It isn’t every day that you meet your metaphorical doppelganger, much less possibly acquire your next residence from them, but that’s exactly what transpired of late. As it turns out, Scott, the realtor who sold my friend W his house, is also a rental agent. Unbeknownst to me, Will asked Scott to help me out. That is how I came to see this cute little midcentury tract home. Now, it’s smaller than I would like, but it has a big, dry, basement. It also has a huge fenced yard. Both my cat and my dog will be very happy there. This is my intention for myself as well. Having a place of my own is just the foundation I need both personally and professionally to get back on my feet and hit the floor running.
Perhaps the best part of all this is that the owner of the house is leaving most of her furniture behind. She’s relocating and renting the house out for extra income. Now, I have radically different decorating tastes than Mrs. B., that much is certain. However, as I basically fled East with my pets and a carful of clothes and other essentials, I have zero furniture to put in any house, anywhere. Having that stress gone along with my housing shortage is 100% worth living with Mrs. B’s cave-like, earth-toned abode until I can finally find my forever home.
When I accompanied Scott to visit the property and see if I would want to rent it, I was rather surprised by both Mrs. B and her household. Mrs. B is about five years older and five inches shorter than me. I was dressed in a teal dress with peacock-feather print leggings. She was in sweatpants and a teal T-shirt. I noticed decorative peacock feathers arranged in a knot on the wall behind Mrs. B. I noted the interesting synchronicity, and then turned my attention to my potential landlord.
Mrs. B is an army vet from the Dominican Republic. She’s also a retired vet who spent her post-military career as a staff veterinarian for the ASPCA. Her house was full of rescued animals. I mean, there were animals in every single room of that house including the basement and the bathroom. And I don’t mean just a jumbled menagerie of many cats and many dogs. Mrs. B. specialized in rescuing exotic birds from their abusive or neglectful owners. There were more birds than dogs in that house.
When she first invited us into her house, I was struck by the smell. It was literally the warmest, cleanest-smelling house I’d seen that day. In front of the window was a 50-gallon fish tank with Koi, Angelfish, Molly fish, Swordtails, Gourami, and a clown loach. They burbled happily just under the water’s surface in their own little school. Mrs. B must have just fed them. Pumpkin spice scent wafted through the living room, courtesy of a wax burner on the table just inside. Before pointing out any other feature, she introduced me to the trio of lovebirds who resided in a bamboo cage in the living room. Hero, Bruno, and Jose sat huddled together on the bar in the center of the cage. Their eyes were closed in what could only be described as cozy contentment as they huddled three abreast on the bar. I’ve never seen lovebirds huddle in a group of three before; they’re kind of known for being “couple birds” for lack of a better descriptor. Yet these three were in their own little world of happy, nestling close. Maybe it works out so well because they are all male.
The fish scattered to the far side of the tank as we moved through the living room and into the kitchen. Before I entered, I noticed the 3-foot dark blue, green, and purple Macaw perched atop its open cage. Her face was a muddy purplish-blue color, and out from it shone piercing yellow eyes gazing upon us with absolute malevolence. Mrs. B introduced us to Marlena the Macaw by warning, “That’s Marlena. Don’t get too close. She gets testy when there’s a man in the house. She don’t like being separated from her boyfriend.” I had no idea what Mrs. Be meant by that, but I could see that Marlena was chewing anxiously on a chunk of a resin tree branch that jutted haphazardly out the far side of the cage. I honestly felt like she would rather have been chewing on my face. Gave me the willies.
Scott and I made a wide berth of Marlena as we squeezed by into the truly tiny kitchen. Scott and I stood side-by-side mere inches in front of the Macaw habitat and listened as Mrs. B pointed out all the things she would be leaving behind for me to use, absent-mindedly remarking at the end that the stove was electric because she had just then realized a potential renter might want to know that. At just that moment, I felt a drippy heaviness drop on my shoulder. Splattered across my right shoulder was parrot crap. “OOOOH. I’m so sorry. She always gets like that when there’s a man in the house.” Scott is 6’5” and 300 lbs, and his build is indistinguishable from that of a grizzly…or a sasquatch. But for some reason, the bird shit on me, the nonbinary potential renter. I guess she saw me as more manly than the grizzly man beside me, and that thought kind of amuses me. It amused me more than scrubbing that shit out of my heavy velour jacket, I assure you.
Mrs. B. handed me a towel to wipe it off and scurried to find some cleanser. Scott and I moved out of the kitchen and into the tiny hallway. Not long thereafter, Mrs. B emerged from her room–two doors down to the right–which was apparently where she kept the caca cleaner. Before she could step all the way out of her door, a small tidal wave of dogs rushed out from behind her to crash on the shores of my flocked peacock leggings. There were two chihuahuas, a husky, and a golden retriever. She called her yappy canine brood to go back into her room and be good. They reluctantly did, mostly because neither Scott nor I was going to pet them. I really wanted to, but given my luck thus far with pets in the house, I thought it better to keep my hands away from their excitable and yapping jaws. I looked to the left and saw the bathroom at the end of the hall. I moved past Scott to get a better look. On the way, I glanced down and noticed that my shins were matted with dog hair.
