3--Frank as a Roommate

I Eight years previously I was having to move out of my rental house because of the owner. I had asked for and 18-month lease. I didn't read the rental agreement until too late to change it. I was under an eight-month lease. When time ran out, I was expected to vacate so that the owner could rent the house for more money. The case went before a judge. I was ready to move but I didn't like being pushed. But I began packing up and looking for a new place to live.

In the meantime, I lost my beautiful white Lab puppy. He was more than I could handle. When we went for a walk, the dog jerked and pulled me down on the pebble and rock driveway. At that point I knew there would be no more walking in the neighborhood. The house had a big backyard, and the large dog had plenty of room to run and relieve himself. He was more than I could handle. One time when I was leaving the house, he was in the yard, he jumped with his feet against the glass in the screen door and broke it. In the process he cut his neck, and the arteries in his neck. He bled profusely and I didn't leave him for shopping. He bled for a couple of hours, and I was right there with him, holding a towel against the large gash, trying to stop the bleeding. He was better in a couple of hours when the bleeding had stopped. It was a clen cut, and I never took him to the vet about it.

When I knew for sure that I was moving, I made arrangements to find the puppy a new home. I went through an adoption process at an animal hospital that rehomed cats and dogs. This was expensive because he had to be up to date on all of his shots. The animal adoption agency got a pretty penny to rehome him, but I was told he got the perfect situation. A family with kids had been visiting from Maryland. They had the open land that Johnny needed to run and play. I don't know if that was really what happened to him, but the story made me feel like he'd gotten the perfect home. It took away part of the guilt of parting with him.

I had three cats also. The cats were female, and two of them had not been spayed. There were two litters of kittens born a few weeks apart before I moved. I intended to take everybody with me, but the curious cat moved her litter somewhere out of sight during the packing. She had birthed them in a dirty clothes hamper. When I went to get her and her kittens, she and her litter had disappeared. There was no time to locate them. Everyone else made the move. I took the other mother cat and her litter of five at my new house, and the lost kitty and her litter stayed behind. I felt bad about leaving a cat, much less a mother cat and her litter behind. I had to believe things would be okay for them because I couldn't stand myself otherwise.

So, in my new house I had the German Shepherd," Angel," the Golden Siamese, and two gray mother cats, with two, litters of five gray kittens. My furry roommates found their sections of the house just fine. My new home was a big 3/2 with a sunroom in the back. I proceeded with the unpacking, and we all settled into life at the new house.

My mother had been over to see the house before I moved in. in her wheelchair she rolled through the various rooms and seemed pleased that I was moving into a house as spacious and nice as the houses where I had grown up. Mother passed away a few months after that. I know she passed in peace knowing I had a nice home.

Before she died, she had Frank and I promise to take care of each other. We weren't a couple, but Mom hoped we would be. She asked Frank to look after me and help me if I needed help. She had me agree to go to Frank if I needed help. It was a good plan, but it didn't work out so well. This was a big part of my downfall.

Frank was with me during my mother's funeral eight years before my move. He drove my truck to the funeral home and stayed with me during that evening. There were only seven people at the funeral. Mother had planned her funeral when she was in her 70s. By the time she was 92, most of her friends and associates had gone to the Lord before her. Some of my cousins attended. It seemed like the only time my extended family got together was when there was a death in the family. We made plans to see each other in the future, but the plans never came to pass.

But in the meantime, Frank was around. I smoked pot and so did he, so we had that in common. Several times a day one of us would roll a joint and proceed to smoke and share. The situation was not what my mother had visualized, but I wasn't alone. When parents die, and there are no brothers or sisters, being alone is the only option. Frank saved me from that.

Frank was the son of Mother's deceased church friends. As a mechanic he had taken care of both or our cars for several years. He had also played handyman for those little things that needed fixing at Mother's house. I had tried to get his attention as a single female, but he never seemed interested in me until after my mother died.

He was with me through the funeral. He offered support by keeping me from being alone. As time went on, he spent more time with me. We became more than friends but less than lovers. He said he would never take me to bed because he respected my mother that much. It didn't make sense to me, but he stayed near if I needed his help, without worrying about how the night would end.

