The Cottage
Patty Somlo
Three days before Miriam Cobb received the letter, cherry trees on the west side of the cottage burst into bloom. Pale pink blossoms released a sharp sugary fragrance, as petals rose and fell with the breeze.
Miriam silently mouthed the words, having already scanned the letter twice. That exacting third reading confirmed what she already knew. She was being evicted from the lovely quiet cottage where she’d lived going on sixty-seven years. According to the letter, she had sixty days to get out.
Sunlight streamed through the small-paned windows, warming the old fir floors that had yellowed with age. Miriam raised her head, letting the letter slip to the floor. Peering over narrow reading glasses, she settled her sights on the window, with its vintage wavering glass that reminded her of breaking waves. Her chest full, Miriam couldn’t keep herself from sobbing.
~ ~ ~
Melanie Steele, a reporter from Channel 7, sat across from Miriam. Steele’s light blond hair fell to her shoulders, where the ends curled up. Miriam had seen her many times on TV and thought the pale pink lipstick she wore suited her. The law firm helping Miriam fight the eviction without her paying a dime had set this interview up.
“I’m sorry,” Miriam said, hoping to coax the reporter into helping her remember what they’d just been talking about.
“You said people didn’t talk about such things in those days. I was asking what things you were referring to.”
Miriam nodded.
She glanced over at the young lawyer, Jericka Johnson. Jericka had a headful of thin tight braids, a small oval face, large, light brown eyes, and flawless, tan-shaded skin. The same thought crossed Miriam’s mind as when she’d first met Jericka. She is far too young to be an attorney. And too pretty.
Jericka nodded to Miriam, signaling to go on. Miriam scooted back in her favorite chair, tempted to stretch her legs out, so the back would click down and be more comfortable. She really wanted to sleep, and not wake up until this nightmare was over.
~ ~ ~
The cottage was located on the western edge of Salt Pond, a tiny town north of San Francisco, and a short drive from the ocean. Most days, the fog that enveloped the coast burned off in Salt Pond by late morning, drifting back close to dusk. Victorians and bungalows slathered with bright colors sat behind lush gardens along the town’s quiet, narrow roads.
For forty years, Miriam taught in the town’s one elementary school on the main road. After retiring, she spent her days tending the garden that surrounded the cottage, taking long walks on the beach and on trails that wound high above, and filling small canvases with color. Not long after, she began selling her watercolor paintings of the ocean, surrounding hills and her garden at a gallery in town.
The cottage only had two official rooms, though it seemed larger. One room contained a small kitchen, a cozy sitting area surrounding the wood stove, and a two-person table for eating next to the window. Off to the side was a built-out rectangular alcove, where Miriam’s double bed sat next to a nightstand and lamp.
The other room was, in fact, an enclosed porch, with square skylights in the ceiling. Padded, pale blue upholstered window seats ran along one side, a bookshelf along another. Here, Miriam painted on days it was too wet or cold to work outside.
From the exterior, the cottage looked about to be swallowed up by the natural world. Honeysuckle and star jasmine climbed trellises on two sides. On a third, pale pink and yellow roses clung to the siding. The garden spilled out in every direction. Raised redwood beds housed fragrant Italian basil, sage, spinach, snap peas, tomatoes and zucchini.
Miriam often sat in a wicker lounge chair on the paving stones that separated the garden from the back of the house. Most days, she scribbled her thoughts down in a black notebook. She wrote about the garden, what was blooming and what was not. When she lost a plant to insects, mildew or some unknown infestation, it felt as if a child had ~ ~ ~ ~
On a bright April day sixty-seven years ago, Miriam took the afternoon off from her teaching job in the city and made the hour and a half drive north to Salt Pond. After parking in the crowded lot, she hurried to the front door.
Mr. Riley, the principal of Salt Pond Elementary, was slender and tall. He took one step for every three of Miriam’s, as they marched to his office. In between questions, he consulted Miriam’s application. She kept her hands clasped in her lap.
Two days later, Mr. Riley called.
“If you’re still interested in teaching here at Salt Pond, we’d like to offer you a job.”
“Yes, I am,” Miriam said, hardly believing her luck.
Almost before Riley finished telling Miriam that a letter offering her the sixth-grade teaching position would shortly arrive by mail, she asked, “Could I just pick it up?”
Then, without giving him a chance to respond, she blurted out, “I need to come to Salt Pond and find a place to rent.”
“My sister has a place,” Mr. Riley broke in to say. “The only thing is, it’s a very small cottage. Might not be big enough for you and your husband.”
Miriam swallowed twice to get some saliva into her throat.
“My husband will be staying in the city,” Miriam responded, hoping Mr. Riley wouldn’t ask why.
~ ~ ~
“I came to Salt Pond to teach,” Miriam began, several minutes after the reporter and Jericka looked over at her. “I was living in the city at the time.”
She pictured herself that day, as she left the San Francisco house for the last time. She wore her dark brown hair curled under, almost brushing her shoulders.
Daniel was at work. She hurriedly crammed a few pieces of clothing – a dark blue dress, a pale-yellow cotton one, a tan suit with a calf-length straight skirt, and two casual outfits –into the small forest green suitcase she had taken on her honeymoon, then dropped two saucepans, a frying pan, one plate, one cup, and a knife, fork and spoon, into a paper bag. Everything else would be left behind.
