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The Table Won’t Fit

By Ophelia Ravenwood

Maelis arrived with a tape measure clipped to her belt and announced that Verran had chosen the wrong table.

He was locking his front door. He finished turning the key before he answered her, keeping his hands where she could see them.

“You haven’t seen it.”

“I’ve seen the photograph.”

“It’s a table.”

“It’s a photograph of half a table. There’s a reason for that.”

At fifty-one, Maelis had the narrow, intent face of a woman who could find a flaw in a kettle before the water boiled. She was wearing a yellow raincoat despite the clear morning, and had brought two apples, a packet of cookies and a folded blanket. Verran had brought the address.

He showed it to her.

“Ground floor. Legs come off. Thirty-five dollars. I’ve asked.”

“You asked about the legs?”

“Yes.”

She looked faintly disappointed.

At the borrowed van he opened the rear doors. His colleague had left him two moving blankets and a box of straps. There was also a child’s pink watering can, which Verran put carefully in the passenger footwell.

Maelis leaned into the load space, measured it, then turned so he could read her signing.

“The table will fit in here.”

“Good start.”

“I didn’t say anything about your room.”

He pointed at the seat. She climbed in.

Verran had lived in the apartment for four months. It had a bedroom, a bathroom and a living room in which the kitchen occupied one wall, efficiently giving every meal a view of the washing-up. The washing machine stood under the counter. The refrigerator opened toward the window. He knew these things exactly, because he had spent a considerable part of his first evening opening and closing everything.

There was a chair, a lamp and a low crate that had once carried bottled sauce. He ate from the crate. When Maelis came over, she ate from her knees and complained that his plates were too slippery.

Last Wednesday they had played cards on his bed. A jack had disappeared into the duvet cover. While he was looking for it, she had picked up his phone and shown him the second-hand listings.

A table, she had signed. Civilization.

Now that he had found one, she was against it.

He drove through the Saturday traffic while she examined the listing again. They were both Deaf and had used ASL since childhood; he wasn’t going to attempt a conversation while watching a delivery cyclist invent a new lane. At a long red light, Maelis touched his sleeve. He glanced across.

She pointed to the photograph, then made a face of such private disgust that he laughed without asking what she meant.

When they parked, she explained.

“That’s not a vase beside it.”

“What?”

“On the floor. In the picture. I thought it was a vase.”

“It is a vase.”

“It’s a kitchen trash can.”

He looked at the photograph. The table, which had seemed pleasantly modest, altered size.

“It said forty-eight inches.”

“It did.”

“People put the size in ads for a reason.”

“So do fish.”

He stared at her.

“When people sell fish, they—never mind. Come on.”

The seller was in a narrow rowhouse, packing books into a box marked GLASSES. He opened the door with a roll of brown tape hanging from his wrist.

Verran showed him the message thread. The man nodded, stepped back and began talking as he led them down the hall. Verran caught up and held out his phone with a new line beneath their earlier exchange.

I’m Deaf. Please type anything I need to know.

The man read it, stopped and took his own phone from his pocket. A moment later he showed Verran the screen.

Sorry. Thought your friend could hear. Table’s through here. Bolts are underneath.

Verran nodded. Maelis, reading beside him, lifted one eyebrow at the familiar assumption and left it there.

The table filled the back room.

It was pale wood with a dark, handsome stripe through the middle. It had four square legs, a solid top and the air of an object that had never apologized for occupying space.

Verran stood beside it.

Maelis unclipped her tape measure.

“Seventy-two inches,” she signed when she’d finished. “Thirty-six across.”

He checked the listing. Then he showed it to the seller, pointing to the number.

The man looked, closed his eyes and typed.

That’s the other table. Sold last week. Copied the listing. Sorry.

For a moment Verran wanted to put down his phone, take the table apart and carry it out anyway. He had borrowed the van. He had asked for Maelis’s morning. His colleague’s only free day was Sunday, and the van had to be back by five.

Maelis tapped the edge of the table, bringing his eyes to her.

“No.”

“I haven’t said anything.”

“You’ve got the face.”

“What face?”

“The one where everybody’s already gone to trouble, so you have to make it worse.”