He stopped by on a Sunday afternoon to see how I was doing, and to see if I needed any help. He arrived with three beers, two of which he drank quickly. The third one was for me, but not being a beer drinker, I passed, and Frank was well on the way to being drunk. I had put a carpet remnant by the sofa to place my drinks on so that I wouldn't mar the hardwood floors. He proceeded to spill his Budweiser Picante red beer on the new carpet square. It seemed as though he was always spilling beer somewhere.

He drank past the point of being a little bit drunk. In order to keep him off the road, I offered to let him spend the night on my sofa. It seemed that he was always too drunk to drive, and he would spend the night for two or three days at a time. He was there if I needed help, but he wasn't in any condition to help me.

I had a housekeeper at the time, and she said that he wasn't what she expected. She said, "He's an old man!" He was a year and a half older than me. I held up well for my age. He had been an alcoholic his entire adult life, and it showed. He was six feet tall, but walked with a hump in his back, making him appear shorter than me. His brown hair was curly in the back as it grew back from well-spaced haircuts. He was of a thin build, not eating on a regular basis. He would go a long time without eating, then eat more than three normal people. I got in the habit of cooking dinner, and he put on weight for a little while. But he was always very thin. He didn't eat on a regular basis.

Frank retired from his mechanic's daily life. His bookkeeper passed away likely from an overdose of pain pills. Frank said the last time he talked to her, the conversation hadn't been pleasant. When Frank got drunk, he was bitter and hateful to everybody including himself. He felt bad about their last conversation. I came to know how it felt.

We fell into a regular routine. He would stay with me for three or four days, then go back to his house for a couple of days. He had a large older home where his father and stepmother had lived, and later lived with his wife and two children. He tried to keep the place up, but it needed a serious remodel--the kind where you tear out the walls and start from scratch. The washing machine and the dishwasher didn't work. Then the hot water heater went out. After that there seemed to be some problem with the electricity. Sometimes it was because the bill wasn't paid. Other times it was because Frank had been in the fuse box himself.

He rented out rooms to construction workers who had a job in the neighborhood. His tenants came on a word-of-mouth connection; he never actually advertised a room for rent, but the four bedrooms and the mother-in-law cottage in the backyard were filled rather quickly. He had one white boy with a heroin habit, and three other wetback laborers. He knew about the wetbacks being in the country without a green card. He didn't know about the heroin situation until later. He told the guy to move. Frank later found his name in the obituaries. Heroin is a life on the edge. People fall into hell and only get out by dying.

Frank was living on Social Security minus a tax bill. His Social Security would have been enough to live on, if not for the automatic house tax deduction. He was getting $600 per month, plus the cash the renter's paid him. At first the rent was paid on time in cash. Later the renters would pay only two weeks at a time. Then it was always late. When their rent wasn't paid, Frank had no money. He ate with me. He showered at my house. There was only a cold shower at his house in the winter. He appreciated my generosity. The wetbacks had only a cold shower. They managed because they had no option.

Frank had always worn a uniform, and consequently he didn't know how to dress himself. Clothes on eBay are cheap, and I shopped for him but never paid much for any one item. He never offered to pay me back. I bought him t-shirts, cotton button up shirts, jeans, dress pants, French cuff Sunday shirts, socks, underwear and a couple of belts. His jean size went from 32" to 30". The belts became important because his pants would have fallen off without one. His weight was a losing battle because he drank beer instead of eating. He generally didn't take care of himself. Because of the promise I had made to my mother, the problem fell on me to take care of him. She had no idea that I would have to take care of Frank. Perhaps my mother would have wanted for me to take care of him so he could take care of me. I believed that Mother would have wanted me to, but not to the extent our situation became. I was doing all the giving and he was doing all the taking. He expected me to take care of him, and I did.

He would help around the house, like running the vacuum cleaner. I appreciated the help because I had a bad back which left me on my Craftmatic bed most of the time. I slept on the Craftmatic, and Frank slept on the sofa on the other side of the living area. I felt some comfort in the fact that he loved my pets as much as I did. "Angel" took to sleeping on the sofa with Frank. If "Angel" accepted him as a sleeping mate, I knew he couldn't be all bad. He loved watching the kittens play at growing up games. I still had one gray female cat who came into season and had a litter of kittens three times per year. We were so attached to the kittens that it was hard to give them away. Consequently, the kittens were into their third month of life before I put out an ad to find them homes of their own. My black Lab "Shadow" loved playing with the kittens. "Get the kitty" became a fun game as "Shadow" would be surrounded by kittens and try to gain his footing as he ran two directions at once. "Shadow" spent time in the garage with Frank. And Frank took "Shadow" for walks around the block. "Shadow" accepted Frank as "Angel" had. If he was loved by my pets, he couldn't be all bad.

