The Lease My Son Typed Himself

Going down was harder than coming up. Miguel went ahead of me, backward, a step at a time, with his hands out and not touching me, which I thought was a mannerly way to do it. Hailey came behind. Mavis brought up the rear with her mouth set in a line.

I sat down at the head of my own kitchen table. There was a pot on my stove with a lid on it, and a dish towel folded over the oven handle the way I fold it. My violets on the windowsill were not only alive, they were blooming.

“Who watered those?”

“Me,” Hailey said. “From the bottom. In the saucer. You can’t get the leaves wet.”

“No,” I said. “You can’t.”

Mavis put the kettle on, banging it a little, and sat down across from me with her arms folded.

“Here is what I see,” I said. “My son rented you rooms he had no right to rent. That paper is worth nothing. He is not your landlord and never was. You do not owe him another dime, and you do not owe me an apology. You answered a notice at the laundromat and you paid honest money. That is all either of you did.”

Miguel started to say something. I held up my hand.

“Here is what else I see. A step that has been broken for six years is fixed. My cat is fat. My violets are blooming. And my doctor has told me I am not to be alone in this house for the next few weeks, and the person who was supposed to see to that is not answering his telephone.”

Hailey had already opened the folder. She was reading the top sheet with her finger moving down the margin.

“So I am going to make you an offer, and you may take it or leave it, and I will think no less of you either way. You stay. I will write a proper lease, with my name on it, because it is my house. The rent is $350 a month, and that includes the lights and the water.”

“Ma’am,” Miguel said.

“I am not finished. You have each paid $1,800. You did not pay it to me, and I may never see a dollar of it, but you paid it for a roof in this house, and I am going to honor it as if you had put it in my hand. August is on me. Starting September first, $1,800 at $350 a month is five months and fifty dollars left over. That is your rent paid through the end of January. The fifty can buy the first sack of groceries.”

Nobody said anything. The kettle started to tick.

“Wanda,” Mavis said, low. “That is $3,600 you are giving away.”

“I am not giving it away,” I said. “I am going to collect it. Just not from them.”

Hailey had stopped reading. Two tears had gotten loose after all and she wiped them with the heel of her hand, quickly, like a child who does not want to be seen.

“Why would you do that?” she said. “You don’t know us.”

“I know you water a violet from the bottom,” I said. “I know he seals the cut end of a board. That is more than I know about most people.”

Miguel sat with his big hands flat on my table. His knuckles had small white burn scars on them, the kind my father had from the forge.

“I’d want to do the yard,” he said finally. “And the gutters, before the leaves come. I’m not taking a rent like that for nothing.”