He turned back to the seller and typed that it was too big. He had measured for the advertised size. The man nodded, then showed him another message.

Twenty, if that helps.

Maelis looked at Verran. He looked at the table.

The dark stripe was beautiful.

“No,” he signed, although the seller couldn’t understand it. Then he wrote it down.

Outside, the empty van sat in a parking space that had taken him eight minutes to find.

“I don’t have that face,” he told Maelis.

She waited.

“All right. Sometimes.”

She opened the passenger door and gave him an apple.

They ate in the van with the engine off. He had forgotten breakfast. The apple was cold enough to hurt one tooth.

Maelis found three other listings within driving distance. The first was a glass table, which he refused before she could enlarge the photograph. The second came with six chairs and required collection from a fourth-floor apartment. The third had a white top, chrome legs and a price that made her tilt the phone away from him as though protecting him from an obscenity.

“There are thrift furniture stores,” she signed.

“I looked last weekend.”

“Different ones.”

He reached for the packet of cookies. She held it beyond his fingers.

“Apple first.”

“I’m forty-four.”

“And yet.”

He took a cookie anyway. She let him, but watched him get crumbs on his coat.

He had known her for fourteen months, since a colleague brought him to a Saturday coffee gathering where everyone signed too quickly for the elderly café owner to know how much they disliked the new chairs. Maelis had disliked his coat as well. She had asked where he’d got it, then softened visibly when he’d told her it was cheap. He hadn’t liked the softening. The next week he’d worn it again.

He still wore it. She had stopped commenting.

On his third visit he had told her he’d been in prison. They had been outside, waiting for rain to ease. He’d said it because someone else had asked where he had lived before, and he was tired of arranging his sentences around a gap.

Maelis had asked whether he wanted to talk about it. He’d said no. Then she had asked if he was standing on her umbrella strap deliberately.

That had helped.

He finished the apple and tucked the core into its wrapper.

“We could just go home.”

“We could.”

“I can keep eating from the crate.”

“You can.”

He looked at her suspiciously.

She put the cookies between them.

“I haven’t booked the rest of your life for today.”

Her phone lit up. She read a message, started to type, then put it face down on her knee.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

He held out his hand, palm up, for the packet. She gave it to him.

The furniture shop was beside a carpet warehouse. In its window stood a metal heron wearing a child’s knitted hat. Verran photographed it for his colleague, who collected pictures of things nobody had intended to be funny.

Inside, Maelis found an oak table within seconds. It was round, heavy and more expensive than the one they had abandoned.

“Look at the edge,” she signed.

“I can see the edge.”

“Proper wood.”

“So was the other one.”

“This will last.”

“Longer than my money.”

She rubbed a mark on the top with her thumb. He moved on.

At the back, beneath a stack of dining chairs, stood a small square table with a yellow top. One corner had lost its trim. Its four metal legs tapered toward rubber feet, two of which were missing.

Verran put his hand on it and pushed. It rocked.

Maelis appeared beside him.

“No.”

He kept his hand on the table.

“I like it.”

“It looks like somewhere you’d fill out a form.”

He looked at her.

Her hands stopped.

“I didn’t mean—”

“I know what you meant.”

He walked to the other side of the table. There was a little drawer beneath the top. He pulled it open. It contained a screw, a plastic curtain ring and a green counter from a game. He picked up the counter and held it toward the window. Sunlight made it glow against his fingertips.

Maelis stood still.

She had the decency not to explain herself further.

He put the counter down.

“I don’t want the oak one. It’s your table.”

“It’s a good table.”

“Then buy it.”

She folded her hands against the front of her raincoat.

He disliked having hurt her. He also wanted the yellow table. Both facts remained in the aisle with them while a shop assistant brought a chair past and waited for them to move.

Verran stepped aside. He took his phone out and asked the assistant the price, showing rather than speaking the question. The assistant pointed to a label on the underside of the drawer.

Fifteen.

He crouched. The legs were fixed to brackets with bolts he could reach. He tested the top again, then lifted one corner carefully. Without the chairs stacked on it, the table was light enough for two people to carry.

Maelis crouched on the other side.

