, Renee, with his initials on it, for the sole purpose of documenting my crimes against cardamom, and I want you to sit with that, because I certainly have, for twenty-two years, mostly at 3 a.m., mostly in the bathtub, mostly with the lights off so the moat outside can't see me thinking about it.

Oh — I haven't mentioned the moat. I'll get to the moat.

You ask how to know if you're ready to live together. Renee, here is the test I wish someone had handed me in a nice laminated card before I ever let Desmond cross my threshold with his duffel bag and his terrible, fascist spice opinions: watch how a person behaves when something small goes slightly wrong. Not the big things — anyone can be gracious about a flat tire or a dead grandmother. It's the bruschetta, Renee. It is always, always the bruschetta.

I want to tell you about our third anniversary, though by then Desmond and I were living together and he had already revealed himself, slowly, the way a water stain reveals itself on a ceiling — first a faint discoloration, then a bulge, then one day the whole thing gives way and you're standing in your living room holding a bucket, looking up at the sky through your own roof, wondering how long the leak had actually been there. We went to a restaurant, a nice one, white tablecloths, the kind of place where the breadbasket alone costs more than my dignity currently does on the open market. We shared an appetizer. Bruschetta. Four pieces. I ate three, because I was hungry, because I had skipped lunch, because I did not yet know that hunger, in the presence of Desmond, was a luxury I had not been budgeted for.

He itemized it, Renee. On the walk to the car, under actual stars, on our actual anniversary, Desmond produced a small notepad — he carried notepads everywhere, another thing I should have noted at the time, a red flag disguised as mere stationery enthusiasm — and calculated, aloud, what he called my "bruschetta overage." He arrived at a figure. He asked, not unkindly, if I'd like to Venmo him or "true it up next time." Renee, I want you to understand that I said yes. I said yes, and I trued it up next time, and I kept truing it up, piece by piece, slice by slice, for six more years, until one day I looked in the mirror and did not recognize the woman staring back, mostly because she was standing behind a moat I had by then already begun digging, out of instinct, the way a body knows to grow a callus over a wound that keeps getting struck in the same place.

So, Renee — when you and your boyfriend split anything, a check, a rent payment, a bag of takeout, watch what he does with the extra dollar, the extra bite, the extra inch of counter space. That dollar tells you everything. Desmond's dollar told me he would one day leave me for a renaissance-faire falconer named Gwendolyn, which — yes — he absolutely did, on a Tuesday, with no more warning than the bruschetta had given, and which is a story for another letter, another Tuesday of your own life when you write to me again, as I suspect you will, because that is how this column works and also, I'll admit, how I prefer it. Fewer surprises that way.

As for the closet space — divide it now, in writing, notarized if you have the means, because I promise you, Renee, "we'll figure it out" is exactly what I said to Desmond in 1998, and by 2001 I owned four sweaters and he owned the entire western wall of our bedroom plus, somehow, jurisdiction over my sweaters too.

But do talk to him. Do it gently, over something warm to drink, somewhere with good light, because you deserve good light, Renee, even if I no longer require it myself — the moat does quite well on ambient moonlight, and the alligator I've named Justice does not need to see me to know I've fed him, and honestly there is a peace in that, a stillness, that I don't expect you to understand yet, and I hope, genuinely, that you never do. I hope you move in with this boy and he never once mentions bruschetta arithmetic and you grow old together arguing happily about nothing more sinister than whose turn it is to walk the dog.

But if he does mention it — if you ever hear the word "overage" leave his lips in a tone that isn't a joke — you run, Renee. You run, and you dig, and you get yourself a good alligator, and in time, in a great deal of time, you will find, as I have found, a happiness so complete, so fortified, so entirely free of shared spice racks, that you will wonder why anyone ever recommends the alternative at all.

Learn from me, Renee, and you'll be exactly as happy as I am.

— Priscilla