When do you realize that every heart needs some kindness?
~~~
Viewing Apartment 3S
“It’s very nice.”
This was a lie. Alternating black and white tiles covered the floor of every room in a checkerboard pattern–old, dirty, and many of them with chipped corners, exposing the careworn wood that lay underneath. The walls throughout were freshly painted, but with a decidedly apathetic hand: in the crevices of the moldings that ran along the length of the floors, years of accumulated dust, grey and thick, were visible amidst the swathes of fresh white.
“And spacious.” This was true. Dre was now standing in the largest room at the end, which could either serve as the living room or bedroom, depending on the inhabitant’s preference.
“Yes,” the landlady agreed. Her name was Maribeth. Dre couldn’t remember her last name. “People always comment on how rare railroad apartments are. You don’t –”
“Jesus Christ, would you just stop it?”
Dre and Maribeth startled at the male voice. It was coming from the apartment across the hall. Maribeth resumed, “There are very few railro–”
“You’re a fucking asshole!” A woman’s voice this time.
“You asked me if I thought changing your name would help you get more acting gigs, and I gave you an honest answer. How does that make me an asshole?” The man was hyper-enunciating, each syllable a staccato point of logic. It was as if the screaming couple were in the same room as Dre and Maribeth; their voices were that clear. The woman would do well auditioning for stage roles. Her voice projected admirably.
“You’re a nasty piece of shit. No wonder your son wants nothing to do with you.”
“I’ve asked you a million times to stop bringing him up. Jesus fucking Christ.”
The piercing sound of glass shattering. Dre’s best guess was that one of them threw a vase.
The voices stopped.
Maribeth and Dre looked at each other. Maribeth tried to think of something to say.
“Are they always like that?”
Another crash, and then a thud. It sounded like a body hitting the wall.
“I hate you.” The woman wasn’t screaming now, but she was still fully audible.
“Back at you, Michelle.”
Maribeth emitted a sound best described as an embarrassed titter. “Sorry about that.”
Back at Home
“Hey.”
“Hey. Calling to see how the apartment search is going.”
“Yeah, I know.” Dre was in the kitchen of the house that he had lived in all of his life. It was in no better condition than the apartment that he had just viewed. The glue underneath the tan flooring had long since admitted defeat: the linoleum’s edges curled upward along the wall, the entire flooring begging to be pulled off and replaced altogether. What had once been pale yellow walls were darkened with grey streaks from decades of mom’s smoking. But to Dre, the shabbiness of the kitchen and of every room of the house differed from that of the apartment: comforting in its long familiarity. His half-brother’s voice pushed through the phone with an insistence that made Dre walk out of the kitchen, an unconscious effort of trying to escape Marco even as he was speaking to him. “I found something really cheap. It’s the only thing I can afford. With my share of Mom’s 401K money, I could take care of first and last month’s rent, and the –”
“Great. So when do you move?”
“Well, I didn’t sign anything. The neighbors –”
“Dre, you need to move out of there. We want to move in as soon as possible. Suzanne is turning your room into a nursery.”
“Yeah, I know.” Dre hesitated. “It’s not just the money, even though I don’t have enough. I guess it’s just –”
“Dre, you know that it’s my house, right? It legally reverted to me.”
“Yeah, I know that.” There was subtext here, Dre knew: Ma may have loved you more, but at least I had a father that gave a shit about me. Your father left before you were ever born. I win.
“I don’t mean to be an asshole. You know that right? Suzanne really wants to move in. She’s due in three months. I mean, technically the house reverted to me the minute mom died. It was my father’s house, Dre.”
I heard you the first time, Marco.
“Don't you have any friends you can stay with?”
The question embarrassed Dre. “I guess I should call that woman and tell her I’ll take the apartment.”
But he didn’t. A week went by, and Marco started calling again. Each time the phone screen lit up with Marco’s name, Dre would hit the red circle with the X on it. He ignored Marco’s texts as well, and would continue doing so until – until when? Dre did not know. 18 years old, high school diploma, and nothing else. He was spending a lot of time curled up in bed. The last of the groceries that mom had bought were long gone, save for some cans of string beans and beets in the cupboard. He had no job prospects and was not even looking. His $16,000 inheritance money wasn’t going to go far, that he knew, yet he continued ordering UberEATS every day. He’d eat, and then go back to bed.
