Dear Neighbor, Drop Dead

by Saralee Rosenberg

  “Nobody’s gonna buy them anyway…music sucks now…people are buying crap.”

  “Sorry. I was voted most negative in my family. You do not get to take my place.”

  “I’m not negative…. I know the truth.”

  “Oh my God, you do sound like me. People always tell me I’m so negative, and I say no, I just tell it like it is. But you know what? Maybe I do have a bad attitude.”

  “Nothin’ wrong with that. I need pizza.”

  “Really?” Mindy lit up. “You like it now?”

  “I dream about it…. Back home the box tastes better than the pizza.”

  “Then you know what? You just gave me a great idea. I have to drop something off at Beth’s, we’ll go get lunch and then have a little adventure.”

  Some adventure! Any time Mindy sat in traffic on the Long Island Expressway, she either fantasized about shooting out everyone’s tires or having a car that could fly. Anything not to have to focus on all the drivers who should be ticketed for EBD (everything but driving). Was it too much to ask fellow motorists, especially the ones on her tail, not to shave, send text messages, or read the paper?

  Clearly this spur-of-the-moment jaunt to Queens was a bad idea, and that didn’t even speak to what the return trip would be like in the middle of rush hour. Fortunately, her kids all had after-school activities, so she didn’t have to play beat the clock. But no question, her time would have been better spent had they gone home so she could have caught up on the bills and thrown in some laundry.

  What stopped her from ripping the steering wheel out of the dashboard was the hope that her father was watching from heaven, as they were en route to visit his mother at the Beth Hillel nursing home, and bringing her favorite food, Sicilian slices from La Piazza.

  Although this trip was intended to alleviate Mindy’s guilt over not having visited in weeks, she also thought it would be good for Aaron to meet a Holocaust survivor. Grandma Jenny was proof that although life could be brutal and unjust, one need not ever lose faith in God.

  A great plan until she hit traffic. Not that Aaron noticed. Like a battle-fatigued toddler who could turn any car ride into siesta time, Mindy had to smile. Aaron’s baby-smooth cheek was pressed to the window, gold streaks sunning his hair. He appeared so young and unencumbered, a boy for whom the light would still shine if he chose an illumined path.

  Oh to have a navigation system that could lead you through life, she thought. To be able to hear the soothing voice of a nice lady telling you to take a left at the intersection of Not Sure and Totally Confused. Or to make a quick U-turn before crossing a line in the sand. Or mostly to watch for road signs that pointed to danger ahead.

  How ironic that at this point in the journey, she spotted a familiar sign for Little Neck, home to the Denny’s children’s clothing store where she’d first met Artie. It was also Aaron’s place of birth.

  What did her father used to say when she’d try to tell him a story? “Mindeleh, I can’t understand if you don’t start from the start.”

  Two weeks after she returned to the University of Buffalo to begin her senior year, her father was diagnosed with colon cancer, and she could not fathom leaving her mother to bear the responsibility of caring for him. In less time than it took her to decide what to wear to a frat party, she made up her mind to move home and finish school at Queens College.

  It was a tough transition, juggling classes and hospital visits while filling in for her mother at Denny’s, the children’s clothing store in Little Neck, where Helene had worked for years. With her husband sick, rather than leave her boss in the lurch, she asked Mindy to fill in.

  Trouble was, Mindy hated the job, as it required waiting on whiny, manicured mothers who’d wheel German-engineered strollers that cost more than her car and who weren’t fazed by dropping hundreds of dollars to outfit their kids while the little darlings tore through the store, delivering ear-shattering cries if Mommy dared to try to stop their fun.

  But the dad shoppers were even worse, screaming at their kids to hurry up and pick out what they needed so that they could get back in time to watch the game. And God forbid they had to wait in line to pay. They would groan about the long wait, fully expecting that if a woman was ahead of them, it was understood that they step aside, as their time wasn’t nearly as valuable.

  So it was an unexpected surprise when one Sunday afternoon, Mindy was shadowed by a young father who cared very much about picking out the right winter jacket and pajamas for his two-year-old son, Aaron.