My gaze fell on the pipe sticking out where the tub faucet should be and then stopped. “I’m gonna fix that tonight!” Mrs. B assured me, as she moved past Scott to address my curiosity and forestall my decision to pass on the house. She knew exactly what I was staring at. I noticed a lonely, homely little turquoise parakeet in a sire cage hanging just outside of the shower. Under other circumstances, he’d have been a little gem of a bird. But after seeing a polyamorous triad of male lovebirds and a menacing if magnificent Macaw, this little gal was kind of…basic. “That’s Pedro. I’m pet-sitting him while my friend is in DR.” I noticed a faucet, a caulking gun, and an assortment of small hand tools were laid out on a faded magenta beach towel in the large, deep, gorgeous old cast-iron tub. I am a bath person, but overly complicated whirlpool tubs are lost on me. Give me one of these mid-century cast-iron tubs any day. The tools in the tub told me that Mrs. B really was planning to fix the faucet spout soon. I relaxed a little.
“Let me show you the basement!” Mrs. B said, gently grabbing my forearm and leading me back across the kitchen and towards Marlena. Mrs. Be lead us to the basement stairs and said, “Her boyfriend is down here. She don’t like being separated from him” Scott glanced at me, eyebrows raised. I just kind of shrugged and followed Mrs. B down the steps. As soon as I got to the bottom step, I saw what Mrs. B. had been talking about–or, rather, who. Perched atop an enormous iron cage was a 3.5-foot brilliant vermillion, saffron, cerulean, and white Macaw with a bright yellow face and eyes. He opened his wings to their full 3.5-foot width and flapped them briskly up and down a few times. He dipped is head twice and then stared me down with a level gaze before emitting a loud, screeching honk. His call was met and matched by Marlena, his erstwhile upstairs Juliet. “That Raoul. He misses his girlfriend,” said Mrs. B. Oh. Marlena the menacing Macaw was Raoul’s girlfriend. “I use to put them together, but then they made babies. I had to find homes for four baby parrots. Never again!” said Mrs. B as she moved in to show the basement.
The bone-dry basement was huge, bright, and fully furnished. The furnace, water heater, and washer/ dryer set were all less than four years old. Could not say the same for the pristine but obsolescent fuse box keeping the lights on in the place. I loved the basement of that house more than anything else. I turned slowly in a 360-degree loop to survey the whole space. My eyes lighted on the cages next to Raoul’s. A smaller red, yellow, green, and white Macaw was inside his wrought-iron filigree cage, munching contentedly on a carrot. Next to him was a bamboo cage with a dark shape huddled in the center, staring out hauntedly. Upon closer inspection, I saw that he was an African gray parrot.
Improbably, Scott’s phone rang. “I gotta take this. I’ll just go upstairs.” With that, grizzly man tromped up the basement steps, leaving me with Mrs. B.
“Do you like the fish?” she asked.
As a matter of fact, I did, and I told her so. “Would you like to have a fish tank? Here with you?” No I would not, but I didn’t say so. While the rest of the house was ho-hum, the basement was fantastic and I could see myself just actually living down there most of the time. Between that and the yard–which I had only seen pictures of, by the way– I knew that this was the place my dog and cat would be happiest, and I already loved the bathtub–a major consideration for me, to be honest.
“Why would you leave it?” I asked.
“Because it won’t make the trip to Kansas. They all die before we get there.” Having recently traveled to New York state from Oklahoma, Kansas’ neighbor to the south, I understood exactly how she felt and knew that she was 100% right. Getting this far in a car with a dog and a cat was pure hell and torture for all three of us. “If you rent the house, would you take care of the fish?” It was very hard to say no to that. Before I could say so, she added, “I can find someone to take care of them, if you can’t.”
“That might be the best thing.” I responded, “I don’t know that I’d be able to keep them alive. I’ve only ever owned three fish and all three of them died within a week. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you for being honest,” she added, sincerely. I asked where she was moving to.
“To Pittsburg, Kansas. My sister lives there,” she said. “I have cancer,” she added, “I’m doing chemo right now.” She paused a bit and then said, nodding emphatically, “I want to be near my family.” She went on to explain that her son lived with his family in Florida and that she didn’t want to burden him.
“That is extremely rough luck, Mrs. B,” I said. “It couldn’t be happening to a kinder, nicer person,” I added ruefully. She cracked a smile at that. After a moment, I looked at her and said, “I truly wish you the best of luck on your journey to Kansas. You seem like the sort of person who really deserves it.” With that, Mrs. B got a bit of a look in her eye, like she was measuring me. Her eyes had become a bit misty, and she wiped at them before saying, “Let’s go. I show you the backyard.”
We schlepped slowly up the steps in silence. As we went, I reflected on the uncanny coincidences at play. This woman was as hardworking and handy as I was. She had clearly done every bit of interior repair work on that house–much like I had my own home. I recognized the bathroom faucet as her desire to finish one last thing to make the house more appealing to a renter. I’d spent weeks doing the exact same thing to my old house before I left.