In the fourth week, Marco actually made the 50-minute drive to the house. Fortunately, Dre heard the slam of the car door in the driveway. Panic-stricken, Dre regressed to a childlike maneuver: he ran into his mother’s room and hid under the bed. With the sagging mattress above him and the musty brown carpet beneath him, he waited, body tensed. He listened to Marco’s progression through the house, uttering not a sound as Marco called his name. Dre strained his ears as Marco walked through the main level, then creaked up the stairs, and into each of the bedrooms. How Dre’s heart pounded when Marco entered their mother’s room, unaware of Dre’s presence. When Marco was alongside their mother’s bed, his feet right by Dre’s face, Dre had to cover his mouth, he was so afraid he’d scream. Finally, Marco gave up. He left the room and went down the stairs. Dre waited for the slam of the front door, the soft thud of Marco’s Rav4 door, and the sputter of the engine starting. Dre gave it some minutes longer for good measure, then crawled out from under the bed. He continued crawling, making his way to the window, peeking out the lower corner to make sure Marco was truly gone. The car wasn’t in the driveway, but what if Marco was on to Dre and knew he was hiding? Maybe Marco had driven the car around the corner and walked back. Perhaps he was hiding behind the big oak across the road, waiting, watching. That night, Dre made a point of not turning on the lights. He watched shows on his laptop in the dark. His streaming channels dried up months ago, and all he had left was the free shows on YouTube. Too afraid to order food, he looked into the cabinets and finally ate the canned vegetables.
In the morning, Dre saw that Marco had left a note on the fridge. A piece torn from a brown paper bag, held in place with Ma’s refrigerator magnet, the one that was shaped like a cup of coffee. Cup and saucer, with curls of stream rising from it.
Block letters. Marco was yelling at him:
DRE
THIS IS TOTALLY NOT COOL. STOP AVOIDING ME. YOU NEED TO MOVE OUT. IN TWO WEEKS, I’M GOING TO FILE EVICTION PROCEEDINGS. I’M NOT KIDDING. CALL ME.
“Eviction proceedings” was underlined three times. As was the “not” of “not kidding.”
Dre took the note off the fridge and brought it to the front right burner of the gas stove. He turned the knob, listened to the gratifying clicks of the starter, and the poof of igniting flames. Even more gratifying was putting Marco’s note into the fire. He watched the brown paper glow as it absorbed the flames, then it curled, contorted and shriveled, eventually turning black.
“Ma, what am I going to do?”
The sound of his own voice startled him. He hadn’t spoken aloud in weeks. And it was the first time since his mother’s stroke that he had actually spoken to her out loud.
“I miss you, Ma.”
The threatened 2-week deadline came and went, with Dre making no progress, unless turning notifications “Off” for Marco on his phone constituted progress. He let the texts and voicemails pile up. At some point, he told himself, he would contend with the situation. Precisely when, however, was undetermined, his inertia being an open-ended strategy. Did he have squatters’ rights? He wondered. Would Marco really have him evicted? Dre’s best semblance of a strategy was to just wait and see. In the seventh week, an external force derailed his default plan of do-nothing.
The piano riff of his phone announced a call. An unrecognized 212 number.
“Hello?”
“Hi, is this Andre Barcello?”
“Yes?”
“This is Maribeth. You saw me about the apartment a couple of months ago?”
“Oh, yeah. Right. I don’t think–”
“The apartment you looked at has been taken – 3S. A woman who travels a lot for work, so she didn’t care about the noise. But I ended up evicting that couple in the other apartment. 3N. The loud couple. There was an altercation, and I had to call the police. It made it easy to get them out of there.”
“Oh.”
“So, I thought of you. Most of their belongings have been cleared out, but it’s kind of a mess. Stuff left behind. If you’re willing to deal with it, you can have the unit. Same rent as the other one.”
