Renter

Stacey graciously offered to help with packing, or organizing, or getting sofas or chairs from their now-impermanent stations in the house to stations closer to the exits, or in the garage where they could be most efficiently dispatched.

I said, “No, I appreciate it, but you’re busy with other stuff and I can do it myself.”

I knew what it would entail. A necessary intensity sets in when moving out, a focus that keeps emotion at bay as much as possible. The presence of others, however good their intentions, dilutes the abrupt, moment-to-moment decision-making necessary to break the home apart. But emotion is always waiting, watching, fueled by all that’s been lost, ready to pounce.

**

In 2023, after the divorce, I moved into an apartment complex in the same neighborhood as our house hoping the commute between their mom’s house and mine would be easier on Megan and her sister. “Divorce Acres” served me well for a year, but when the lease was up, an argument with the manager over my reserved parking place made me realize I didn’t have to live there anymore.

That afternoon, I told Megan I was thinking of finding a house in Park Hill, the neighborhood next to our old one.

“I have to be honest,” she said. “I hate this apartment.”

I looked at one house that afternoon, didn’t like it, then looked at another, an old red brick ranch with creaking hardwood floors, a big yard for my dog, and a garage. (Honestly, the garage is what sold me.)

I brought Megan over to see it the next day.

“It’s perfect.” She nodded as she looked around the place. “That’s your room, and this is mine?”

“Yep, but only if you’re sure this is the one.”

“This is the one.”

I signed the lease the next day and moved in a couple weeks later, in March 2024. Megan lived here with me for the last few months of her senior year of high school. Then she was off to college. She usually stayed with her mom when she came home for weekends that first semester, but she stayed with me a week during Christmas break.

She loved her room, adorned with Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, and 2001: A Space Odyssey posters and orange translucent curtains she’d picked out. She had a lighted vanity and a single bed with a slide-out bottom mattress for her sister to sleep on when she also visited.

A dark walnut flat-packed bookcase arrived on our doorstep one afternoon right after we’d moved in; Megan had ordered it online. I offered to assemble it for her but no—she would do it herself. Her room, her bookcase. She spent an afternoon in there with the door closed, occasionally asking for a screwdriver or an Allen wrench, but never for assistance. She built the bookcase as she had built her room: solid and all hers. She was proud of both.

**

Four days after my first Christmas without Megan, I was forced out of the company I’d helped build. More to the point, I suddenly found myself without an occupation, without income, without my daughter. Happy New Year.

After exploring options and realizing I needed to do something fast, I called an old Vanagon buddy to see if he wanted to buy one of my vans.

“Can’t do it right now, money is tight while we work on some things. Let me call you back.”

In the days before he called me back, I scrambled. I brushed up my resume and looked for jobs back in the finance world I’d emancipated myself from two and a half years prior. I knew there were positions I could jump into, be successful, and make some much-needed money. But I paused. Don’t make a mistake out of desperation. You left that world for a reason. Don’t forget it. I decided to wait.

When I spoke with my VW friend again, he had a proposition.

“Why don’t you come down to the shop this weekend and let’s talk about your role in our new company.”

At the shop that Saturday, we discussed his new venture, a Vanagon-specific maintenance and restoration company. He’d found a perfect spot, a defunct transmission shop down in Sheridan, a suburb of Denver, and the plan was to renovate the place and do the fun stuff—working on and building VW vans for customers.

Intrigued, I let him know I was in no financial position to join the company. But maybe I could turn wrenches, we could see how it worked out, and go from there. He agreed and I started working in his current shop as a mechanic the next Monday.

**

Eventually we moved to the new shop and work continued. The money was far less than I was used to, but the work…I’d never been happier. The focus, the problem-solving, and the joy of doing something I loved were worth more than anything.

But as the months went on, it became obvious that the life I’d grown accustomed to financially was far different than the life I was living now. The house was too expensive.

