The Rental

I bought it as a rental, this little bungalow next door: 2BR/1BA, old walls but solid, nice little lawn with fence, only a few repairs needed. With a rental you stick to the basics; anything fancy only gets you caught up in extra upkeep. The plan was to bring in a steady $300 a month over mortgage to add to my SSI income. That is, until my daughter Jean’s third husband up and left her and she asked if she and Tim, my twenty-year-old grandson, could move in “just for a minute”, an expression that worried me as soon as she uttered it.

When the U-Haul pulled up, I was at my window. I thought it would be a small one, but it was the full 24-footer. Tim ground the gears as he got the truck backed into the rental’s narrow driveway. When he climbed down I saw he was in bedroom slippers — to move furniture. His hair was messed up, his eyes red and raw as if he’d been rubbing them, maybe allergies. I was about to go out when I heard stammering and saw Tim on his cell phone having what could almost be called a seizure. If it was the kind I handled for thirty years as an EMT for Sacred Heart, I’d know what to do — but this one was emotional. Meanwhile my neighbor, Mrs. McCready, was walking past with her Yorkie, both of them watching the whole thing.

Tim has always worn his heart real close to his skin, but the desperation is unfamiliar to me. This from a kid who used to play third base, the “hot corner.” Whispering for that ball, he looked just like a guy on a card. I caught all his games. Freshman year he’s playing Varsity; sophomore, batted .412 with already a few scouts taking a peek. Instead, everything got more “complicated” — his word — and that summer he’s off backpacking through Europe with this older girl named Cheryl, picks olives on Crete and lives in a cave, comes back lanky as that fellow who won the Oscar for that Holocaust movie.

I wonder about these cell phones themselves, the way they ruin kids’ attention spans: everything’s now. Those chirpy ring tones go off and their bodies perk up like Pavlov’s dog. I see them downtown walking together but they’re all on their phones.

I go get my mail, bump into my neighbor, Ralph. I smile but feel it edge into a wince. I have to admit, we retirees seize any moment to shoot the shit — the Seahawks, gossip from the Neighborhood Watch — but that would be a luxury now. “I apologize,” I say. “He’s stressed. Already wearing a path through the grass.”

Ralph nods supportively. “Kids these days, they’re more raw,” he reasons. Ralph has a rental unit too, across town, with his granddaughter in it.

“Why… just tell me why!” Tim shouts. We look on as there come a quick series of hang-ups (hers) and re-dials (his).

I say, “At his age we were off to war. Then you got home and got married.”
We stand there, side by side, silently sifting through our mail, maybe a few very quick memories, before we turn back for our houses.

Of course it’ll fall on me to try to match up the grass. There’s that Generic Blend, they call it, made to hide all the wounds.