Page 3
Story: Sort of Seeing Someone
A lot of women my age wouldn’t really like it if their landlord came over as frequently as Gerda does.
Moreover, they wouldn’t like her settling into a chair like she’s gathering around a campfire to tell a story with no end.
But Gerda’s company is okay with me because I know what she wants isn’t necessarily to stay and chat awhile.
She wants to do the crossword puzzle that’s in the back of the magazine with me.
For the first three months of living here, when my magazine got delivered, I found it rather odd that by the time I’d make to the puzzle section in the back, the crossword was already filled out. Always the same jagged handwriting. Always in pencil.
When Gerda came by to water the plants and trim the fig tree, which was—and still is— about every other day, I couldn’t help but notice she kept a Dixon-Ticonderoga tucked behind her ear most of the time.
The bright yellow-painted pencil stuck out against her silver hair like a piece of costume jewelry.
I compared the shaky handwriting of the filled in clues such as, “JENNIFERGARNER” or “EMMYAWARD”, with her signature on the lease—also in pencil—and quickly put two-and-two together.
I confronted her.
She confessed.
We compromised.
And so now, Wednesday mornings are puzzle mornings.
I read the clues out loud, she answers, I fill them in.
Her only thing is she insists I do so with pencil.
I insist it’s not the one from behind her ear.
And that’s the story behind how I purchased a pack of pencils for the first time since I was in grade school.
I get right to it: “One across. Kardashian matriarch. Four letters.”
Gerda is silent. Maybe she hasn’t been keeping up with the Kardashians.
“Kris,” I say out loud as I scribble it in. “It’s Kris. Okay. Two across. Ode on a Grecian blank ,” I say. “Three letters.”
I look to Gerda.
“Come on, GG. This one was way before my time. I’m relying on you.”
Nothing.
“Okay. Let’s skip that one. Three across. Wonder Woman—”
“Moonie,” she interrupts. Finally, her comforting, gravelly voice making an appearance.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” she says.
That lead in, though, I do not find comforting.
“What’s going on?” I ask, taking a nervous sip of my now lukewarm coffee.
She lets out a sigh and stares off into the yard. It hits me that what she’s about to tell me is serious.
I set down my pencil and focus in on her while I wait for her voice to crack open again.
I see her face like I’ve never before. In the moment, she goes from being the quintessential old, quirky neighbor, to a vision of…
well, myself. Her sea glass blue eyes are locked with mine—almost in a mirrored fashion.
Her shoulder-length hair is parted down the middle and pinned back with a single, tortoise shell barrette on just left side of her silver hair.
Gerda had beach waves before John Freida made beach waves a thing.
Briefly, I wonder if she was a blonde back in the day.
If so, there’s a good chance I’ll look a lot like Gerda when I’m her age.
Except Gerda doesn’t have a nose ring in her right nostril and her wardrobe consists of clothes that aren’t all black like mine.
She’s also skinnier than me, but who’s keeping tabs?
“You know, I really love that fig tree,” she says, interrupting my moment of reflection. “And they’re going to cut it down.”
“Who? The city? Is it dying? Oh, Gerda. I know the tree is beautiful, but it has always smelled a bit like rotten banana peels and it’s an eyesore. I think it’s probably time,” I say, as if she’s just told me her fifteen-year-old blind, deaf, incontinent dog needed to be put down.
“No, not the city. These people.”
Gerda slides over a piece of paper that was under the pile of mail she carried in.
I pick it up and examine it. I’m far from a legal expert, or a realtor, or an investor, but from the looks of it, a combination of all of those kinds of people has some big plans for this little house on Narragansett.
“They’re going to eliminate the yard, build a three-story beach condo building, and flip the units for triple what they’re paying me,” Gerda adds.
“You sold the house?” I ask, my voice hollow like piece of rotted wood.
She says nothing. Her silence scares me. I take a few more moments to read over the letter, which is still by and large, mumbo-jumbo.
“Gerda, I need to know if you sold the house.”
“I did,” she says, unable to look me in the eye.
“But you love this place. I love this place. You said you’d never sell it,” I rapid fire her way. My intention is not to guilt her, but rather to recite the facts in case she…forgot?
