Coming to Stay

Victoria stands in her empty guest room, sweating from the exertion of pushing the heavy cardboard boxes to the perimeter of the room. She struggles to envision the small space as a proper guest room, despite always referring to it this way in her mind. The boxes have sat there, largely untouched, since the day she moved in over a year ago. “I’ll get to it this weekend”, she tells herself each Monday, when the idea of a fresh week gives her a burst of energy. But the exhaustion of her gruelling 6 day work week accumulates and her Sundays typically consist of her lying on the couch obsessively watching historical documentaries, which she finds strangely calming. And truthfully, if she needed anything in those boxes she would have already gone searching for them. She heard somewhere that if you haven’t used something in a year, you should just get rid of it, without even looking at it. But the thought of driving those unexamined boxes to the Goodwill gives her a slightly panicked feeling. What if they contain something deeply personal, or she really needs whatever is in there? 

These are the types of situations her little sister, Jamie, would laugh at when they were younger. “Oh, Vic", Jamie would tease. “Only you can make such an ordinary task into a huge dilemma”. She wasn’t wrong, and Victoria envied her for the way she made life look easy. She always assumed it was because Jamie was 8 years younger, and didn’t yet understand the complexity of how the world worked. But now that they were 26 and 34, respectively, Victoria can see objectively that Jamie has managed young adulthood with a grace and ease that she herself never possessed. 

Victoria thinks of Jamie’s voice on the phone yesterday. Vacant. “Do you think I could come and crash with you for a while?” she had asked, with a forced casualness usually reserved for filling their mother in on her life. Victoria was shocked. Never had her sister gone out of her way to see her, especially not since she started dating Dave 3 years ago (a fellow free spirit). “Of course”, she had replied, sensing Jamie wasn’t in the mood to discuss why she would be coming. 

Victoria’s eyes landed on the closet - a generous size for such a small room - and wondered if all of these boxes would fit if she stacked them all the way up to the ceiling. 10 minutes later, with more sweat and arms aching, she succeeds and quickly shuts the closet door until she hears the click of the latch. She makes a mental note to warn Jamie not to open it, and turns her attention back to the now empty room. She walks barefoot over to the wall with her measuring tape, sets the tip firmly into the stiff beige carpet and walks backward to pull it out, framing the length and then width of a double bed. 

“Hmmm..” she murmurs to herself as she absent-mindedly wanders across her apartment and comes to sit on her couch. Grabbing her laptop from behind a couch cushion, she pops it open, kicks her feet up on the coffee table and types “facebook marketplace” into the search bar. It starts to auto-populate but before she can click it, she recalls with a jolt the horror stories she’s heard of bed bugs and used mattresses and weighs the pros and cons of taking the chance to save a little money.

Her salary is good, but not great. She knew living in Victoria, B.C. wasn’t going to be cheap when she agreed to move out here, but she figured helping her friend Carrie realize her dream of opening a cafe would be a life experience that would be worth a couple of years of financial instability. Not to mention the kismet connection of living in a city with whom she shared her first name! She appreciated Carrie’s generous offer - to pay her a regular salary - which protected her from the volatility of restaurant ownership. Victoria didn’t know how Carrie managed the stress of the fluctuations of income from month to month, especially now that she had a young child. In fact, Carrie’s new baby, whose name was currently slipping Victoria’s mind…..was it Ellie? Leah?....had been so utterly consuming of Carrie’s time, Victoria rarely saw her anymore. Most often, there was Carrie’s newest hire, a young barista named Paige, bustling around during the peak hour of the morning, pouring out lattes and carefully placing muffins into paper bags, as Victoria worked alone in the small kitchen. She loved the flow state that she entered when she was in the kitchen, hearing the gentle hum of her Kitchenaid mixer folding a triple batch of muffin batter while she glazed dozens of fragrant scones. Baking had always been an escape from the noise of her brain which was prone to excessive worry and rumination. An art form that engages all of the senses. Everything about it calmed her and gave her a sense of purpose that no other activity ever had. 

No, she decides, bringing her thoughts back to the task at hand, there’s no way my sister is sleeping in a bed from God-knows-where that God-knows-what has happened in. She opens the Ikea website and settles on the Malm bed. Classic Scandavanian style. She begins to browse duvet covers and scans the options. Her eyes quickly land on a big splotchy multicolour patterned duvet which would certainly appeal to childhood Jamie, but wouldn’t young adult Jamie have different tastes? Tastes that Victoria really knew nothing about? Victoria rubs her eyes wearily. Where were those blue light blocking glasses she'd purchased for when she was on her laptop? She had a plain grey spare duvet in her linen closet. Maybe a neutral bedspread would fly under the radar, rather than a glaringly obvious outdated option which practically screamed "I don't know who my own sister is". Victoria selected 'delivery' in her checkout and the process of her bed purchase was over in under 45 seconds, thanks to the magic of saved credit card information. 

The next day, Victoria looked around the guest room, feeling something close to satisfaction about what she had been able to accomplish in less than 24 hours. Above the newly assembled and made bed hung a woodsy Bob Ross portrait which she had made at a Paint and Pour night, one of her first and only attempts at meeting people when she had first arrived in the city. One of the bookshelves from her own room stood on the wall across from the guest bed, filled to the brim with books from the now-unpacked boxes in the closet. It felt almost homey. Victoria checked her phone: 12:36pm. Jamie's flight was arriving at 2:00 and she always left plenty of time, not just for travel but to carve out at least 30 minutes of reading, parked in her car with the windows down. Before she left, she packed a day-old muffin from the cafe in a small cardboard box in case Jamie hadn't eaten on the flight.

Driving to the airport in her white Honda Civic, Victoria ran through the same scenarios she had been mulling over for the last few days as to why Jamie had decided to visit. The most obvious: things had ended with Dave. But….could it be a mental health issue? Oh God, what if something was wrong with her mother and Mom was sending Jamie to break the news to her? "Ok, Vic, you're officially spiraling" she told herself, glancing at her reflection in the rearview mirror. "Box breathing always helps". Breathe in….2….3….4…..hold….2….3...4…..exhale….2….3….4….hold…..2….3…4. A few minutes later she could feel herself settling into the seat again and coming back from the brink of a panic attack. She put on a podcast she had downloaded and managed to distract herself until she arrived.

After parking, she walked toward the airport. The hot sun on the pavement instantly dehydrated her and she hurried toward the air-conditioned oasis just beyond the automatic double doors. She stepped inside and approached the screen listing the arrivals. It looked like Jamie's flight came in a few minutes ago, so she set off to Gate 79.

As she approached, she saw a stream of passengers coming toward her. Many were still sporting neck pillows and Air Pods, and some were already happily greeting those who had come to collect them. Victoria's eyes almost passed over Jamie. When did she cut her hair to her chin? Jamie locked eyes with her in that moment and quickened her pace. Victoria extended her box containing the muffin slightly as Jamie approached. "Hey! I brought you a muffin…" she said, shyly, almost apologetically. Jamie wrapped her arms around her in a tight hug. "Hi, sis." she replied. Victoria held onto her tightly and wondered when the last time she felt someone's warmth so completely. Her body relaxed under Jamie's embrace. "Let's go home" Victoria whispered.