Dre hesitated. “Do you need guarantors? I don’t have a credit rating.”
Maribeth exhaled in a sound of displeasure. “Do you have a job?”
“Not yet but I’m looking.” He halted again. “I could give you first and last month’s rent, though. And security.” His anxiety grew as he spoke, as he calculated what the cost would be.
She paused, considering it.
“If you could give first and last month’s rent, security AND an additional month’s rent, maybe we could work with that. Do you want to come by, and check the place out? If you like the place, we can go ahead and sign the lease.”
Apartment 3N
Dre was standing in front of the fridge. He reached into his back pocket and pulled it out: Ma’s refrigerator magnet. He put it on what was now his fridge, in what was now the very first place of his own. He placed the magnet on the freezer door, eye-level.
“I guess this is home now, Ma.” He continued speaking, despite feeling stupid. “I don’t know how I’m going to do this, Ma. I need to find a job. I’ll start looking in the morning. I just need to settle in. I’ll rest tonight. Get used to this place.”
Dre walked the length of the apartment. It was a mirror image of the apartment that he looked at just over a month ago, perhaps more dilapidated. A good many items were left behind, more than Maribeth let on. And what felt to Dre was just his luck, all the things he would have wanted had been removed. In the bedroom, there was no bed, but a nightstand remained. No sofa in the living room. No table and chairs in the kitchen. The kitchen did hold an assortment of pots and pans and dishes and utensils. The cupboard above the sink held a considerable assortment of coffee mugs, and there was junk mail on the kitchen counter. As for the bathroom, the built-in ceramic toothbrush holder held two toothbrushes, their bristles splayed outward pitifully from overuse. A mostly used tube of toothpaste rested underneath it. When he pulled back the moldy shower curtain, a worn-down scrap of soap revealed itself on the built-in soap dish, which itself was caked with old, melted soap.
Dre wandered back into the living room and took a second look around. When he had come last week with Maribeth, he hadn’t really had the time to inspect everything. Built-in bookshelves still held an array of books. The middle shelf was split into two sections: books on the left side, books on the right, each of those sections held in place with curious bookends: skulls made of glass. One skull was clear, and the other was green glass with alien eyes, elongated and inky black. Each skull had a protuberance at the top of its head. Were these skulls novelty lightbulbs? Dre walked over to them to examine them more closely. There was a space between the two skulls, more than wide enough to fit a third skull. He lifted the clear glass skull and was surprised by a sloshing of liquid within it. He now saw that the protruding knob at the top wasn’t a lightbulb screw base: it was a bottle cap. The lettering on the label that wrapped around the cap read, “Crystal Skull Vodka.”
“Cool.” He scrutinized the front of the skull. Impressively detailed it was, with faceted cuts and curves, with hollows for the eyes and nose. A bottle worth keeping, long after its contents had been drunk. He put the skull back in its place and examined the green one. Full of liquid as well, and this one, too, had a label on its cap: Extraterrestrial Vodka.
“Guess you like vodka–” What was the guy’s name? He had seen it on the junk mail that was on the kitchen counter. Edgar Cashman.
“I guess you like vodka, Edgar.” And then Dre remembered the overabundance of mugs that he saw in the cupboard. “And coffee.”
Four Weeks Ago
How did I get myself into this? How could I have been so stupid? Edgar could not think of a time when he had been more miserable. Five months ago, Michelle was just the receptionist at Starlight Marketing, and she had been on the verge of being fired from the very get-go. Edgar was now stretched out in his recliner, vodka and soda in hand, looking at Michelle, who was prostrate on the sofa. She had apparently fallen asleep while deciding on a piece for whatever audition she was doing next. Her arm had fallen off the sofa, and her hand dangled over a paperback copy of “50 Best Women’s Monologues” that lay on the floor. Yes, the hiring HR person at Starlight was a heterosexual male, and while Michelle was not a conventional bombshell, she was very attractive. Lean and strong, with long hair and big eyes, which, if you looked long enough, betrayed a gleam of crazy.
