Vacating the premises and evicting the ghosts

Our new(ish) tenant is moving out. 

Yes, this was all rather sudden as she moved in only a couple of months ago, but actually I’m not heartbroken.

In fact I’m rather glad.

Relieved, you might say.

Ecstatic is probably pushing it a bit far but I am a firm believer in all things happening for a reason beyond the mere practical and immediately obvious, and although she cited a sudden change in financial circumstances I feel that mysterious forces are at work to make this a positive move for all concerned.

I mentioned some weeks back that she was a newly single mother with part-time custody of a six-year old boy, and I thought at the time that this might prove to be a pleasant relationship for Five – the two children could play together from time to time and would be at the same school which would be nice for them both. What we did not know was that the boy, whom I shall call Kevin, had a destructive kamikaze deathwish streak and liked nothing better to break things (preferably Five’s toys or my plants) or leap off parts of buildings from great heights, and that Susan, his mother, could not rouse herself to say anything more to him about his wild behaviour than;

“Oh, Kevin, honey? I think that the tree might not like it when you break its branches? Okay? You might have an opportunity to make a different choice here? What would you like to do?” as he beat the living crap out of a sapling and stomped it to death.

Almost every day that he was home we would hear him fall down the stairs and wail, stomp ,tumble and scream through the flat.
It was a bad scene.
There was also the small issue of them failing to pay their rent regularly or on time, but we tried hard not to make a big deal of it as she was a single mum – a tough position to be in.
We sympathised

But she WAS a pain. Nearly every day there was a phonecall about something terrible happening in the apartment, usually in the middle of dinner.

Could we come that second and open a window for her?  It appeared to be stuck.

Oh, ok, I’d come over.
Oh, look, Susan. You have to unfasten the window lock and then push it open. They are all like that. We have locks on them to stop them just swinging open on their own.
(Or as I could have said but didn’t; unruly children whose parents don’t look after them properly falling out to their deaths.)

Could we come and turn the heating on? It was broken and she was freezing to death?

Yes. I could.
Oh look. Here. You can switch it on like this. Press on the button where it says “Press here and turn to ignite”. 
Or, you could, in a novel approach, put on something warmer than a bra and running shorts. I don’t want to be rude, or speak out of turn, but we do live in Southern California and it is MAY and the ambient temperature is 68 degrees.
I’m just saying.

Could we come, RIGHT NOW and put up the smoke alarms in every room that she found in one of her boxes.

Yes, of course we could. I’ll come right away.
Um, was she sure that she wanted me to take down the new smoke alarms I’d put up in every room before she moved in and replace them with some old ones? I was pretty sure they were better. Okay, yes, I’d leave them. Can I go now? Anything else?

Could we leave our social engagement THIS INSTANT as there was a swarm of bees in the apartment?

Husband will come right away, no, don’t worry that we’re out at brunch with friends, nothing is too important for you. 
Oh, Susan, did you know that a swarm is usually classified as being greater in number than five or six bees, and look, they are very happy to go outside if you open the window – remember how we open them with the window locks?

All this after having broken the lease and given us fewer than 30 days notice.

However these were all small things.

I think the worst of it was something deep and personal that affected mainly me, and that was that in the two and a half months that she lived here she had not put any furniture into her apartment except a bed and an elliptical running machine, and her little boy’s toys were scattered along the dusty wooden floor of the cavernously empty living room beside the cardboard box they had been brought in.

I know this is not my business.

It’s her life, her apartment, but it got to me, dammit. I couldn’t go in there without wincing.
She never really tried to make any kind of home for him. He never even had his own bed. We heard him shouting at her, we heard him crying, and from time to time we’d see the father drop him back with his mother and the two parents would sit in the cab of the father’s pickup truck talking for ages about their impending divorce while Kevin hung about not knowing what to do with himself.

That bit really slayed me.

It touched a deep, distant and yet still tender wound, like a cavity you don’t know you have until you eat a piece of chocolate that zings straight down to the nerve at the base of  a molar that could crush a rib, but is undone by a grain of sugar.

How many hours had I loitered, alone, while my own parents interminably discussed their awful split? The agony, the loneliness, the slow torture of powerlessly watching your life be systematically broken apart by the very people you love and need the most.
And the little shreds of childish hope you entertain that it might all go away. He is young enough to hold those. I see it in his eyes.
Hell. We’re all still young enough to hold them, even if we don’t admit it to anyone anymore.

He lolled on the balcony looking forlornly down at the children who were playing on the patio. Five asked him what he was eating. He was eating candy. A roll of mints.

Where’dja get them? She asked.

At the liquor store he said.

Five looked at me, baffled. She’s not been to the liquor store, but clearly Kevin knew it pretty well, including all of the candy selection and how it was superior to the drugstore and the supermarket offerings.
This sent another little arrow into my tender heart. I don’t like it that a little boy of six is so au fait with the boozer.
I’m all up for wine o’clock and all, but there are an awful lot of empties in our recycling bin that don’t come from our house and again, that’s just a bit of a shitty blast from the past for me. 

He asked her if she wanted a sweet and she looked at me for permission. I granted it, mainly because I felt so sorry for poor Kevin that I decided he could come down and be with us until his parents were finished their talk of doom.

But the worst thing.
I assumed that he would saunter through the gate in his usual cocky way and just hang out. But no.  He put his little hand through the crack at the side, pitifully proffering it like a prisoner. 

It broke me.

I actually had to step inside the house and wipe away a tear.
I saw so clearly that this awful split, this terrible mismanagement, this period of painful lunacy that the parents were entering (and they surely can’t help it, poor woman, poor man) was going to sentence Kevin to a lifetime of being outside the kissing gate, lonely and unsure of his place within the heart.

He didn’t even have a bed, let alone a proper home. How would he know he was welcome to spend a little time at our ours if he was not even welcome in his own because he didn’t have one?

Susan told me that Kevin was going to live with his grandma for a year so that she and Kevin’s father could each, individually, get their financial acts together over that time.
I felt physically sick when she told me that, on behalf of all of them. What a terrible loss for her, for Kevin, for the dad.
A family, broken.

I know they are none of my business.

I am glad they are no longer going to be any of my business.

That excavating of my own brutal past is something I may have to do in order to exorcise my demons one day, but I think I might prefer to do it with a little anasthetic, and in my own time. Not literally over my head and under my roof in full, living colour.

In the meantime I wish them all Godspeed on their journey. And I hope we get nice, quiet, reasonable tenants this time. I can’t help but think that because I am in a better, happier, more stable place myself we should be able to attract something better, happier and more stable to the space.

No further need to talk about Kevin

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