This Old House

Lou Gottlieb is a man who asks very little of life. At 88, he says, it is enough to simply wake up every morning. It is enough to be no one’s burden.

He asks only that he be left alone to sit on the porch of his small apartment and read the newspaper or that he be allowed to nap in his favorite chair with his front door open to the sunshine.

Is that asking too much? He holds no bitterness toward God for taking his wife of 54 years, his beloved Rose, because he knows she is in heaven and he will someday join her there.

That doesn’t mean he has forgotten her. To the contrary. A dozen pictures adorn the living room of his apartment, from their marriage to her last days. Pictures of Rose with him and with their children and their grandchildren.

Her memory fills Lou’s life, because love has a way of enduring after death. It is a link that spans distances and survives separation; a ghost, as Lou puts it, that is always present.

And yet, there is an uneasiness to the memory.

Much of it lies in a different place. For the last 20 years of Rose’s life, they lived in a house on the west side of the city.

Rose adored their home. If he closes his eyes, Lou can see her in the kitchen cooking special dishes on holidays. He can smell the good aromas of food she created as if by magic.

When Rose died, Lou vowed to remain in the house until God saw fit to take him too, but that was not to be. A gun in his face chased him away.

*

It is the nature of violence to seek easy victims. Children die on street corners, women disappear forever. The elderly fall into that category too. Lou Gottlieb was no exception.

The neighborhood where Lou and Rose had known so much happiness was slowly deteriorating. Gangs were moving in. This all seemed to happen after Rose had died, and Lou was grateful for that, at least. She had never been crime’s target.

The same could not be said for Lou, an ordinary man living an ordinary life and expecting no more from his days on Earth than to be self-sufficient in the house he now occupied alone.

But fate had noticed Lou.

I wrote about him a year ago. Lou’s car was stolen one night from in front of his home. He wondered why anyone would want to steal an inconspicuous 12-year-old Buick, but shrugged and began looking for another car. God’s will be done.

Lou’s insurance company leased him a Honda to use in the interim. He parked it at a store one day and while he was inside, someone stole its headlights. Lou couldn’t believe his eyes as he stared at the gaps where the lights had been.

Twice in just a few days he had been victimized. Why would anyone want his headlights?

His next car was a Ford Escort. It was stolen the day after he purchased it. So he bought another Buick. It was stolen too.

The incidents of crime left Lou puzzled and uneasy, but they would not chase him from the home that was filled with so many memories. It took a gun to do that.

He was parking his car in his driveway one night when a man in a mask put a revolver against Lou’s head, beat him with it and took his wallet. For the first time in his life, Lou Gottlieb was afraid.

*

The incident haunted his nights and intruded on his memories. Lou gave up walking and wouldn’t drive home after dark anymore without first alerting a neighbor to watch for him.

His son and daughter pleaded with their father to move. The car thefts had told them that the neighborhood was no longer safe for him. The robbery-beating proved it.

Lou had always turned deaf ears to their pleas. How could he leave a home that he and Rose had shared with such love and warmth? But fear was eroding his resolve. He could not spend the remaining years of his life in terror.

Lou finally gave in to the fear that is driving so many from their neighborhoods. He packed his memories and moved. The old house stood empty.

Now he lives in an apartment on a quiet, tree-lined street in the San Fernando Valley. His unit is in an enclosed complex that looks out on a garden and a swimming pool. He often sits by the pool to chat with his neighbors.

Lou feels safe there and hopes to spend the rest of his days in peace. He thinks of the other place often and drives by once in awhile. He is angry that he was forced to leave. He had broken his vow to die there.

But anger is not an emotion that dominates Lou’s life. He is happy to have recovered from the beating and is content to sit on his porch in the sunshine and recall with an old man’s tenderness the life he knew a long time ago. He closes his eyes and remembers Rose, and he smiles.