Arrangement by Kenneth N. Margolin

Darlene’s husband, Warren Mason, sells his lumber company for twenty million dollars. They build a forty-five hundred square foot deck house on thirty wooded acres bounded by three hundred acres of conservation land in rural North Carolina and plan to grow old amidst the trees. Five years after they build the house, while cutting down a diseased tree, Warren collapses and dies. Darlene considers moving closer to town, but cannot bear the thought of leaving the birds, the deer, the unseen creatures that forage through the woodlands and visit her backyard. At eighty-three years old, Darlene resolves to live and die in her beloved home.

She adopts a daily routine that she follows with military precision. At 7:00 a.m., she awakes and puts on a colorful print dress. After breakfast, she straps on a backpack and walks the woods for hours. When she returns from her walk, Darlene busies herself in the kitchen, baking breads and cakes and homemade sauces that she brings weekly to the food bank in town. Dinners are leisurely. She prepares for herself visually pleasing meals, perhaps a small serving of beef or chicken surrounded by greens, a sticky rice cake and alternating orange and apple slices. She eats her creations with no distraction of radio or reading material. She drinks two glasses of wine with her meal and a generous chaser of hard liquor after dinner. Most nights, Darlene allows herself a couple of hours of television or a movie before she goes to bed and reads until the verge of sleep.

When Darlene turns off the lights and can no longer distract herself with the activities of the day, she feels the primal darkness of the countryside like a crushing weight, a presence that might extinguish her. Her breathing comes fast and shallow, and she sobs with such force that her stomach aches until she falls asleep to await her predictable next day. The only break in Darlene’s parade of cloned days comes in the increasingly rare visits from the west coast of her two children, William and Jane, both married and childless. Son and daughter had been closer to their father than to Darlene. Since Warren’s death, there grew an increasing emotional chasm between mother and children. When she is honest with herself, she allows that she and her husband had also grown distant in the last years of their marriage.

She decides to make home repairs that she has ignored since she became widowed, andcontacts a solo contractor named Frank “The Handyman,” who advertises in the local newspaper. Frank sends her five references who rave about his workmanship and courtesy. With some misgivings about inviting a stranger into her home, she calls him.

At exactly the agreed upon time the next Monday morning, Frank knocks on her front door.

“I’m Frank, the handyman,” he says.

Darlene bids him inside. He is a large man, heavy, Darlene thinks. Everything about him is huge. He is not obese, yet his shoulders, chest and stomach are massive. His wide face broadens to a fleshy jaw and chin, which along with his day old dark beard, make him look like a comic book villian.  His black hair speckled with gray is slicked down and barely combed. Darlene guesses him to be in his sixties and Greek or of some Middle Eastern descent. Frank moves a step toward Darlene to hand her a card. When Darlene instinctively takes a step back, Frank moves a half-step back himself.

“What is your last name, if you don’t mind my asking,” she says.

“Argyros. I was born in Greece and came to the United States when I was fifteen, so I am a Greek American citizen.”

Frank gives the information matter of factly with no hint of pride or offense. His voice is deep and gravelly. The Greek accent remains. Darlene shows him around the house where work needs to be done. He inspects each area intensely. When finished, they return to the kitchen where Frank scrawls a list of the work and an estimate of the cost, and hands the paper to Darlene.

“Let me know if you want me to do the job,” he says. “I can start tomorrow and will be done on Friday.”

Darlene agrees and signs the estimate.

Frank arrives at nine a.m. the next day as promised. With no conversation beyond “good morning, I will get to work,” he proceeds to the second floor and begins. Darlene does not take her daily walk. She sits in the living room with a crossword puzzle, then a novel to which she gives scant attention. All the while, she is aware of the human presence in her home. The sounds, the scent, the physicalness of a person not a child or child’s spouse is different, and Darlene has allowed little that is different since Warren died. She listens to Frank working upstairs, with her breath quieted, as if he might suddenly lurch down the stairs like a horror movie ghoul. He works nonstop for hours. Finally, Darlene gathers herself and goes upstairs to where Frank has removed peeling wallpaper that will be replaced with paint.

“May I bring you a cup of coffee?” she asks.

Frank bends down to retrieve his thermos, which he holds up to Darlene with a slight nod.

“I have my own,” he says. “I stop work each day at three in the afternoon, so will be leaving soon.”

At precisely three o’clock, he leaves.

The next day, Wednesday, Frank comes downstairs at noon and finds Darlene in the kitchen.

“If yesterday’s offer of coffee still stands, I would like a cup,” he says.

