You would never choose Cliff as your landlord, but our favorite gifts come unbidden.

This particular gift stood six feet, five inches, a pink behemoth with a Chow-Chow named Nugget. With a sweet tooth for the absurd and little to lose, he had purchased a farmhouse connected to the Eastbrook Post Office. Nearly every wall dripped with feral murals of vines and birds, cave paintings from a former resident without restraint. Spattered Spanish tile formed a yellow-brick labyrinth, and all the closets were the color of asparagus. Cliff would chop the house into four apartments. The USPS would pay him rent.

For $800/month including utilities, it would be my first home out of grad school.

Cliff was breathless the day I met him, a condition I would learn was his default. Gasping and exasperated, he had found a taker for the fourth and final apartment. “A teacher!” he boasted. “We got a teacher, a yoga instructor, a pastor, and me. It’s a sweet house!”

“I’m not a pastor,” I reminded him.

“You went to pastor school. That’s enough for me,” Cliff grinned, a nearly imperceptible shift. He had been born with strawberry cheeks that smiled even when angry.

“You sure you like this place?” He leaned against the long ledge that lined my apartment for no apparent reason. “It’s a bowling alley. It’s the weirdest of the four.” He shrugged, causing seismic activity three counties away. “It’s the cheapest of the four.”

“I love this place.” I was the sweet idiot he’d dreamed of, as he would go on to tell me in kinder terms. “I love everything about this place.”

At twenty-six, I was doused in bafflements, and an apartment with indoor shingles and unhinged art felt appropriate. I was marrying my newly minted seminary degree to a job fundraising for a cat sanctuary. I was settling into a town with twenty fainting goats and no stoplights. My presence brought the average age down ten years.

I was not ordained, but I was infatuated in all directions. I had an apartment! I had a cat. I had the innocence of an eleven-year-old and the bravado of a Master of Divinity.

I had a three-hundred-pound landlord who loved me on arrival.

The feeling was mutual, one of those mystery bonds that predicts its own reasons. I determined to delight Cliff, starting with my reverence for the house.

I conscripted my mother, who could renovate gulags into French Country comfort. We aligned my bed with the inexplicable mantel-without-a-fireplace. We hung hearts on the indoor shingles. We found a jaunty area rug to cover the “door in the floor,” a wood-and-glass portal to the sump pump in the middle of my kitchen. We found a ghastly green couch “free to a good home” on the roadside and asked Jesus to banish theoretical bedbugs. We stationed angels everywhere.

We restored Cliff’s dented faith in miracles.

“You made it the sweetest of the four,” he gasped. “It’s beautiful. This one I couldn’t see ever bein’ nice, and you made it beautiful!”

There was work to be done. A layer of toxic waste covered the pond like cheese on some diabolical French onion soup, bullfrogs bellowing below. A stairway in my apartment led directly to Cliff’s, and he spackled both sides to create “a genuine staircase to nowhere!” The post office matron with a beehive high as heaven called Cliff with daily demands. “Ruby’s a gem,” he would gasp. “A reeeeeeeeal gem.”

Cliff’s life hadn’t been easy, not with three wives who sounded like Macbeth’s witches and three sons who sounded like goateed toddlers. He had done well enough in a sales career to experiment with landlording, but not so well that he could afford to live anywhere but upstairs, “although it’s not as weird up there as down here.”

His Nugget was a cast-off from a former daughter-in-law. “Just gave her up. Can you imagine?” A dour bear made entirely of brown fat, Nugget was unwalkable, so Cliff would simply stand outside beside her. I would see them out there together for a half hour at a time, plush monuments between the belching bullfrogs and the defunct outhouse. I am convinced they both frequently fell asleep.

Other tenants came and went, and Cliff meticulously chose “sweet folks” to replace them. He interviewed our first male renter, string-bean Milt, as though vetting a director of the CIA. “I won’t let anyone in this house who’s no good,” Cliff promised. Milt went on to clean my ancient Subaru after every snowstorm.

I teased Cliff that he only kept my rent low to entertain his endless theological questions. “I talk to God, but I don’t need specifics,” he’d say, proceeding to ask me specifics. “There’s too much lovin’ for this world to be all bad. I don’t believe people are goin’ to hell.” His cheeks filled. “I do believe some are gonna get a little toasty first.”

We agreed that the pond housed fairies, and the bullfrogs were the neighborhood watch.

Though he looked like a refugee from a rock tumbler, all red and bald, Cliff was given to giggles. He found politics uproarious and thought it might be better if senators threw chairs at each other and then had a friendly lunch, “you know, like in Malaysia. Ever see their congress online? Wild stuff. Healthier than ours.”

He cheered my creativity in making the Alice-in-wonderland house a home. There were no kitchen counters, but a plastic bistro set brought a taste of Paris. The door in the floor gurgled in thunderstorms, but “we can hide down there if we gotta!”

“We could hide immigrants down there,” I suggested.

“You and that bleedin’ heart. Must be all those cats.” Strawberries shortcaked into smiles, and Cliff’s eyes disappeared.

When the daffodils came up in February, Cliff banged on my door. “First ones. Gotta see ‘em.” When Cliff’s sons came to visit, he insisted on extended postmortems. “That was Cliffy. I wish I did better with him. That was Carmine. His mom’s the good one. Kid’s lost to me, though. Would take my last sandwich. That was Louie. Louie’s my baby. You can count on Louie.”