For a few seconds they inspected the same bolt in silence.

Then she looked up and waited for his eyes.

“It’s the feet. Not the legs. The legs are straight.”

“I saw.”

“Yes.”

He ran a finger along the damaged corner. It was smooth, not sharp. The yellow was the color of custard made with too much powder.

“I want to play cards on this,” he signed.

Maelis sat back on her heels.

“All right.”

He waited.

She pointed at the drawer.

“You can keep the cards in there.”

They bought the table and two plain wooden chairs that didn’t match each other. The total came to twenty-nine. Verran paid, and the assistant found a small bag in which to put the loose screw and the green counter. The curtain ring remained in the drawer by mutual agreement; neither knew what to do with it.

Behind the shop, they laid the table upside down on a moving blanket and removed the legs. Maelis held the bag for the bolts while he worked. When he needed to ask her something, he put down the wrench first.

The empty van swallowed the pieces with embarrassing ease.

He strapped the chairs to the side rails and checked the load. His colleague had shown him the straps the evening before. He handled them at work as well, though usually around cartons of bathroom fittings rather than a chair with somebody’s old chewing gum underneath it.

Maelis photographed the gum.

“For the history of your home,” she signed after he had stepped down.

“I’ll frame it.”

Her phone lit up again.

This time he saw her expression change before she concealed the screen.

“What is it?”

“Nothing urgent.”

“That’s not nothing.”

She put her phone in her pocket. Then she took it out again.

On the screen was an orange armchair.

It had wide arms, short legs and a back that curved round the sitter like an opinion. One cushion was darker than the other.

Verran looked at it for a long time.

“Proper orange,” he signed.

She gave him a reluctant smile.

“It was free. Someone near my building’s moving. I asked them to hold it until half past twelve.”

He checked the time. Twelve ten.

“Why didn’t you say?”

“You were getting your table.”

“We still had a van.”

“I thought there might be room afterwards. Then that first one was enormous, and you were disappointed, and I didn’t want to—”

She stopped.

“Where’s your chair?” he asked.

“Gone.”

“Where?”

“The dump. The frame broke last month.”

He pictured her apartment, where they had watched a subtitled crime series three weeks ago. She had insisted he take the sofa and sat on a dining chair herself. When he asked whether she was comfortable, she had said she sat too much at work anyway.

“You said you preferred that chair.”

“I was lying.”

He nodded toward the phone.

“Tell them we’re coming.”

“It’s quite ugly.”

“I can see.”

“I like it.”

“I can see that too.”

The orange chair lived two streets from Maelis, in a ground-floor apartment with a step down to the sidewalk. Its owner had supplied measurements, which Maelis had actually checked. It fitted through the door without argument.

Getting it into the van was less elegant.

They set it down on the sidewalk once, caught each other’s eyes and agreed on a different grip. Verran fetched the second blanket so they could protect its back against the loading edge. They lifted together on a visible nod and slid it forward.

Maelis stood with her hands on her hips, breathing hard. A strand of hair had escaped her clip and stuck to her mouth.

He waited until she brushed it away.

“Could have had the oak table,” he signed. “You could sit on that.”

She hit his arm with the folded receipt.

At her building, a neighbor held the outer door while they carried the chair along the level corridor. They stopped outside her apartment to rest and decide how to turn it. Nobody attempted a conversation through the upholstery.

Once it was inside, Maelis went straight to the kettle. Verran stayed beside the chair.

She turned at the movement of his hand.

“Sit down,” he signed.

“I’ll make tea.”

“After.”

She stood for another moment, then sat.

The chair accepted her completely. Her shoulders dropped. She put both hands on the orange arms and looked, for the first time that morning, entirely without an objection.

Verran took out his phone.

She raised a warning finger.

He photographed the chair without her head.

“Evidence,” he signed.

She leaned back, closed her eyes and dismissed him with one lazy hand.

He found the mugs himself. There was cold leftover rice in a covered bowl in her refrigerator, and eggs. When she came into the kitchen to see what he was doing, he asked if she wanted lunch. She did. They cooked together, passing things rather than trying to sign with their hands full, and ate at her kitchen table while she showed him a ludicrous message from the office printer supplier.

