Maid - Stephanie Land Page 0,48
no cash to buffer what I actually needed to survive.
Every little bit of donated money from friends started to add up, and I found myself with nearly $500, and Travis offered to match it. Finally, I could afford a studio apartment in Mount Vernon in an old house that had been divided into three apartments. Our studio had once been the front living room and an attached sunroom. For $550 a month, we had a bathroom with a tub, a tiny kitchen with a full-sized fridge, and a view of the whole city through a wall of windows.
The landlord, Jay, and I emailed back and forth about the place, and he said I could drive over and look at it. I stopped by after work that day, before I had to pick up Mia, to check it out. I’d known it was small—a studio apartment implied that. But standing in there, in that room smaller than the one I’d used to watch movies with Travis for the past year, for a moment I wanted to turn away and refuse. I thought back to the apartment Mia and I had had in Port Townsend, the one by the fairgrounds with separate bedrooms, a dining room, and a washer and dryer. This place had none of that. This was a grimy room above a freeway that I would struggle to afford.
Where I stood, the floor was old, possibly the original wood, with large cracks in between the planks. Through French doors was the sunroom that looked over the city. Under the windows, there was a bench with tops that lifted up so I could store things in there, but someone had left a bunch of blinds and curtain rods. There was a dark green carpet, and I mentally tried to imagine where Mia’s bed and toys would go and wondered if my dresser would fit. In the other section, L-shaped cabinets with an electric stove, fridge, and sink served as a kitchen. I walked from one wall to the other. About thirty paces.
“It’s great,” I said to Jay on the phone. “I’m here right now. It’ll work for us, I think.”
“Your daughter’s three?” he asked. I hoped he wasn’t rethinking his offer to rent to us.
“Almost,” I said. “But I work a lot, and she goes to her dad’s on the weekends.” I walked over to the windows off the kitchen, looking down at the cars speeding by. “We probably won’t be here very much.” I involuntarily held my breath. That was only halfway true.
“Okay, that’s no problem,” he said. “Did you want to stop by to get the keys this weekend? You can drop off the rent and deposit then.”
“Can I make payments on the deposit?” I asked, surprised at my boldness. Maybe standing in that space brought on a nothing-to-lose feeling. “I can do fifty or a hundred bucks a month. I just, uh, this move is kind of sudden and I don’t have anything saved up right now.”
There was a silence. I pulled at my lower lip with my teeth. “Sure, that’s fine. A hundred bucks extra for the next five months’ rent would be fine.”
I breathed out, almost laughing. “Thank you so much. I really appreciate that.”
When I met Jay at the apartment to give him a check for the first month’s rent and get the keys, he and his wife were just beginning to paint the ceiling of my new living room and kitchen. He was a plain-faced, brown-haired guy about my age. His wife, who introduced herself as Mandy, was much smaller than me in just about every way. They looked like they were good people. Nice. Trustworthy. Probably hardworking and honest. I hoped, anyway.
“Looks like you guys have your work set out for you,” I said, watching them piece a long pole together.
“Yeah,” Mandy said, rolling her eyes. “At least the grandparents agreed to take the kids for the day.”
“Exactly what we wanted to be doing on a sunny Saturday,” Jay added. They both looked at each other. He let out a sigh.
I smiled, waved, and thanked them for their understanding about the deposit. I imagined spending a Saturday next to my spouse, painting the walls and ceiling of an old house that we owned and rented out, while my parents watched the kids. That’s exactly how I’d want to spend a Saturday, I thought as I drove back to Travis’s. I had to start packing our stuff, had to figure out what major things