Roommate

Busy now that it's spring. In the time since my last post, I moved into an apartment with Monica and her dogs, Burning Sand and Loving Hand. Moving is always emotional. There are always loose ends. There is something of a push and a pull in every direction that you move. Now that I'm somewhat settled in my new place, I feel like I can think again. It has been many days since I could entertain a thought outside of thoughts of moving. Today, I wondered if I would be a good roommate. What makes a good roommate? "What makes a good roommate?" I asked Monica. She was organizing things in kitchen drawers. There were boxes on the table and on the floor. So many boxes. "I don't know," she said. "Respect? Care? Understanding?" Then she stopped what she was doing and said,"Not to scare you or anything, but I've never had a good roommate. Once," she continued, "I lived with a roommate who was so excited for me to leave that she invited over the person who was going to move into my room one morning. I was sleeping when they knocked on my door, opened it, measured my room while I was still in bed, and talked about the future like I'd already left. Right there, right there in front of me. My heart broke." Monica put a rolling pin in a drawer, then removed it like she didn't like the way it looked inside.

A roommate is still a new concept to me. I wonder how different, or how similar, it is from having a cell mate. My cell mate. Have I written about him already? His name was Eric and he was six years older than me. Even when he smiled, I could see how sad he was. He was tall, but had thin toy-like legs. There was something about the way he sat that reminded me of a kettle sitting on the stove ready to be heated. There was potential. He wanted to boil over. When I talked to Eric, I felt that he would never open up to me. When we slept, his snoring sounded like he was on the verge of saying something. Once, I thought he was saying my name. I answered, "What is it?" excited that he might finally tell me something. We were both murderers. But Eric, I would learn from others, had accidentally killed his daughter. We were cell mates for nearly five years before I felt that he started noticing me. I watched him pull his hands out of his pockets, look at them, and put them back in. He said, "I like pockets, Curt." I was so shocked, I didn't know what to say. So I didn't say anything.

Monica filled a bucket with water and soap to wash the floor and set it in the middle of the kitchen. "If I'm a bad roommate, would you tell me?" I asked.
"Depends," she said. "Once, I told a former roommate of mine that I thought she could be better."
"Then what happened?"
"It wasn't really about being a better roommate. It was about being a better friend and a better person."
"Did she understand what you really meant?"
"Yes, I think so. She became a better roommate, taking out the trash and doing her dishes, but became a worse friend. But maybe she became a better person. I don't know. I don't know." Monica dragged into the kitchen a rag, push broom, dustpan, and even floor wax." It depends on what kind of person you are," Monica said. "I would be honest with you if I thought it would do some good. With that roommate, I don't know if it was really good, what I said. I lost a friend and gained a roommate."
"I see," I said. "Would you want me to tell you if you were a bad roommate?"
Monica laughed. "Sure, Curt."

Eric and I were cell mates for fifteen years. In that time, we watched each other grow old like how I imagine husbands and wives do. His hair grew thin and his arms became thick. My hair grew thin and my eyes became smaller. I tried to imagine what Eric would be like outside of prison. This was the day before he was set to leave. "I'm leaving, Curt," he said that night.
"I know," I said. "I'm excited for you, Eric."
I imagined Eric wearing tasteful, plain clothes. Someone on the outside might think he was brutally simple. They might think his nostrils were large. I imagined Eric eating alone in a kitchen at a round table with a brave look on his face. I imagined Eric sitting in a park and looking at the people on foot, then the cars, and then the people on bicycles, and think that everyone was in a hurry. Eric told me a story that night. He told me many stories. They were funny. It was the most I heard him talk. He must have been nervous about being outside prison. Most of the stories were about his daughter. His voice was pebbly when he told these stories.

I put away the dishes, the bowls, the glasses, the mugs. Monica, behind me, was sweeping up the floor, flattening the boxes. "Curt," she said. "I think you'll be a good roommate."
"Thanks," I said. "What happens when you have a bad roommate?"
"You move on," Monica said. "Sometimes it's easy and sometimes it's hard."
"When was it the hardest for you?"
"Once, I had a roommate, and we had mutual friends. My roommate and I had a falling out, and it seemed like all the friends we shared didn't want to hang out with me anymore." She stopped sweeping the floor. Her face became soft. "It was always hard to see my roommate get in a car of a friend that we shared and know that I'd been consciously not invited to something. It felt like something heavy was sitting on my chest. I would be so sad, I wouldn't be able to sleep. I would be so sad and so hurt, I wouldn't even be able to cry."
"I'm sorry, Monica," I said.
"It's not always like that. Just sometimes."

The last story Eric told me was about how his daughter broke a crystal candy dish. She told Eric what had happened in tears and they cleaned up the mess together and agreed to not tell her mother what happened. "I'd never seen my daughter so scared," he said, laughing a little to himself. Her mother, Eric's wife, didn't even notice until four or five years later. By then, Eric's daughter was a teenager. She was wild and outspoken, but when she came home that day, her mother asked her what happened to the candy dish, and Eric watched his daughter's face lose all it's color, her eyes pinch with fear. After he was done telling me that story, he turned his head up towards the ceiling and shook like he was laughing, but I knew it was something else. "Eric, what is it?" But he didn't answer. It was the first and only time I hugged Eric. In the morning, he was gone. His bed was empty. I felt empty.

It's nice out today, and Monica is taking a nap. I'm sitting in the kitchen, wondering what Eric is up to. I wonder if he is living with someone, a roommate, and whether or not he is a good or bad roommate. Does he wash his dishes? Does he take out the trash? Does he walk quietly through the apartment when his roommate is asleep? Does he ask his roommate if his roommate needs to use the bathroom for anything before he takes a shower? Does Eric have a garden? Does Eric own plants? Does Eric remember me? Does Eric ever wonder what I'm up to? But I know, in my heart, that when Eric left prison, I also left his mind. That's how it is sometimes. Though there might be some small thing, some small tick that Eric has learned from me. Like the way he might move his hand, the pinky turning up, when he explains something that's hard to explain. It is hard to explain so many things, I think. That's ok. That's ok.