My life is a series of stupid decisions. How the hell am I going to get her out of here? He took another sip. How did I get here? It was a question that he’d been asking himself frequently as of late. She had just been just the receptionist at his office, for Christ’s sake. She barely registered as a human being to him. Hell, if he remembered correctly, he didn’t think he even said, “Good morning,” to her as he walked to his cubicle each day, another 9 to 5 at his decidedly underachieving position as marketing specialist. At his age he should have at least been a manager.
Goddamn BakeFresh account. If it hadn’t been for their arbitrarily urgent request for updated figures, he wouldn’t have been at the office until 8:00 pm. He wouldn’t have been there when Michelle was at her receptionist station, crying behind her monitor.
“What are you still doing here?” he had asked her. Why, for the love of God, had he asked her that? When he saw her weeping, he should have averted his eyes and wordlessly walked out the glass doors. But no, he asked her that godforsaken question. And then she blubbered out something about her boyfriend being an asshole and needing to move out and find a place to live. And then Edgar took her to Pete’s Tavern to continue the conversation, her with a rum and coke, and him with – well, his usual. She told him how her boyfriend was a narcissist. He had love-bombed her, then gaslit her and was now devaluing her – that was the M.O. of a narcissist, you know. And a liquored-up Edgar told her about his son Cooper, how he hadn’t seen him in over two decades, and how he was now trying to maneuver a reconciliation.
By the end of that week, Michelle had moved into his place, long legs and all. And please, nobody get Edgar wrong. Edgar was no pig. Michelle was 26 years younger than him. He wasn’t a dirty old man trying to get her into bed. He was just trying to help a young girl out, give her a place to stay while she got on her feet. He lied to himself, rationalizing that taking her in would somehow make up for abandoning Cooper. Hell, Edgar wasn’t even having sex with Michelle. Well, okay, yes, he was having sex with her, but that hadn’t started until three weeks after she had moved in. Unfortunately, it was not long after that Michelle had started the screaming and throwing things.
The throwing things. God. The sex was maybe worth the damage she was doing to his vodka bottle collection. The Kors Vodka that looked like a genie bottle. The Imperial that looked like a Fabergé egg. And damn, the Jazz Vodka, the bottle shaped like a trumpet. Edgar didn’t know which pained him more, the Jazz Vodka, or the Red Army Vodka, the bottle shaped like a rifle, which had laid horizontally atop his dresser on wooden brackets, its four matching shot glasses alongside it. She had thrown two of the shot glasses as well. There was no point in trying to replace all the bottles at this point. And that was that other thing. The weird thing she was doing with coffee mugs. Each time she broke a vodka bottle, she’d bring home a new coffee mug for him, in some illogical, decidedly inequivalent substitution. Edgar was certain she was shoplifting mugs from TJ Maxx down the street, as Michelle had no money: she had gotten fired from Starlight right after she moved in with him.
He continued gazing at Michelle with bemusement as he nursed his vodka. She was now snoring softly. He pressed the button on the side of the recliner, with the soft hum of the mechanism as the recliner positioned itself upright. Drink in one hand, he grabbed his cell phone from the end table, went to the bathroom, and locked the door.
Toilet seat cover down, he sat, and typed in Cooper’s name, and hit Call.
It rang three times, and then –
“I recognized your number. I’m only picking up to tell you to stop calling me. I’m blocking you now.”
“Wait – just give me a se-”
Click.
“Hello?” Cooper had already hung up, leaving a gaping silence in his wake. In that silence, the meaningless of his existence loomed in front of Edgar. He saw who and what he was with unbearable clarity: a middle-aged man who had never accomplished anything, and was, for all intents and purposes, kind of a shit. He didn’t like the way it felt. He decided that in the morning he would call Cooper’s mother, his ex, and ask for Cooper’s email address. “I’m going to try one more time,” he said aloud.
A rap on the door.
“Edgar, who are you talking to?” Michelle’s voice called through.
