Room for Rent

It was a classic farmhouse, white with black shutters. A wide porch which ran across the front sheltered a double door and three windows on each side of the entrance. For years Eleanor would attach seasonal flags to the pole out front, ones she had made out of old scraps from worn out sails. Now there were no flags, just the rusted metal base that wept brown tears down the white column by the front steps. The shrubs around the porch had grown wild, long entangled branches reaching this way and that. The big house was over 150 years old and was finally showing its age, just three years of neglect having taken a toll on the place. But nobody in town blamed Elly. It wasn’t her fault that her husband had been taken from her so tragically. Nobody could have been expected to keep everything together after finding their husband dead on the kitchen floor from a massive heart attack the morning following his 60th birthday. Three years had passed since the morning that changed everything and now Elly had turned 60. Instead of a barbecue with fifty people, she had spent the night alone in the big house watching reruns of Foyle’s War, letting her cellphone go to voicemail.

She had become the talk of the town. Her withdrawal from public life, while at first understandable, had now become cause for great concern in town. One by one her friends had been shut out from her life and now seemingly everyone had an opinion as to the mental state of their beloved former friend. Some claimed that her and Will had one of those rare, magical connections from which it was impossible to recover once it is lost so abruptly. Others, less romantically inclined, worried that by walling herself inside that old house for so long, she was simply losing her mind from lack of human interaction. Still others fretted over the condition of her soul, having been shocked by her disappearance from church at precisely the time when the place and its people could have done her immeasurable good. But mostly, the good and decent people of Claremont missed Elly. She had been the unofficial mayor of the town for as long as anyone could remember. To lose someone so dear, so essential to the harmony of their associations, had cast a cloud over all of them.

A handful of her closest friends still paid her visits. They would bring flowers for her kitchen table and donuts from Vale’s. Elly would greet them unenthusiastically and try not to be rude, listening to the latest news and gossip. But each time she heard car tires in the driveway an internal clock would begin ticking. Twenty minutes was about as long as she could manage. As she awkwardly began inviting everyone to follow her outside to the driveway, she would thank them all for coming, hug them in the most perfunctory way possible, then wave at them as they disappeared in the pines by the road. Almost every visit found Elly in her pajamas, hair up in a bun, looking skinnier than ever. The friends would talk about nothing else for days…Elly looks like a ghost.

What Elly couldn't bear to say was that the mere sight of them made her sick to her stomach. Each of her friends brought to mind memories of Will, glimpses of his ghost smiling and laughing with them at some forgotten dinner. She simply couldn’t take on a single additional memory. Her heart was full enough. She felt as if she was drowning in faded visions of him, maybe just one more would finish her off. As each month passed she began to draw a strange and dangerous comfort from her loneliness. She knew it wasn’t good for her, she could feel herself slipping away from the world, but the thought of driving into town to have breakfast at Tilly’s felt like a fate far worse than loneliness. Walking through those doors would be to invite a thousand fresh visions of him to rain down on her, something close to suicide.

So she convinced herself that the old house was the safest place to be, the lesser evil of a series of imperfect choices that fate had foisted upon her. She had Netflix. She read book after book on her Kindle. She still found a measure of comfort from tending the garden. But Elly wasn’t accomplished at self-deception. After three years of grief and spiraling despair, she became aware of the role that she herself had played in that despair. By locking herself away in the fortress that had once been the most bustling exuberant house in town, she had denied herself almost all human contact out of a misguided self-preservation instinct which now had taken a toll. An accommodation would need to be made to preserve what was left of her sanity, but she still couldn’t agree to re-enter her old life in town. But, maybe a stranger. At least a stranger to her. She could rent one of the bedrooms upstairs, take on a tenant. One of the guest bedrooms had a full bath attached. It would be perfect for someone, as long as it wasn’t anyone she knew. Maybe having someone else in the house might bring greater perspective. They could exchange pleasantries in the morning, maybe share a cup of coffee. Just a few minutes a day of harmless human interaction would break through the heavy sadness that had gathered around her like a brewing storm. She would post several notices advertising the room for rent in every popular gathering spot in the three towns closest to Claremont. It would have been the perfect use for Facebook if she hadn’t deleted her account. But the condolence messages and crying emojis which had overrun the thing in the weeks after Will’s death had been too much to bear. Now, she regretted her impulsiveness. She would have to depend on homemade fliers on community bulletin boards…

“Looking for someone to rent out one of my guest bedrooms with a private en-suite bathroom in a large farmhouse sitting on twenty acres. Lots of peace and quiet, yet still close to the towns of Claremont, Richland, and Twin Forks. Rent negotiable. No cats. Call for directions. 804-616-6832.”

