The Lease for the Room Over the Garage

Saturday

Jake and Brooke pulled out of the driveway at 8:40 Saturday morning, the twins in their car seats in the back of the Traverse. Emma waved at my window. She always does. I waved back.

At nine o’clock exactly, Dale backed his old blue Ford into the driveway.

Dale is sixty-six, a big quiet man with forearms like fence posts. His grandson Tyler came with him, home from college at Brookings for the weekend, and Sue came behind them in her Buick with a box of donuts from the bakery on Main.

“Morning, Deb,” Dale said. That was all. He didn’t ask a single question. He just went up the stairs and picked up the dresser like it was a lawn chair.

It doesn’t take long to move a life when you’ve already boiled it down to one room.

My bed, my dresser, my chair by the window. Gary’s recliner, which I’d kept even though it didn’t match anything. Eleven boxes, counting the four I’d never unpacked. My quilt, the one my mother made in 1971, wedding ring pattern in blue and yellow.

We were done by eleven-thirty.

When the room was empty, I sent everybody down and I stayed up there alone. I swept the floor. I wiped down the little bathroom sink and the window ledge. I unplugged the mini refrigerator and propped the door open so it wouldn’t sour.

I left it cleaner than I found it. That was important to me.

I took the letter out of my purse. It was in an envelope with Jake written on the front in Gary’s blue ink. I laid it on the bare mattress of the twin bed, the one that came with the room. Then I pulled the door shut behind me.

On the way out, I put the envelope with the $700 check through the mail slot in the front door. A deal is a deal. I’d signed.

Dale’s apartment smelled like fresh paint and, faintly, like the popcorn machine downstairs. Sue had already put a little vase of daffodils on the windowsill.

I stood at the front window and looked down at Main Street.

“Well,” Sue said behind me. “What do you think?”

“I think I can use the kitchen whenever I want,” I said.

And we laughed, the two of us, until I had to sit down.