A knock on the door roused Allen from his quiet work. Usually delivery drivers and such rang the bell instead; a knock was more likely to be someone from the neighborhood. He sluggishly got up to answer and the knock sounded again. He was being too slow.
"Just a moment," he called, walking through the house that he kept mostly shuttered against the daylight when he was working, to avoid distraction.
He opened the door to a blaze of late March sunlight framing a head of long chestnut hair that belonged to Rosa, from next door.
"Hello, Allen," she said. "I was in the neighborhood and wanted to stop by to see how you're doing."
"In the neighborhood? You live here."
"Oh, you don't know yet. Not anymore, I'm afraid. I broke up with Mike a few days ago. I just came back for the rest of my things."
"Oh, no! I'm so sorry, Rosa."
She shrugged. "It's been coming for a while. I'm more relieved than anything else. But how goes it with you?"
"Please, come in," he said, avoiding having to answer her immediately.
She was in her mid-twenties and had been living with Mike next door since Mike's parents had downsized to a condo and rented the old house to their son for a nominal price, two years ago. He had brought in two other housemates around the same age to split the rent.
Allen had her sit down in the living room while he poured them coffee, which he always had ready during his working hours. He brought it to her and sat with her on the sofa, stopping on the way to roll up a blind on the front window and introduce some light. Her deep brown eyes, as always, seemed to hold secrets beyond her years. Now they also looked at him with genuine concern.
"I'm okay, I guess," he said, in belated answer to her question. "It's been four months. I suppose you could turn that around and say it's only been four months. Either way, I won't ever be the same, but I'm getting through each day. Each one is a little easier. I have work to focus on, and that helps."
"How are your children?"
"They seem to be doing all right. Either Tom or Eric calls me almost every day to check up on me. They don't tell me that's what they're doing, of course. It's all about what they are up to themselves, letting me know they're okay. They always tell me how much they miss their Mom."
His face was downcast, betraying a deep sadness. Rosa was moved to slide next to him and lay a hand on his shoulder.
"I miss her too. She was always friendly to us, treated us like neighbors. She said one time that it was good to have younger people in the neighborhood, that it made it more like the real world. Even if we did sometimes have parties and play loud music."
Allen had to smile at this.
"For what it's worth, I agreed with her on that," he said. "So I'm sorry that you're leaving."
"The others will still be here, probably rowdier than ever. I was the moderate in that house."
"I'm sure I can deal with that somehow."
"Is there anything I can do to help, Allen? I have some spare time now and I'm not too far away. I could come over and help you with the house. It must be a lot to keep up with by yourself."
He thought for a second. It was early spring. The yard—
"Now that you mention it, there is something. Would you be able to look after the garden a little? I've seen you before planting flowers next door. I don't know much about such things myself."
"Oh, wonderful!" she exclaimed. "I loved Grace's rose garden. I'd be happy to take care of it."
"I could pay you for your time."
"Oh no, I won't hear of it. It will be my pleasure, seriously. We're friends, aren't we?"
"Of course."
He led her from the darkened house into the bright back yard, where the dew had been dried by the late-morning sun, and showed her where the tools and supplies were kept, in the tiny shed next to the garden. The daffodils along the fence were already in bloom, painting the fence-line in yellow. The rose bushes were there in their rows, almost bare, but starting to show green leaves. They would need care soon for their blooming to come later.
"Anything you need that's not here, just let me know," he said. "I'll get it for you. I'll leave this unlocked. You can come by and work on it any time you want. You don't have to let me know you're here."
"It's all right if I pop in to say hello sometimes, isn't it?"
"Well, sure. You're always welcome, Rosa."
"Everyone in the neighborhood is thinking of you. And I am, too. Well, I'd better go, I have work in an hour. Take care of yourself, Allen." And she held out her arms, offering a hug.
Allen accepted it, opening his arms to her. Hers went around his neck, and then her young body was against his, the light scent she wore wafting into his head. He hugged her back, pressing her warmth to himself for one more moment before he released her.
"Thank you, I will," he said. She gave him her wide smile, eyes sparkling above high cheekbones.
He watched her walk away, her long hair tied behind her and swaying with her movements. She was wearing running pants and a simple top over her slim figure. Her look reminded him of Grace in their younger days, giving him a pang of loneliness.
Then she turned briefly and waved, as if she had known he was watching.
He waved back, smiling.
Standing at the kitchen window while preparing food or washing dishes, he would often catch sight of Rosa coming to tend the garden. She came mostly in the late morning, having an afternoon to shift at her job. He would sometimes stop and watch her prune the bushes, water, or put down plant food.
Once it had been Grace who knelt there, nurturing her beloved roses. His thoughts at times carried him back helplessly to their last months: the time of hospitals, the journey to sit beside her that was the center of each day, the machines to which she was tethered that tracked the pulse and breath of her life. He remembered the ups and downs, the cycle of hope, relapse, renewed hope, and finally, the loss of hope.
To shake his remembrances, he would bring Rosa a cold drink and sit with her on the wooden bench overlooking the garden. He would praise her work and convey whatever little bits of family news he had. She would explain what she was doing that day and why, point out the different varieties of roses that were growing there, and share a little of her own personal news. No one new in her life yet. She was up for a promotion at work.
The spring grew warm, and she would now appear in shorts and short sleeves. Her smooth limbs, the color of desert sand, awakened old longings in Allen. Her skin glowed with perspiration as she worked. Her shirt grew damp and clung to the outline of her young breasts, nestled in a sports bra. When he was out in the yard when she arrived, he would greet her, wishing it were a new, thirty years younger version of himself bidding her good morning. He wondered if she noticed a difference in his attention.
He studied himself in the mirror after a shower, already knowing what was there to see. His graying hair, starting to become thin on top. The bags under his pale blue eyes, and the skin on his throat starting to loosen. The stubborn twenty pounds around his middle that refused to go, however closely he adhered to his diet and walking regimen.
I'm falling apart
, he thought,
little by little, but it's starting
.
He wondered what he could do with the rest of his life. With Grace taken from him, there wasn't much left of his old ways. Should he try to find new friends? Probably, but it would be a hard slog as it had always been for him. A new career? That was laughable. At his age, opportunities were few, and if you had a job you stayed in it or risked becoming unemployable. He had a vision of himself just fading away, an old man who once meant something to the world but who had increasingly become irrelevant. He searched himself for something that would let him avoid that fate, but couldn't see it. Just taking each day for what pleasure might be in it was what he had now, but it could not be enough forever.
On a morning in late April, with the sun emerging from the clouds of an early rain shower, he became aware of voices being raised in the back yard. He left his keyboard and went to the kitchen window.
It was Mike, not at work today for some reason, who was standing in his yard having a dispute with Rosa across the chain-link fence that separated the properties. He was gesticulating angrily as he spoke, and Rosa was answering him back heatedly, but Allen could not make out the words through the closed window. He opened the kitchen door and stepped outside.
"—and I don't understand why you just happen to be there. What are you doing, spying on me? Or are you just there to taunt me? What is it, bitch?"