E. Taylor

She had labored over the paragraph for three days. This was the sort of thing that Will was good at. He would have known exactly what to say. But he wasn’t available anymore. She would have to post the thing and hope for the best. Two weeks went by without a single response. Unfortunately she had been forced to answer every call which came in to her cellphone, which meant she had endured close to a dozen painfully awkward conversations with all of the people she had been successfully ghosting for the past couple of years. Of course she could have avoided this too if she hadn’t cleared out all of the contacts on her phone on one of the darker days six months after Will’s death. Just about the time she decided that renting the room wasn’t going to work out, a knock came on the door on Thursday the 14th of May at 9:11 in the morning

She opened the front door and squinted through the screen. There stood a man carrying a back pack dropping a duffle bag on the porch at his feet. He held a folded piece of paper in his hand. He wore a clean pair of jeans and a long sleeve white t-shirt with a worn and faded Red Sox cap on his head.

She was careful to keep the screen door latched as she asked, “Yes? May I help you?”

He turned the sheet of paper and held it up for her to see. “I’m here about the room.”

His voice was deep with no discernible accent. She looked at the paper and recognized her words, her inadequacies as a writer of public notice bulletins laid bare. She had not specified that she was looking for female tenants only. And now he had asked a question which she would have to answer with a lie. The room had not been rented. He had been the first prospect. She opened her mouth to lie when he folded the paper and slid it his back pocket with the words, “I don’t have a cat.”

“You didn’t call for directions and I didn’t include an address on the flier.”

“Wasn’t hard to find. Lots of information in that flier.”

“And you’re…a man.”

“Yes. I am. Didn’t know if you were a man or a woman. It just said ‘E. Taylor’. Could have been Ed or Elizabeth. Is the fact that I’m a man a deal breaker?”

She started to feel silly for keeping the screen door locked and just a bit rude. Before Will’s death she would have invited the man inside and served him breakfast by now. Her old instincts began doing battle with her new fears. She should have been afraid and cautious for a million reasons, but the man standing on the porch appeared to have the most benign presence, a face with soft features that betrayed not the slightest suggestion of menace. She suddenly found herself unlatching the screen door and walking outside, offering him a seat at the tea table at the the far end of the porch.

“Would you like some coffee?”

“No.”

She found herself surprisingly at peace with a stranger sitting in a chair where her husband sat nearly every morning in the spring. Maybe it was his peaceful demeanor, or maybe the novelty of human interaction.

“I see where it says that the rent is ‘negotiable’. That’s a bit odd, that you were more emphatic about the no cats thing than the rent.”

“Not really,” she said. “Its just that I have never rented a room before so I don’t really know what the going rate is.”

“Do you live here alone?” His question seemed perfunctory, as if he already knew that she was alone, not creepy or calculated.

“Yes. For the past three years. Yes. Alone.”

“Awfully big house to live in all by yourself. Have you ever thought about selling? Downsizing?”

“I suppose I should, and I probably will at some point, but this is my home and I still love it, although it is a lot to keep up with.”

“So is this room you have for rent for a regular tenant or are you looking for a caretaker?”

“Oh no. Just a tenant. I can handle the chores myself.”

He stopped asking questions and began looking the porch over carefully, taking in every detail of the workmanship of its construction. He stood up to get a better look at some detail of the window casement. “Really nice work…” he said to nobody in particular.

She heard herself ask him if he wanted to see the room. He answered yes and followed her inside. She stopped at the bottom of a beautiful wooden staircase, pointed up and said, “Its the third door on the left.”

He smiled at her briefly then walked up the stairs and disappeared down the hallway. She went into the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee. She could hear him shuffling around. It was the way of old houses, each room spoke to every other room. He stayed up there by himself for what seemed a long time. She wondered what he was doing, whether inviting him inside was a mistake. The coffeemaker let out its synthetic beep just as he appeared at the entrance to the kitchen.