After arriving at the cottage, Miriam sat hunched over on the window seat. Every time a car passed, she shivered. As she peered out the window, a ray of sunlight hit the glass and broke apart.
~ ~ ~
“Are you feeling all right?” Jericka asked, bringing Miriam back to the present, where her once thick brunette hair was now thin and white.
Instead of answering, Miriam pondered a different question. Where can I possibly go? She had no family. Rents were so high she would have to pay ten times what she paid now.
“Miriam. Would you prefer that we reschedule the interview?”
Miriam nodded, grateful this young attorney was so thoughtful.
~ ~ ~
They met in the university cafeteria, on a spring afternoon near the end of Miriam’s junior year.
“Is anyone sitting here?”
Miriam looked up. A blond, blue-eyed young man stood holding a brown plastic tray. She couldn’t understand why this handsome guy had chosen to sit at her table.
“No,” Miriam said, then lowered her head, even though she was tempted to look up and admire those beautiful eyes.
“I’m Daniel,” he said.
Miriam looked up, surprised that he was speaking to her.
“What’s your name?”
“Miriam.”
Her hands, she noticed, were shaking.
He asked about her major, where she was from, and if she had any brothers or sisters. She knew she ought to ask something about him, but he never gave her a chance. After they finished eating, he wanted to know if he could walk Miriam to her next class. A week later, he asked her to have dinner with him.
~ ~ ~
The morning after the interview, Miriam sat alone in the cottage. Though Jericka assured her she would try to get a court-ordered stay on the eviction until the case was heard, Miriam couldn’t help but worry.
Balancing a brown plastic filter atop her favorite blue porcelain mug, she brewed a cup of strong French Roast coffee and carried it to the enclosed porch. Outside, birds were singing. She slowly eased down onto the padded window seat and looked around. The walls seemed to reach out and comfort her.
A life, she thought, gets built up, minute by minute, hour by hour, year by year. And then, with one stroke of the clock, it’s gone.
~ ~ ~
Miriam loved the attention Daniel paid her. Yet sometimes when she was with him, she noticed a gnawing ache in her gut. Daniel wanted to know how she spent her time away from him. If she said she needed to study, his voice took on a hard edge.
He brought roses or mixed bouquets for no reason, told her she was beautiful, gave her poems he’d scribbled on lined white paper. He confessed to losing his mother to cancer the year he turned eight. He didn’t let on that he fell into dark places, whenever he spent time alone.
When Daniel proposed, it didn’t make sense not to accept. Miriam hoped, after they were married, he would learn to trust her.
~ ~ ~
Three months after leaving Daniel, Miriam flipped through the yellow pages, stopping when she spotted the ad. The word was there at the top, spelled out in all capital letters. DIVORCE.
The office was on the second floor of an old brick building in downtown Mill Creek, a thirty-minute drive south. Irving Feldman, the lawyer, appeared old enough to be her grandfather. A smattering of thin gray hair was combed over his otherwise bald crown.
She must have heard the phrase in a movie, so she used it. Cruel and unusual punishment. Irving Feldman laughed. She felt the color rise in her face. The lawyer didn’t try to make her feel better or apologize.
“That’s a term used when someone is incarcerated. When someone’s in prison,” he said.
~ ~ ~
Mr. Riley’s sister, Gwendolyn Luntz, guessed right off.
“You’ve run away from your husband, haven’t you?” she asked, after agreeing to rent Miriam the cottage.
“I’m just taking a break,” Miriam rushed to get out the lie.
As the year wore on, Gwendolyn brought up the subject again.
“Does your husband know where you are?” Gwendolyn asked, the first Saturday in December, when she stopped by to pick up the rent.
At that moment, Miriam decided it was time.
“No,” she admitted.
She had met with Irving Feldman twice and the divorce proceedings were underway. When Miriam offered tea or coffee, Gwendolyn chose tea. They sat in the two overstuffed chairs facing the wood stove. Miriam began with the day she saw the ad for a teaching position at Salt Pond Elementary. By the time she was done, Gwendolyn had assured Miriam she could live in the cottage the rest of her life.
~ ~ ~
Sixty days came and went, and Miriam hadn’t moved out. The attorneys filed motion after motion, arguing about whether an oral agreement existed between Gwendolyn Luntz, the cottage’s former owner and great-grandmother to the current owner, Jonathan Will, and if it mattered. Outside the legal proceedings, Miriam Cobb, now ninety-eight, had become a symbol of so much that was wrong, about greed and inequality, and the absence of empathy and love.
Jonathan Will claimed he needed to sell the cottage, for his children to receive the legacy owed them. At the same time, he agreed that his mother, from whom he inherited the place, had informed him of the historic agreement made with the longtime tenant. In letters written to the court, Miriam’s supporters asked what it would hurt Will, a wealthy man, to wait and sell the cottage after this elderly woman passed away.
In the meantime, Miriam’s cancer had come back. Her doctor recommended radiation and another round of chemotherapy. Miriam told him she was still making up her mind, but had in fact decided she was done. At ninety-eight, what was the point?
~ ~ ~
By the time the case went to trial, Miriam was too ill to testify. Instead of a personal appearance, Jericka Johnson introduced her client to the jury through a videotaped deposition. The judge watched on the small computer screen in front of her.
