SOLTuesday: A Short Story

(This is a lightly fictionalized account of something that's actually happened. I'm wondering how it reads to people who don't know me.)

She hates me. The woman in 4B. I live in 2B. She wants my apartment. I’ve lived here for 50 years. My husband died here, and so will I.

            She hates me, the woman in 4B. She has three children under 10. Sometimes I see them on the street. I take the stairs instead of the elevator. I’m 78. As long as I can walk up the stairs I will walk up the stairs. 

            Our apartments are the same, but not quite. They each have two bedrooms. But mine has long hallways, hers doesn't. My halls are lined with bookcases; I don't know where she keeps her books. Her kitchen is smaller, her living room is bigger. But the two bedrooms are why she hates me.

            The person who owns the apartment next to mine died. His wife doesn’t want to die in the same apartment, she wants to sell. The woman in 4B thinks if she had my apartment, she and her husband could buy the apartment next door and have lots of bedrooms, lots of room for the three children. The boy is the oldest. The girl is maybe seven, and there’s a new baby.

            Her husband sent an emissary, the real estate agent who lives in 2D.  She said I had many opportunities: I could buy the next-door apartment, put a door between them, rent to a roommate whose rent would pay the extra maintenance, and I’d have another person who’d notice if something went wrong with me. I’m old, after all.

            Or I could trade apartments with the family in 4B. The apartments are the same. The fourth floor would have more light. The apartments are the same. I’d be doing a good deed for that family. I don’t even know them, even though they moved in two or three years ago. I take the stairs, not the elevator.

            But. But. But. I don't want to move. 

            She hates me. I imagine her conversations with her husband. "What's wrong with the old bitch? The apartments are identical. There's an elevator. She'd have more light." And I wonder, why did they have a third kid when they knew they only had two bedrooms?

            But the apartments are different. I love my long hallway. I love my kitchen, which I renovated 10 years ago. Those two extra flights of stairs might be good for exercise, but what about those times when my bladder needs release as soon as I walk down the street to my building? I hate potty talk, but at a certain age bodily functions become insistent. And most important, my husband never lived in that other apartment layout. His memory would get lost without the long hallway and bookcases.

            I tell her husband, no.  I invoke my husband's spirit. He's fine about it. But I know she hates me. 

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It’s Slice of Life Tuesday over at Two Writing Teachers. Check out this encouraging and enthusiastic writing community and their slices of life every Tuesday. And add one of your own.

Slice of Life Tuesday

     I'm taking a writing workshop at the moment, and today's assignment is to write two short stories, 200 words max, in 4 grafs, set in two different cities or towns. Once we get to the workshop, our instructor will have some "surprising" way of presenting the stories. Since we've been working on upending chronology, I wonder if she will have us mixing up the stories. But I thought I would share the stories as I've written them here, and tomorrow I'll let you know what they turn into.
     (For those of you who may have read my last Slice of Life, I want to assure you that things are better, not least because my husband has taken over the bandaging himself. I should also credit him with step 21; that's his dream, not mine.)

I Don’t Notice

            I don’t know who I am talking to. I don’t know whom I am talking to. Mrs. McHenry knows if I should say “who” or “whom.” She marked my 10th-grade papers for grammar. Never spelling. I’ve always been good at spelling.

            The cardboard sign I made for when I sit on the street is perfectly spelled, but I’m not sure of the grammar. “Im lost in New York City need to get to Richmond, Va. for my mother’s funeral. Please help.” Should I put a comma in there somewhere?

            I lost everything when my boyfriend took my suitcase. I didn’t notice. I’m napping at his friend’s apartment. Not really napping. I smoked a joint right after breakfast, well, it’s not a joint, it’s crack.

            I don’t notice when he takes the suitcase. I don’t notice when he doesn’t come back. I don’t notice when his friend says I have to leave. I notice when he pulls me up from the chair and pushes me out the door. I notice I don’t have my suitcase. I notice when I pawn my pearl necklace so I can eat dinner. I notice how cold it is on the street.

What’s Your Language?

            We drove into Dubrovnik from the airport. The winding road up the coast offered glimpses of the blue Adriatic, diamonds of sunlight floating on the surface. Thank god they drive on the right side of the road here.

            At the hotel I let Dominic talk to the desk clerk. Dominic seemed to inhale languages as soon as he stepped off the plane. I watched him chat up the clerk in his baby-Serbo-Croatian. The clerk laughed, shook her head, repeated some word several times.

            At lunch in the old city, inside the medieval walls, Dominic told me the clerk almost didn’t give us a room because she thought he was  Serb. “There’s no Serbo-Croatian language anymore,” he mused. “She said I need a dictionary to translate from Serbian into Croatian.” I didn’t know. I was a typical American, monolingual and condemned to stay that way.

            Dominic led me up to the top of the wall, where we walked until we could see the water. I tried to imagine the war, when Dubrovnik was bombarded. Dominic said, “Wait here,” so I watched sunlight drip into the Adriatic, the bright fade to glow, the shades of blue deepen to navy. The stone wall chilled in the dark.