“Every morning,” she replied. “I’m running late today. Had a little trouble with insomnia last night, so then I fell asleep and woke up a little late.”
“Well,” I said, “let us know if you need anything.”
“Thank you,” she said, and then, as I walked away, I heard over my shoulder: “You can call me Edith.”
I heard the rumble of the cars across the bridge nearby. I thought I got a whiff of that baseball-card bubble gum, too. I looked back and saw Edith struggle to get down to her knees, until her whole form was tucked behind the chain-link fence that faced her house, as though she had revealed just a little bit of herself, just for a moment, and now she was going back into hiding.
It’s funny how the most momentous conversations of your life – or the ones that turn out to be the most momentous – can seem, in the moment they happen, so mundane.
I stopped one more time and turned back to look at the house, standing lonely and deserted on that broken-down street. It seemed impossible, but the developers had already offered Edith $750,000. Three quarters of a million dollars, probably ten times what the house was worth – and she turned them down cold. I guess I should have known going into it that I would run into people who would give me a hard time, building a big, hulking mall around that tiny house. The other side of town – if you looked to the left of the Ballard Bridge as you crossed into town, instead of to the right toward Edith’s house – was already the site of a lot of new development, development that many people thought was killing the character of good old Ballard. And the deals had been closed to build a whole lot more. Because Edith’s was the last house standing on her block, people saw her as a symbol, a force against “yuppification,” against the overdevelopment of old neighborhoods with character and charm. I was the man bringing in change, she was the woman who wanted things to stay the same. That same Seattle Times columnist who wrote the story about the homeless people, Danny Westneat, had also written a column in February about Edith’s so-called last stand. A few days later, he wrote about how that column had “unwittingly unearthed an entire community of folks who have been captivated by her for years.” He quoted one resident as saying, “I salute her for standing up to some of the ‘progress’ that’s coming to Ballard.” Another one wrote, “I’ve come to love this lady, and I don’t even know her.”
Someone in the office showed me the article, and when I read it over, I was struck by the ending of it, what the guy wrote about Edith. He said, “How she lives and the choice she made to stay put seems to spark powerful feelings in total strangers. It did me, yet I’ve spoken to her only three times. I think it’s because she’s genuine. Authentic. She’s living the life she’s got and not asking for help, pity or money.
“What does it say about us,” Danny wrote, “that we find that so remarkable?”
As the days went by, I didn’t have occasion to talk to Edith again, but I noticed that the birdseed was, indeed, out on the sidewalk almost every day before we got to work. It was funny, but all the guys started watching out for it – and for her. After a while, if the birdseed wasn’t out by 10:30 or 11:00 a.m., somebody would let me know. The first time, I didn’t think much of it, but the second or third time, I decided I’d better go over and check on her.
I knocked on the door.
“Go away!” I heard her shout from inside. “Leave me alone!”
I was stunned. I was sure she’d change her tune when she realized it was friendly old me.
The rumble from the bridge had quieted down. The wind had kicked up, though, and nearly blew my baseball cap off my head. I tried again. “Edith,” I said, “it’s me, Barry, from the construction site. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
“Are you deaf?” she yelled. “I said go away! Leave me alone!”
I thought, well, okay, this is what everybody told me to expect. Shouldn’t be surprised.
“Well, just glad to know you’re okay,” I called in, making one more attempt to rescue this conversation, if you could call it that. “Let us know if you need anything.”
I guess that insulted her, like I was saying she couldn’t take care of herself. “I’m fine! Go away!”
I walked back over to our construction trailer, scratching my head. Was it something I said? It’s pretty hard to mess up “Hello,” though. Once again, I felt like a little kid who’d gotten yelled at by the teacher.
I got the same response the next few times I went over to check on her, over the next couple of weeks, trying to get a look inside and make sure she was okay. Maybe I should have been offended or pissed off by that, but to tell you the truth, I really just felt kind of sad for her. I figured maybe she wasn’t feeling so well, and there she was all alone. I also felt kind of embarrassed – I don’t even know the woman, and here I am, popping open her mail slot and peeping inside.
I started to wonder if maybe there weren’t two sides to Edith: the polite, gracious, friendly side, accepting of the change all around her; and the cranky, crotchety side, quick to anger and to take offense. And I thought, maybe there was a reason for that. The first time I went over, I treated Edith with dignity and respect, and she reacted the same way – pleasant and courteous. But maybe she didn’t like it if she thought people were checking up on her; she didn’t like what that implied, which was that she couldn’t take care of herself. I think that’s what happens when people get older. They know a time is coming when they won’t be able to take care of themselves, and they’re fighting it. They don’t want to admit what’s happening and it makes them mad when you remind them. That’s the first lesson that Edith taught me, and I didn’t know it then, but it would be the first of many. For the time that I knew her, Edith’s little house would become my schoolhouse. She taught me about what I guess they call the continuity of things – what we learn from the older generation and what we pass along.
I met Edith just in time, it turns out. My dad was seventy-three years old, and holding up pretty well so far, but soon enough he’d start having his own problems. I think if it weren’t for the things I started learning from Edith, I wouldn’t have known how to handle or accept what was happening to my father. Or how to help him.
But for the moment, I put those thoughts aside. Everybody’s got their problems. I had plenty of my own.
I had a shopping mall to build.
There’s a lot of sitting-around time at the beginning of a project, especially one like this that begins with tearing down buildings to make way for the new construction. There were two buildings on the other end of the lot from where Edith’s house stood that we had to get rid of. I’d given the crew their assignments, and now the best thing for me to do was stay the heck out of their way and let them do their jobs. So I found myself wandering from my trailer over to Edith’s front gate, not forty feet away. Now that I’d figured out what pushed her buttons – or thought I’d figured it out, anyway – I started approaching her a little differently. I only went over when I saw her outside, when it didn’t seem like I was checking up on her. And I kept it casual, chatting about the weather and the transients and whatnot. Pretty soon we were hanging on the fence like any neighbors, poking fun at the way teenagers dress these days, what we recalled about Ballard years ago, trying to remember the names of who ran which store, that sort of thing.
As we talked, day by day, little bits of her past would seep into the conversation. Once we were talking about something we’d heard on the radio, another dumb government botch-up. “It’s not just here, believe me. When I worked for the British government, let me tell you, there were some royal mess-ups there as well.” A van turned off the overpass and drove by with its muffler roaring; I had to wait for it to pass before I could ask, “You worked for the British government, Edith?”
“Yes,”