Arthur appeared behind her, unshaven, phone in hand, and he had the specific look of a man who had been told about a decision and had chosen not to look at it too closely. He did not ask me to stay. That is the detail I have never been able to get past. Twelve years, and standing in that hallway, he did not ask me to stay.
He said, “Sarah, come on. Don’t be like this.”
“Like what?”
“Petty.”
I laughed. It came out of me before I could stop it, and it was not a nice sound, and both of them flinched.
Leo came out then. Twenty years old, sleep creased, standing in the doorway of the bedroom that had been his since he was eleven, watching the apartment empty out.
Valerie stood behind him with both hands on the shelf of her stomach. Thirty two weeks. She looked frightened, and I remember thinking, with a clarity that surprised me, that none of this was hers.
By nine forty the apartment was almost bare. What was left was Arthur’s clothes, Eleanor’s bedroom set, Leo’s things, and a great deal of empty parquet.
Eleanor stood in the middle of the living room with her arms crossed, still in her dressing gown, and she said, “You are behaving like a child. Fortunately this is our home and you are leaving it.”
And I said the sentence.
“From now on,” I said, “you can pay the nine thousand eight hundred dollar rent yourselves.”
The silence afterward had a shape to it.
“What are you talking about,” Arthur said, but he said it flatly, without the rise at the end, because he already knew.
“You’ve been paying utilities for four years, Arthur. Con Ed and the Wi Fi and the grocery delivery. I have been paying the rent. Every month. Nine thousand eight hundred dollars, out of my account, on the first, since March of the year your company started failing.” I looked at Eleanor. “Every dinner party you’ve had in this room. Every time you told Marjorie about the doorman. That was me.”
Eleanor’s face did something I had waited eight years to see. It came apart for about a second and a half and then reassembled, but I had seen it, and she knew I had.
“That’s a lie,” she said.
“Priya Raman will be sending the documentation to Arthur this afternoon. Forty eight months of transfers.” I picked up my bag. “And there’s one more thing you should know before I go, because I don’t want anyone claiming afterward that they were confused.”
I told them about the lease.
My name. Only my name. Four years, renewed twice, signed alone because the building had run Arthur’s credit and declined him. Eleanor had lived in that apartment for eight years without ever once asking whose signature was on the paper, because it had never occurred to her that it could be mine.
“I gave notice at eight thirty this morning,” I said. “I’m not renewing. The term ends in sixty one days. You’ll each get a letter from the management company, and after that you’ll need somewhere else to live. Sixty one days is more notice than you gave me.”
Then I put the envelope on the floor, because the table was already in the truck, and I wrote Arthur’s name across it.
He opened it while I was standing there. I had not planned that. I had planned to be gone.
Inside were three things.
The first was a printout of the lease with my signature at the bottom.
The second was a copy of the notice of non renewal, dated and time stamped that morning.
The third was a photograph.
It was of Leo, aged fourteen, at a science fair at his school in Riverdale. He is holding a second place ribbon and he is not smiling, because he never smiled in photographs, but he is looking directly at the camera, which was rare for him.
I took that photograph. Arthur was in Chicago. Eleanor said she had a thing she could not move.
