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Not Quite Home Alone

You needed only to ascend a few steps to the scarred brown door labeled “2B.” And I was too broke to call a locksmith, I lived with the door that would not lock. The odds were low that out of all the apartments in all of the old tenements in the city, someone would try doorknobs then risk prison time to steal a clutch of clothing and books from mine.

The view from the two rooms was of the building’s concrete interior. The interior clung to the designation “courtyard” only because an unidentifiable vine sprawled from a pedestal. Without that vine, the courtyard would have been busted to the rank of “air shaft.” Neither the landlord nor the maintenance staff nurtured the heliotrope. That the vine survived and flourished without light or tending was like a miracle in a holiday movie.

It was officially Christmas Eve. I would have liked another Jack and Coke, but the unhappy prospect of being a female at the Irish pub, alone at Christmas, propelled me from the bar toward the two rooms. It was unseemly to think of the place as home. “Home” was such an overburdened word. The connotations of love, support and safety were too much to pour onto 
four letters.

I tried to sleep on a leaky, deflating air mattress — which seemed appropriate. After being betrayed in a relationship of more than nine years, I was also leaky and deflated. My psyche appreciated the congruity, even if my spine and dog did not. But four pegs had done the trick, and I passed out, expecting to wake alone in the morning.

The invader did not scale the fire escape. The invader did not jimmy the window with a screwdriver or exercise her criminal genius with a hairpin in the lock. She simply caught the entry door behind another tenant and tried doors until one opened. When I woke, the invader was standing over me, smelling like an ashtray and clutching my dog. She was calling my dog “Phoebe” and screaming about what she wanted.

What did the woman want? What does any woman want? Before you address the specifics, the generalities must be considered. Generally, what a woman wants includes: a lover with whom to draw a warm bath; a closet stuffed with pretty dresses; a scale that subtracts seven pounds; a bank account that speaks to her usefulness; a dog to comfort her; and a burly cowboy who drives the bad guys the hell 
out of Dodge.

If all these desires were given, were necessary but not sufficient, then what, specifically, did the woman want from me? Specifically, the woman wanted a lost man and a dog. Specifically, the woman thought she had lost them in my illegal sublet.

I want Paul? I want Phoebe? Paul, Phoebe! Get out of my apartment! The woman’s earnest cries nearly had me convinced that I had fallen into a bizarre, “It’s a Wonderful Life” alternate universe, and that if I could only wake up, I would be drowsing on wonderful mattress support in the last place I lived. But I had to remember: the last place I lived hadn’t been safe 
or nurturing.

I still marvel at my logic with the invader. I said, calmly, “If this is your place, then where is your copy of the lease?” My dog squirmed away from the invader and I pushed her toward the door. It wasn’t easy. She was stronger, taller and younger. She had curly hair and a cashmere coat.

That sad woman blocked the door frame until I threw my weight against the door. Then she lay in the foyer, sobbing, until the police responded to my 911 call. I don’t know where the woman spent her Christmas, or if she ever found Paul or Phoebe.

It was gray daylight a few hours later, time to buy last-minute gifts, time to hurry to airports and Interstates to connect with the past and greet the New Year. I looked up locksmiths and ordered a bed online. I tacked holiday greeting cards to the wall and thought about how lucky I was to live in a place where no harm had come to me, to imagine the two rooms as home.

Krista McGruder is the author of “Beulah Land,” a collection of short stories