No Good Deed

My friend, Laura, has a son. We'll call him Grant, for the sake of anonymity. At Christmas time, Grant was offered the opportunity to go work on a cruise ship for six months, until June of this year. He'd get to go all over the Pacific, work with his friends and have amazing adventures. We all told him he should go. Well, everyone told him to go, except his girlfriend, Spring. (Those of you who know these people are laughing up your sleeves at the fake names but I don't want anyone finding this during a random Google search and then hunting me down.)

Spring cries. Spring sobs. Spring begs him not to go. But in the end, cooler heads prevailed and Grant took the job. Spring and Grant had been living together for quite some time before this and, when he left town, he left behind most of his stuff. His fake plants. His high school yearbooks. Posters from shows he'd been in. College kid stuff.

So Grant goes on his trip. And two months in, decides he and Spring are not to be. Which is, of course, why Spring didn't want him to go on the trip. Absence doesn't always make the heart grow fonder. Sometimes it smacks sense into you. At some point, Grant tells Spring that things are over and that they aren't meant to be. When that is and how this occurred is yet to be determined. And I will outline the reason for my ignorance below.

By the time Grant and Spring hit the skids, Laura had left the country. She housesits in the winter and lives in a summer cottage during the warm months. However, she was given the opportunity to go work in the Carribbean for several months and, being no dummy, she took it. So she has a very small summer cottage filled with stuff and no actual house-house of her own. So I, somewhat stupidly, let Laura know that, should Grant need a place to stash his stuff during the months that he'll be away, I have two rooms that I never use and he's welcome to move stuff in there, if he has someone to move it. Better that than hearing from friends that your ex-girlfriend is selling all your possessions on E-Bay. Or has cut one sleeve off of every shirt that you own and thrown them onto her front yard.

I don't hear anything. And I don't hear anything. And I think, "Well, maybe he isn't going to tell her until he gets back." "Or maybe she's going to hold onto everything in order to ensure a face-to-face meeting when he gets back." "Or maybe she already got a good price for everything but his old kitchen pots."

Last Wednesday, I get an email. Grant's friend, Matthew, is wondering if he can come over that night to bring all of Grant's stuff over. Well, if there is one thing that is sacred, it is Wednesday at the bar, so I tell him Thursday or Friday will work. He picks Friday. It is a go.

Some background. I've met Grant, oh, maybe a handful of times. I'm friends with Laura. I'd seen Grant and Spring together a number of times but wouldn't count myself as a friend of either of them. However, I'd hear all about Grant and his relationship with Spring from his mother. So their relationship, to me, was kind of that of Jennifer and Brad or Brad and Angelina. I know all about it from the outside, and have discussed it at length with others, but have no actual first hand knowlege of the subject.

So I'm thinking, "Great. Matthew's going to come over here with some friends. He'll have talked to Grant about everything and I can get the scoop from him about the whole break up. The when, where and how." Turns out, not so much.

Friday afternoon, I get a call from Matthew.

"So, we're leaving Spring's place right now and should be there in about twenty minutes. And, um, well, how is it that you know Grant?" I can tell he's trying to figure out what he can tell me and what he can't, as he clearly doesn't want to offend anyone.

"I'm friends with his mom."

"Oh, right. Um. Spring's coming to, um, help."

God. I immediately get on the phone to everyone in town to see if they're available to come over and relieve the awkwardness that is about to engulf my house. But, no. They're all drinking. And laughing at me. Bastards.

They show up. Two guys and Spring. Who, for the most part of the next hour, is incredibly gracious. But what else do they have? A friggin' U-Haul. Not the little one you haul behind your car. The cube truck. And it is full.

We spend an hour unloading. Four people. An hour. Grant has a lot of shit. The aforementioned fake plants. The high school yearbooks. Notes from college classes. More fake plants. Computers. Televisions. Microwaves. A weight bench. Kitchen table and chairs. Not one, but two coffee tables. Chairs from Laura's cottage from when she redecorated. An organ. No, a real organ. That plays music. Perverts.

The two rooms? Are unnavigable. I cannot reach the closets. There is stuff in my garage. When they left, there was black dirt ground into my cream colored carpet. I cringed when I first saw it, but that's what I get for not sweeping out the garage. It took physical restraint on my part to keep from grabbing the vacuum right then, but I figured that was a bit too anal-retentive, even for the girl who pulled over on the Jersey Turnpike to change her shirt when she spilled Diet Coke all over herself because she couldn't stand the thought of wearing something with stains. STAINS!!!!

They finally left. Spring was more than pleasant about the entire thing. The only time I got to talk to the boys by themselves the only thing I had time to say was, "Well, this is awkward, isn't it?" They laughed, then Spring came back. After they left, I vacuumed, opened the wine and got back on the phone.

So, while I am storing enough stuff to house a Guatemalan family in comfort and style, I am still without the breakup story. All I can say is, Grant? You owe me. Can't wait 'til June!