  His name was Artie, and though he was obviously married with a child, Mindy thought a lot about his gracious smile, quick wit, and undeniable love for his boy. She hoped one day she would meet a man as special as he was.

  A month later, with her father having recovered enough to return to his job at a midtown accounting firm, and her mother having thankfully returned to her job at the store, Mindy was free to focus on graduating. She knew that her bachelor’s degree in psychology would mean nothing careerwise until she went for her master’s, but she was too stressed to think about graduate school and decided instead to take a year off and take any job that paid well.

  The first “any job” she applied for brought her to Forest Hills Ophthalmology and the office of a Dr. Stanley Sherman, who was trying to hire a new office manager. Though Mindy had had no previous experience, it did not matter to Dr. Sherman. He admitted to being desperate, as his wife, Rhoda, had just given him her two weeks’ notice. “It’s fine if I have to work another twenty years, but she should get to retire?”

  Mindy had a bad feeling after speaking with the grouchy doctor by phone, but she decided to at least interview and find out his deal. On her way in, she recognized a young man leaving Dr. Sherman’s office. It was the sweet dad with the little boy she’d helped at Denny’s.

  When he held the door and smiled, she shivered. But it wasn’t from the cold, it was from the heat. She found him cute in a teddy bear way, yet stopped herself from saying hello. Not only was he a family man, she was back to dating Noah, her former high school sweetheart. And yet, only that morning she told her friend Nadine that he didn’t do it for her anymore, since he’d become a kosher-vegetarian-psychic trying to make millions selling his homemade hummus.

  “How’s your little boy?” Mindy blurted.

  “What?” he jumped, unprepared for a stranger to ask.

  “Mindy Baumann.” She shook his hand. “I used to work over at Denny’s…. Didn’t I help you pick out a winter jacket for your son? He was so cute.”

  “Oh…yeah, right. Thank you. I thought you looked familiar. Are you a patient here? He’s my dad. I’m finishing optometry school. Artie Sherman. Sometimes I work part-time in the office. My life is such a mess. My wife took away my son. They’re living in Oregon. Do you want to maybe get some coffee?”

  “Oh my God. I mean sure, but I’m here for a job interview. How would it look if I went on break before I was hired?”

  “Don’t take the job!” Artie uttered so fast he surprised himself. “You’ll hate working for my dad. He’s crazy, and my mom’s not really quitting. She just wanted a raise.”

  All true. And coffee it was. Then an official date. Then a second, at which point Mindy already knew that she wanted her parents and her Grandma Jenny to meet him, though she had the good sense not to mention he was married with a child.

  As soon as Artie excused himself to use the bathroom, her grandmother rendered her opinion. He seemed like a nice boychik, it was just too bad that he hadn’t gone to work on Wall Street like his brother, or better yet, planned on becoming an ophthalmologist like his father, who had an office in Queens, one on Long Island, and a vacation house in the Berkshires. “It’s such a shanda when a bright young man like that wastes his potential.”

  “Well, he did mention he might still be thinking of applying to med school.”

  “Oy. That’s crazy. You’ll end up supporting him and then he’ll leave you for a nurse.”

  W
hen they married a year and a half later, Artie’s single greatest regret was that three-year-old Aaron was not at the wedding to serve as ring bearer. His single greatest joy? That his bride had taken a pregnancy test hours before the wedding and whispered under the chuppah that their new life together would truly be blessed with new life.

  Mindy parked in front of a row of modest two-family houses, shocked that she had found the block. Remarkably, the dwellings looked unchanged, with their postage stamp frontage and the familiar Fedders air conditioners hanging from bedroom windows.

  “Aaron, wake up.” Mindy nudged him. “You’ll never guess where we are.”

  “Your grandmother’s nursing home.” He didn’t bother opening his eyes.

  “No…c’mon. Wake up. We’re at the house where you were born!”

  “What?” he looked out. “Why?”

  “Because the traffic was getting to me, so I pulled off and then realized this was where your mom and Art first lived. Does it look familiar?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you were only two when you left, but isn’t it cool to see where your life began?”