Darlene makes two cups and sits across from Frank at the kitchen table. To her questions about Frank’s life, he answers politely in few words. He had been married once, divorced for decades with no contact with his ex-wife. He is long estranged from his one child, a son, who developed a drug addiction and refuses all help from Frank, even money, and lives on the streets somewhere in California. Frank believes he is alive, and expects he will never see him again. When not talking, he stares directly at Darlene’s face, which causes her to shift in her chair.

“Are you sizing me up?”

“I read people very well,” Frank says. “It’s a gift that I have.”

“And what do you read in me?”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow,” he says. “In fact, when I am done with my work tomorrow,

I would like to talk with you. I have a proposal to make.”

“I don’t want any more work done in the house right now, but sure, we can talk.”

On Thursday at three, Darlene and Frank sit again across her kitchen table sipping cups of coffee and eating Darlene’s banana bread. After a few moments of silence, he begins.

“I told you I read people well. What I read in your eyes is loneliness, and what I read in the way you carry yourself is desperate loneliness.”

While Darlene considers a response, Frank continues speaking.

“I also know that you are wealthy. I read about your late husband’s sale of his lumber company. I have worked all my life and spend each week’s earnings for necessities. If I ever retire, I will have little savings. We can help each other out.”

Darlene keeps her eyes on Frank and considers how he could have read her bone weary loneliness so accurately. Any carnival huckster could do the same. She is a widowed older woman who lives alone with not a neighbor in sight. No special gift in guessing her to be lonely.

“Here is my proposal,” Frank says. “If you pay me one thousand dollars a week, I will have dinner with you on Mondays, breakfast and dinner Tuesdays through Fridays and breakfast on Saturdays. After our dinners, I will keep you company however you wish, then will sleep with you. I don’t know much about sex and women your age, but I could provide that if you want. After weekday breakfasts, I will go on my way and come back for dinner. Once I leave Saturday morning, the rest of the time until Monday dinner will be mine and what I do will be my business, though I will always answer honestly any question you put to me. “

Darlene considers whether Frank is insane. Frank gets up from his chair and stands relaxed a respectful distance away.

“You can stop our arrangement with a word and I will be gone. But if you still want me here after a month, you will rewrite your will and leave me twenty-five percent of your estate if you die while our arrangment is on. If I die before you or you end the deal, you will owe me nothing of your estate. One more thing. While I am in your house, I will do what you ask; your rules.”

Darlene gestures toward the front door.

“To how many other rich old widows have you offered to rent yourself out?” she says. “Please leave now.”

Frank turns to leave. At the door, he says, “think about my proposal. I believe you will accept it. Do you still want me to come back tomorrow?”

“I want the work we agreed upon to be completed,” Darlene says. “Come back, finish it,

I will pay you, then be on your way.”

That night in bed, Darlene’s tears do not come. The darkness holds no weight for her. She listens to noises in the woods she has long ignored, the wind in the treetops, branches snapping, cries of beasts large and small, life everywhere. She stays awake for hours before she finally sleeps and does not waken until 8:30 a.m., barely enough time to ready herself for Frank’s 9:00 a.m. start.

When Frank arrives, he makes no mention of his offer. After her breakfast, Darlene tells him she will be out and will return shortly before three to check his work and to pay him.

“I will be done on time,” Frank says.

Darlene enters the conservation land and walks briskly on the main trail until she reaches a mile long side trail that has become overgrown with disuse. She takes the trail through brush, viny weeds and thistle to where it dead ends at a small wetlands pond. At the edge of the pond is a large rock with a flat top. Here she lays out a blanket, lunch and a book, and sits for hours. As she prepares to head back to her house, a hare emerges from the woods and sits three feet from her, motionless but for the twitching of its nose. The hare is a deep woods hare, lean and muscular with short dark gray fur and black eyes. Darlene and the hare commune silently for ten minutes.

“What do you think?” Darlene says at last. The hare turns and bounds back into the woods.

When Darlene returns to her home, Frank is in the kitchen with his tools and supplies stacked together against the wall. Darlene inspects his work as Frank follows behind. Back in the kitchen, Darlene asks Frank to sit with her. He watches her intently as he had the first time they sat across from each other.

“I accept your proposal,” she says, “but for seven hundred dollars per week, not one thousand, and if we are still in the arrangement when I die, twenty percent of my estate to you, not twenty-five percent.”

For the first time since Frank arrived four days previously, he smiles, which softens his mien more than Darlene had thought possible.