“I do love this place, so much. But Betty is going into assisted living and I decided I’m going with her,” she says. “Do you know much those places cost? I’m talking about the ones with the good food and the pickleball courts. I don’t have that kind of money, dear. Well, I didn’t before the sale.”
Why does everyone love pickleball so damn much?
In addition to being my landlady, Gerda is also my neighbor.
She lives in the house behind me, across the alley, owned by her friend, Betty.
Together, Betty and Gerda are the unofficial Thelma and Louise of OB and have ruled this part of the town for over fifty years.
All the locals here know them, even if they don’t know them personally.
In a way, I feel like I’m renting fromSoCal royalty. Was renting from SoCal royalty.
Anyhow, after Gerda’s husband died, I guess the one-bedroom house felt too big for her and she decided living alone was not her thing.
So, she asked Betty—who never got married—if she was in the mood for constant company and just like that, it was like the 1960s all over again…
maybe with less eligible bachelors spending the night but just as many joints to be rolled—hey, it’s legal here!
Every day, the two of them can be seen strolling up and down Newport Avenue, the main drag, in their tropical-print housecoats and foam flip-flops, getting ice cream, eating fish tacos, and hopping from one psychic on the beach with a ten-dollar special to the next. Goals.
“I didn’t even know you put it on the market. When were the showings?”
“It didn’t happen like that, Moonie . Developers have been after my lot for decades.
This land is a goldmine. One of them offered me three million dollars.
Three million dollars to move on with my life.
How could I say no to that? I don’t make money off you, Moonie .
You cover my property taxes and the bills—which is all I ever wanted.
This house has been paid off for the better part of fifty years and Social Security covers the rest. I just wanted someone to enjoy the place like Larry and I did, and that was you.
But you know what rent goes for around here— normal rent,” she clarifies, and I know exactly what she means.
“There was no way I could afford to leave with Betty if I didn’t take this offer.
Please, you have to understand. It was now or never. It was this way or no way.”
The way she talks about my tenancy brings me back to how I found this rental in the first place.
Before I decided to move to San Diego, I made a “housing wanted” ad and put it on Craigslist .
In it, I explained who I was, why I wanted to move to the West Coast (but not L.A .), what I was looking for in a place, and what my budget was—a humble two thousand a month, which sounds relatively cushy but, in Southern California affords you approximately one third of a crack den with no AC.
Worried about someone stealing my identity, I signed the ad “NannyGirl312”—an ode to the job I was doing in the area code I lived before I left—and figured if anyone wrote back with the perfect place, that I could afford, it was a sign that I could throw in the towel on my Midwestern life as a nanny and that I was meant to move out west.
For weeks, the only replies I got were bogus emails about wiring money to an account in Nigeria, guys looking for non-committal, nanny-themed sexual encounters whenever I finally did make it to San Diego, and realtors trying to sell me places twice my budget.
I had all but given up hope I’d amount to anything other than an au pair for Nora’s kids when Gerda emailed me from her trusty yahoo.com email account.
The subject line: “I think I have what U R looking 4”
How this didn’t go to my spam folder, I’ll never know. And how this wasn’t the subject line for one of the non-committal sex requests, I’ll also never know.
Nonetheless, I opened the email to find a darling description of a place that sounded too good to be true.
I saw your housing-wanted ad on Craigslist. I’ve lived in a little beach cottage with my husband, Larry, for fifty years and I am finally putting it up for rent for the right tenant.
Things we love about the house: a big front yard with real grass—none of that fake turf crap.
A hot tub—which is surprisingly easy to maintain—I can do it for you.
A mature fig tree. Do you like figs? Air conditioning…
window units, but still, it gets quite cool.
A full-sized washer and dryer, stackable.
A dishwasher, compact but does the job. Nice neighbors—my best friend Betty lives behind us.
The gray kitty is hers. There’s a parrot next door, Walter.
One block from the best Rocky Road ice cream (cash only) you’ll ever have.
Two blocks from the Pacific Ocean (I see seals on my walks every day).
Anyhow, Larry died earlier this spring and while I thought I could stay here without him; I just can’t.
I’m asking $2,000 a month, but you have to let me leave my furniture in there because I have nowhere else to take it right now. What do U think?
