The Apartments

But Charlie was not stopping. He continued, pointing now: "See where the hill comes down from what's left of the Old Post Road up there, behind the apartments? See that outcropping of rocks, where the kids like to play? Well, the kids aren't gonna play there anymore 'cause those rocks're smack dab against the apartment building now. No space at all between 'em, and they weren't that way last week. Damn sure weren't. Damn buildin' is suckin'm right in. Alice, you listenin'?"

"I hear you, Charlie," she said. No use lying.

"Good, 'cause there's somethin' else, too. The buildin's taller today again. I think it grew another story. Yeah, I count thirteen now, and last time it was twelve. Damn thing's grown five floors since they built it. Five goddamn floors, Alice. Can you believe it? It was just eight floors when it first went up, remember? Dammist thing I ever saw. God dammist thing. How does a building do that, Alice? Can you answer me that?"

Alice, who knew the question was not really meant to be answered because Charlie already had his own answer, mopped sweat from her brow with the back of her gloved hand, leaving a smudge. The zucchini and other vegetables weren't going to be as good this year. Not as good as the ones the year before and those vegetables hadn't been as good as the year before that and so on down the line. This pathetic little patch of dirt was played out and that was all there was to it. They had added fertilizers and rejuvenators and she didn't know what-all to the soil; they had tried changing what they planted in a particular section, or not planting anything at all for a time, and those things had worked for a little while, but no more. The ground's just played out, she thought, just like me and Charlie and this house. Our time's just about done. They had gotten the last good years out of the house and this little patch of garden, all that was left of a once-prosperous working farm. They had probably produced enough vegetables to feed several good-sized armies over the years, even after the farm had begun to get sold off piece by piece to pay the debts that had inevitably crippled so many private farms, and to make way for so-called progress. But no more. Everything had limits. No, their time had passed and nobody should kid himself about that. This was not farm country anymore and hadn't been for many years. And they were not farm people anymore, either, as much as they might try to delude themselves. Alice could accept the idea of change and their own passing because such things were right and natural, even if what was replacing them didn't have much good to say for itself. But what she was having trouble with lately was the way Charlie was reacting to it, him and his fool's talk about apartment houses moving and growing by themselves.

She picked a few remaining weeds, threw them in the woven bushel basket that had held more weeds over the years than even God would care to count, pulled off her dirty gardening gloves and stood. Enough for today. It was time to get Charlie inside, out of the sun. Give him some iced tea with a big lemon slice, then make him take an afternoon nap. She was tired, too. She would put her feet up and watch some TV. And, if the truth be told, she had no enthusiasm left for the garden. Not now and maybe not ever again. At that moment, she didn't care if the weeds overran the place. Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

She looked at Charlie. He was counting the number of floors on the apartment building again. "Yeah, thirteen. Was definitely only twelve last time I counted. Damn thing's gonna swallow everything up, give it enough time."

"Charlie, come inside. Have a cold drink and lie down. It's too hot to continue today." She took his arm and gently pulled.

"Look at that lot between us and the apartment buildin', Alice. Kids used to play ball there, don't you remember? But now you couldn't swing a bat in that space, f'chrissakes. And the shadow. See how it's gonna cover the garden earlier now? The bigger that buildin' gets, the more it blocks out the sun."

"Charlie, please. Don't think about it anymore today." She pulled at him more insistently.

"It doesn't want us here, Alice. It's gonna block out all the sun and grow right over us. We're not wanted here anymore."

"Inside, Charlie. Then you won't have to look at it." Charlie looked at the hoe in his hand, looked at the ground he had been turning, then at the apartment building, looming massively over their heads. He let the hoe fall to the ground and, in that instant, Alice got a chill. Suddenly she felt--no, she knew--that no one would ever pick up that hoe again. "Too late to put the beans in now, anyway," Charlie said. "Waited too long. Yeah, too late. What's the point?" Alice looked at the building too, now, as much as she didn't want to. It was an awful thing and it was not hard to understand why it upset Charlie so. It upset her, too, but she tried to be more philosophical about it. Was it thirteen stories? She did not count. She would take her husband's word for it. If it was thirteen stories then it was thirteen stories and who cared? But if it was thirteen stories today, then it had been thirteen stories yesterday; yesterday and last week and last month and last year, right on back to the day they put the last cursed brick in place. Yessir. Not eight stories, as he insisted. And she was not even going to consider the idea that the building was closer. If the lot wasn't big enough to swing a bat in today, then it never had been. And if the building's shadow fell on the garden at a certain time now, then it had always done so and you could take that to the bank and earn interest on it. She would not share in his senile dementia, thank you very much and good day.

She walked with Charlie through the back door of the old farmhouse, once so isolated, now so surrounded, holding onto his arm the whole time. She became aware of how much like an old man he shuffled. Well, why not? At eighty-six he is an old man. Eighty-six last January.

