What it comes with, eventually, is a room that is quieter. That is what I have found. The room gets quieter.
## The Apartment Now
I have been in the new apartment for about two months. It is larger than the old one, which I knew, and it is also quieter, which I did not expect because it is on a higher floor with different ambient noise. I have unpacked most things. There are still two boxes in the second bedroom that I have not gotten to, which is the standard ratio for me — I am someone who unpacks most things immediately and then leaves a small collection of things I don’t need urgently in their boxes for longer than I intend to.
The second bedroom is officially a home office, which is what I told myself when I applied for the unit. In practice, it is a room where I have a desk and a plant and two boxes I haven’t unpacked, and where I occasionally sit when I need to do something that requires more focused attention than the couch provides. It is the room I had been working toward. It is mine.
I have had Tessa over twice. She came for dinner the first week and we cooked something that was too complicated for the occasion and ate it anyway, and it was good. She came again last month, just to hang out, and we watched something and talked about things that had nothing to do with my mother or the dispute or any of the eight months that preceded my moving in here.