The jurors saw a tiny woman, barely five feet tall, with tissue-thin arms. Her wrinkled, droopy lids nearly swallowed her blue eyes. She had a small, narrow face and cheekbones prominent and high. She wore her white hair pulled severely back in a tight bun.
After preliminary questions confirming her name and age, address and how long she’d lived in that location, Miriam was asked what brought her to live in that place.
“A teaching position,” Miriam said. “I got a job teaching sixth grade at Salt Pond Elementary.”
“And were you married at the time?” her attorney asked.
“Yes, I was,” Miriam responded.
“Did your husband go with you to live in the cottage?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“And why was that?”
“Because I left him.”
~ ~ ~
The jurors were given a fifteen-minute break to use the restroom. When they returned, Miriam’s attorney announced that they would continue with the rest of the video. She reminded them that they stopped with her client starting to explain the owner’s assurance that she could live in the cottage the rest of her life.
“Why do you think Ms. Luntz agreed to let you live there until you died?” Jericka asked.
Will’s attorney objected to the question, claiming that Ms. Cobb couldn’t know what Ms. Luntz had been thinking. Jericka agreed to rephrase.
“Did Ms. Luntz tell you why she agreed to let you live in the cottage forever?”
“Yes, she did,” Miriam testified.
~ ~ ~
Before Miriam became too weak from the cancer to paint, she tried to capture her feelings about the cottage in watercolor. Some days, she slipped through the French doors, moments after sunrise. She challenged herself to paint fog. Though others found the paintings wondrous, Miriam never felt satisfied with even one.
After weeks painting the exterior, Miriam tackled the inside. She worked rapidly, since that was the point of watercolor. More of the final paintings ended up in the garbage than saved.
Though she never shared the details of her life with Daniel to the press, the story of this elderly woman being thrown out of her home after sixty-seven years became known throughout the region. Every time the attorneys were scheduled to argue motions, housing activists gathered at the county courthouse to demonstrate, marching up and down the sidewalk, signs hoisted into the air. Tourists bought up her paintings, as fast as she finished them. Miriam didn’t realize that her supporters, who numbered in the thousands, drove by to gaze at the cottage, as if it were a shrine.
~ ~ ~
The jurors watched Miriam on the screen, as she slowly sipped water from a plastic bottle and swallowed. She hadn’t answered her attorney’s last question. Three of the jurors, two men and one woman, were retired. Though they agreed to only consider the evidence before reaching a verdict, the retirees had made up their minds.
The jurors’ eyes were focused on the large white screen at the front of the courtroom, watching the elderly Miriam Cobb. Nearly all of them felt sorry for her, thinking it was a shame that her final days were being spent fighting to stay in her home.
“I’ll ask the question again,” Jericka announced. “Did you have any children?”
Miriam, who’d dropped her head moments before, looked up. She shook her head from side to side.
“No, I did not,” she said, in a soft raspy voice.
“Was there a reason you didn’t have children?” her attorney asked.
“Yes, there was.”
“And what was that reason?”
Will’s counsel objected but the judge instructed the jurors to ignore his objection.
“I couldn’t,” Miriam said.
“Why couldn’t you have children?” Jericka asked.
Miriam looked away, then let out a sigh.
“Daniel,” she said.
“Your husband, Daniel. What about Daniel?”
“Daniel,” Miriam said again. “Daniel made me lose the baby.”
“How did Daniel make you lose the baby?”
Miriam ran a frail hand under her eyes. The jurors saw that she was crying.
“He beat me.”
“Daniel beat you and you had a miscarriage?”
Will’s attorney objected to the form of the question.
“I will rephrase,” Jericka said.
“Did Daniel beat you when you were pregnant?”
“Yes, he did,” Miriam said.
~ ~ ~
Memories started to haunt Miriam. Flooded with sunlight moments before, the room would suddenly turn dark, like a closet after the door slams shut.
“He locked me in the closet,” Miriam whispered, as if acknowledging this terrible truth to herself for the first time.
All these years later, Miriam imagined herself trapped there, unable to make out a hand held in front of her face. She gasped for air, as her heart pounded, fearing she would use up all the oxygen, before Daniel freed her from that cramped space.
The blows stayed below her face. Bruises bloomed bright purple on her arms and belly, her breasts and legs. They turned dark gray, then a sickly yellow, eventually fading to pale off-white. Her hip still rode higher on the right side.
To blot out the memories, Miriam painted. It was one thing to run away, another to acknowledge what had happened.
Each day, when long-buried feelings arose, Miriam scolded herself to go outside. She used a cane now, which irritated her, but she hoped to die before ending up with a walker. She set the cane down on the floor, took a step with one foot, and then with the other. On reaching the patio, the darkness in her head began to lighten.
~ ~ ~
The jurors deliberated for an hour. As one older man later told Will’s lawyer, who asked to poll the jury, it was “a slam dunk.” Dabbing her eyes with a crumpled Kleenex, one of the retired women said, “No one wanted to see that elderly woman thrown out.”
The oldest jurors couldn’t help seeing themselves in Miriam’s place, even though every one of them owned a home. Middle-aged jurors saw their parents, while the two jurors in their thirties recognized their grandmothers in Miriam’s face.