This evening
A box of Band-Aids was still in the medicine cabinet, a fortuitous thing. It was a clear night, and despite the cold, Dre wanted to sit on the fire escape and look at the moon. As he positioned himself to open the window, something that lay at the edge of the wall pierced his big toe. He cried out and lifted his foot to examine the offending object. A glass shard was stuck in the fleshy underside of his big toe, surrounded by a dribble of blood. As he pulled out the shard, he recalled the shattering sounds he had heard when he was with Maribeth in the apartment across the hall. Dre bandaged up his foot and put on his winter jacket. As he passed by the bookshelf, the skulls called out to him invitingly. A drink would be a lovely accompaniment to stargazing. He went into the kitchen and grabbed a juice glass. He opened the fridge to grab the seltzer that he had noticed earlier, which with any luck, would not be flat. A twist of the cap elicited a weak “pfffft” that wasn’t entirely satisfying, but sufficient. He poured some into his glass, and walked back to the bookshelf. His eyes alternated between the human skull and the alien one.
“I’ll go human tonight,” he said aloud, as he rested his juice glass in the space between the glass heads. A brand new, never-opened bottle, the cap of the Crystal Skull did not give readily. A second hard twist emitted a puff of air, followed by the scent of vodka, and something else that surprised him. It took him a moment to place the scent that was so familiar to him. Lavender. It was a lavender-infused vodka, and as that clean floral scent filled his nostrils, a memory presented itself.
“Don’t throw that out,” Ma said. She had been leaning in the doorway of his bedroom, her gray-streaked jet-black hair loose on her shoulders, her amber eyes looking at the jar of Vicks VapoRub Lavender Scent in Dre’s hand.
“I haven’t used it in over a year. Same as the nebulizer. The pills have been enough for a long while.”
“Keep it in your nightstand, just in case.”
Dre had leaned over to the nightstand, his hand on the knob.
“What made you think to throw it out all of a sudden?”
“I dunno. Changes are happening, I guess I wanted to do little things to make it feel like a new chapter.”
And her eyes had softened, understanding. “You mean Kent moving away?”
“Yeah.”
“Why don’t you try calling him? Phoenix is just a phone call away.”
“I did try. He didn’t call back. That was two days ago.”
She walked into the room, and placed her hand on his shoulder. “You can make new friends, Dre. You will.”
Dre snorted. “Kent and I were the losers. Now I’m the only loser left.”
“Don’t say that!” Dre didn’t respond. He leaned over, pulled the drawer open and returned the VapoRub to its place. With his motion, his mother’s hand slid from his shoulder to his back. “It’s going to get better, Dre. I promise you, it will.” Her hand remained on his back as she spoke.
Dre’s was motionless, hand wrapped around the skull as the memory flooded him. Her words had been few and the physical gesture small, but what she brought to him immeasurably surpassed the outward gestures. With everything she did and said, she emanated a love and comfort that had always enveloped him. Dre shook himself out of his reverie and gave his juice glass a generous pour. Vodka and soda in hand, he walked across the living room. He climbed out the window, onto the fire escape, and settled in to look up at the clear night sky.
He took a sip, and rested the glass alongside him, then pulled his phone out from his coat pocket. He tapped on the email app and went to the Drafts folder. He opened the draft with the subject line “Steven Clarks,” and looked at the content in the email’s body. A series of email addresses: steveclark@gmail.com; sjclark@gmail.com; stevenjclark@yahoo.com. The list went on. He looked at it for a moment, closed it, and then started a new email.
Dear Mr. Clark,My mother’s name was Sara Barcello, and you were her boyfriend around 19 years ago. She got pregnant, and you moved away to California. You never got to see your son.
Yup, you guessed it, that son is me. But please don’t think I’m mad or asking you for money or anything. That’s not why I’m writing to you. I’m writing because my mom died four months ago. She was only 48. She had a stroke. It was such a shock. I feel really alone, and I just need to talk.
