Jimmy had given notice the week before, and was moving at the end of the month. He didn't know where. Just not there. Anywhere but there.
The building manager was showing the apartment to a young couple who said they were getting married. They were both wearing jeans and sweatshirts and sandals, and to Jimmy they seemed innocent and young. They were in their early twenties, had just graduated from college and had come from the Midwest. They were in love with LA and they thought the apartment was great. They thought Venice was the best. The building manager introduced them to Jimmy, and he nodded and shook hands, and went back to his packing, and left them to look at the apartment on their own. It was small, and in good order. There was a small living room, and a tiny bedroom, barely bigger than the bed, a bathroom you had to stand on each other's shoulders to use together, and the kitchen where he was packing. It had worked for them, they hadn't needed more space than that, and Maggie had always insisted on paying her half of the rent and couldn't afford more. She was stubborn about things like that. They had split all their expenses in half since the day they met, even after they were married.
“I'm not going to be a kept woman, Jimmy O'Connor!” she had said, imitating her parents' brogue, as her flame-colored hair danced around her face. He wanted to have babies with her just so he could have a house full of kids with red hair. They'd been talking about getting pregnant for the past six months, but Maggie also wanted to adopt. She wanted to give kids a better life than they might have had otherwise.
“How about six and six?” Jimmy teased. “Six of ours, six adopted. Which ones do you want to support?” She had conceded that she might be willing to let him support the kids, some of them at least. She couldn't afford to have as many as they wanted. But they had often talked about five or six.
“Gas stove?” the prospective tenant asked with a smile. She was a pretty girl, and Jimmy nodded, without saying more. “I love to cook.” He could have told her he did too, but he didn't want to engage in conversation with them. He just nodded and kept on packing, and five minutes later they left. The building manager called out thank you and Jimmy heard him close the door, and then muffled voices in the hall. He wondered if they were going to take the apartment. It didn't really matter. Someone would. It was a nice place, the building was clean, and they had a good view. Maggie had insisted on a view, although it had stretched her budget, but there was no point living in Venice if you didn't have a view, she had said with the brogue again. She played with the brogue a lot. She had grown up with it, and it was familiar to her, and always amused him. Sometimes they went out for pizza and she spent the entire dinner pretending to be Irish, and everyone was fooled. She had taught herself Gaelic too. And French. And wanted to learn Chinese, so she could work with immigrant children in the Chinese neighborhoods. She wanted to be able to talk to the kids.
“He's not very friendly,” one of the new tenants whispered. They had conferred in the bathroom and decided to take the place. They could afford it, and they loved the view, even if the rooms were small.
“He's a good guy,” the building manager said protectively. He had always liked them both. “He's had a tough time,” he said cautiously, not sure if he should tell them, but they'd hear it anyway from someone else. Everyone in the building loved the O'Connors, and he was sorry to see Jimmy go, but he understood. He would have done the same thing.
The new tenants had wondered if he was being evicted or asked to leave, he had looked so unhappy and almost hostile as he packed up his stuff.
“He had a beautiful young wife, a terrific girl. Thirty-two years old, with bright red hair, smart as a whip.”
“Did they break up?” the woman asked innocently, feeling slightly more sympathetic. Jimmy had looked almost fierce to her as he shoved his skillets into a cardboard box.
“She died. A month ago. Terrible thing. A brain tumor. She started having headaches a few months ago, she said they were migraines. Three months ago they put her in the hospital for tests, brain scans, I guess. MRIs, CAT scans, whatever they do. She had a lot of tests. They found a brain tumor, they tried to operate but it was too big, and it had spread all over the place. She was dead in two months. I thought it was going to kill him too. I've never seen two people more in love. They never stopped laughing and talking and kidding around. He just gave me notice last week. He says he can't stay, it makes him too sad. I feel so bad for him, he's such a good man.” The building manager had tears in his eyes.
“How awful!” the woman said, feeling tears sting her eyes too. It was a terrible story, and she had noticed photographs of the two of them all around the apartment. They looked happy and in love in the pictures. “What a terrible shock for him.”
“She was very brave. Right up until the last week, they went on walks, he cooked dinner for her, he carried her down to the beach one day because she loved it so much. It'll be a long time before he gets over it, if he ever does. He'll never find another girl like her.” The building manager, who was both known and beloved for his gruffness, wiped a tear from his eye, and the young couple followed him downstairs. But the story haunted them for the rest of the day. And late that afternoon, the building manager slipped a note under Jimmy's door to tell him the young couple had taken the apartment. He was off the hook in three weeks.
Jimmy sat staring at the note. It was what he had wanted, and what he knew he had to do, but he had nowhere to go. He no longer cared where he lived. It didn't matter to him. He could have slept in a sleeping bag on the street. Maybe that was how people became homeless. Maybe they no longer cared where they lived, or if. He had thought of killing himself when she died, just walking into the ocean without a murmur or a sound. It would have been an enormous relief. He had sat on the beach for hours the day after she died, and thought about it. And then, as though he could hear her, he could imagine her telling him how furious she would be, and what a wimp he was. He could even hear the brogue. It was nightfall when he went back to the apartment, and sat for hours crying and wailing on the couch.
Their families had come out from Boston that night, and the rosary and funeral had eaten up the next two days. He had refused to bury her in Boston. She had told him she wanted to stay in California with him, so he buried her there. And after they all went home, he was alone again. Her parents and brothers and sisters had been devastated over their loss. But no one was as distraught as he, no one knew how much he had lost, or what she meant to him. Maggie had become his whole life, and he knew with absolute certainty that he would never love another woman as he had her, or perhaps at all. He couldn't conceive of another woman in his life. What a travesty that would be. And who could possibly be like her? All that fire and passion and genius and joy and courage. She was the bravest human he had ever known. She hadn't even been afraid to die, she just accepted it as her fate. It was he who had cried and begged God to change his mind, he who had been terrified, who couldn't imagine living on without her. Unthinkable, unbearable, intolerable. And now here he was. She had been gone for a month. Weeks. Days. Hours. And all he had to do now was crawl through the rest of his life.
He had gone back to work the week after she died, and everyone treated him like broken glass. He was back at work full-time with the kids, but there was no joy in his life now, no spirit, no life. He just had to find a way to keep putting one foot in front of the other for the rest of his life, to keep breathing, to keep waking up every morning, with absolutely no reason why.