The printer, according to the message, had developed an attitude.

Verran read it twice.

“Maybe it wants a different job.”

“Everyone in that office wants a different job.”

“Even you?”

“Especially on Tuesdays.”

He asked what happened on Tuesdays. She told him, at considerable length. He had to put down his fork to defend the printer.

By the time they reached his apartment, the afternoon had warmed. They carried the flat table top and detached legs up the single flight separately, then the chairs, taking their time. Through the open window came the smell of somebody burning toast.

Verran cleared a space beside the kitchen counter. He had put masking tape on the floor the previous evening to show where the advertised table would stand. The new top was smaller. They laid it on its blanket inside the taped rectangle and bolted the legs back on.

Maelis held a bracket steady while he tightened the last bolt. Then they turned it upright.

It rocked.

He looked at her.

She looked at him.

“You could put your disappointing apple under it,” he signed.

She took two rubber caps from her coat pocket. The furniture-shop assistant had found them in a box by the till while Verran paid for the chairs. Maelis put them on the bare feet, then let him test it.

The table stayed still.

He pushed harder.

Still.

She rested one elbow on it with exaggerated confidence.

He moved the table to the window. One chair could stand against the wall when he wasn’t using it. The other fitted beneath the top. He tried opening the refrigerator, the cupboard under the sink and the window. Nothing struck anything else.

Maelis peeled up the masking tape. He watched her roll it into a tight little ball.

When he’d first come out of prison, he had been staying in a room where the table belonged to someone else and the chairs had to go back in their exact places. It had been a perfectly decent arrangement. He had needed it. For a while, even after moving here, he had found himself straightening the borrowed chair before leaving his own room.

He touched the damaged yellow corner.

Maelis was looking at the drawer.

“The curtain ring’s still in there.”

“It lives here now.”

She opened her mouth in a silent laugh.

They returned the van before four, with fuel in it and the pink watering can back in its original place. Verran sent a photograph of the table and a thank-you. His colleague replied with a picture of the metal heron, now enlarged until the knitted hat filled the screen.

On the walk back, Maelis bought a packet of salted nuts. Verran bought two bottles of ginger beer. He tried to take the bag from her. She lifted it out of his reach.

“It’s nuts,” she signed. “I can manage.”

He bowed and let her carry them.

At the yellow table, Maelis took one pack from the pair Verran had bought in January and dealt. He put the spare in the drawer.

Verran opened the bottles and put a folded tea towel beneath them. The cards traveled beautifully over the smooth top. He found himself sliding one back and forth until she rapped the wood beside his wrist.

“Are you playing?”

“I’m appreciating my purchase.”

“Appreciate your hand.”

He picked up the cards. It was a bad hand. He arranged it as though a more thoughtful order might improve it.

Maelis ate a nut and watched him.

Outside the window, a man was attempting to persuade a dog to walk away from a lamppost. The dog had other business. Verran turned his chair slightly so the afternoon light wouldn’t be in Maelis’s eyes.

She won the first game.

He accused her of teaching him the rules selectively.

“I taught you in January.”

“You may have left something out.”

“Talent.”

He dealt again. This time the cards were kinder. Maelis leaned forward, intent, her coat hanging over the unmatched chair and one shoe tucked beneath the other.

Halfway through, he reached for the nuts and caught the bottle with his sleeve. Ginger beer spread over the yellow top. They both grabbed for the cards. Maelis lifted the whole packet of nuts into the air as though it were a rescued child.

Verran snatched up the tea towel. Beneath it the table was already sticky.

He stopped wiping.

Maelis looked at him, then at the small pool running toward the damaged corner. She waited until he looked back.

“Your table has had a drink,” she signed.

He laughed. It surprised him enough that he spilled a little more while moving the bottle.

They wiped the top dry. One card had acquired a damp corner. He laid it on the windowsill and fetched a replacement from the spare pack in the drawer.

Maelis gathered her hand.

“You had three aces,” he signed.

“I had no such thing.”

“I saw them.”

“Then don’t look.”

He sat down, picked up his cards and put his feet wherever he liked.