Yes, there was an oral agreement, the jurors flatly concluded. Even Jonathan Will didn’t dispute that.
~ ~ ~
Each month in the first two years of her marriage, Miriam’s period dutifully arrived. As time passed, she grew resigned. She was incapable of having a child. Her battered body refused to bring new life into that violent world.
Eight years later, Miriam missed her period, then missed it the following month. She didn’t breathe a word to Daniel.
Then the morning sickness started.
Once confirmed, she gave Daniel the news. For the first time in years, he looked at her the way he had when they first dated. He opened doors and carried her grocery bags in from the car. Several times a day, he asked, “Honey, are you feeling all right?” He didn’t hit her even once.
Three months later, she started to show. While Daniel hoped the baby was a boy, Miriam felt certain it would be a beautiful little girl. Whenever Miriam imagined the child, she pictured a small pink hand she would hold as they crossed the street and fine blond hair she’d brush each night. Alone in the house, Miriam talked to the child. She assured her as soon as she was born, if not before, they would be gone.
Only after the divorce did Miriam let herself feel the regret. If only I had left him before. She remembered the awful, aching emptiness, how she wished Daniel had killed her.
But he hadn’t. He cried instead, sobbed, as if he had lost the baby, not Miriam. Looking up, his cheeks damp and his nose running, he pleaded with Miriam.
“Please,” he wailed. “Forgive me.”
Miriam knew she never would. As Daniel repeated how sorry he felt, Miriam heard her own unspoken thoughts. I am going to leave you, Daniel.
~ ~ ~
The phone rang six times before the recorded message came on. Jericka listened to the message, instructing her to leave her name and number, and then hung up. She preferred to give Miriam the news directly.
Two hours later, Jericka called again. When Miriam didn’t answer, the young attorney said, “We’ve got a verdict, Miriam. Call me as soon as you can.”
The sun had set by the time the young attorney called a fourth time.
~ ~ ~
One ripe red cherry fell to the ground. It didn’t make a sound. Stretched out on the wicker lounge chair with her eyes closed, Miriam failed to notice. A moment later, a second cherry dropped.
Earlier in the afternoon, sunlight had bathed the worn wicker and warmed Miriam’s body. Now, a cold breeze danced across the garden.
By the time Jericka pulled up out front, fog blanketed the sky. Thick white clouds masked the stars.
Though it was dark, Jericka spotted Miriam’s body, moments after she stepped into the garden. Feeling for a pulse, Jericka grabbed her phone and dialed 911.
~ ~ ~
The following afternoon, a large manila envelope arrived at Jericka’s office. She searched the envelope’s front and back, but didn’t find a return address.
After opening the envelope, it took Jericka a moment to realize what she had been sent. The handwriting was shaky and, in places, hard to decipher.
“What?” Jericka shouted, once the meaning of the papers she’d pulled out of the envelope became clear.
~ ~ ~
Miriam hadn’t wanted alimony, but Irving Feldman insisted.
“I will have him send the payments to me. He will never learn where you live.”
When Feldman was five years into his retirement a decade later, Daniel died of a sudden heart attack. By then, Feldman’s son, Bruce, had taken over the firm.
“Your ex-husband left everything to you,” the younger Feldman informed Miriam over the phone.
Everything included the San Francisco house.
Miriam met with Bruce Feldman the following week. He suggested they put the San Francisco house up for sale. She could then invest the proceeds.
Miriam shook her head. “I can’t.”
For fifty-six years, the Feldman firm had managed Miriam’s San Francisco property. Each month, profits from the monthly rent went into a trust account set up for her by the firm. Some months, she struggled to get by on her limited income. But she still refused to let the Feldman firm transfer any of those funds to her or sell the San Francisco house and give her the proceeds.
~ ~ ~
“She had the money all along,” Jericka said to her boss, the firm’s managing partner, Eric Stein. He sat behind his antique oak desk, gazing out the floor-to-ceiling window at the San Francisco skyline. “For fifty-some years, she refused to take her ex-husband’s money. Even after he died.”
Jericka spent the next several months working with one of the probate attorneys to carry out instructions in Miriam Cobb’s will. One by one, Miriam’s investments were sold, the proceeds used to pay off medical and other bills, including legal fees the firm originally offered to donate. They sold the San Francisco house for three million dollars, even though the place was practically falling down.
“She could have bought the cottage several times over,” the managing partner said, after telling Jericka the amount the San Francisco house sale netted.
~ ~ ~
The weather was unseasonably warm on the September afternoon Jericka drove to Salt Pond. She wanted to take a look at the cottage one last time. She’d heard a rumor that investors bought the cottage and turned it into a vacation rental. Two days before, she’d done a quick search online but failed to find it listed on any of the popular sites.
She parked on the main road and followed the gravel lane to where the redwood fence started. Leaves on the two maple trees were starting to redden toward fall. She glanced to her left and right. No one appeared to be around.
After stepping through the gate, she paused next to the fence. The garden looked as well-tended as when Miriam was still alive. The wicker lounge chair where Jericka discovered Miriam’s body sat a few feet from the front door.
And then Jericka saw it. To the right of the small-paned front door. In all white letters. A simple wooden sign. WELCOME TO COBB COTTAGE.
The letters blurred, as Jericka quietly began to cry.