She poured herself a cup and sat down at the table grateful to have something to do with her hands, and not knowing what to say to this strangely observant man who was now staring at every angle of her huge chef’s kitchen. Before her husband had died, she had lived in the room. Nothing in all of her life gave her more joy than conceiving of, planning for and cooking a  meal for her friends. For the last three years she quickly passed through the kitchen on her way to somewhere else, anyplace else. Why had she chosen to sit at the kitchen table with him here? 

“You have a beautiful home. Old houses like this were built differently. I find them fascinating.” He slowly walked across from the entrance to the table where she sat then stopped abruptly and looked down at the floor. He extended his right hand slowly, with all of his fingers stretched out to their full length, pointed at the floor at his feet. “But, something very sad happened here…on this very spot, I think..something very, very sad.”

She looked at him, eyes closed, head tilted sideways slightly as if he was trying to hear the story. She should have been disturbed by the scene playing out before her, this complete stranger transfixed directly over the spot where she had found her dead husband, but a calm came over her as she asked, “Who are you?”

The stranger opened his eyes at the sound of her voice, and returned to the present.

“I’m just a guy looking for a place to live.”

“No, what’s your name?”

“Gabriel.”

“You sure you don’t want some coffee, Gabriel?”

“Maybe I will. It smells good.”

“Thank you.”

She walked over to the counter and poured him a cup, then handed it to him black. He pulled out a chair and sat down. She remained standing behind the chair at the opposite end of the table. 

“You’re right about the kitchen,” she said. “Something very sad did happen here.”

“Yes. I’m sure of it. But I’m sorry for bringing it up. I didn’t want to upset you.”

“Its ok. I found my husband collapsed on that very spot three years ago, dead from a heart attack. What I can’t figure out is how you knew?”

“I didn’t know about your husband. I just know things sometimes, things I have no business knowing. See, houses tell stories, especially old houses, if you’re paying attention. But, I’m very sorry about your husband. That must have been horrible for you.”

“Yes. It was. It still is.”

“But there’s something else about this room. Despite the sadness there’s also a lot of happiness here. It feels like a place of great laughter and gaiety. Ha, I know that’s an old word, but gaiety seems to fit.”

She pulled the chair out from the table and sat down. Then she took a long sip of her coffee.

“Before Will’s death, this was very much a happy room. Some of the happiest moments of my life have been spent here.”

“Nothing happy for three years? That’s a long time.”

“Honestly, this is probably the longest amount of time I’ve spent in this kitchen since that morning. There’s just too much regret and sorrow here. I suppose you’re right that rooms tell stories.”

He finished his coffee and sat the cup down softly on the placemat, looked at her with soft eyes and said, “I can understand your sorrow. I know a thing or two about sorrow. But why regret? Certainly you don’t blame yourself for your husband’s death. You said it was a heart attack.”

She looked across the table at the stranger. She desperately wanted him to leave but couldn’t bring herself to ask him. Instead, she surprised herself by thinking clearly about the night before her husband’s death for the first time. She felt the tears forming, shocked by the vulnerability she felt with the man with the ageless face and the odd name…Gabriel. She began.

“It was his 60th birthday, the night before he died. Will wasn’t crazy about parties, although he tolerated them for my benefit. He didn’t want a big deal made over his 60th so I had invited maybe ten of our best friends to the private room at Tilly’s for dinner. It wasn’t a surprise since he hated those, so he had agreed to the plan and to the guest list. It was a delightful evening really. Will seemed to enjoy himself, or at least I thought he did. But when we got home everything went all wrong. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive myself.”

Gabriel reached into his back pocket, removed a clean white cotton handkerchief and slid it across the table to her. She picked it up and held it tightly in her hands.

“Will and I didn’t argue a lot. I mean, we disagreed often enough but never really had big fusses. But as soon as we got inside the house he made an odd comment about one of the guests at dinner that night. We are both really friends with his wife more than him, but we’ve both known them since high school. Anyway he had been seated next to me all night and I had engaged him in conversation like I always do. I didn’t think it was more or less than usual, but Will said a few uncharitable things about how I had been flirting with the guy all night. I was shocked, I really was. It was so unlike Will. Then he went what I thought was entirely too far when he brought up the fact that this man and I had dated for a month or so back in high school. 45 years ago!! After that I don’t know what happened, I just lost it. I said some ugly things and he gave as good as he got and before I knew it I had stormed out of the bedroom and slammed the door behind me in that bedroom you just looked at earlier. We spent the night in separate rooms for the first time in ages and over something so ridiculous.”