  “It’s okay,” he shrugged. “When are we goin’ back?”

  “Don’t you want to get out? Maybe ring the bell?”

  “Hell, no! Am I getting a cell phone today?”

  “Oh, come on…I know the experts say not to do this, but I thought we could see if someone was home and ask if they’d let us look around.”

  “Let’s just break in. Now that’d be awesome!”

  “We’re not breaking in. We’ll say hello, sorry to disturb you, but this young man was born in this house and we were wondering if we could maybe see his old room.”

  “The place means nothing to me. Can we just go?”

  “Really? I thought you’d be so excited. Who doesn’t want to see where their story began? Can I at least take a picture of you in front of it? It’s that one over there.” She pointed to a tan brick duplex with two front entrances and an American flag flapping between the doors.

  “You’re such a tool!” He grumbled, but opened the door.

  “No, just sentimental. And if you don’t cooperate, next I’ll take you to where I was born.”

  “The old lady don’t open the door for no one.” So said the ghost of Lucy, a spindly, redheaded woman with a career-smoker rasp who had come outside for a cigarette and pointed to the next-door neighbor’s. “Been here six years and don’t speak a word of English.”

  “Excuse me?” Mindy noted the high-rise hairdo, the orange nylon jogging suit that swished with every step, and the white leather Keds, all remnants of the eighties. Had this woman escaped her time capsule?

  “You thinkin’ of buyin’ the place?” She coughed. “’Cause they took down the For Sale sign last month.”

  “Oh. No,” Mindy motioned Aaron to move to the right. “We thought it would be nice to take a quick picture. This young man was born here…just moved back from Portland, Oregon.”

  “Maybe tell her your garage code, too.” Aaron squirmed.

  “Aaron?” The woman squinted in the bright sun. “Are you little Aaron?”

  He stopped in mid yawn.

  “You remember him?” Mindy almost dropped her phone.

  “A grandma never forgets a face…I used to babysit you when you was this big.” She placed her hands together, her cigarette flopping. “I gotta get my boy out here. You remember Jimmy? He was maybe six or seven when you was born. He’d try playin’ with ya, but you’d just be layin’ there on your little blankie and he’d say, ‘Ma, you said a new boy was livin’ next door, when’s he gonna be able to play catch with me?’”

  Aaron said nothing. Was he being his usual, off-putting self or trying to dredge up any recollection of a boy named Jimmy?

  “You’re not the mother.” The lady eyed Mindy. “She was an itty-bitty thing.”

  Thank you? “No…I’m wife number two…Mindy Sherman.” She shook her hand.

  “Yeah, yeah. Sherman…that was the name. Oh, good lord, I’ll never forget the day she up and left with the baby. Never saw them two again. And my Jimmy, he cried and cried.”

  “They were close?”

  “No…it was on account of the fact that Aaron used to play with Jimmy’s big-boy toys and he liked this certain fire truck, see…my husband, John, God rest his soul, spent twenty-three years with Engine Company forty-five in the Bronx. Every week he’d be bringin’ home another fire truck for Jimmy and Mikey, and I’d say, John, they got enough of them stupid things, I’m trippin’ on ’em all day. Anyway, this one truck lit up, made all kinds a noise and Aaron here, that was his favorite. But that day he and his mom run off, they took it with ’em and Jimmy kept sayin’, ‘Ma, I want my truck back…. Make ’em bring my truck back.’ I just never forgot that day.”

  “Aaron, any of that ring a bell?”

  “So you knew my mom?” he ignored Mindy’s question.

  “Oh, sure! Ya can see how close you lived. Hard not to get to know the people, except of course for these folks. So many goddamn people livin’ there now we can’t keep track no more. You got the parents, the grandparents, the kids, the uncle from Sri Lanka, and not one of them stinkers knows how to come out and say good morning.” She stared at the long lost boy. “So how’s she doin’, your mother? She still makin’ those nice quilts? She made me a beauty for my birthday once…bet I still got it somewhere.”