You two weren’t together very long. Under a year, right? That’s what she told me. It’s okay that you left. It really is. I guess you had stuff you wanted to do, weren’t ready to be a father. And Mom and I were really okay all these years. We lived in the house that you knew her in, where she lived with Marco, her son. You remember him, right? He’s my half-brother. That was his father’s house and his father had it written up that my mom could live in it until she died, then it would go to Marco. I guess he felt he owed her that much because he cheated on her and left her. Whoever thought Mom would die so young? Sure as hell not me. Marco never liked me much. He was nine when I was born, and I guess he felt like I was an interloper, or something. Like I took Mom away from him. But Marco moved out when he graduated from college, and these past five years it was just Mom and me in the house. She was a great mom. I don’t want to bore you with too many details. I was pretty sickly as a kid. Had really bad asthma and was always catching infections and stuff. In and out of hospitals a lot. Didn’t make me the most popular kid, you know? But my mom was always there. She always got me. All a person needs is for someone to really get them, and no matter how hard it gets, knowing that that one person gets you makes it okay. Do you know what I mean?
But she died. It was so sudden. Know what I’ve been thinking about? I read something on Yahoo years ago about this woman who didn’t want her dog anymore. She brought him to a dock – a golden lab, I think – and shoved him off the dock. The poor dog struggled to climb back onto the dock, but it wasn’t able. It kept doggie paddling as best as he could, yelping, crying to be helped to get back on the dock. The crazy woman just watched him struggle. There were people around, but they didn’t know what was going on. The dog paddled as long as he could, but he got so tired. By the time people realized what was happening, it was too late. The dog drowned.
I guess I’ve been thinking about that story because losing my mom makes me feel like that dog. I feel like I got pushed off the dock and I don’t know how to get back on. I don’t know how to live my life without her. I talk aloud to her, and it helps some.
Do you remember her? What did you like best about her? Maybe you could tell me. One day if you’re ever in New York, maybe we could go for a burger, and you could tell me in person.
Yours truly,
Andre Barcello
Dre didn’t paste in one of the email addresses from the Steve Clark list. He didn’t paste anything into the “To:” field at all. He thinks that one day he will.
3 Weeks Ago
“You can move in with your mother. Or with your sister.”
“I already told you. I’m not doing that.”
“Well, you don’t have a job. You can’t pay for your own place, so those are your options.”
“How can you just throw me out on the street? You can’t just have someone move in, then just throw them out.”
“I’m not throwing you out. You have options.”
“You’re such an asshole. No wonder your son hates you.”
Edgar felt certain that his eyeballs were about to explode. “We are not going to talk about my son. I’m giving you two weeks to move out.” He turned away from her.
“You can’t just walk away from me.”
But he did precisely that. He proceeded toward the wooden rack of hooks that hung from the wall, intending to grab his wool coat and leave before Michelle had her next shit fit. He didn’t make it. Michelle grabbed one of the three Matrioshka Luxe Vodkas bottles that were on the end table, the ones that were shaped and painted to look like Russian nesting dolls. In all fairness, Edgar should have put away all his vodka bottles after she had thrown her first bottle. Now, her hand was clenched tightly around one of the matrioshka, and then she hurled it. It missed him, hitting the wall in front of him, an exploding grenade of painted glass and vodka. Edgar ignored it and grabbed his coat. As he was putting it on, Michelle grabbed the second matrioshka and threw it with equally bad aim as the first. Another explosion against the wall. The third fared just as badly.
His coat then fully buttoned, Edgar was just about to grasp the doorknob and make his escape. This, to Michelle, was entirely unacceptable. Flying matrioshkas being of no effect, she upped the ante. A moment should now be taken to remark upon Michelle’s impressive physique. Tall, but small-boned, she had the long, sinewy muscles of a ballerina and the strength of a gymnast. In one fluid motion, Michelle leapt toward the bookshelf like a panther. She grabbed the bottle of Purity Vodka that was nestled between the Crystal Skull and Extraterrestrial Vodka. The Purity bottle was beautiful in its own right. Simulacrum of an iceberg, it was made of frosted glass cut with angles and edges–thick and weighted at the bottom, narrowing as it rose to a point. It truly looked like a wedge of broken ice. Michelle seized that exquisite bottle, which for all intents and purposes was a blunt, heavy object. Excellent for bludgeoning. With all her strength, she clubbed a hapless Edgar on the back of the head.