Now the tears were flowing, the handkerchief pressed to her eyes, and her words became halting and barely audible.

“I didn’t hear him when he fell. I was down the hall, further away from the kitchen. If I had been in bed with him where I belonged, I would have heard him get up, then I would have heard him fall and I could have saved him. I know CPR, I could have stabilized him and called 911. Instead, I didn’t wake up until four hours after he passed.”

Gabriel got up slowly and pulled his chair around the table to get closer. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Taylor. I can see why you might feel like taking the blame, but you’re being awfully hard on yourself. Even if you had heard him fall, there’s no guarantee you could have…”

“NO!! You don’t get it..I was flirting with him!! That’s the thing I can’t forgive myself for! Will was right! I spent the night of his birthday flirting with an old flame while I should have been paying attention to my husband. That will forever be the last memory of me he had. 

Gabriel set back in his chair and let her collect herself. It was the most awkward of silences. He looked on as she regained her composure thinking of how best to proceed. Finally he thought to say, “And thats why you so seldom come in your kitchen, to avoid your last memory of him.”

She looked up at him for the first time since she began telling her story and felt a surprising comfort for having told it. She could never have admitted such a personal failure to anyone she knew, but out of nowhere Gabriel had showed up and given her the chance.

Gabriel stood up slowly and said, “Now this is why I don’t drink a lot of coffee. It makes me so hungry!”

She smiled for the first time in months and shocked herself by asking, “Could I fix you something?”

“I suppose its been a while since you made a meal in this kitchen, but if you’re offering, I’d love an omelette.”

She smiled again and looked away, “That’s strange. I used to be kind of known for my omelettes. But its been a long time and I’m almost certain I don’t have any eggs or even cheese.”

It was Gabriel’s turn to smile. “I think if you look you’ll discover that you do.”

She opened the refrigerator and saw the dozen eggs, the cheese and butter she hadn’t remembered buying. She looked back at him, bewildered by the events of the morning.

“This is one of those things I was talking about earlier that I have no business knowing.”

He stood by the counter and watched her artful touch with eggs and cheese. She melted a slab of butter in the skillet, cracked three eggs into a clear Pyrex bowl gracefully, adding salt and pepper before whisking with a fork. After pouring the eggs into the skillet she added the ground cheddar onto the light yellow surface, never touching the mixture with anything. Instead she twisted the handle of the skillet carefully with her wrist like she had done it her entire life. When the time was right she suddenly curved the eggs over onto themselves making a perfect crescent of omelette perfection then slid it onto a plate in one tidy motion. Gabriel cut it open with the side of his fork and watched the melted cheese flow slowly out of the middle onto the plate, then took a bite.

“I’m thinking that it would be a shame for a woman of your gifts to tiptoe around this kitchen like you don’t belong here. This is divine, Mrs. Taylor.”

“It’s Eleanor. My name is Eleanor. My friends call me Elly.”

“Then, I’ll call you Elly,” Gabriel answered after taking his last bite. “But I’m afraid I won’t be renting your room. It’s lovely and all but its not the right fit. But I appreciate you seeing me without an appointment and for this amazing breakfast.”

“I must say I’m a little disappointed,” she replied. “I think it might be nice to have someone to cook for around here again.” Then she let out a quiet laugh. “I had forgotten how much I missed it.”

Gabriel stood up from the table and walked towards the front door where he had left his back pack and duffle bag. “Elly, to tell the truth, I don’t think you lack people to cook for. I bet that this town is full of people who call you ‘Elly’.”

Then he put on his backpack and threw the duffle over his shoulder and walked off the front porch, down the drive way and disappeared. It wasn’t until later that night when she found the note he had left on the bed in the guest room. He had scribbled on the back of the flier, Your omelettes are new every morning, just like his mercies.

The next morning, Elly skipped her coffee and stayed out of the kitchen. After sitting at the tea table on the porch for an hour, she got into her car and drove into town. She heard the tingling of the bell ring out as she opened the door at Tilly’s, and that most familiar of sounds gave her a delightful appetite.