Patty Somlo
Three days before Miriam Cobb received the letter, cherry trees on the west side of the cottage burst into bloom. Pale pink blossoms released a sharp sugary fragrance, as petals rose and fell with the breeze.
Miriam silently mouthed the words, having already scanned the letter twice. That exacting third reading confirmed what she already knew. She was being evicted from the lovely quiet cottage where she’d lived going on sixty-seven years. According to the letter, she had sixty days to get out.
Sunlight streamed through the small-paned windows, warming the old fir floors that had yellowed with age. Miriam raised her head, letting the letter slip to the floor. Peering over narrow reading glasses, she settled her sights on the window, with its vintage wavering glass that reminded her of breaking waves. Her chest full, Miriam couldn’t keep herself from sobbing.
~ ~ ~
Melanie Steele, a reporter from Channel 7, sat across from Miriam. Steele’s light blond hair fell to her shoulders, where the ends curled up. Miriam had seen her many times on TV and thought the pale pink lipstick she wore suited her. The law firm helping Miriam fight the eviction without her paying a dime had set this interview up.
“I’m sorry,” Miriam said, hoping to coax the reporter into helping her remember what they’d just been talking about.
“You said people didn’t talk about such things in those days. I was asking what things you were referring to.”
Miriam nodded.
She glanced over at the young lawyer, Jericka Johnson. Jericka had a headful of thin tight braids, a small oval face, large, light brown eyes, and flawless, tan-shaded skin. The same thought crossed Miriam’s mind as when she’d first met Jericka. She is far too young to be an attorney. And too pretty.
Jericka nodded to Miriam, signaling to go on. Miriam scooted back in her favorite chair, tempted to stretch her legs out, so the back would click down and be more comfortable. She really wanted to sleep, and not wake up until this nightmare was over.
~ ~ ~
The cottage was located on the western edge of Salt Pond, a tiny town north of San Francisco, and a short drive from the ocean. Most days, the fog that enveloped the coast burned off in Salt Pond by late morning, drifting back close to dusk. Victorians and bungalows slathered with bright colors sat behind lush gardens along the town’s quiet, narrow roads.
For forty years, Miriam taught in the town’s one elementary school on the main road. After retiring, she spent her days tending the garden that surrounded the cottage, taking long walks on the beach and on trails that wound high above, and filling small canvases with color. Not long after, she began selling her watercolor paintings of the ocean, surrounding hills and her garden at a gallery in town.
The cottage only had two official rooms, though it seemed larger. One room contained a small kitchen, a cozy sitting area surrounding the wood stove, and a two-person table for eating next to the window. Off to the side was a built-out rectangular alcove, where Miriam’s double bed sat next to a nightstand and lamp.
The other room was, in fact, an enclosed porch, with square skylights in the ceiling. Padded, pale blue upholstered window seats ran along one side, a bookshelf along another. Here, Miriam painted on days it was too wet or cold to work outside.
From the exterior, the cottage looked about to be swallowed up by the natural world. Honeysuckle and star jasmine climbed trellises on two sides. On a third, pale pink and yellow roses clung to the siding. The garden spilled out in every direction. Raised redwood beds housed fragrant Italian basil, sage, spinach, snap peas, tomatoes and zucchini.
Miriam often sat in a wicker lounge chair on the paving stones that separated the garden from the back of the house. Most days, she scribbled her thoughts down in a black notebook. She wrote about the garden, what was blooming and what was not. When she lost a plant to insects, mildew or some unknown infestation, it felt as if a child had ~ ~ ~ ~
On a bright April day sixty-seven years ago, Miriam took the afternoon off from her teaching job in the city and made the hour and a half drive north to Salt Pond. After parking in the crowded lot, she hurried to the front door.
Mr. Riley, the principal of Salt Pond Elementary, was slender and tall. He took one step for every three of Miriam’s, as they marched to his office. In between questions, he consulted Miriam’s application. She kept her hands clasped in her lap.
Two days later, Mr. Riley called.
“If you’re still interested in teaching here at Salt Pond, we’d like to offer you a job.”
“Yes, I am,” Miriam said, hardly believing her luck.
Almost before Riley finished telling Miriam that a letter offering her the sixth-grade teaching position would shortly arrive by mail, she asked, “Could I just pick it up?”
Then, without giving him a chance to respond, she blurted out, “I need to come to Salt Pond and find a place to rent.”
“My sister has a place,” Mr. Riley broke in to say. “The only thing is, it’s a very small cottage. Might not be big enough for you and your husband.”
Miriam swallowed twice to get some saliva into her throat.
“My husband will be staying in the city,” Miriam responded, hoping Mr. Riley wouldn’t ask why.
~ ~ ~
“I came to Salt Pond to teach,” Miriam began, several minutes after the reporter and Jericka looked over at her. “I was living in the city at the time.”
She pictured herself that day, as she left the San Francisco house for the last time. She wore her dark brown hair curled under, almost brushing her shoulders.
Daniel was at work. She hurriedly crammed a few pieces of clothing – a dark blue dress, a pale-yellow cotton one, a tan suit with a calf-length straight skirt, and two casual outfits –into the small forest green suitcase she had taken on her honeymoon, then dropped two saucepans, a frying pan, one plate, one cup, and a knife, fork and spoon, into a paper bag. Everything else would be left behind.