Mrs. B took in stray animals and cared so well for them that her house smelled only of warmth and love. The only fur in evidence was matted on my leggings. Otherwise the place was spotless and yet completely accommodating of her much-loved menagerie. Both my furbabies are rescues. While the trip East would have been much easier without them, I was not about to part from them. You don’t dump animals you rescued from near oblivion, no matter how hard it gets. I knew for a fact that she absolutely did not want to leave those lovely little fish behind, either, but she knew as well as I that they had a better chance of surviving if she left them here and could re-home them. My being honest about wanting them to live long and healthy lives had actually sort of impressed her, it seemed.
Mrs. B. stopped so abruptly at the bottom of the steps that I almost ran into her. She gestured to a small pile of tchotchkes and assorted small appliances. “That is all I am taking with me from the garage,” she said. “The rest is yours. If you decide to rent the house.” Mrs. B. then led me on a tour of her garage to see the abandoned DIY projects she must leave behind. She showed me a new Shower/tub enclosure with frosted glass doors. “I did not have the time to do that one. You can put that in, easy, if you decide to rent the house,” she said. She gestured to a perfectly vintage midcentury minibar that only needed to be restrained. “You can do that if you decide to rent the house,” she said. We stopped in front of a few more projects scattered around the periphery of the garage. It felt for all the world like I was walking the Camino de Santiago with a fellow pilgrim, and both of us had serious prayers to make at the shrine of our final destination. Finally, she takes me to the back door of the garage, behind which lies the enormous fenced yard. She gently swung the door open, and then stood aside so I could step through and get a better look.
The yard has an enormous hill sweeping from the east to the northwestern edge. I was very happy that Mrs. Be was also leaving behind her a weedeater, two lawnmowers, and a snowblower because I was definitely going to need all three to keep up with that glorious yard. I noticed that a lovely little niche was created by the downward slope of the hill and the curve of the yard. A pit group and chiminea sat in the clearing. Mrs. B stepped in close to my left side. “I need to ask you a favor. For if you rent the house.” Having had to refuse the fish, I was hoping this was a request that I could actually accommodate.
“Lay it on me, mama. What do you need?” I asked.
Tears gathered in her eyes as she turned her face toward the far back of the yard. With a sweeping gesture, she pointed to a tiny tree with a wind chime hanging from its lower branches.
“There. That’s where my first baby is buried. My chihuahua, Maria.” she then swept her hand across and down the hill to rest at what looked like a tiny grotto. “I put that pond in for her. She love it.” Mrs. B. stopped for a moment and stifled a sob. I fervently hoped that whatever favor she wanted, it was something I could grant.
“Will you…look after her?” Mrs. B. looked at me, eyes pleading. “After her grave? Make sure nothing happen to it? If you rent the house?”
Boy, howdy. Did she ask the right person for that favor. I smiled gently and told her, “Ancestors and graves are sacred to me. I’m happy to look after it,” adding, “If I rent the house.” She smiled widely and wiped her tears away. “I hope you rent the house, then.”
In that moment, I knew for a fact that although my life has been extremely rough for the past several months, I was still in a better place than she. “I would never trade places with her,” I thought to myself. A moment passed before I realized that in taking her house, I was doing EXACTLY that. A chill trickled into my spine and settled heavily on my limbs as the realization hit me.
Mrs. B, like myself, had spent her professional career being referred to as “Doctor,” just like me. She was alone and bravely facing an uncertain and foggily dim future, just like me. She barely had anyone other than family to rely on, just like me. She was being forced to part from a home she loved so very much and had planned to live in until she grew old, just like me. She was being compelled to flee halfway across the country to avoid a dread, implacable, and deadly fate, just like me. She didn’t deserve to be going through any of it, just like me. And to top it all off, she was moving to a Kansas town less than 2 hours from Tulsa. I’ve even been to Pittsburg–several times. My college theater department at NEO A&M had a reciprocal course-sharing agreement with Pittsburg State University that I took advantage of.
At that moment, Scott came into the garage. “Well, what did you two decide?
I paused for a long moment, lost in thought. Mrs. B was most certainly my metaphorical doppelganger. We were both shedding dire circumstances and setting forth, cross-country, into an uncertain future with only the hope and intention of making a better life. Mrs. B knows that with me as a renter, her Maria’s grave will be respected and tended, and that thought lightened her mind considerably. The thought of having a mostly furnished place so accustomed to and accommodating of pets lightened my mind considerably. Given that zero of the other AFFORDABLE properties I had seen that day were actually habitable, much less safe for pets, I decided that Mrs. B’s place might be a trade I would have to live with.
“Let me talk things over with my agent, and we’ll get back to you this afternoon,” I finally said. Scott was happy to escape Mrs. B’s feathery menagerie.
“Ok. But if you rent the house,” she asked “you will take care of my Maria?”
My gaze leveled at hers. Nodding slowly in the affirmative, I replied, “If I take the house.”