  “She passed,” Mindy whispered as if Aaron couldn’t hear. “Just recently.”

  “Oh…well, very sorry to hear that. Gotta be rough on a young man to lose his mother.”

  “What’s your name?” Aaron blurted.

  “Darlene. Darlene Fitzgerald. Maybe you guys wanna come in and say hello to Jimmy? He’s home almost a month now. Just got back from Iraq…second tour…sons of bitches in Washington sending these kids on a mission to hell, and for what? So they can come back all shot up. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for bringing him home alive,” she looked around to make sure Jimmy couldn’t hear, “but he ain’t ever gonna be the same. His right foot got blown to bits in a Humvee, and his mind ain’t the same neither. I thought fine, the government’s gonna take care of him, pay for all his rehabilitation, pay for college, but good luck tryin’ to get the sons of bitches to answer the damn phones, let alone send the money they owe him. You listen to me, young man. You stay in school and get yourself a good education so you don’t gotta go join no stinkin’ army and spend the rest of your life feelin’ sorry for yourself. Yeah, come on inside.” She finished her smoke. “Say hello to Jimmy. He’s just sittin’ around watchin’ the TV. Meantime I’m gonna look for that quilt for you, Aaron, and I might just come across some pictures, too. Used to be real good about gettin’ them in albums, but lately the arthritis’s actin’ up pretty bad.”

  Mindy looked at Aaron’s puzzled face and knew he was trying to decide between racing to the car and holding the woman’s hand.

  “We’ll just stay a few minutes,” she whispered. “I swear to God I did not plan this.”

  “Then who did?” He looked around. “My mom?”

  “Wouldn’t be surprised.” She rubbed his back. “You remember that fire truck?”

  “Yeah,” he swallowed. “Still got it.”

  Aaron sobbed the whole ride home, clutching the mildew-stained quilt his mother had sewn, each handwoven square a patchwork of her troubled past. Still, it was comforting to hold something she’d created from love, something that held the remnants of her life.

  And on his lap? Several Polaroids, including one of him and Jimmy under the Fitzgeralds’ Christmas tree, fighting over a fire truck. Who could have known that when their paths finally crossed again, they would both be soldiers fighting a war against abandonment?

  Mindy prayed that this unexpected detour wouldn’t prolong his agony, though from the way he clung to the quilt and the photos, it was just as Mindy’s father had said. Getting lost was good for the soul, as it could take you down roads you were des
tined to explore.

  Twenty

  “Does that really help?” Mindy watched Artie pace as she dozed in bed.

  “I don’t want to fall asleep yet.” He flicked on the news. “My parents still might call.”

  “They never call past eleven.”

  “Oh believe me, if they find that policy, they’ll call.”

  Artie had spent the day trying to keep his mind off the fact that his parents were still searching for any record of taking life insurance on Davida. As of six o’clock, they had nothing to report, though their investigation did turn up a box of invitations left over from his bar mitzvah. “We thought the kids would like to have them,” Rhoda sounded so pleased.

  “Mom, throw ’em out,” Artie begged. “Nobody cares about that stuff; just get back to looking.”

  “Believe me, we’ve been schlepping boxes down from the attic since we got here.”

  “I don’t understand why you can’t just call Henry’s office. He handled your insurance stuff for how many years?”

  “Number one, he’s retired now, and number two, we didn’t buy this policy from him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because at the time I was fighting with him. I didn’t care for how he handled my mother’s claims when she broke her hip.”

  “So who the hell did you buy it from?” Artie yelled. “My agent said if you know the company name, you call, give them your social security number, and they’ll trace the policy.”

  “Stop yelling at me, Arthur. What do you want from me? It was a long time ago.”

  “I’m not yelling,” he yelled. “I’m just upset. That money would be a huge help to us right now, okay?”

  “If things are so terrible, talk to Ira. Who knows more about making money than a big success like him?”

  “Mom! Stop! I don’t need to talk to Ira. Just tell me what else you remember.”

  “Well, I was saying to your father that I remember how reasonable the premiums were because you were so young and in good health.”