Everything Is Fine

Act I

Lizzie Moran sat at a plastic table in the back corner of Tony's Pizzeria on Flatbush Avenue, drinking coffee that cost two dollars and tasting like it had been sitting on the warmer for three hours. She had been sitting there for forty-five minutes, not reading anything, not looking at her phone, just watching the door and the people who came through it and the people who did not.

Her life had been falling apart for six months, though the collapse had been gradual rather than dramatic. First, the design studio laid off thirty percent of its staff, and her name was on the list. She had sat in HR's conference room for twenty minutes while a woman named Denise explained that it was "a difficult decision based on business necessity" and that she would receive two weeks' severance. Lizzie had nodded and said thank you and walked out of the building without crying, which was something she would be proud of if crying had been the expected response.

Then her landlord had raised the rent by four hundred dollars a month. Not renewed the lease, exactly, but made the renewal so expensive that declining it was the same as declining it. She had three months to find a new place, and in Brooklyn, places that cost what she could afford were either in basement apartments with windows that opened onto brick walls or in neighborhoods she had never had reason to visit.

And then David had left. Three years they had been together, living in the apartment on Eighth Street, and he had packed two bags while she was at a job interview and left them by the door with a note that said I'm sorry and I think we both know this is happening. She had read it three times before she understood what it meant, which said something about the way she had been living, trusting in the continuity of things that were not continuous at all.

She was twenty-eight years old, and she had no job, no apartment, and no boyfriend, and she was sitting in a pizzeria on Flatbush because it was warm and the coffee was cheap and she had nowhere else to be.

The man who would change the direction of her month walked into Tony's at half past eight, wearing a work shirt that had been washed too many times and jeans that were dirty in the way that suggested actual labor rather than fashion. He was thirty-five, broad-shouldered, with the face of someone who had spent years outdoors and had learned to squint against things he could not control.

He ordered a slice of pepperoni and a beer from the counter and found a table near the window, and Lizzie watched him eat with the detached attention of someone who has nothing better to do. He ate quickly, efficiently, without looking at his phone or a newspaper or anything else to fill the space. When he finished, he left a dollar forty in tips on the table and walked out.

She finished her coffee and went to the counter to pay, and the man was standing by the door talking to Tony, who was a large man with a bald head and a face that had been carved from something solid.

"You got the townhouse on Butler?" Tony was saying. "That place is a wreck, Mike. You sure?"

"I'm sure," the man said. His voice was low and steady, with an accent that was Polish but not heavy, the kind of accent that comes from growing up in a neighborhood where your family was one of many and you learned to speak your language inside and outside the house. "I need it fixed. I'll pay to have it done."

"Who you got to do it?"

"Someone. I'll find someone."

Lizzie paid for her coffee and walked out, and she did not think about the man again until two days later, when she was sitting in a laundromat on Kingston Avenue folding clothes that were already dry because folding was something she could do without thinking, and her phone rang.

The number was unfamiliar. She answered it.

"Miss Moran?" the voice said. It was the man from the pizzeria. "This is Frank Kowalski. You might remember me from Tony's."

"Do I know you?"

"You looked at my truck. Two weeks ago, when I was getting coffee."

She thought back. She remembered the truck: a faded blue Ford with a toolbox in the back and a dent in the passenger door. She remembered glancing at it because it was the only interesting thing in a three-block radius.

"I didn't mean to stare."

"That's alright. I was wondering if you'd be interested in some work."

"I'm a designer."

"I know what you do. I'm asking if you'd be interested in working."

"What kind of work?"

"I bought a townhouse on Butler Street. It needs renovation. Plumbing, electrical, drywall, flooring. I need someone to manage the project, coordinate the contractors, make sure the work is done right. I also need someone to live there, because I can't watch the place every day."

"That sounds like a property manager's job."

"I can't afford a property manager. I can afford you. I'll pay you two hundred dollars a week, cash, plus you live in the apartment. It's not finished, but it's habitable. There's heat and water and a bed in one of the bedrooms."

Lizzie stood in the laundromat with a basket of clean clothes in her arms, listening to a man she had met once offer her a job that was not really a job and an apartment that was not really an apartment.

"Why me?" she asked.

"Because you looked like you needed something to do."

She should have said no. She should have hung up and folded her clothes and gone back to the pizzeria or the library or anywhere that was not a crumbling townhouse with a stranger. But she had not slept in her own bed in three weeks, staying on a friend's couch in Queens when the friend's girlfriend came home early from a business trip, and the idea of sleeping in any bed that was not a stranger's couch felt like progress.

"When do I start?" she asked.

Act II

The townhouse on Butler Street was worse than Frank had described. It was a three-story walk-up that had been a townhouse before townhouses were a thing, which meant it had been built in the nineteeneighties and modified by a series of owners who understood structure as a suggestion. The front door stuck in its frame. The stairs groaned under weight. The windows were single-pane and drafty, and one of them on the second floor did not close at all.

