Chapter 18: Curtain Rod

The man Dad called turned out to be a retired postal supervisor with a duplex on Kimbrough Avenue.

It had two bedrooms on the second floor, four blocks from my school.

The living room window looked out over a Little Free Library.

I signed the lease on Labor Day, at the hood of his Buick, and he waived the deposit.

"Your father covered my route for three weeks when I had my knee done," he said. "In 1996."

By Tuesday afternoon I had a mattress, a table, and nineteen boxes, and every box had a different handwriting on it.

Dad had claimed the smaller bedroom for the winter.

He'd put his recliner in the living room, facing the door.

He sat in it in his socks, holding up the mail.

"I like to see who's coming," he said.

"It's a duplex, Dad."

"That's when you most need to see."

The only thing I hadn't done was hang the curtain.

I'd bought the rod on Sunday.

It was brushed nickel and adjustable.

It came with four brackets, a bag of screws, and a diagram that appeared to have been drawn by someone who hated me.

I had marked the wall in pencil.

I had stood on a chair with a drill I'd borrowed from the man downstairs.

I had made one hole in the plaster, and it ran straight on into a different universe.

At 4:30 someone knocked on the open door.

Russ stood on the landing in his green crew shirt with a toolbox in one hand and a stepladder under his arm.

He had grass on his boots.