It was unquestionably the most dramatic moment of Michelle’s pre-incarcerated, pre-convicted-of-manslaughter, sentenced-to-fifteen-years life.
And the whack that she gave him. Arguably, if one ever wanted to bash someone’s head in, hers was the whack to give. Upon impact, the glass shattered into a magnificent shower of ice and vodka. Edgar’s skull shattered as well, and he felt every detail of it, every millisecond, each splinter of glass and bone piercing his brain, while he simultaneously feeling his brain being – well, smooshed. As his knees buckled and his body fell to the floor, certitude flooded him: he was dying.
He lay there, blood pouring out of his head, mingling with the pool of vodka and broken glass beneath him. In his last moments, Edgar’s thoughts didn’t turn to his son. They didn’t even turn to his beloved vodka bottle collection. At the end, his mind was as empty as his life had been. The last intelligible thought of this man – who had never been the deepest of men – was simply, Oh shit.
With that, his head twitched. His body spasmed. And then he was gone.
This Evening
Dre had gone back to the old house in an Uber, and took household items that he could not afford to buy. He reasoned that a lot of the contents of the house had been his mother’s, and he had rights to them: blankets, pillows and towels. He laid the comforting, familiar blankets on the floor of the bedroom, alongside the nightstand that had been left behind. Placing his old gooseneck lamp on the nightstand soothed him further. Then, for the first time, he opened the drawer of the nightstand and examined its contents. A Paper Mate pen rolled around atop of a single piece of paper. Dre pulled out the paper: a printout of an email.
Dear Edgar Cashman,I’m using your full name because it’s appropriate, given our lack of personal relationship. I deleted the email you sent me as soon as I saw it. I hadn’t bothered responding, but I recently thought better of it and asked my mother for your email address.
I am not your son. You lost the right to call me that when you abandoned my mother and me when I was three years old. You left her with a toddler, barely paying child support for a couple of years, and then you disappeared altogether. You come back, 24 years later, expecting me to welcome you and call you father. You’re a ridiculous person, going through some midlife crisis, looking for something to give your life meaning, to give you value as a human being. You’re not getting it from me.
Don’t ever contact me again.
Signed,
Cooper Murray
(I had my name legally changed
to my mother’s maiden name)
Through the layers of blankets, the unforgiving hardness of the tile floor pushed against Dre’s buttocks. Knees raised up, back resting against the wall, he considered the words of the printout that was in his hand. Then he reached for his phone, and despite the lateness of the hour, he called Maribeth.
“Hello?” Her voice was thick with sleep.
“Hello, Maribeth, this is Dre. The new guy in 3N. Sorry I’m calling so late.”
“Is anything wrong?”
“Books. Other things, too,” Dre lied, “I figured I should try to return them to Edgar Cashman. You must have his number. Could you give it to me?”
Silence. Then:
“I think I lost it.”
“You lost it? Isn’t it in your phone?”
“Well, legally I’m not at liberty to give it to you. But if he contacts me, I will let you know.”
“Oh. Okay.” He hung up.
Perhaps one day the words of Dre’s mother would come to pass, that things would get better. One day, the absence of his mother wouldn’t be a gaping ache inside him. His loneliness and lostness, the feeling of helplessness would all subside. And perhaps one day, the father-sized hole inside him would close up and heal. That day, however, was not today.
Dear Mr. Cashman,I’m the new tenant in Apartment 3N. My name is Dre, and I’m 18 years old. I hope it’s okay to say this, but I found the letter from your son in the drawer. The letter must’ve made you very sad.
I’m writing to you because my father left before I was born. If he ever came back to find me, it would make me really happy. I was thinking. You miss your son. I miss my father, even though I’ve never met him. I don’t know where you are, but if you’re still in New York, maybe we could go have a burger some time.
Yours Truly,
Andre BarcelloP.S. You have some really cool vodka bottles!
Dre didn’t hesitate. He hit Send.
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