The Date on the Kitchen Calendar

The Unit on the Left

Donna showed us the ground floor unit on the left.

It had one bedroom, a living room with a front window that looked out at the maple, a kitchen with a gas stove, and a little bathroom with a claw-foot tub somebody had painted white a long time ago.

The floors were real wood. The walls had been painted that winter, and it smelled like paint and nothing else.

There was a washer and dryer in the basement for all four units, and a spot out back to park.

Kyle walked through every room twice. He opened the kitchen cabinets. He turned on the bathroom faucet and watched the water run.

He stood at the front window for a long time, looking out at the tree, with his listing folded in his hand.

Donna watched him, and then she looked at me, and I saw her understand something about him without either of us saying it.

She did not hurry him. She stood in the kitchen with her keys and let him look, and I liked her very much for that.

“It’s $575 a month,” she said when he finally came back to the kitchen.

“Water and trash are included. You pay your own gas and electric. I ask for first month and a deposit of one month, and I’ll want a pay stub and somebody I can call.” “I work at the feed mill,” Kyle said. “Nights. Six years now.”

“I know where you work,” Donna said, and she smiled at him. “My brother-in-law runs the day shift. He says you’re the only one out there who never calls in.”

Kyle turned red to his ears. But he smiled too, and it was the first real smile I had seen on him since the funeral.

We did go see the third place, the duplex by the highway. I made him.

I wanted him to have something to compare it to, so he would know he chose well and not just first.

It was clean. It also shook every time a semi went by toward the ethanol plant.

“No,” Kyle said, before we were even back to the van. “The brick one. Can we go back before somebody else gets it?”

We went back after lunch. Donna was still there, raking under the maple. Kyle signed the lease on the hood of our minivan with a pen from my purse.

The unit would be ready the first of June. He wrote her a check for $1,150, first month and deposit, from a checkbook so new the pages stuck together.

On the drive home he held his copy of the lease in both hands, flat on his knees, like it might blow away.

“Megan,” he said, when we were almost home. It was the first time I could remember him saying my name. “Thank you for coming with me. I mean it.”

“Anytime,” I said. And I meant it too.