After arriving at the cottage, Miriam sat hunched over on the window seat. Every time a car passed, she shivered. As she peered out the window, a ray of sunlight hit the glass and broke apart.
~ ~ ~
“Are you feeling all right?” Jericka asked, bringing Miriam back to the present, where her once thick brunette hair was now thin and white.
Instead of answering, Miriam pondered a different question. Where can I possibly go? She had no family. Rents were so high she would have to pay ten times what she paid now.
“Miriam. Would you prefer that we reschedule the interview?”
Miriam nodded, grateful this young attorney was so thoughtful.
~ ~ ~
They met in the university cafeteria, on a spring afternoon near the end of Miriam’s junior year.
“Is anyone sitting here?”
Miriam looked up. A blond, blue-eyed young man stood holding a brown plastic tray. She couldn’t understand why this handsome guy had chosen to sit at her table.
“No,” Miriam said, then lowered her head, even though she was tempted to look up and admire those beautiful eyes.
“I’m Daniel,” he said.
Miriam looked up, surprised that he was speaking to her.
“What’s your name?”
“Miriam.”
Her hands, she noticed, were shaking.
He asked about her major, where she was from, and if she had any brothers or sisters. She knew she ought to ask something about him, but he never gave her a chance. After they finished eating, he wanted to know if he could walk Miriam to her next class. A week later, he asked her to have dinner with him.
~ ~ ~
The morning after the interview, Miriam sat alone in the cottage. Though Jericka assured her she would try to get a court-ordered stay on the eviction until the case was heard, Miriam couldn’t help but worry.
Balancing a brown plastic filter atop her favorite blue porcelain mug, she brewed a cup of strong French Roast coffee and carried it to the enclosed porch. Outside, birds were singing. She slowly eased down onto the padded window seat and looked around. The walls seemed to reach out and comfort her.
A life, she thought, gets built up, minute by minute, hour by hour, year by year. And then, with one stroke of the clock, it’s gone.
~ ~ ~
Miriam loved the attention Daniel paid her. Yet sometimes when she was with him, she noticed a gnawing ache in her gut. Daniel wanted to know how she spent her time away from him. If she said she needed to study, his voice took on a hard edge.
He brought roses or mixed bouquets for no reason, told her she was beautiful, gave her poems he’d scribbled on lined white paper. He confessed to losing his mother to cancer the year he turned eight. He didn’t let on that he fell into dark places, whenever he spent time alone.
When Daniel proposed, it didn’t make sense not to accept. Miriam hoped, after they were married, he would learn to trust her.
~ ~ ~
Three months after leaving Daniel, Miriam flipped through the yellow pages, stopping when she spotted the ad. The word was there at the top, spelled out in all capital letters. DIVORCE.
The office was on the second floor of an old brick building in downtown Mill Creek, a thirty-minute drive south. Irving Feldman, the lawyer, appeared old enough to be her grandfather. A smattering of thin gray hair was combed over his otherwise bald crown.
She must have heard the phrase in a movie, so she used it. Cruel and unusual punishment. Irving Feldman laughed. She felt the color rise in her face. The lawyer didn’t try to make her feel better or apologize.
“That’s a term used when someone is incarcerated. When someone’s in prison,” he said.
~ ~ ~
Mr. Riley’s sister, Gwendolyn Luntz, guessed right off.
“You’ve run away from your husband, haven’t you?” she asked, after agreeing to rent Miriam the cottage.
“I’m just taking a break,” Miriam rushed to get out the lie.
As the year wore on, Gwendolyn brought up the subject again.
“Does your husband know where you are?” Gwendolyn asked, the first Saturday in December, when she stopped by to pick up the rent.
At that moment, Miriam decided it was time.
“No,” she admitted.
She had met with Irving Feldman twice and the divorce proceedings were underway. When Miriam offered tea or coffee, Gwendolyn chose tea. They sat in the two overstuffed chairs facing the wood stove. Miriam began with the day she saw the ad for a teaching position at Salt Pond Elementary. By the time she was done, Gwendolyn had assured Miriam she could live in the cottage the rest of her life.
~ ~ ~
Sixty days came and went, and Miriam hadn’t moved out. The attorneys filed motion after motion, arguing about whether an oral agreement existed between Gwendolyn Luntz, the cottage’s former owner and great-grandmother to the current owner, Jonathan Will, and if it mattered. Outside the legal proceedings, Miriam Cobb, now ninety-eight, had become a symbol of so much that was wrong, about greed and inequality, and the absence of empathy and love.
Jonathan Will claimed he needed to sell the cottage, for his children to receive the legacy owed them. At the same time, he agreed that his mother, from whom he inherited the place, had informed him of the historic agreement made with the longtime tenant. In letters written to the court, Miriam’s supporters asked what it would hurt Will, a wealthy man, to wait and sell the cottage after this elderly woman passed away.
In the meantime, Miriam’s cancer had come back. Her doctor recommended radiation and another round of chemotherapy. Miriam told him she was still making up her mind, but had in fact decided she was done. At ninety-eight, what was the point?
~ ~ ~
By the time the case went to trial, Miriam was too ill to testify. Instead of a personal appearance, Jericka Johnson introduced her client to the jury through a videotaped deposition. The judge watched on the small computer screen in front of her.
