by
However you celebrate this holiday season, it’s worth remembering that love -- like rust -- is eternal. That the meaning of life might be found in one another. And if you can’t remember that, just remember an old man and an old woman who live in an old part of town.
Harold the fireman and Annie the waitress became neighbors when they were young, when Harold opened a locksmith business next to her house in 1971.
She was ornery, even then. Bickersome. Petulant. If evidence be needed, then consider, dear reader, that Annie shot her second husband five times. He lived, but seeing how things were, the second husband moved on. As did her third. And Annie stayed.
Annie and her neighbor Harold got along little better, and little in their relationship has improved over five decades. Annie, a reclusive shut-in, recently accused Harold of stealing her underpants and gifting them to his wife.
Age, of course, can be a cruel companion.
Annie is 90 years old now and feeble. The house is no better, falling down and boarded up. It is without heat. Water comes from a garden hose. The windowpanes have holes and winter has set in.
For reasons known perhaps not even to herself, Annie refuses to leave the old yellow brick house on a busy corner on the east side of town.
"She shouldn't be here," Harold says. "But she's happy here. She lives in that room with the cats and she gets mad, and then she gets happy, and I don't quite know what to do. I'm caught between a rock and a hard spot. I would like to have her someplace heated. But if something happens to her 'cause I had her taken out of here, then I'm gonna feel bad."
And so the compromise the old man has made with himself is to look in on the old woman, because that's what a decent man does.
I came to know them both some years ago, after the abandoned house next door caught fire and nearly killed Annie in her sleep. I did a story about it, and then Harold and I and concerned strangers cleared out her mountain of hoarded garbage. We installed a furnace. We got her water running again. Harold boarded up the broken windows where scrappers crept in and robbed Annie while she slept.
Sometimes I come by around the holidays with soup and crackers and coffee. Harold and Annie. I like to be reminded what love is...even when you despise the person you love.
Harold the locksmith has a key, It was he, after all, who installed the locks. And whenever he opens the front door and climbs the stairs, Harold is afraid he'll find Annie dead, or worse. That Annie got herself a gun again.
The sound of winter
The dead sound of winter blows through the parlor, filled not with furniture or mementos, but garbage and lonesome bits of scrap paper dancing in the draft.
"Annie?" shouts Harold. "Annie? Annie? Annie are you here? Annie!"
He shows me an anxious face.
Eventaully a meek voice wafts from a side bedroom.
"Yeah, I'm here."
"It's Harold."
"I'm here."
"Yeah, I see. How you doing?"
"I'm all right."
A poignant scene
Harold finds Annie in bed, bundled in a winter coat and woolen hat, socks and blankets. The drapes are drawn. A kitten lays next to her nose, the tip of which is red.
They talk the stuff of old people. Annie's feet hurt.
"I got an ingrown toenail here," she says.
"Well why don't you go Annie, they do that for you for free at the foot clinics?"
"They fix it?"
"They cut your toenails once a month for you."
"Yeah?"
"They cut mine."
"Yeah? I got an ingrown toenail and boy is it sore."
"Get a hold of someone to take you to the podiatrist. They do that for free."
"When?"
"Anytime you want. Find a podiatrist, call him up, tell him you're on your own and you want your feet trimmed and they'll do it for you. They put them in a hot tub of water"
"Really?"
"Yeah! They put them in a hot tub of water, they stir it and then they cut your toenails and then they put cream on them, and then once a year, you get a brand new pair of shoes."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah!"
"Wow!"
"You're old enough," Harold says. "You're older than me, so you can get it too. That's government working for you."
"It's this toe here. "
"Yeah, I can imagine, that hurts. I'm telling you, they'll take care of it for you."
"I'll show you how it looks."
She removes a soiled sock. A substance similar to sawdust falls out. Her foot is scaly, red and green.
"Those are infected Annie. You're going to lose your foot," Harold says with slight alarm.
"I might."
"Well, you go to the podiatrist."
"Where do you go?"
"I'll find out for you. All right? I'll find out."
"It's sore."
Enduring emotion
I clear a space on a greasy kitchen shelf so Annie might remember the can of soup and packages of crackers after we leave. Harold stuffs old clothes in the hole in the windowpane. Annie has followed us with the kitten in her arms.
"Well, I might as well ask you like I do every year," I ask Annie. "You still love the guy?"
"Huh?"
"You still love the guy?"
"What guy?" the old woman asks.
"Harold," I say.
"Harold?"
"Yeah."
"No, I hate his guts."
"See, that's what I get," Harold says.
"How'd you get in here?" Annie demands. "With the key?"
"Yeah," says Harold. Annie has forgotten he was the man who installed the locks after the fire and looters.
"Oh, you got the key?"
"Yeah, well somebody's got to come in and check on you."
Harold notices an old chest of drawers Annie once promised to give him.
"When are you going to give me that desk?"
"When I die."
"Oh, okay," he says. "Then I'll probably never get it."
Shuffling back to solitude
"Yeah, well. I'm gonna live forever."
"I think you are. We'll get out of your hair. I'll find about that doctor for you."
And with that, Annie shuffles back to her blankets and solitude.
Harold hobbles down the stairs, pulls the front door shuts and locks it.
He rolls his eyes. "See? She ain't gonna leave."
"So you love her?" I ask Harold.
"She's a human," Harold says after a moment. "I never cared for her much, but I care about what happens to her. I guess that is love in some kind of way."