I couldn’t count on Cliff to pay the heating bill, and I came to know the sound of his three hundred pounds hurdling downstairs seeking absolution. “I’m an idiot. I’m the king idiot. Ang, I’m sorry. It’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll cut your rent this month. I’m the fattest moron.”

In the meantime, I had “The Prototype,” a magnificently hazardous electric fireplace that Cliff had found when he bought the building. “I’m bringin’ you heat!” he would crow, lofting the beast over his head. It worked, but it sputtered expletives and glowered at me like the eye of Sauron. I opted for layered hoodies instead.

My bay window opened to the post office parking lot, and I became a novelty for farmers and gentle geriatrics. Teddy openly declared his love between embellished war stories. (“Teddy’s alright, but tell me if you need me to shut him up,” Cliff offered.) Aldene asked if I would guest preach at the Methodist church. Elmer saw all my colored glass and brought me electric transformers and blue Ball jars. “Hope you like ‘em. I kept the pretty ones. You know, I used to have an antique store.”

Even Ruby, Eastbrook’s Queen Bee since the Revolutionary era, waxed semisweet. “The way to her heart is to ask about Otto,” I told Cliff constantly. “Get her talking about the terrier, and she will love you.”

“Doubtful.”

The power went out constantly, and I sometimes wished I did not have patio flooring in my living room. No amount of scrubbing could get the Spanish tile clean. The bathroom was so small that I could put my feet in the shower while on the toilet.

But the staircase to nowhere was the bookcase of my dreams, the pond was filled with fairies, and Cliff made me feel safe in my very first apartment.

I didn’t think about this feature, not in a town of fainting goats and fat soybeans. Cliff did, constantly.

“Lock your doors, even here, Ang. Don’t run the dryer if you go out. You know I’m upstairs. Well, at night you’re screwed, ‘cause my CPAP would drown out nuclear war. But you know what I mean.”

In the time of the great sourness, I learned what I already knew.

Bad boyfriends are a rite of passage, and first apartments see them all. Six hundred square foot bowling alleys become the stage for raging and resurrection, pale cheeks yielding to fledgling phoenixes.

But the oversized eleven-year-old had hearts all over her wings and senses too saturated with sweetness to smell smoke. I was unprepared for Blake, all contempt and prowess.

Cliff’s initial ticklement – “Ang has a boyfriend! I’m callin’ NBC! I’m tellin’ Teddy!” – furrowed fast. “Everything OK?” he’d ask with no context.

“Totally! Absolutely!” My thinnest denials are adverbs.

But Cliff knew, and my mother knew, and one night they cooperated in the soybean field beyond knowledge.

Blake was shouting about my immaturity. He said I kissed him like a brother. I embarrassed him. I needed so much. What, did I want him to do cartwheels when he saw me? And the damn cat sanctuary. What if he needed me to make more money than I could ever earn at that cat sanctuary?

I saw my exit. I tried to return his engagement ring. He threatened suicide. “It’s dire, Angie. I’ll do it.” I reached for my cell phone. He put his hands on my shoulders.

My mother did not know this. My mother did not know why she was praying with desperation. My mother did not know why she asked God to send a “large and powerful man” to my house.

Cliff did not know this. Cliff pulled into the parking lot. Six feet, five inches, and three hundred pounds of Cliff rose like a genie in the window. “HEY ANG!” All strawberry grin.

Blake choked. “Cliff!” He drizzled towards the door. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

Tomorrow never came. My best friend from the cat sanctuary delivered the ring into the hands that shook my shoulders. I deep-cleaned six hundred square feet until I felt safe again.

When we put the pieces together and changed the lock, I told Cliff. “You were Cliff ex machina, you know. Sent by God.”

“Like all your angels?”

“Even better.”

“Well, I’m the fat angel.”

My fat angel should have sheltered Eastbrook forever, the power source upstairs from the post office. But six days after Nugget collapsed in the garden, I got a phone call from an unknown north Jersey number.

“Angie, is this Angie? Hey, hi. Um, this is Louie LoCascio.”

“Louie? Cliff’s…?”

“Yeah. Uh. Listen, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but my dad. Um. He died.”

I dropped to the patio carpet. “Oh my goodness, Louie, I’m so sorry, I…” I couldn’t speak fast enough. “Louie, your dad was a great man. I love your dad. Your dad—”

“Yeah.” He sounded younger than twenty-two. “Yeah. You know, he liked you a lot.”

We met at the funeral and hugged tightly. Louie broke the news. “Uh. I know this is crazy, but Dad left me the place.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Um.” Terror filled his eyes. “I’m gonna be the landlord.”

Before my blood could drain, Louie rushed in. “It’s gonna be OK. I’m gonna do right.”

“You will.” I willed it into being as my voice shook.

“I am.” He had his father’s eyes. “You guys were the best thing in Dad’s life, you know. He left you to me. I’m gonna do right.”

“You will.” I didn’t need convincing. “Louie, listen. I’ve lived here ten years. I’m here for you, too, OK? We’ll figure this out together.”

His cheeks filled. “Yeah.”

He turned into the second-best landlord I ever had.

When I left Eastbrook after twelve years, I took the blue Ball jars and gave Louie the prehistoric green couch and my promise. “We’re family now, you know.”

“Forever.” Louie knew.

“And remember, you can hide a lot of people down the door in the floor.”

Louie laughed with his dad’s strawberries. “You remember: pond party every Friday.”

The fairies are still in the pond, and the mailboxes fill with love letters. There are new dogs in the neighborhood and fat soybeans every fall.

The staircase didn’t lead nowhere. A large and powerful man is still looking out for me.

– Angela Townsend