Chapter 9 - The Hallway That Smelled Like Soup
The building didn't look like I remembered it, even though I'd only been gone a few days.
It was shorter than in my head. Gray brick, three floors, with a flat parking lot in back and a dumpster that smelled sour in the rain. We parked in front that morning and I just sat looking at the front door. The glass was smudged. Someone had taped a pizza flyer inside. My hands were clean now. The clinic lady had scrubbed under my nails yesterday and it still felt weird.
The man — Mr. Harold, that's what the caseworker lady told me to call him, because mister and sir was too formal, she said — turned off the car. He didn't get out right away.
"You don't have to go up if you don't want to," he said.
I nodded, but I kept my seatbelt on. "I know the address," I said. "Apt 2B."
Miss Dana, the caseworker, sat in the back seat. She had a clipboard. She'd said we needed permission to go in, and that Mr. Harold couldn't just take me by himself, and that the manager had to open the door. She'd said verification. I didn't really know what that meant, but I knew it meant checking if I was telling the truth about Grandpa.
I wasn't lying.
I unbuckled. My new shoes squeaked. They'd given me socks and sneakers at the shelter office, white ones, and the laces were too long. I bent down to tuck them.
The hallway inside smelled like old soup and cigarettes. The carpet was brown with dark spots. The light buzzed. I remembered counting the stairs last week when Grandpa died. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven to the landing. I counted them again in my head and didn't say them out loud.
A door opened before we knocked. Mrs. Lacy from 2A. She had curlers in her hair and a pink robe. She stared at me, then at Mr. Harold, then at Miss Dana.
"Emily?" she said. "Lord. Where you been, baby?"
My throat got tight. "Hi."
She came out into the hallway fast and hugged me. She smelled like powder. I didn't hug back right at first, then I did. Her hand rubbed my back.
"I told 'em," she said, looking at Miss Dana. "I told the super that man passed and that little girl was in there alone two nights talking to herself. You his people?" She looked at Mr. Harold.
"No, ma'am," he said quietly. "I'm just — helping."
Mrs. Lacy frowned. "Hmm." She looked back at me. "Your grandpa, honey. I'm sorry. He was a good man. He went last week, Tuesday, I think it was. Ambulance came in the morning. Didn't have the siren on when it left. You stayed after, didn't you? I heard you in there."
I nodded. I couldn't talk.
Miss Dana wrote something down. "Mrs. Lacy, did Emily stay in the apartment after Mr. — after her grandfather passed?"
"Till Friday, I'd say," Mrs. Lacy said. "I knocked Thursday with a plate. She wouldn't open. Said through the door she'd eaten. Friday morning I didn't hear her no more. Thought maybe somebody got her." She squeezed my shoulder. "You haven't eaten since Friday? That what they said?"
I looked at the carpet.
Mr. Harold didn't move closer. He stayed by the wall with his hands together. He was wearing a different suit, gray this time, but the same watch. He watched me like he did at the restaurant, quiet.
The building manager came up the stairs then. Big keys, paint on his jeans. "You Dana?" he asked. Miss Dana showed him a paper. He nodded, not happy. "2B. I was told not to clean it out yet. County said hold."
He unlocked 2B. The lock stuck. He had to push the door with his shoulder.
The air inside was stale. Cold. The heat was off.
It was empty in a way that made my stomach hurt. Grandpa's chair was still there, brown recliner with the arm worn white. The TV was gone. I guessed the super took it or somebody took it. The little kitchen table had one chair. On the counter there was a can of soup, unopened, and a box of spaghetti. The blue box. Unopened.
My chest went tight when I saw it.
Miss Dana walked through slow, looking, writing. The manager stood by the door. "Rent was behind two months," he said. "I put the notice up Monday. Nobody claimed nothing."
There was a white paper taped on the inside of the door. NOTICE TO VACATE. Big letters. Names and dates. Grandpa's last name, spelled wrong.
I walked to the bedroom. The mattress was bare, no sheets. A folded blanket on the floor where I'd slept Friday after I'd locked the door because the noises scared me. The closet was open. Grandpa's flannel shirts still hung there, three of them. His boots were under them. I touched one sleeve. It smelled like him, like soap and cough drops.
"Emily," Miss Dana said softly from behind me. "You can take something small. Something that matters to you."
I knew what I wanted. I went to the kitchen drawer, the junk drawer. It stuck too. I pulled hard. Inside were rubber bands, batteries, a flashlight, envelopes. And Grandpa's plastic fork box. He kept plastic forks from takeout places in a butter tub.
Under the tub was a folded paper. A recipe card, stained. Grandma's handwriting. I'd never met her. Grandpa always read it when he made spaghetti.
Spaghetti with broccoli. Cut small. Butter, not sauce. That's what he made me when Mom left me the first time and I cried. That's what he made last month when I had a fever.
I held the card tight with both hands.
Mrs. Lacy was in the doorway crying a little. "He loved that girl," she told Miss Dana. "Tried his best."
Mr. Harold hadn't come into the bedroom. He stood in the little living room looking at the empty space where the TV had been, at the eviction notice, at the box of spaghetti on the counter. His face didn't change, but his hands kept opening and closing.
When I came out, he looked at the card in my hand.
"Can I —" he started, then stopped. "That's yours to keep," he said.
I nodded and put it in my hoodie pocket. I was wearing my gray hoodie again. They'd washed it. It smelled different, clean, but it was still mine.
Miss Dana touched my shoulder light. "Ready?"
I looked around one more time. The chair. The soup can. My blanket on the floor. I didn't want to leave Grandpa's shirts, but I couldn't carry them.
"Bye," I whispered, not loud. I wasn't sure who I was saying it to.
In the hallway, the manager locked the door again. The click sounded final.
May you like
Mrs. Lacy hugged me again before we went down. "You be good, you hear?"
On the stairs I counted without meaning to. Seven steps. My new shoes didn't make noise like my bare feet had on Friday when I left with nothing and walked because I didn't know where else to go.
