As the screen door closes behind me and the smell of dust and cigarette smoke greets me on the other side, my first thought is this is not going to work. Lee's little white dog is growling at me with its paws out. His fur is cropped peculiarly short and close to his body, but looks as if given the chance to grow, might be long or curly. The result is slightly unsettling, and I wonder if he feels deprived of his locks. Ironically his name is Fluffy. "Oh he's a friendly dog, just try to pet him," Lee says, and against my better judgement, I pet him mid growl. The growling stops as he begins to lick my hand happily and I forgive his initial less-than-warm reception.
Over the phone I imagined Lee to be a slightly overweight woman in her mid-50s, but when I pull up and see her peering out the screen door, she appears closer to 70, a slender grandma. When I called to confirm our appointment and told her my name, she said gruffly, "Tiffany, that's a pretty name." The compliment sounded strange said so matter-of-factly in such low tones, almost as if she were talking to herself.
She shows me the upstairs room. We climb the wooden stairs and I go into the small brown room. The curtains are drawn and it's dark inside, making it seem sadder and more tired than it is. It feels like it hasn't been touched or seen for years. I can feel the loneliness pulsating from the stillness of the old TV sitting in the corner, the worn red carpet. Lee tells me she has been living in this same house since she was married at twenty-three in 1963, and I imagine that this room has seen better days. A day when it was new and pretty and lived in by a child or teenager. She takes me through the rest of the house and it's compact and practical. In the kitchen she tells me she loves to cook and would do all the cooking.
"You can eat whatever I've cooked that's stored in the fridge," she says, said in that same matter-of-fact way, no question about it. The smoke bothers me and is a deal breaker, although I don't tell her that at first. "I'll think about it and get back to you," I say politely, but she asks me to tell her if it's a no as soon as I can. I hesitate and tell her I'm looking for a non-smoking environment. "Yeah, I figured," she sighs, a little disappointed but as if expecting it. "I've been smoking since I was ten," she says, and I believe her.
Her husband died a couple of years ago and there is a photo of him sitting on the television, which is turned on to a channel showing some movie made in the 80s on par with movies like The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles. The teenagers in the movie are talking about if they're ready to have sex. Lee points to the smiling photo of her and her husband and tells me she took care of him through his cancer, and now that he's gone it's lonely. "I put up with a lot from him," she says, but it's not said begrudgingly, merely stating the truth, and I can tell she loves him and misses him. She tells me that she needs a tenant to help pay taxes on the house, but she could also use the company because it can get lonely. She has girlfriends but they don't come over too often. "Stay for a bit" she says, and I find that I want to.
Lee pours me a cup of coffee in one of those paper cups you'd find at church or daycare, and lets me scoop sugar and pour skim milk in. I find out she drinks her coffee black because there was a time she was living at someone's house and there was no milk or sugar in the house, so she got used to it. Her brother lives around the block on Avenue A, and she shows me two handsome zucchinis from his garden. She was born in California but grew up in Long Island and moved to Jersey when she was fifteen. Her honeymoon was near Beverley Hills. "That's not in California," she wonders aloud. It's not a question, but I answer and tell her that it is. I learn about the dreaded tenant who lived downstairs for a while, smoked pot, and left burns on the stove top downstairs. She used to be overweight but managed to lose it after her husband passed. She tells me that she took care of her mother in law who had dementia, and one time came downstairs at 3 AM to find her stark naked and exclaiming that there was a Halloween party going on. She played along and opened all the doors and cupboards (all of the towels inside fell on top of her) to usher the guests out. She tells me another story about her friend's daughter who was trying but couldn't get pregnant, and one day Lee saw her and told her she was definitely pregnant. "How could you tell?" I ask. "Her butt was getting big," Lee says.
After twenty-five minutes I have to go to view another appointment, and as I pet Fluffy he jumps up so that his front paws are on the arm rest for me to pet his head. "You like her huh," Lee says to her dog, stated as more a thought than a question "I hope they're all as nice as you," she says, referring to other people that may come look at the room. I give her a hug before I leave, wishing her the best in finding a tenant. I only spent a short time with her but I feel like I know her. She asks why I parked so far from the house and when I tell her I accidentally drove too far and parked further down the road, she shakes her head at my senselessness. I just smile because it seems like she's looking out for me. My last glimpse is the first one I saw of her, peering out the screen door.
I wonder what her voice would sound like if she hadn't smoked for all those years. Somehow the low voice fits with the way she tells her stories, not to entertain but just to be told. I wonder how she spends her days, what she thinks of, what memories of her husband she replays in her head, whether she goes upstairs at all any more. I let myself imagine for a moment what it would be like to live there. To come home after work to zucchini soup left out for me and talk to Lee about the past. It sounds comfortable and nice and a little sad. But the smoke. So I walk down the street to my too far parked car and drive to the next house. She doesn't strike me as the church goer type, but I wonder what she would say if I invited her to church with me.
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I haven't written on here for a while. Maybe because I feel like I don't have anything meaningful to say, haha. But there is nothing new under the sun, and I'm not (and shouldn't) write on here to gain some sort of sense self importance (alliteration ftw). I like writing, but sometimes it's a sporadic urge rather than a consistent need. I realize though, that it's not necessarily about things happening in life that are worth noting, but the meanings you create through thinking about those things. The things God convicts you of through mundane activities which then make them not-so-mundane.
In other news I found out that "420 friendly" means marijuana friendly. I was all ready to respond to an email saying yes, I'd love to look at the place and consider housing with you! when I turned to Ed and asked what 420 was. OH. hahaha.
