Summer Soldier

It was as yet still fall, and true cold had not arrived. But winters here in Asturias are always damp and chill, and this one would likely be the same once it got its bearings. For the moment, though, the weather oscillated between late summer warmth and bracing cold. Each change caught me by surprise and made me wonder.

My worries, however, were not global, but intimate, even small. Nevertheless, they were real. I deserved some relief before I gathered myself to staunchly carry on, so I decided to treat myself to a new kitchen—something on the drawing board since I’d moved into my house four years earlier. Not a splurge, but a justified home improvement. It was to IKEA I turned. Not my first choice, but my first had let me down.

By mid-December, I had been to IKEA three times. First, to plan a new kitchen with an assistant at a desk in a cubicle. Second, to meet my friend Mada in the display rooms and look over and discuss my options. Third, to modify the plans, again sitting down but with a different assistant. Then a workman came to my house to measure the space and make sure everything would fit.

And now I was back in the store to order and purchase the cabinets, the counter and sink, and the appliances. Everything would be delivered to my home one Friday a month away, and the following Monday, the workmen would come to do the installation. They would leave behind my fresh new cheery kitchen, bright like a girl in a clean pinafore. My problems would not evaporate, though I might dwell on them less in the girl’s company.

“Let’s just review everything first,” said Eva, the young woman helping me. She was the same woman who had done the initial planning. The first thing to confirm was that I did not want the cornice on the cabinets, the decorative strip along the top. I told her that Ana, who had modified the plan, said I should have it. David, the workman who had visited my house, advised against it. (I didn’t remind Eva that she had never mentioned the cornice in our first meeting.) Ana’s manner had been breezy, sweeping aside any questions or doubts. I went along because of the momentum. David’s manner had been gentle. I went along because I trusted him. I sought confirmation from my friend Mada, who said she wouldn’t choose the cornice, though she thought it looked fine in the pictures I’d scrounged up on the IKEA webpage. And now, with Eva smiling politely, I had to make my decision. So I made it—yes, leave them off. Then immediately, I reversed. No, I’ll have them. Then I asked, “What do you think?”

Eva smiled, stiffly polite, yet with her tone turning a tad chilly, offsetting the smile. “It’s an aesthetic choice.”

“Yes, of course, but what would you do?”

She repeated exactly what she had just said, without variation. I was annoyed.

“I don’t really know what it looks like,” I said. Then I asked if there was an example in the showrooms of cabinets with the cornice. She became thoughtful, half talking to herself, half to me, searching her memory. “I’d swear there was …”

I waited.

“Let’s look,” she said, and I followed her out of the cubicle into the maze of displays. We wound among thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise until she found what she was looking for. “There,” she said, pointing.

The display showed me the general idea, but not in the same color or style of cabinets I had chosen. Could I reliably translate this information into a reasonable sense of how the two options—with or without—would look in my kitchen? Back at Eva’s desk, I said to include the cornice in the plan. She made the changes on the computer. Then I began to regret the decision. Mada had said no, David had said no, Ana had said yes. Two against, only one for, with Eva refusing to say.

I sat still, looking at the computer screen, wondering whether each assistant worked with her own screen background or whether I was seeing a company choice, and all the while my unhappiness with the situation was growing. Why was I here, spending several hours of my life tormenting myself about the cornice? Why did I think it mattered? Why wasn’t Eva more sympathetic? What did she think of her clients—people who came and spent a lot of money to make a kitchen more functional or more attractive, when what they already had surely did the job. My tension continued to rise.

I was slowly reaching the conclusion that I did not like Eva. This was a problem, because I do not like people who go around classifying other people as either liked or not liked. I did not approve of applying that category. Pleasant or not, helpful or not, cheery or not—those categories I can live with. But liked by me or not? That’s a ridiculous way to respond to the world, as if it had been made to order and I was dissatisfied and considering asking for a refund.

Sitting facing Eva, I was not desperate yet, but I needed to make the jump—to choose one option or the other. Suppose, instead, I just announced—ever so calmly—that I was through, forget everything, I was done. What a moment of self-assertion that would be! What a pleasure and what an embarrassment!

Sometimes, when it looks like I’m trapped, I take a minute. That’s when I walk myself through such an act of defiance: stopping short, laying everything down, saying this is not good enough and washing my hands of it. It’s not escape, exactly, but refusal. For split seconds, I can see it happening. Then I go on, leaving behind that alternate reality.

While Eva fiddled with some numbers, I excused myself and went back to look more closely at the cabinet with the cornice. Had Eva been helpful, she would have shown me the computer-generated image of my kitchen with and without the cornice. But she hadn’t thought of it, and neither had I. Even if I had, I wouldn’t have pressed my luck. I was thinking of David, too, picturing him shrugging when I stood beside him in my kitchen, me frowning at the elaborate strip on my new cabinets. I would never hear, “I told you so” from him, but I would tell myself, “He warned you.”

By then I was sure I was going to make the wrong decision, but which ignorant choice would be safer? In a quick version of Pascal’s wager, I decided it would be worse to add the cornices and find them unwanted than to leave them off and regret not adding them. I’d rather disappoint Ana, whom I would not see again, than David, who would labor in my kitchen to bring forth what I was counting on to give me a midwinter uplift. But could I ask Eva to make another change?

I went back and told Eva to leave the order as it was and not change again.

She gave me a questioning look.

“It’s fine. Just leave it how it is.” I wasn’t even sure if the cornice was included or not at that point. I asked. No, was the answer.

“Take all the time you need,” she said, her attitude suddenly warmer, which was both welcome and discombobulating, like the weather that fall. “Choose what you want.”

When I said, “I don’t know what I want,” she seemed surprised. Yet days later, I was still wondering. But I was also deeply engaged in imagining the arrival of my new kitchen in all its expected charm—fresh and willing, my helper in a white pinafore. How long before she turns into a drudge? Maybe at that point I can spruce her up with a set of decorative cornices. Accommodating is not giving in, really, but recalculating to carry on later.

So I shouldn’t worry about giving up too soon, losing my will to fight. Even if I don’t draw a weapon, I am quick to see who has my back and who doesn’t. I know whom to count on and what’s worth fighting for. I am no summer soldier, but sometimes it helps to look like one—at least until I’ve regrouped.

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