“Eight hundred dollars a week,” he says, and twenty-three percent of your estate.”

“I find it difficult to believe I am having this discussion,” she says, “but I guess I am.” Eight hundred dollars per week is fine; twenty percent of my estate is non-negotiable.”

Frank holds out his hand and Darlene shakes it.

“Madam, you will not regret this decision.”

#

Darlene decides that the first day of her arrangement with Frank is the strangest day of her life. She feels as if in a dream world where the dream characters must be play-acting an imaginary drama. At Monday dinner they speak only of how Frank’s visits will work. They agree that he can put some clothes in Warren’s bureau and closet, which Darlene had emptied not long after Warren died. They set up wire transfer so that Darlene can pay Frank at the end of each week. She tells Frank that he can help himself to anything in the liquor cabinet, but that she will end the arrangement quickly if he is a heavy drinker.

“I am not,” he tells her.

When he comes to bed that first night after a shower, he is naked and turns sideways as he climbs into the bed. He apologizes to Darlene, says that he cannot sleep with anything on him and that he had not thought to mention this.

“I was married for decades,” she says, “and raised a son. Nothing to see here.”

Frank sleeps turned away from her near his edge of the bed. Darlene lies on her back and feels his weight and warmth, hears his breathing. When she finally sleeps, Frank’s snoring wakes her. She nudges him and he stops.

Tuesday through Saturday continue as did Monday, except that the details of Frank’s stay being agreed upon, they eat in silence. When Frank arrives for dinner on Monday of the second week, Darlene tells him that they need to make a change.

“I can eat in silence over breakfast,” she says. “But, we’ve got to make some conversation at dinner. Okay?”

“I can do that,” Frank says. “Your rules.”

The weeks roll by with a rhythm that becomes familiar. Darlene provides enormous breakfasts. They speak little. After Frank is done, he says, “I will see you this evening,” and promptly leaves. Nights, Darlene continues to cook modest dinners for herself, but acquiesces to Frank’s request for large amounts of food, though the size of his evening meals makes her uncomfortable.

“I am a working man,” Franks says. “I need to feed the engine.”

As Frank had promised, he makes conversation at dinners and by the third week is downright garrulous. Darlene tells him of her childhood, a rural upbringing as an only child with few friends, and parents who provided the material basics of life and who showed little affection to her.

“I learned independence,” she says.

Frank talks easily of whatever enters his mind, from falling leaves to wildlife sightings, and often of politics. He laments the state of the country, believes young people have become soft.

“All I want from the government,” he tells Darlene, “is to be left alone.”

Darlene nods in agreement. They never mention their late spouses. They sleep chastely and do not touch, Frank on his side near the edge of the bed as Darlene drifts to sleep quickly after putting down her book and turning off the light.

On Tuesday evenings, they teach each other what they know. After a Tuesday dinner, Darlene teaches Frank how to bake bread.

“Don’t use all your strength when you knead,” she says. “You’re making a loaf of bread, not a giant pancake.”
The next Tuesday, Frank teaches Darlene how to refinish furniture. He is a patient teacher. On most evenings before bed, they sit on separate chairs in front of a fire in the living room stone fireplace.

Three years go by. Darlene struggles to remember her life before the arrangement with Frank. She gives no thought to ending it. On a warm Tuesday morning, she is determined to have Frank take the day off and join her in the conservation land. She will cajole him until he agrees. When she nudges him to awaken him, his body is stiff and cold. Frank has died during the night. She calls “911” and police arrive to remove Frank’s body.

In the nights that follow, Darlene’s tears come and she feels the darkness once again as a weight. She brings the one picture she had taken of Frank to a photo shop and has it blown up to fit in a ten by twelve inch desk top picture frame. On the days when Frank stayed for breakfasts and dinners, Darlene places his picture across from her while she eats. At breakfasts she is mostly silent, but at dinners carries on conversations with Frank’s image. Nights when Frank stayed, she places his picture on the night stand on his side of the bed. Her tears stop and the dark loses its heaviness.

Darlene continues with her daily routine and the company of Frank’s photograph. Ten days before her ninetieth birthday, as she eats breakfast, a crushing pain seizes her chest. She sweats profusely; the pain continues to her left arm, and she struggles to breath. Darlene knows she is suffering a massive heart attack. She takes Frank’s picture and hobbles over to her favorite living room chair, where she awaits her inevitable end. She becomes light-headed and feels life slipping away. She lifts Frank’s image to her face.

“Thank you,” she says.

Kenneth N. Margolin