Notice

The Habit

Chapter 35: Notice

The notice came by email on a Wednesday at 9:14 in the morning while Noel was under the crawl space of a split-level off Washington Pike trying to determine whether a smell was mold, rodent, or the ordinary theology of damp insulation.

He saw Renee's name on the lock screen and called back from the truck.

"It's official," she said.

No greeting. No softening.

"Owner-occupant. Sixty days."

Noel sat behind the wheel with the inspection file still open on the passenger seat.

"You all right?"

"No," she said. Then, because accuracy mattered more to her than posture: "Not panicking. But no, not all right."

The sentence steadied him more than reassurance would have.

"What do you need."

"Probably a second brain and a forklift." He heard paper moving on her end. "I'm making lists. Memphis rentals. School deadlines. Work rules. Whether I hate the idea of starting over somewhere else more than I hate paying more to stay in a place that rattles when trucks go by."

Noel looked through the windshield at a yard stippled with March mud.

"Leon said his niece might have a duplex opening in June," he said. "Two bedrooms. East side. Near enough to Edna that she'd become a public hazard."

Renee was quiet a second.

"I don't know if moving to Knoxville would be brave or insane."

"Usually both if it's real."

She laughed once, short and tired.

"That's not comforting."

"I don't think comfort is what this conversation has available."

After they hung up he sat with the truck idling, watching the wipers clear a mist so light it barely qualified as rain. He was aware, with unusual clarity, of wanting. Wanting Renee and Lila nearer. Wanting the house on Linden to become less theoretical in their lives. Wanting, selfishly and not, the ongoingness of them in town.

Desire, he knew, becomes dangerous when it starts dressing as generosity.

That evening he walked over to Leon's with a question and a six-pack because some forms of local intelligence require tribute.

Leon was in the carport sorting washers into baby-food jars by diameter.

"Your niece still got that duplex on Morrow?" Noel asked.

Leon did not look up.

"Depends which niece."

"The divorced one."

"That narrows it to three."

Noel handed him a beer.

"The one with the brick duplex near Carter Elementary."

Leon twisted the cap off with a tool Noel suspected had not been designed for bottles and which Leon had elevated anyway through ideology.

"Kendra," he said. "Tenant's moving in May. Why."

"Might know somebody."

Leon squinted at him.

"The Memphis people."

Noel did not bother denying it.

"Rent's decent," Leon said. "Place ain't fancy, but it doesn't lie. New roof last year. Plumbing's stupid but operational. Kendra likes tenants who pay and don't burn bacon past competence."

"Could she show it."

"Probably. If you ask like a grown man and not like you're trying to smuggle kin through the side door."

Noel took the remark because it was accurate.

Later Edna came by to inspect porch progress on her way home from Bible study, which was less a church function than a roaming audit of neighborhood morality.

He told her, in summary, about the Memphis notice and Leon's niece and the possible duplex.

Edna listened from the porch steps with her purse looped over one wrist.

"You are allowed to make room," she said.

"That's not the same as making someone else's decision."

"I know it isn't." She looked at the new post. "Hospitality gets ugly when it forgets that."

"Then what am I doing."

"Offering information," Edna said. "Maybe a neighborhood. Maybe your truck. Maybe a casserole if they earn it."

He smiled in spite of himself.

"Earn it."

"I'm not feeding freeloaders and siblings get no exemptions."

The word siblings arrived with the startling naturalness of something that had always belonged in the sentence and was only now being spoken at volume.

After she left he stayed on the porch until the streetlight clicked on at the corner.

The new post held. The temporary bracing waited for next weekend's finish work. The opened part of the house had not made it weaker. It had merely made the repairs impossible to confuse with luck.

That night he wrote:

A formal notice from Memphis arrived today and turned worry into timetable. Leon says his niece may have a duplex open in June near Carter, and Edna reminded me that making room is not the same thing as making someone else's decision for them. I am trying to remember that wanting a thing nearby does not automatically make me wise about it.