They slipped out of their dirt-caked gardening shoes at the rear entrance. She brushed dirt from their cuffs then led him right into the living room where she situated him in his favorite reclining chair, setting aside the rule about getting out of his work clothes fist. He sank into it with a long sigh. She reached down and grabbed the wooden handle that raised the footrest and pulled it up. Charlie's skinny legs went out straight. "Now, you just stay right there and I'll bring you some iced tea. There'll be no more gardening today." Or any other day, came a thought, and she felt the same chill she had felt outside when she looked at the hoe lying carelessly where Charlie had dropped it. Charlie did not reply. His eyes were closed and his breathing had slowed. He would be asleep before she returned with the tea, but she would make it anyway and put it on the table by his chair.

In the kitchen, Alice made iced tea from a powdered mix. As she did, she looked out the kitchen window. From it she could see their property as it climbed up to meet that small, potholed stretch of what was called the Old Post Road. A few other private houses remained on it, anachronisms like her own house and the road itself, all going back to a day when that was the only road going through, little more than a winding country lane, long before the existence of that brawling madhouse called the New Post Road that now ran on the other side of the house. She recalled how beautiful it had been then, when this house had been at the center of a thriving farm. And how young she had been, only seventeen when she married Charlie, then twenty-six and coming into full ownership of the farm. Charlie had lived in this house since he was three years old, and she had lived here a respectable piece of time herself. And maybe it wasn't such a good thing, she thought, living all these years in the same place. Maybe we should have sold out completely and left a long time ago, instead of staying to watch the old way of life rot away around us like something not properly buried.

They had worked the farm together, bringing it to its peak of productivity, and then had watched together as the area began its inevitable change, becoming more populous and cluttered with buildings, ceasing to be a farm community, or any kind of community at all, for that matter. The growth seemed pointless, directionless; growth for its own sake. Things grow because they can, Charlie said. Even buildings. And now, today, they lived in a sprawling dirty borough of a sprawling dirty city, and the working farm was reduced to a memory and a played-out garden patch.

Also visible from the kitchen window was the apartment house. She looked at it, looked at all the windows from which so many strangers had watched the two old poops tend their pathetic little garden. Charlie insisted the building had only been eight stories high when it was completed, but was now thirteen. She had long since refused to listen to such talk, of course. The first time she had counted the floors herself and found the number to be nine, not eight, then ten, not nine, she had brushed it all aside with a wave of her hand and a shake of her head, insisting that she had simply miscounted in the first place. After that, she had refused to count again and told Charlie not to bother her with any more damn-fool notions about buildings getting bigger by themselves. Or closer. That was another of his ideas. For years, an empty lot had remained as a buffer between the apartment building and their house. At some point, Charlie began insisting that the lot was getting smaller, that the distance between them

was decreasing even as the building was getting higher. But that was nonsense. The building had always been as high as it was and the lot as wide as it was. Or as narrow, depending on your viewpoint. And so she had begun to worry about Charlie's mind.

Except...except that sometimes she thought that maybe there were more people leaning out more windows to watch her and Charlie as they tended the garden. And not only more people, but also that they were more distinct, not just fuzzy blots in little rectangles against red brick. As if they were closer...

"Ridiculous, Alice," she said aloud. "Brain rot must be airborne. You're catching it from that fool of a husband of yours!" She completed the iced tea, placed ice cubes in glasses for them both, stuck a generous lemon slice on each glass and carried them into the living room. As predicted, Charlie was asleep. She set his glass on the table beside his chair, anyway, then sat on the couch. She would watch some television.

From time to time, she looked at her husband, always with the same hope: that when he left her, he would go peacefully in his sleep.

Charlie did just that. In fact, he did it that very night.

Alice did not go home right away after the funeral, but spent several days with her daughter, Rose. Rose offered Alice a permanent place in her home, but Alice declined. After three days, then, Rose drove her back.

"Are you sure you're going to be all right, Mom?" Rose asked again when they arrived. "You know you don't have to live alone."

"I know that, sweetheart, and that's very kind of you. But I'll be fine. I feel closer to Charlie here."

"All right, Mom. But you know the invitation stands. C'mon, then. I'll carry your bag inside for you."

The two women got out of the car and walked toward the apartment building. On the sidewalk in front of the main entrance, Alice stopped. On an impulse, she tilted her head back and looked up, trying to see the roof, but the building was so tall that her neck began to hurt before she could make it out. She lowered her head and looked from left to right, traveling the building with her eyes in both directions. It seemed to go on forever, so far each way that her aging eyes couldn't be sure where the corners were. Had it always been this big? Along with that odd question came another unbidden thought: that she could not remember what had been here before the building. I'm older than the building is, certainly, and I ought to know, but...

"Mom? Are you all right?"

"What? Oh, yes. I just ...”

"Just what, Mom?"

"Oh, never mind. It's hot and I'm feeling old, is all. Let's go inside and I'll make iced tea for both of us." She wondered if Charlie's last glass of tea was still on the table beside his chair. She thought that it probably was and felt another twinge of things forgotten.

Together, Alice and her daughter entered the lobby of the apartment building. There they got on the elevator and rode it to Alice's apartment on the twentieth floor.

THE END

Bio: Mr. Cushnie will be 70 years old in February and has been writing stories since about 1980 at the advice of a psychologist. This story can be seen as a metaphor for changes in the neighborhood he lived in back in the 1950s.

E-mail:Peter Cushnie

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