Amy Pechukas met her friend Al in 2018
when she rented the apartment under his in Northampton, Mass. They
didn’t connect immediately. Amy, now 42, worked four jobs and thought
Al, 76, was a curmudgeon with questionable boundaries. He helped look
after their two-family home and would frequently enter her apartment to check on her two cats and two dogs.
But
Al’s peculiar brand of kindness grew on her. “He often pops in for a
conversation spontaneously, at times when I need a lift, and we end up
talking for hours,” she said. “We go for evening walks and argue about
the route.”
Covid brought them even
closer. During lockdown, they would meet in the driveway to talk about
the virus or politics. Amy made a Thanksgiving meal, which they ate
outside on their porch with electric blankets on their laps. They have
celebrated the holiday together ever since.
Al
can still be overbearing. He has firm ideas about the way things should
be done around the home, like the “right” way to rake the leaves. Every
summer, he frets that Amy’s elderly cat, who grows lazy in the heat, is
on the verge of death.
But Amy feels
deep gratitude for their unexpected friendship, and for the constant,
unselfish care Al has shown her and her pets. “When my dog got very sick
a year ago and needed me to do round-the-clock care for her, I would
come home on occasion to find Al in my kitchen doing my dishes,” she
recalled. “‘You can’t do everything, Amy,’ he’d say. ‘You’re doing a
great job.’”
Though Al does not say it
outright, Amy knows he worries she might move out. She recently
interviewed for a position out of state, and Al told her several times
that it sounded terrible — reminding her that there were other jobs
closer by.
“We just have a lot of
fun,” she said. “We like to quote movie lines endlessly, we’ll do that
for, like, two hours straight. Last winter we went ice skating in the
cemetery because it was flooded. Al’s just a good person.” — Catherine Pearson