Frank showed her around on a Saturday morning, wearing work boots and a jacket that had seen better weather and carrying a flashlight because the electricity had been turned off three weeks ago and he had not gotten it reconnected yet.

"The first floor is the kitchen and living room," he said, shining the light on a room that had hardwood floors covered in dust and a fireplace that was filled with debris. "Kitchen needs complete redo. Plumbing is original, probably from the original build. Electrical is knob and tube, which is a fire hazard. Living room floor is solid, but the walls need skim coating or drywall replacement."

He led her upstairs. The second floor had two bedrooms and a bathroom. The bathroom was a joke: a toilet that was cracked, a sink that leaked, a bathtub that was stained with something that looked old and possibly biological.

"The bedrooms are decent size," Frank said. "You take the master. It has a closet, though the door is off the hinges."

The master bedroom was on the third floor, which was actually an attic that had been converted at some point. The ceiling sloped down on one side, and the window looked out over a backyard that was mostly weeds and a chain-link fence that was leaning at a concerning angle.

"Your bedroom," Frank said. "I'll get the contractors in Monday. I already talked to Pete, the plumber, and he's coming Tuesday. The electrician is coming Wednesday. After that, it's drywall, then flooring, then paint."

"Who is paying the contractors?"

"I am. You coordinate. You make the schedule, you talk to the guys, you tell me when there's a problem. I'll check in a few times a week."

He stood in the doorway and looked at her, and she saw that his face was not unkind, just tired. The kind of tired that comes from going through the same motions too many times and expecting the same results.

"Does your ex-wife know about this?" Lizzie asked.

"My ex-wife knows about everything and nothing. She has her life, I have mine. Our son knows you're here, and he is not happy about it, but he will get used to it."

"Your son?"

"He's twelve. Lives with his mother most of the week. Weekends with me. He'll be here Saturday."

Lizzie looked around the room, at the peeling paint and the exposed insulation and the way the light came through the broken window in streaks, and she thought about the last three weeks of her life: sleeping on a couch in Astoria, eating at Tony's, folding laundry in a laundromat because it was something to do.

"When do I get paid?" she asked.

"Every Friday. Cash."

She nodded. It was not a lot of money. It was not much of an apartment. It was not a situation that would appear in any magazine or get mentioned in any conversation that was not about housing insecurity in Brooklyn. But it was a roof, and it was a bed, and it was something to do on Monday morning.

"I'll take it," she said.

Act III

The renovation proceeded according to plan, which is to say it did not. Pete the plumber showed up Tuesday and immediately declared that the entire plumbing system needed to be replaced, which cost more than Frank had budgeted. Frank paid it without arguing, which Lizzie noticed. He was not a wealthy man, but he was a man who paid for quality, which was the same thing in his world.

The electrician came Wednesday and said the knob-and-tube wiring had to be completely replaced, which meant opening up every wall and running new wire through spaces that had been sealed for eighty years. This took two weeks and smelled like burnt insulation for the first three days.

The drywall crew came in early April and knocked out everything that was not structurally sound, which was more than they had anticipated and less than Lizzie had hoped for. She stood in the living room on the second day, watching them tear down a wall that had been holding up a staircase that no longer existed, and she felt a strange sense of recognition. Things falling down is something she was becoming familiar with.

Frank checked in twice a week, usually on Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings. He was not a demanding boss. He showed up, looked at the work, asked questions, and paid the invoices. He did not hover or micromanage or try to prove that he understood construction better than the people who actually did it. This was one of the things Lizzie respected about him.

His son, Nick, came on the first Saturday, and he was exactly what you would expect a twelve-year-old boy to be when his father brings a strange woman into his life: sullen, hostile, and entirely honest about his feelings.

"Who are you?" he asked, standing in the doorway of the kitchen with his arms crossed and his shoulders hunched the way boys his age hunch when they are trying to look older than they are.

"Lizzie. I'm going to be helping your dad with the house."

"Do you live here?"

"For now."

"I don't like it."

"That's fine," Lizzie said. "You don't have to like it."

He looked at her for a long moment, trying to find a reaction that would give him something to work with. Lizzie gave him nothing. She went back to unpacking her bags, which she had stored in Frank's garage while his house was being destroyed, and she continued the motion of her hands as if he were not in the room.

He stayed for an hour, standing in various rooms and saying nothing, and then he said he was going to catch the subway home. Frank walked him to the corner, and when they returned, Frank said, "He'll get used to you."

"He might not."

"Then he won't. But you'll find a way to live with it."

That was the extent of their emotional conversation about Nick. No negotiations, no attempts at bonding, no forced friendliness. Just two people acknowledging a fact and moving on. Lizzie found this refreshing in a way she could not have explained to anyone.

The contractors were unreliable, which is the standard condition of contractors in any city. They showed up late, they left early, they quoted one price and charged another, and they had opinions about Lizzie's management style that they expressed freely. She dealt with each of them the same way: firmly, directly, and without emotion. She kept a ledger of payments and schedules, and she called Frank when there was a problem he needed to solve, which was not often because most problems could be solved with a firm voice and a willingness to walk away.

