3rd Floor Apartments by Sheila Zwiebel

 

3D carried the stack of normal-sized thin envelopes back up to her apartment. She refused to read the return addresses until she had a glass of wine in her hand. She had set for herself a certain deadline to find a new school, a new city, a fresh start. That deadline had long passed and now she was running out of time. Her grad school loans wouldn’t clear up on their own, and she had to remind herself that a more prestigious district could help her finances. She had left that world of preparatory academies and boarding schools and wrote off that entire scene. She wanted to make a difference, try something new. This was supposed to be a temporary stop. Just for the school year and this summer’s classes. Her framed degree hung on the wall, slightly dusty, but not at all crooked. It had never hung straight, not in any of the apartments she’d lived in, especially not in New England. As she thought of the seasons of leaves, the golds and reds and cardigan sweaters embroidered with school crests, she knew she had made the right choice, for this past year.

Coming here to this city made all the years in school, all the training, all the baby-sitting of whiny preteens worthwhile, important, actually mean something. Her kids here now—they matter. They have stories. True stories. An honest life that’s far from perfect, but real and difficult, and one which offered the 3D woman a community that she actually cared for, and wanted to make better.

As the contrasts played in her mind—between the dry prep school pranks there and the metal detectors here, the prim slacks and skirts and sweaters there and half the kids here without new clothes—her decisions reaffirmed themselves. This is where she should be. Even if the daily stress and sadness and horrors prompted her to smoke pot and drink to relieve it all. It still meant something.

 

 

The man from 3E woke up from his afternoon nap on the old plaid armchair. He stretched his arms out in front of his chest, went to the bathroom, and came back to the living room. The pile of today’s mail was on the side table, but right next to that stack was a stationery envelope, the kind his wife used for thank-you notes to the kids. He picked it up and the outside simply said “my husband” in her handwriting.

 

 

Well into the night, 3B helped to close up the store and arrived home even more tired than usual. Muscles throughout her body felt sore and her feet ached to be rubbed. She shivered despite the warm night air and her headache from this morning had returned. She refused to listen to what her body was telling her. She just wanted to go to sleep. Before heading upstairs, she opened her mailbox and pulled out the stack of letters. The impersonal thick black ink of the return address on one envelope caught her eye and she stared at it for quite some time. She’d been dreading these lab results from the clinic for two weeks. She opened it right there in the hallway.

“Pregnancy test: POSITIVE. STD/Chlamydia: POSITIVE. Please call the office to schedule a follow-up appointment.”

            The memories flashed through her mind. That one night. That one man. This one letter.

 

 

The man in 3E opened the envelope. “I love your marinara. It saved me today from asking the impossible of you. We’ve been through so much—the good, the bad, all the times in between. Children, grandchildren, births and deaths. You going to war. New jobs, old jobs, the fire, our health scares. Lately I’ve been dreading living even just one day without you. I could never do that. I feel that the bad is much more than the good. The good days are less. And I don’t like that feeling. I don’t want any more bad days. I started writing this other letter to you today, during your nap. It said how I couldn’t live without you during the bad days, how I couldn’t (wouldn’t!) go on. But when I went for some water for my pills, I saw your saucepot cooling. I knew if I could live another day, another week, it’d be because of you and your habits that I love so much. I know I can count on you for anything. You’re here with me every week, making your marinara, so I know you’ll help me through the bad days that I know are coming. You saved me, just by being you. And I don’t want you to forget that I love you.—Your doll.”

 

The bank had sent a letter to 3D, which was odd considering she’d sent a payment check last week sometime. It stated that the balance sum of her loan was now due in full by the month’s end. She slammed it down on the table, stood over it, read it again. Money doesn’t grow on tress, not here! She’d have to leave this place, move back, borrow the money, or just ask for it. But the other people here, her students, they would never even have that option open to them, so it wouldn’t be fair of her to do that. She called the bank to figure out how it could do this to her. “Pursuant to the terms of the loan, ma’am,” said the much too chipper banker, “this option can be enforced at the bank’s discretion.” They talked for a few minutes about options for repayment, of which there was only one: payment in full by the month’s end.

            The bank lady, in clicking around her computer screen, discovered a recent note in the file. 3D clenched her teeth into the phone upon hearing it concerned her father. “As a cosigner of the earliest loan you have with us, he was also contacted. And now that I’ve pulled up that part of the record, it looks as though he must have received his letter in the mail a day earlier that yours.” Her knuckles gripping the bank’s letter turned white and stiff, and she stared at the phrase “due in full” with faraway eyes. She forced herself to breathe deeply, and the banker continued her syrupy rant about how her father had contacted the bank yesterday regarding this matter. “What good news! It’s been paid off! I sure am glad to be the one to tell you. Well, now, that certainly changes things, doesn’t it?”

 

 

The man sitting on the floor in 3L stared at the letter in his shaking, sweaty hands. They had found him. He knew they were after him. He’d always sensed it, but now he had proof. They knew where he lived, he knew it, and now they knew that he knew it. He could stay or he could run. Those were the options. Staying is too dangerous. He’d have to try harder next time to cover his tracks and disappear. Maybe it was all the walking around that ruined him. Next time, he’d be more discreet. Next time, he’d vanish. He had no choice.

 

 

“I always knew this would happen,” said the man from 3L.

“I can’t believe this happened,” said the teacher from 3D.

“I know exactly when this happened,” said the woman from 3B.

“I’m lucky that this happened,” said the old man from 3E.

 

 

They all slipped their letters gently back into their envelopes. They frowned and smiled, cried and laughed, and all took long, deep, fulfilling and cleansing breaths. Their next step forward would be life changing, or not.