8 min read · 1,514 words
Our front steps were where Mr. Bell sat after dark, and where I found the porch light covered with paper.
I live in the same apartment building as Mr. Bell and Mrs. Adams. I’m not family to either one, though I’ve known Mr. Bell long enough to call him Stan when we’re alone. He’s the sort of neighbor who brings your mail in when it’s raining and then says he was already by the door anyway. I’d gotten used to seeing him on the steps. I hadn’t asked why he sat there so often.
The paper was taped over the light when I came home from work. It was a square cut from a grocery bag, folded once and stuck across the fixture. I thought maybe the bulb had drawn bugs, or someone had been trying to keep the light from shining through the glass. I noticed it, but I didn’t take it down. That was my first mistake.
At supper, Mrs. Adams told me she’d asked the landlord to cover it. The light came right through her bedroom window, she said, and she’d been waking up at night. I didn’t know her window faced the entry. I’d never thought much about where her bedroom was.
“I just need to sleep,” she said.
I said I understood. I did understand, at least in the simple way you understand when somebody tells you they’re tired. I didn’t tell her that Stan sat under the light. I thought she knew.
She didn’t.
The next evening, I found Stan at the bottom of the steps with his hands in his coat pockets. He had a paper cup from the gas station, though he wasn’t drinking from it. The porch light was still covered, and the entry had gone dim enough that I had to feel for the rail.
“Did they break the light?” he asked.
I told him Mrs. Adams had asked the landlord to cover it because it bothered her at night. Stan nodded, like that was a fair reason. Then he looked toward the paper.
“I liked knowing it was on,” he said.
He didn’t say anything more. I could have asked what he meant, but instead I asked if he wanted me to call the landlord. He said no. So I went upstairs, and he stayed on the steps.
That part bothered me more than I expected. I’d known Stan’s wife, Ruth, a little. She used to bring a tin of oatmeal cookies down at Christmas and say she’d made too many, which was not true. Stan had been sitting out front most evenings since she died. I hadn’t put the two things together until he told me he liked knowing the light was on.
I felt bad for him, and then I felt bad for Mrs. Adams, and then I got irritated with myself for having to be told what was happening right in front of me. I’d lived there long enough to know who took the stairs slowly and who forgot their grocery bags by the mailboxes. I’d never bothered to learn why Stan sat outside.
The landlord, Dale, came by two days later to check the paper. I walked him over to Mrs. Adams’s side of the building so he could see where the light landed. Her bedroom window was closer than I’d thought. The glow hit the curtain at an angle and left a bright patch on the wall inside.
“I can’t sleep with that in my eyes,” she said from the doorway.
Dale looked at the fixture, then at the paper. “I can get a shield,” he said. “Should point the light down at the steps.”
Mrs. Adams didn’t answer right away. She was holding a dish towel, twisting one corner around her fingers. I should have told her then that Stan sat outside. I nearly did, but I worried she’d hear it as an accusation, like I was asking her to live with bad sleep because he was lonely. So I kept quiet.
Dale said he’d see what he could find. The paper stayed up.
The next few nights, Stan didn’t sit outside as long. I told myself he was probably cold, though it wasn’t that cold yet. One evening I heard his chair scrape across the concrete, then stop. I was halfway down the stairs with a bag of trash when he looked up.
“You don’t have to come down,” he said.
“I was taking this out.”
“Sure.”
I knew he didn’t believe me. I was embarrassed that I’d waited until he looked lonely to come say hello. I tossed the bag and stayed with him a minute. He talked about Ruth’s old habit of leaving the kitchen radio on when she went to bed. Not loud. Just enough to hear if he woke up.
“Some houses are too quiet,” he said.
I said I knew what he meant. I didn’t, not really. My own house had never been quiet in that way.
Dale came back the following week with a small metal shield for the porch light. He took the paper down and adjusted the fixture so it pointed toward the steps instead of the windows. It was a plain fix. No big meeting, no argument. He turned it on, stepped back, and asked us to check it after dark.
Mrs. Adams came down in her slippers. Stan was there too, standing by the railing. I stayed near the door, mostly because I didn’t want to make the whole thing feel like a show.
The light fell on the steps. It didn’t hit Mrs. Adams’s window.
Dale asked if it looked all right. She said she couldn’t tell in the daylight, and he said he’d leave it for the evening. She went back inside. Stan thanked him, but he didn’t sit down. He just touched the rail and looked at the lit steps.
I thought the hard part was over. I was wrong about that.
That night, I saw Mrs. Adams standing by the mailboxes after ten. She had a cardigan over her nightgown and her bedroom curtains still open behind her. I was going to ask if the shield worked, but then I saw her looking toward the steps.
Stan was sitting where he usually sat. The light landed across his shoes and the first few steps. He had one hand resting on the railing, and he was watching the empty sidewalk. Mrs. Adams stood there for a while. She didn’t wave. Neither did he.
I almost went over, but I didn’t want either one of them to feel watched. So I went upstairs and left them to it.
The next morning, Dale texted me to ask whether anyone had complained. I told him I hadn’t heard anything. I could have asked Mrs. Adams directly, but I figured she’d tell me if it wasn’t working. That was convenient for me. It meant I didn’t have to bring up how I’d stayed quiet before.
A couple nights passed. The shield stayed in place. Stan sat outside again, though not as late. Mrs. Adams didn’t mention the light. I assumed that meant it was fine.
Then, on Saturday, I found a new square of paper taped to the inside of the entry door. It was a note in Mrs. Adams’s handwriting, with a message for Dale. She’d written that the light was no longer shining into her room and asked him not to remove the shield.
At the bottom, in smaller writing, she’d added that she’d checked it from her bedroom window after Stan came down.
I read it twice. I don’t know why I expected a bigger gesture. She hadn’t brought him cookies or told him she understood. She’d just checked from her own bed, in the place where the light had been keeping her awake, and asked for the fix to stay.
I took the note upstairs and handed it to Dale when I saw him in the hall. I didn’t tell him it made me feel relieved. I also didn’t tell him I was sorry I’d let both of them think they had to manage the problem alone.
That evening, Stan sat under the light. Mrs. Adams’s curtains were drawn, and the steps were bright enough to see. He didn’t look up at her window. She didn’t come outside.
I sat beside him for a few minutes anyway. The light was on. Neither of us had to explain why.