The Lease for the Room Over the Garage

Sue

When I could talk, I called Sue Lindgren.

Sue and I have been in the same circle at church for twenty-two years. Our husbands hunted pheasants together. When Gary died, Sue came over every morning for a month and made the coffee, because I couldn’t remember how many scoops.

When I moved to Tea, I transferred my letter to the Lutheran church there, but Sue and I still talked twice a week.

I told her the whole thing. The $700. The kitchen hours. The laundry on Tuesdays. Jake looking at the floor.

Sue was quiet. Then she said, “Well, I’ll be.”

“I signed it,” I said.

“Of course you did. What were you going to do, throw it at her?”

“I thought about it.”

“No you didn’t,” Sue said. “You’ve never thrown a thing in your life.” Then she said, “Deb. Dale’s place.”

Sue’s brother Dale owns the hardware store on Main Street in Tea. Lindgren Hardware, the kind of store where you can still buy one bolt instead of a bag of twelve, and there’s a popcorn machine by the register on Saturdays.

Over the store there’s an apartment. One bedroom, a little kitchen with a gas stove, a front window that looks out over Main. Dale’s clerk had lived there for four years and had just moved to Brookings to be near her daughter.

“He hasn’t even put a sign up,” Sue said. “Let me call him.”

She called back in fifteen minutes. “Five hundred and twenty-five a month,” she said. “Heat’s included. He says you can have it the first of May, or this weekend if you want it.”

$525 for a whole apartment with a kitchen I could use whenever I pleased. I sat there and did the math in my head the way I do at work. I could do it. I could do it easy.

“I don’t want to leave like a storm,” I said. “I don’t want the kids to see me carry boxes out like I’m running.”

“Then don’t,” Sue said. “When are they gone?”

I knew the answer. Brooke had told me Wednesday, back when we were still talking normal. They were taking the twins to her mother’s in Brandon next Saturday, all day, for her mother’s birthday.

“Saturday,” I said.

“Then Saturday,” Sue said. “Dale has the truck.”

The week in between

I want to tell you I was cool and calm that whole week. I wasn’t. But I was kind, and I kept my part.

Tuesday I picked the twins up at daycare at three, like always. Emma had painted a picture of a purple horse, and Owen had a scraped knee he wanted me to kiss three separate times. I took them to the park by the water tower and pushed them on the swings until their cheeks were pink.

At 5:15 I brought them home and gave them to Brooke at the side door, and I went up my stairs. I made myself a grilled cheese on the hot plate I’d bought for the room.

The kitchen was not mine until 7:30.

Thursday was the same. Daycare at three, the park, home by 5:15.

Brooke was polite. I was polite. She said thank you for picking them up. I said they were angels. We were like two women at a bank counter.

Jake left for Mitchell Tuesday morning and came back Thursday night. He knocked on my door once, late Thursday. I could tell it was him from the knock, two short ones, like his dad.

“Mom? You up?”

I was up. I was sitting in the chair by the window in my robe. But I didn’t answer.

I’m not proud of that. I just knew if I opened that door I would say things I’d want back, and I’ve buried a husband, and I know you don’t always get things back.

He stood there a minute. Then I heard him go down.

Friday after work I went to the bank and wrote a check for $700, made out to Jake and Brooke Kaltenbach, for the month of May. I put it in an envelope.

Then I got out a sheet of the good stationery Gary’s sister gave me one Christmas, and I sat at the dresser with Gary’s pen, and I wrote a letter to my son.