251 Court Street

Anna, whom everyone calls Queenie — a childhood nickname that took hold —  lives down the hall from my now-empty third-floor apartment. It’s not really a hall — more like an elevated walkway with a full wall on one side where the apartment doors are and a half-wall on the other side open to a four-story atrium with skylights that sound like snare drums whenever it rains.

She’s intensely proud of her Polish heritage, even when she identifies it as the source of her legendary stubbornness. 

Anna has an almost endearing habit of complaining about everything: the weather (heat and cold alike); her apartment (too dusty); her neighbors (including me when I’m not around to answer her knock on my door); her various aches and pains and her hearing, which is failing. She bought hearing aids, complained about how harsh everything sounded, and returned them for a complete refund. 

“I’m not giving that man a single penny of mine,” she said with an edge, tossing her long grey hair. “He’s awful.”

Over the past few years, Anna grew convinced, despite evidence, that I was not capable of providing for myself, so she would bring me meals from time to time: vegetable soup, fried chicken and French fries, frozen pizza, eggs and potatoes on occasion for breakfast.

She’s irked that I’m leaving.

“Who will I cook for,” she asks. I suggest she cook for her good friend Gloria. She answers, “No, she cooks for me!” Beverly? “For crying out loud, she’s never home!”

~

Annie, whom everyone calls Miss Annie out of respect, lives on the second floor, in the apartment directly beneath Anna. A tall, slender Black woman, she has had two strokes in the past several years and struggles to get around, sliding her feet slowly forward, struggling even with her walker, which she has since traded for a wheeled “rollator” with a fold-down seat so she can rest if she needs to.

Miss Annie likes to keep on top of developments in the 65-apartment former high school building. She greets new residents, follows the Bingo scores like a hawk, avoids the major gossip that develops after games. I would wait when Bingo was over to hold the heavy community room door open for her and to call the elevator and to make sure she got back to her apartment safely. (She often seemed to me to be on the verge of falling.) And once, I was able to get her TV working again when she had accidentally changed the input signal. She took a liking to me and now that I am leaving, she has decided to be upset.

“I heard something bad about you, and I want to talk to you about it,” she told me as she left for church in a long blue dress that showed off her elegance. I was outside this morning in the cool air and warm sunshine of an early mid-August morning when she left and I will meet her when she returns and I will apologize for leaving, but mostly for not telling her about it earlier. 

~

Joe and I have shared small talk while we rode the elevator together when he would take his dog out for walks. I thought the dog — Ralph — was some kind of small terrier. Joe said Ralph is a mix, and he isn’t sure of what.

Joe is slight and his teeth show the effects of age and probably years of smoking. We crossed paths on one of his longer walks down Pearl Street, along the east side of the apartment building.

“It’s back,” he said. “It started as lung cancer six years ago, and it went away. But it’s back and it’s all over.”

Joe said his insurance company was refusing to pay for a treatment scheduled for two days later. 

“They’re assholes,” he said. “I need the treatment. I’m dying.”

He was upset about the insurance company’s decision, but the clincher was his son. 

“He has Down syndrome and he’s not grasping what I’m telling him,” Joe said with tears welling in his eyes. “I cry whenever I try to tell him, but he’s not catching it.”

When I saw Joe a few days later, he said he had received the treatment only because the hospital intervened with the insurance company, but that his son, who lives with his mother, still wasn’t understanding what he was facing.

“And I can’t leave it completely up to his mother to tell him. I need to tell him, but he’s not catching it.”

~

Annie just got back from church. I was right that she wanted to dress me down for not telling her earlier about my plans to leave. She hates to learn news second-hand. But I promised to stop at her apartment before I leave and I believe we’re back on good footing, which is a good place to be with Miss Annie. 

Really, it’s the only place to be.