For What It's Worth

I live on California's Central Coast, where too many people have stuffed their souls with money.

Last weekend I visited my ex at the tiny house we bought together. Seeing the place always makes me sad; we spent years fixing it up. First, we tore off the roof, added skylights, and replaced it with something that wouldn't leak. I painted the place dark green, so it would blend in to the wooded surroundings. We saved up for, bought, and installed a woodstove. The Japanese gate I designed and built still swings near the top of the driveway.

The day I left, we were remodeling the kitchen. I loved to cook for my ex, and there was the new stainless steel stove, the cookbook niche I'd built in the wall, the shiny pots and pans hanging at ready above the sink, the spice drawer, the knife sharpener, the cutting board I'd sawed from a cottonwood stump. The things that still represent what I loved.

This was the ex: he knew the latin names of all the plants native to our neighborhood; he never once killed a spider; children lost their shyness around him, and stray dogs followed him home; he gave one-third of his money away, and he never held a grudge. Last March, though, something went suddenly and horribly wrong with his mind. I won't tell you the details of what happened -- not here.

And now, we haven't determined what to do with the house. Sometimes the ex wants to live there and sometimes he wants to sell. I'm just glad he has a safe place to stay. If he stays. In the meantime, I rent a room in San Francisco. Don't get me wrong; it's a nice room, and I'm lucky to be here. It's not home, but it's something. I wait and I wonder and I try to scrape by.

The weekend of my visit, an old friend of my ex's stopped by. He toured the house, speculating on how much we'd get if we sold. He stopped in the doorway of what used to be our bedroom. From the ceiling hang two longboards. Mine, the shorter one with three fins, I took as payment for helping rewire a house. I stood there and listened while the guest offered my ex four hundred dollars for it. Is it normal to walk into someone's house and start bidding on the items therein?

This is what it's all been reduced to, this life. The negotiations have begun. I've lost everything, everything, everything.