The jurors saw a tiny woman, barely five feet tall, with tissue-thin arms. Her wrinkled, droopy lids nearly swallowed her blue eyes. She had a small, narrow face and cheekbones prominent and high. She wore her white hair pulled severely back in a tight bun.
After preliminary questions confirming her name and age, address and how long she’d lived in that location, Miriam was asked what brought her to live in that place.
“A teaching position,” Miriam said. “I got a job teaching sixth grade at Salt Pond Elementary.”
“And were you married at the time?” her attorney asked.
“Yes, I was,” Miriam responded.
“Did your husband go with you to live in the cottage?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“And why was that?”
“Because I left him.”
~ ~ ~
The jurors were given a fifteen-minute break to use the restroom. When they returned, Miriam’s attorney announced that they would continue with the rest of the video. She reminded them that they stopped with her client starting to explain the owner’s assurance that she could live in the cottage the rest of her life.
“Why do you think Ms. Luntz agreed to let you live there until you died?” Jericka asked.
Will’s attorney objected to the question, claiming that Ms. Cobb couldn’t know what Ms. Luntz had been thinking. Jericka agreed to rephrase.
“Did Ms. Luntz tell you why she agreed to let you live in the cottage forever?”
“Yes, she did,” Miriam testified.
~ ~ ~
Before Miriam became too weak from the cancer to paint, she tried to capture her feelings about the cottage in watercolor. Some days, she slipped through the French doors, moments after sunrise. She challenged herself to paint fog. Though others found the paintings wondrous, Miriam never felt satisfied with even one.
After weeks painting the exterior, Miriam tackled the inside. She worked rapidly, since that was the point of watercolor. More of the final paintings ended up in the garbage than saved.
Though she never shared the details of her life with Daniel to the press, the story of this elderly woman being thrown out of her home after sixty-seven years became known throughout the region. Every time the attorneys were scheduled to argue motions, housing activists gathered at the county courthouse to demonstrate, marching up and down the sidewalk, signs hoisted into the air. Tourists bought up her paintings, as fast as she finished them. Miriam didn’t realize that her supporters, who numbered in the thousands, drove by to gaze at the cottage, as if it were a shrine.
~ ~ ~
The jurors watched Miriam on the screen, as she slowly sipped water from a plastic bottle and swallowed. She hadn’t answered her attorney’s last question. Three of the jurors, two men and one woman, were retired. Though they agreed to only consider the evidence before reaching a verdict, the retirees had made up their minds.
The jurors’ eyes were focused on the large white screen at the front of the courtroom, watching the elderly Miriam Cobb. Nearly all of them felt sorry for her, thinking it was a shame that her final days were being spent fighting to stay in her home.
“I’ll ask the question again,” Jericka announced. “Did you have any children?”
Miriam, who’d dropped her head moments before, looked up. She shook her head from side to side.
“No, I did not,” she said, in a soft raspy voice.
“Was there a reason you didn’t have children?” her attorney asked.
“Yes, there was.”
“And what was that reason?”
Will’s counsel objected but the judge instructed the jurors to ignore his objection.
“I couldn’t,” Miriam said.
“Why couldn’t you have children?” Jericka asked.
Miriam looked away, then let out a sigh.
“Daniel,” she said.
“Your husband, Daniel. What about Daniel?”
“Daniel,” Miriam said again. “Daniel made me lose the baby.”
“How did Daniel make you lose the baby?”
Miriam ran a frail hand under her eyes. The jurors saw that she was crying.
“He beat me.”
“Daniel beat you and you had a miscarriage?”
Will’s attorney objected to the form of the question.
“I will rephrase,” Jericka said.
“Did Daniel beat you when you were pregnant?”
“Yes, he did,” Miriam said.
~ ~ ~
Memories started to haunt Miriam. Flooded with sunlight moments before, the room would suddenly turn dark, like a closet after the door slams shut.
“He locked me in the closet,” Miriam whispered, as if acknowledging this terrible truth to herself for the first time.
All these years later, Miriam imagined herself trapped there, unable to make out a hand held in front of her face. She gasped for air, as her heart pounded, fearing she would use up all the oxygen, before Daniel freed her from that cramped space.
The blows stayed below her face. Bruises bloomed bright purple on her arms and belly, her breasts and legs. They turned dark gray, then a sickly yellow, eventually fading to pale off-white. Her hip still rode higher on the right side.
To blot out the memories, Miriam painted. It was one thing to run away, another to acknowledge what had happened.
Each day, when long-buried feelings arose, Miriam scolded herself to go outside. She used a cane now, which irritated her, but she hoped to die before ending up with a walker. She set the cane down on the floor, took a step with one foot, and then with the other. On reaching the patio, the darkness in her head began to lighten.
~ ~ ~
The jurors deliberated for an hour. As one older man later told Will’s lawyer, who asked to poll the jury, it was “a slam dunk.” Dabbing her eyes with a crumpled Kleenex, one of the retired women said, “No one wanted to see that elderly woman thrown out.”
The oldest jurors couldn’t help seeing themselves in Miriam’s place, even though every one of them owned a home. Middle-aged jurors saw their parents, while the two jurors in their thirties recognized their grandmothers in Miriam’s face.