By the end of April, the townhouse was recognizable as a place where someone could live. The kitchen had new cabinets and a working sink. The bathrooms were functional, if not beautiful. The floors were sanded and varnished, and the walls were painted a shade of white that Frank approved because it was cheap.

Lizzie had been living there for six weeks, and she had not seen David in all that time. She had not thought about him in all that time, which was not entirely true. She had thought about him, but not with the intensity of the early days, when every song on the radio and every restaurant on every block was a reminder of something they had done together. Now he was a fact, like a phone number she had memorized or an address she no longer needed.

One evening, in late May, Frank came home early from checking on the construction. He found Lizzie in the kitchen, sitting at the table with a cup of coffee and looking at the street through the window.

"How's it going?" he asked.

"Fine."

"You alright?"

"I'm fine."

He stood beside her and looked out the window at the street, where a woman was walking a dog and a delivery truck was backing up toward a building across the road. The sounds of Brooklyn filled the space between them: a siren in the distance, a dog barking, the hum of traffic on Flatbush.

"My contractor called," he said. "The flooring guy is behind schedule. Says he's got another job that came in early."

"Tell him to prioritize this one or I'll find someone else."

"He'll prioritize it."

"How do you know?"

"I know contractors."

They stood in silence for a moment, and then Frank said, "You want to eat? I was going to order pizza."

"Sure."

They ordered from Tony's, which was a coincidence or a pattern, Lizzie could not tell which. They ate at the kitchen table, and Nick was there, sitting between them and saying nothing, and Frank asked him about school and Lizzie asked him about the boy's mother, and Nick said his mother was fine and he did not want to talk about it, and the conversation moved on.

This is what their evenings were like: ordinary, unremarkable, built from small gestures and unspoken agreements. There was no romance, no dramatic confessions, no moments of connection that would appear in a film as the point of the story. There was pizza and silence and the sound of the city outside, and for Lizzie Moran, who had spent the last six months watching her life dissolve, this was as close to fine as she expected to get.

Act IV

By June, the renovation was ninety percent complete. The remaining ten percent was the kind of work that takes longer than you expect: touch-up paint, fixture installation, the small things that make a house functional rather than just habitable. Frank hired a handyman to finish it, and he paid the handyman, and the townhouse on Butler Street became a place where people could live without immediately wanting to leave.

Nick came on weekends and stayed later each time, until Friday evenings became Saturday evenings and Saturday evenings became Sunday mornings, until he was sleeping in the apartment and Lizzie was making him breakfast in the kitchen and he was eating it without complaint, which was the highest form of approval a twelve-year-old boy can offer.

Lizzie had stopped counting the weeks. She had stopped thinking about David altogether, which was surprising because she had assumed she would never stop. She had a bed in a room with a window that closed, a kitchen that worked, and a job that paid two hundred dollars a week and required her to solve problems that were mostly small and occasionally interesting. She had gone to the grocery store and bought sheets and a pan and a coffee mug, which felt like an achievement even though it was something she had done a hundred times before in her old life.

Frank and she had developed a rhythm that was neither friendship nor romance nor anything that had a name. They existed in the same space, shared meals occasionally, and spoke about practical matters. He asked her opinion on the color of the front door, and she said gray, and he painted it gray. She asked him if he wanted help with Nick's school registration, and he said no, but thank you, and she said you're welcome, and the conversation ended there.

One evening in mid-June, they sat in the living room after Nick had gone home with his mother. The television was on, but neither of them was watching it. The windows were open, and the sound of the street came in through them: people talking, cars passing, a radio playing from an open apartment window two doors down.

"How are you doing?" Frank asked. It was the first time he had asked her how she was doing without attaching it to a work-related question.

"Good," Lizzie said. And she meant it, not in the way that people mean good when they are being polite, but in the way that a person who has been drowning means good when they finally reach the surface and can breathe.

"That's good."

He sat there for a moment, and she thought he was going to say something else, something that would change the shape of everything. But he didn't. He just nodded once and turned up the volume on the television, and the moment passed.

Lizzie went to her room and stood at the window and looked out at the street and the sky and the sliver of city that was visible beyond it. She was not in love with Frank Kowalski. She was not living in a fairy tale. She had no job in fashion design, no apartment she could afford to buy, no future that looked like the one she had imagined at twenty-two when she had graduated from community college with a certificate in textile design and thought the world was full of doors that would open if she knocked hard enough.

But she had a bed. She had a kitchen. She had a boy who ate her breakfast without complaining. She had a man who asked how she was doing and meant it, even if he did not push when she said good. And tomorrow, there would be contractors coming to finish the front porch, and she would be there to tell them what to do and when to do it and how to do it right.

She turned off the light and lay down on the bed and listened to the city through the window, and she thought that everything was fine, which in her experience was the best any of them could hope for.

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