Sincerely,
Gerda Germain
The furniture wasn’t my style and I’m terribly allergic to cats. But the price, location, and promise of a new life were just what I was looking for. I pounced on it.
“So how long do I have?” I ask Gerda the way you’d ask a doctor how much time you have left after a terminal diagnosis.
The butterflies swarmed my stomach as I dreaded her answer.
In the meantime, I twirled my nose ring with my thumb and my pointer finger, a bad, nervous habit.
Especially since it’s one degree away from looking like a full-blown nose pick.
“Til the end of the month.”
I do the quick math. It’s September 12 th which leaves me with less than three weeks to find a new place to live. Can she even do that? Is that legal? Happy birthday to me…
“But,” she continued. “You should know I completed the sale over the weekend. Funds are already in my account. So much so that…here’s your September rent back.”
Happy birthday to me, indeed!
Gerda slides me an envelope of cash from the pile of magic mail. I take a peek inside and my sudden urge to sue her goes away.
“Wow, thank you,” I say.
“Thank you . You were a great tenant and even better neighbor and friend. It’s the least I can do before I leave.”
“And when is that?” I ask.
“Betty and I are headed to Oceanhearse tomorrow night.”
“You’re moving to an old folk’s home with the word hearse in it?” I ask, as if that’s the worst part of finding out I’m about to be homeless.
“Hur st ,” she emphasizes the ‘st’. “Oceanhurst. And it’s not an old folk’s home.
It’s a Senior Care Club. It’s in La Jolla, twenty minutes away, very fancy.
You’re welcome any time. We can have lots of visitors.
I heard the tuna melts in their restaurant are delicious and the lemonade is always fresh-squeezed. ”
Up until now, I have never had a reason to dart up to La Jolla for a game of old-people tennis followed by a tuna melt with a lady three times my age, but it sure sounds lovely—even down to the sugary lemonade.
In order for that to become a reality, however, I need to still be living within driving distance to La Jolla.
Meaning, I have to find a place in my budget or I don’t know how I’ll be able to make it in SoCal after this month is over.
I check the time on my phone once again and take the last sip of my coffee.
“I don’t know how you do those things,” she says.
“What things? Cell phones?” I ask.
“Yeah. You know, the radiation those things give off could wipe out a whole generation.”
“I’m not following,” I say.
“They’ll never outright admit it, but 5G is part of the government’s plan for population control.”
Just when I think I’ve heard all the major conspiracy theories (Gerda’s other hobby besides crossword puzzles) she hits me with a new one: planned genocide by way of the thing that houses my meditation apps.
“Oh, I see,” I say, appeasing her. Little does she know, I survived my fair share of Charged Lemonade atPanera, so I’m not really worried about what my cell phone is doing to me.
“Alright, dear. I’ve got to get to packing up my things. Tomorrow night will be here soon enough. You’ll be alright here by yourself for the rest of the month, won’t you? After Betty and I leave?”
“Don’t worry about me,” I reassure her.
The sound of her chair on the patio again sends a final shiver down my spine as she gets up to waddle back down the pathway toward Narragansett.
While I may be a grown woman who lives by herself, I’ve never actually lived alone. The truth of the matter is that Gerda has been my watchdog since the moment I got here—and soon, she’ll be gone.
It’s not for everyone, having their landlady come by every day to piddle, or leave the occasional passive aggressive note about forgetting to put out the trash, or to do your crossword puzzles for you before you ever open the magazine.
But, it has been for me. It’s made the transition to another side of the country palatable, homey, and safe.
I can’t say I would love OB as much as I do if it wasn’t for GG.
I look back at the place I’ve called home for the last two years and picture a wrecking ball being driven through my bedroom window in t-minus twenty days.
What are the chances I’ll find another Gerda?
Another lovely old lady looking to rent out a fully furnished beach shack with all utilities included for $2,000 a month or less?
As lucky as I was to have found this spot, renting from Gerda was the exception—not the rule.
I’ve been living in a fantasy land these last two years and I really don’t know how I’ll afford making the move to the real world once Gerda hightails it to Oceanhearse.
Hurst.*
Just then, she stops at the gate and looks back at me.
“What do you think you’ll do, Moonie?”
I shrug my shoulders. That’s the (three) million-dollar question.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3 (Reading here)
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
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- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
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- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48