I should have figured that out right off the bat, but I was attached to the place. More than that, I felt (and had been unable to recognize) I had to stay here. I couldn’t leave my post. I couldn’t leave Megan’s room, even though I’d rearranged it into a guest room while keeping her posters, now framed, and some of her things in there. I removed her big metal trundle bed and replaced it with a queen bed with a light green patterned blanket that went perfectly with her orange curtains.

I remember telling myself she would have liked my changes. I thought of it as hers, as though she would walk in one day after a long time gone and absolutely love it.

I couldn’t leave the house where I’d experienced so much terror and pain, where I’d faced hell head-on and survived, broken but alive. But I realized there were parts of the house I rarely visited. I only went to the expansive basement for laundry. The large, finished room down there was used as storage for the furniture I could not part with, Megan’s bed and vanity.

The yard man had inexplicably stopped mowing. The grass was overgrown and weeds were everywhere. The garage was a mess, unused because I worked in a garage now and did all my car stuff there. I spent most of my time in about five hundred square feet of the place, not counting the desk I’m sitting at right now, where I’ve written nearly every day since February 2025.

**

I’d joyously filled the house with furniture and stuff that had rarely been used. It was time to let go of as much of it as possible, to pare down to only enough stuff to fill a five hundred square foot apartment somewhere near downtown. I envisioned a place in the thick of the city, where I could dissolve, be anonymous, be away from the things that existed before Megan died, a place where I could be an old man with a little dog, living in a small apartment where very few people knew or cared who I was.

To reach this goal, this reversal of material expansion, I’d have to let as much go as possible. I began thinking of it as releasing myself from attachments. I had practice already—earlier in this crisis I sold the Tornado Red Vanagon Megan had loved. I sold my mom’s VW Beetle. Due to divorce, sobriety, grief, and the wholesale changes they encompassed, I’d lost connection with most of my friends, my old lifestyle, and much of my desire to celebrate or host anything. Now we were down to basics. I needed to get rid of stuff, each piece of which had its own story in my life.

And I had to do it alone. I started with Megan’s room. I pulled the green blanket and the sheets off the mattress then clumsily leaned it against a wall in the hallway we once shared, the hallway with the floral floor runner she’d suggested because the hardwood was cold on her feet. I carefully removed her framed posters from the walls and moved them to the back room of the house along with her bookcase.

I sat down on the floor to disassemble the bed frame, removing screws and bolts and letting the long wooden sections rest on the floor. One section brushed the side of the door to the room. It drifted closed.

On the inner doorknob hung a beige door hanger made of wood and straw. It had two white beads woven into the top and four circular wood blocks below. Together, the white letters on the blocks spelled “HOPE.”

I stood and looked closely. Behind the hanger were three of Megan’s hair wrap bands. They were black. A few strands of her hair were still entwined in them.

I felt it coming. I thought I could stop it. I sat back on the floor and continued disassembling the bed. Focus on the task. No time for emotions. Focus on the task.

Hope. Megan hoped for great things in her life. It had all been before her, right outside this door. In the time since her death, I had never thought to look at the inside doorknob. Where did this thing come from? Was it even hers? Is somebody or something telling me to have fucking hope? Hope for what? I failed at the most important task of every living creature on this earth. There is no hope.

I wanted to be in a rage, but there was no hope for that either. I collapsed. Defeated. It must have been a bad one because my dog ran in to check on me, wagging his tail and sniffing my face, as he’s had to do so many times before.

“Carmine, it must be hell living with me. I’m sorry.”

I stood back up, composed myself, and removed the hanger and her hair bands from the knob. The hair bands went on top of her bookcase and the hanger went on a hook in the kitchen (temporarily, since everything would eventually be packed).

I continued the work until Megan’s room was completely empty, now echoing from the absence of stuff. I left the orange curtains—maybe the next tenant will like them. If they don’t, that’s fine too. They don’t belong to me. They never belonged to me.

**

I’m tearing it all down except for what’s absolutely necessary. But if I can find a quiet space—a small, different space—to call my own, where I can be that old man and write and walk my dog and make dinner and be closer to the shop, there might be a spot for the door hanger.