We would break up, then get back together as a regular part of our relationship. I would tell him to go home and that I didn't want him around anymore. A few weeks would pass, and I would call him, or he would call me. I didn't make an issue of his drinking at that point. His company was a way of keeping me from being alone. Frank would drink his Picante Budweiser during the day while he was in the garage, and I was sleeping. We only saw each other in passing during the day. He was in the garage, so I didn't know what he was doing when I was sleeping. I would stay up all night on the computer writing and sleep most of the day. He would sleep at night and be active during the day. He spent most of the time in the garage and I had no idea what he was doing. He was content with our routine, so I didn't ask any questions. I was content too. He made the morning coffee then went to work on his various garage projects. He seemed to be mostly investigating what was there. There were tools and yard equipment, and painting equipment and lots of furniture that didn't fit in the house. He drove around the neighborhood in his little red truck and picked up various items that had been put out for garbage. The garage got more cluttered. He was out of sight when I was sleeping. He listened to the radio and smoked pot and drank beer the whole day long. I was embarrassed that he was buying beer at the drugstore where I did all my business. One time they wouldn't sell him any more beer because he was noticeably drunk. The employees knew him, they knew me. and they knew we were together.

This situation went on for a year, two years; Mom had died almost three years before. The trust was not fulfilling my needs. They did finally replace the soiled carpet the dog deposited on. I was able to get matching hardwood flooring as a replacement for the soiled carpet. The pile of melted feces was in the middle of the floor of my study for three months before the trust replaced the carpet as they had promised. The trust would eventually do as I requested, but not on a timely basis.

I had prepaid debit cards for transportation and medical expenses. I became a regular rider of Lyft after my truck was totaled. My four-year-old truck, my queen's carriage, was parked in front of the house, headed in the proper direction to not be ticketed. I usually parked on the far side of the street because that was the direction I usually came from. I was parked on the side of the street that wouldn't get me a ticket. A passing drunk turned the corner at the stop sign, barely missed plowing into two other cars parked on the street, then hit my truck on the right driver's side fender and wheel well. The driver attempted to continue down the street, but his vehicle was too damaged to continue. He and his girlfriend and a child were outside of my house in the yard until the police finished their report. The driver was handcuffed and sitting on the curb. I went inside and didn't see if the driver was taken away in the police car. My beautiful truck was totaled. At this point Frank decided he would be responsible for all my transportation. He was usually spending the night with me. He only went back to his house to collect rent money at the first of the month.

Frank's little red truck died. It had a problem that he couldn't fix. He had his father's Cadillac parked in his back yard, but it too had problems he couldn't fix easily. He occasionally got a call to fix a car on the owner's driveway. He would come home with $100 which went for a trip to Whataburger for dinner, and drugs. He was smoking more than half of the marijuana purchases. I let him know i was unhappy about it, but he never changed his ways much. If we were out of dope for a few days, he would come up with the money for a little bag.

I had a connection for crack. I didn't smoke it in front of him to avoid problems. But a day came when he was at the house when a delivery arrived. I took a puff and offered the pipe to him. I told him he didn't have to smoke it if he didn't want to. He took a puff and handed the pipe back to me. I took my hit, then he asked for more. That's how fast crack can take over your life.

The guys at his house had been smoking crack, so he knew something about it. They hadn't offered him any. After that first hit, he became a regular crack addict. I already was. The money from the truck insurance payment went towards crack purchases. The money Frank was getting as rent went to crack purchases. Soon he was bringing crack from his connection with the guys living at his house. It was a way to zone out from problems and responsibilities. We both looked forward to our next crack smoking. We both knew it was bad, but we were in a situation that we didn't care.

Frank began to sing the Garth Brooks song to me.

We were shameless.

Continued "4--From House to Apartment"