Yes, there was an oral agreement, the jurors flatly concluded. Even Jonathan Will didn’t dispute that.
~ ~ ~
Each month in the first two years of her marriage, Miriam’s period dutifully arrived. As time passed, she grew resigned. She was incapable of having a child. Her battered body refused to bring new life into that violent world.
Eight years later, Miriam missed her period, then missed it the following month. She didn’t breathe a word to Daniel.
Then the morning sickness started.
Once confirmed, she gave Daniel the news. For the first time in years, he looked at her the way he had when they first dated. He opened doors and carried her grocery bags in from the car. Several times a day, he asked, “Honey, are you feeling all right?” He didn’t hit her even once.
Three months later, she started to show. While Daniel hoped the baby was a boy, Miriam felt certain it would be a beautiful little girl. Whenever Miriam imagined the child, she pictured a small pink hand she would hold as they crossed the street and fine blond hair she’d brush each night. Alone in the house, Miriam talked to the child. She assured her as soon as she was born, if not before, they would be gone.
Only after the divorce did Miriam let herself feel the regret. If only I had left him before. She remembered the awful, aching emptiness, how she wished Daniel had killed her.
But he hadn’t. He cried instead, sobbed, as if he had lost the baby, not Miriam. Looking up, his cheeks damp and his nose running, he pleaded with Miriam.
“Please,” he wailed. “Forgive me.”
Miriam knew she never would. As Daniel repeated how sorry he felt, Miriam heard her own unspoken thoughts. I am going to leave you, Daniel.
~ ~ ~
The phone rang six times before the recorded message came on. Jericka listened to the message, instructing her to leave her name and number, and then hung up. She preferred to give Miriam the news directly.
Two hours later, Jericka called again. When Miriam didn’t answer, the young attorney said, “We’ve got a verdict, Miriam. Call me as soon as you can.”
The sun had set by the time the young attorney called a fourth time.
~ ~ ~
One ripe red cherry fell to the ground. It didn’t make a sound. Stretched out on the wicker lounge chair with her eyes closed, Miriam failed to notice. A moment later, a second cherry dropped.
Earlier in the afternoon, sunlight had bathed the worn wicker and warmed Miriam’s body. Now, a cold breeze danced across the garden.
By the time Jericka pulled up out front, fog blanketed the sky. Thick white clouds masked the stars.
Though it was dark, Jericka spotted Miriam’s body, moments after she stepped into the garden. Feeling for a pulse, Jericka grabbed her phone and dialed 911.
~ ~ ~
The following afternoon, a large manila envelope arrived at Jericka’s office. She searched the envelope’s front and back, but didn’t find a return address.
After opening the envelope, it took Jericka a moment to realize what she had been sent. The handwriting was shaky and, in places, hard to decipher.
“What?” Jericka shouted, once the meaning of the papers she’d pulled out of the envelope became clear.
~ ~ ~
Miriam hadn’t wanted alimony, but Irving Feldman insisted.
“I will have him send the payments to me. He will never learn where you live.”
When Feldman was five years into his retirement a decade later, Daniel died of a sudden heart attack. By then, Feldman’s son, Bruce, had taken over the firm.
“Your ex-husband left everything to you,” the younger Feldman informed Miriam over the phone.
Everything included the San Francisco house.
Miriam met with Bruce Feldman the following week. He suggested they put the San Francisco house up for sale. She could then invest the proceeds.
Miriam shook her head. “I can’t.”
For fifty-six years, the Feldman firm had managed Miriam’s San Francisco property. Each month, profits from the monthly rent went into a trust account set up for her by the firm. Some months, she struggled to get by on her limited income. But she still refused to let the Feldman firm transfer any of those funds to her or sell the San Francisco house and give her the proceeds.
~ ~ ~
“She had the money all along,” Jericka said to her boss, the firm’s managing partner, Eric Stein. He sat behind his antique oak desk, gazing out the floor-to-ceiling window at the San Francisco skyline. “For fifty-some years, she refused to take her ex-husband’s money. Even after he died.”
Jericka spent the next several months working with one of the probate attorneys to carry out instructions in Miriam Cobb’s will. One by one, Miriam’s investments were sold, the proceeds used to pay off medical and other bills, including legal fees the firm originally offered to donate. They sold the San Francisco house for three million dollars, even though the place was practically falling down.
“She could have bought the cottage several times over,” the managing partner said, after telling Jericka the amount the San Francisco house sale netted.
~ ~ ~
The weather was unseasonably warm on the September afternoon Jericka drove to Salt Pond. She wanted to take a look at the cottage one last time. She’d heard a rumor that investors bought the cottage and turned it into a vacation rental. Two days before, she’d done a quick search online but failed to find it listed on any of the popular sites.
She parked on the main road and followed the gravel lane to where the redwood fence started. Leaves on the two maple trees were starting to redden toward fall. She glanced to her left and right. No one appeared to be around.
After stepping through the gate, she paused next to the fence. The garden looked as well-tended as when Miriam was still alive. The wicker lounge chair where Jericka discovered Miriam’s body sat a few feet from the front door.
And then Jericka saw it. To the right of the small-paned front door. In all white letters. A simple wooden sign. WELCOME TO COBB COTTAGE.
The letters blurred, as Jericka quietly began to cry.