The Movers Carried Out My Marriage and Stayed for a Beer novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Out the Door
On moving day her ex insults her in front of the crew, a young mover lifts her off a stepstool by the waist, and she says: stay for a beer.
By eight in the morning the movers had carried most of my marriage out to the truck.
I stood in my empty kitchen in Marietta with a clipboard and a coffee gone cold, checking boxes off a list.
The house had sold. Closing was yesterday. I had until six tonight to be gone.
The younger mover came in through the garage with a dining chair in each hand.
He was the biggest man I had ever stood next to.
He had to turn his shoulders to get through the doorframe, and the chairs looked small in his fists.
"Where do these ride, Miss Amber?" he said.
His voice was low and so soft I leaned in to hear it.
"The truck's fine," I said. "Anywhere."
He nodded, and I read his shirt.
DARIUS, in white thread over the pocket.
The other one was lean and bald, with a clipboard of his own.
He had already told me his name was Tavon and that he'd get me to Smyrna by dinner or I'd get a free sandwich.
At nine the sectional went.
Four men were supposed to carry it. Darius took one end, looked at Tavon, and said, "I got it."
He walked it down the front steps alone, with the whole couch on his back and his face perfectly calm.
I watched from the doorway with my hand over my mouth.
Twelve years I had been married to a man who needed help to move a recliner.
At ten the garage door rolled up, and my husband's car came into the driveway.
Randall had left in March.
He had a woman from his gym and a condo by the interstate, and he had no reason to be on this street.
He got out in a quarter-zip and looked up at the house.
"I brought the garage remote," he said, and held it out between two fingers. "The buyers want it."
"You could have mailed it."
"I wanted to see the place one more time."
He walked past me and looked at the crew and the open boxes.
Then he looked at the stand mixer on the counter, wrapped in a towel.
"Don't take the stand mixer," he said. "It was a wedding present. Nobody's going to bake for you now."
Tavon stopped with a lamp in his arms.
Randall smiled at him, the easy smile he used on clients.
"At least this house won't have you in it," he said to me.
He said it pleasantly, so everyone would hear.
My face went hot all the way to my ears.
Nobody on the crew spoke, and nobody moved, and Darius stood in the hall with a box on his shoulder, looking at Randall.
I picked up the stand mixer and put it in my own arms.
"It's staying with me," I said. "Goodbye, Randall."
He laughed, tossed the remote on the counter, and left.
I heard his car back out, and I found I was breathing through my teeth.
"Ma'am," Tavon said. "That man's a damn fool."
"Thank you."
"I'm just saying it so you hear it from somebody."
I managed a laugh.
Then I went upstairs, because the curtain rods in the back bedroom were still up, and I did not want to ask anyone for anything.
I dragged the stepstool over.
I got the first bracket off. I reached for the second, and the stool tipped.
I did not even have time to yell.
Two hands closed around my waist and I was in the air.
His palms met at my spine, and his fingers met over my stomach. He held all of me with his hands.
I weigh a hundred and forty pounds. I am five feet one.
Darius lifted me off the stool in one motion and set me on the carpet, and he did not let go right away.
"I've got you," he said.
His thumbs rested on my hip bones.
I could feel each one of his fingers through my shirt.
The heat of them, and I felt it all the way down my legs.
"Thank you," I said. My voice was not mine.
He let go.
He took the rod off the wall in one pull and carried it down the hall.
I stood in a bedroom full of afternoon sun telling myself it was only the sun.
That was it. It was the sun, and I was thirty-nine, and a man had touched my waist.
I had not been touched in a year and some months.
I could not remember the last time I had wanted to be.
By five we were unloaded in Smyrna.
The townhouse was an end unit with beige carpet, a galley kitchen and an island the last owner had left behind.
Darius carried the mattress up the narrow stairs by himself, the whole queen slab on his shoulder.
I stood at the bottom and watched the back of his neck and the long muscle in his arm.
I did not look away.
Then the last box came down off the truck, and the crew was done.
Tavon was wiping his hands on a rag.
Darius stood by the front door with his cap in both hands, waiting for me to sign.
I signed the ticket.
I looked at the fridge.
It held a six-pack Tavon had set on the shelf when he carried it in, a thank-you gesture or a joke, I couldn't tell.
I was thirty-nine years old, and my husband had just told me nobody would ever bake for me again.
I took two beers out of the carton and held them against my chest.
"Stay for a beer," I said.
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