My half room was at the end of Vi’s hall and used only when we were at top capacity because no one wanted it. I went there to open the package.
Since every apartment or house I had rented came furnished, I didn’t have much to take with me. I lived out of my suitcase, and most of what I had was either in the trunk of my car or in storage, like the few albums, the kids’ mementos, and the clothes and gear they didn’t take with them.
The package carried my name and Sandy Hills address.
A set of keys and two yellow Post-It notes fell out of it.
The house has a smart lock system, but I prefer these. I’ll be gone for a while, so please feel welcome to move in and stay. Don’t be stubborn and don’t give a duck.
“Oh my God,” I blurted, staring at the note. Oliver’s handwriting had never been too legible, and it still wasn’t. But I understood every word, including the duck reference. I thought of another package from years ago, one that had arrived from New York, addressed to another place I had once worked at.
“0515#. Alarm. Memorize and shred. Oliver,” the second yellow note read.
You could have chosen something other than your birthday, Oliver.I chuckled under my breath, my heart still fighting to rationalize itself back to a normal pace.
Being his dad’s cleaning lady’s daughter, this wasn’t the first time I had possession of Oliver’s house keys. Though this was different, and I had no intention of using them.
Peeking through the window, I noticed the FedEx van was gone. I couldn’t return them to the sender, which meant I had to keep them for now. Oliver neglected to leave me his phone number, though I could probably get it from Amy or Google. But I didn’t want any more temptations.
In the afternoon, when I knew Will and Lennox were probably off from classes, we texted in our group chat, just a few lines to ensure everyone was okay. They used to check in on me almost as much as I did on them.
That night, dead tired and tucked under the covers, I couldn’t sleep. Again. Not because of the plastic covered mattress under the sheet, the occasional sigh, cough, or sleep talk that reached me from the other rooms, but because of Oliver. Again. I hadn’t thought of him this much in so long and now I couldn’t stop.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Born in January, I was only a few months older than Oliver, but somehow, even at six years old, I knew that what I was witnessing through the crack in the Maddens’ kitchen door was wrong. I didn’t remember my father—he had died of a heart attack when I was two—but I was sure he loved me and had never treated me or June that way when he had been alive. Our baby sister, September, had a different dad who was alive, but he didn’t live with us.
I got bored drawing in the coloring book my mom had brought to keep me busy while she cleaned, and as I heard a squeaking sound on the other side of the kitchen door, I got up and went to peek through it. I saw Oliver. He was conducting his Lego Duplo duck on wheels across the living room with the cord that was attached to it. The plastic wheels squeaked.
I liked Oliver. He was quiet and didn’t speak much, and I had only seen him twice before, but I liked him.
That summer, my mom brought me with her to work. June was in summer school, a neighbor watched over September, and Mom didn’t want to saddle her with two kids. Mom had asked me to keep to the kitchens in the houses she cleaned and, “stay out of the way,” checking in on me every now and then.
There was a swing, and a trampoline, and a slide in the backyard of Oliver’s house, but I never dared come out of the kitchen. It was a really quiet house. And I didn’t like Mr. Madden.
“Chubby little thing, aren’t you?” I had heard Alfred Madden mutter in his foreign accent once when he’d come to grab something from the fridge and saw me in his kitchen, eating meatballs my mom had made at home. “Just leave something for others,” he had continued to mutter, his face already inside the fridge. As if there was any danger I’d touch anything of his.
“We’re not taking anything from anyone’s fridge,” my mom had warned over and over on our bus rides to the houses she cleaned. “So, don’t ask and put me in an awkward position. We have our food, and they have theirs. Okay, baby?” she had added the last two words in a soft voice, bumping my shoulder playfully and leaning her head on mine as we sat next to each other on the bus.
Last week, Oliver had entered the kitchen, sat himself quietly next to me, and asked what my name was. After I told him, he told me his.
“I know,” I said. “My mom told me.”
“My aunt, she’s in Sweden, she got sick, so I had to come back here,” he explained, though I hadn’t asked. It made sense to me. If my mom had to take me to work or have a neighbor watch over my baby sister, then his dad had to send him to his aunt, and now that she was sick, Oliver had to come home.
“Do you want to draw or play?” I asked when we were silent. I wasn’t used to so much silence. Though he probably had a lot of toys in his room, I didn’t want to leave the kitchen without my mom’s permission. Oliver agreed, and we drew together in my coloring book. We were both not so good at it, and we laughed, traded colors, and challenged each other to not go outside the lines.
“Hey, Ollie, that’s not fair. You had the blue already, now it’s my turn,” I had said at one point.
“Don’t call me Ollie. I hate it when he calls me Ollie,” he had said, handing over the blue crayon. I instinctively knew who he meant by “he.” I didn’t like Mr. Madden.
When I took out my sandwich, I gave him half. We ate, our legs dangling above the floor. At some point, we synched our feet’s back-and-forth so we’d slam them against each other’s. For some reason, we thought it was funny.
He taught me how to say “thank you” and “you’re welcome” in Swedish, and I told him stories about my sisters that made him laugh. All he shared was, “I don’t have brothers or sisters, and my mom is dead.”
“I know. My mom told me. I’m sorry.”
“Her name was Luna. She was from Spain,” he added.
