I ignore Nick-Nick and say, “I’m not sure why this is occurring to me, why I’m bringing it up now, but it’s kind of a funny story, I think. And I like to tell funny stories. My first director was the stereotypical failed actor with the goatee, pasty skin, bald, overweight . . .” and I stumble a bit, because I just described what George looks like. To the T. Nick-Nick, of course, laughs like a clown. Big-shoed and annoying as hell. I’m going to withhold his M&Ms for a week. “I wasn’t a very good actor but he gave me the only good acting advice I ever got.” I stop again, making sure to draw George in.
Nick-Nick says, “Never let them see you sweat.” He pulls a second beer out of his pants.
I say, “He told me when you need to act surprised, imagine someone has just snuck up behind you and stuck a broom handle in your ass.” I laugh, offer my hand, and say, “All right, see you later.”
George accepts my hand. He doesn’t want to. Lonely Guy George isn’t comfortable with contact. I see his stained-black fingernails and I feel the grit and oil on his fingers. I feel the road in his hand.
Nick-Nick raises his can. Blessedly silent because he’s chewing on a mouthful of beer.
We walk back toward my house. Neither of us is sure what we’ll do with the rest of the day. There’s the Yard Guy, Flynnie. He’s mowing Howie’s weeds. He swears under his breath, cursing the day he was burdened by the bad-lawn neighbour who goes to church (well, I know they call it Temple, but I’m sure Flynnie doesn’t call it that) on Saturday.
I rub my hands together and feel the oil and grit transferred from George. I think I know what he was doing, but it makes no sense.
“Tell me what you think.”
Nick-Nick says, “Would it kill you to get some M&Ms?”
I’m in my bedroom upstairs, alone. Nick-Nick went home because I wouldn’t promise him his goddamn M&Ms.
Look, this isn’t about me. And I won’t pretend it is. So all you really need to know about me is that I’ve never been to Nick-Nick’s house. I don’t even know where he lives. I have a vague notion of the vicinity of the area in which he lives. A yellow or maybe white house, a Cape with dormers, or no dormers, or maybe a ranch, front lawn strewn with metal innards of things that he’ll never finish fixing. His one-car garage has no door and is filled with things that are nothing but metal outards that won’t ever be matched to those broken innards from the front lawn. Wherever Nick-Nick lives, it can’t be too far away because he doesn’t drive to my house.
This is about the people who live near me. And I’m predicting this just might be all about George.
From up here in my bedroom, I can see George is back out in the street. He’s sitting at the road’s end, right on that line between pavement and dirt. But like this morning, I’m still too far away to see exactly what he’s doing. That hasn’t changed.
There’s a phone call. But I know it’s not Nick-Nick so I let it ring.
I order Nick-Nick’s M&Ms and some other groceries online. I pick up underwear off my lawn and return it to the Booths’ front porch. Then I sneak past Flynnie’s screaming kids. They’re in Howie’s yard picking dandelions and blowing the fuzz in Howie’s three-year-old son Jacob’s (pronounced Yakov) face. Those dandelion seeds stick in Jacob’s long ringlet hair, but he’s giggling. Flynnie yells at his kids, telling them to stay in their yard.
And there’s George. Sitting, with his fingers digging and prying at the pavement. I walk up, as quiet as I can. His back is to me. I say, “Why are you picking apart the road?”
He doesn’t look up. He doesn’t act surprised. I guess I should be flattered he can’t picture me coming at him with that broom handle. He says, “Oh, you know. I noticed that the pavement right at the dirt road was cracked and broken in spots.” The way he says it, it almost makes sense. Like I’m silly for even asking him.
George gets a finger underneath a slab of blacktop, and picks it away.
“Doesn’t that hurt?”
“No.”
“Are you going to stop anytime soon?”
“I don’t want the road to end at my house. I think I’d prefer it ended sooner.”
I imagine what smart-ass comment Nick-Nick might have. George’s fingers disappear under a piece of tar, a crack appears, and then a piece crumbles away from the road. It looks too easy. I think about asking him what he’s going to do about the pre-road, grooved pavement type stuff they put down under the layer of blacktop. He couldn’t possibly pick that up with his fingers. I should say something to the man. There’s something obviously wrong here. Something wrong with our Lonely Guy. I’ve known since before the road picking. I wonder if his siblings know the kind of shape he’s in. I should try and help him. It’d be the neighbourly thing to do. I mean, he’s forcing me to confront some pretty strange behaviour, behaviour that I’m well within my right to comment upon as an upstanding member of the development.
Did I say that this was a development? Well, it’s not. It’s just a bunch of houses and people forced together by the quirks of fate and location. Like those house-sellers always say: location, location, location.
I say, “Come on, George. Talk to me. Tell me why.”
“When I was seven years old, I misjudged a curb and fell off my bike, splitting my head open on some fresh blacktop. I was knocked cold for a good minute or two. When I woke, Dad scooped me up in his arms and ran with me to the hospital, which was only two blocks away. He tried to stop my crying by making ambulance noises and tickling me. But I couldn’t stop crying because my head was cracking open. I still remember the pain. Between the tears I screamed, ‘Why?’ Dad stopped making the siren noises and he stopped tickling my legs, but he didn’t answer me. He never answered me.”
Well, to be honest, George didn’t really say that to me. I was that kid who fell off the bike. Like I said, I like to tell good stories. And it is a good story. I thought about it right then because it might bring some sense to what George was doing if in fact that (that being the falling off the bike and bouncing his head off the road) had happened to him. Might explain why he wants to get rid of the road. Maybe, in his addled head, if he thinks he can tear away the road then no one would fall, no one would get hurt anymore. If there wasn’t any road then loved ones would never drive away. No more ambulances or hearses to take people like his father away. Or maybe his “Why?” would finally have an answer.
But George didn’t say anything to me. So I don’t say anything to George, I don’t tell him about falling off the bike and the little-kid me asking, “Why?” I leave our Lonely Guy to his work.
On the way back to my house:
Jacob and Flynnie’s kids play on one of their swing sets. Flynnie explodes out the front door and tells his kids to come in for lunch and he tells Jacob to go home. He says it like Jacob has a long way to go before he gets home. Then Flynnie looks at me and whispers, “I just don’t want to be responsible for someone else’s kid, you know what I mean?” The Booths are rotating wet clothes for dry on their hangers. A Vegas-fat Elvis T-shirt hangs from the handle of the screen door.
Nick-Nick sits on my front stoop, reading the newspaper. He says, “I got my own bag.”
“Swell.” I put out a hand, wordless in my command for an M&M. Nick-Nick obliges, but not without a sigh, the goddamn ingrate.
Okay, okay. There’s this:
George hasn’t left his home in three months. Wait, that’s not right. Let me fix that: he hasn’t left the neighbourhood in three months. He can afford this, and a few more months if necessary. Actually, I’m just guessing at that. I haven’t seen him leave in three months. I suppose it’s possible he has left at one time or another. Anyway, that’s not what I mean about there’s this:
This is a funny story about me as a kid. I tell this story a lot. When I was really little, I couldn’t do anything for myself. And as the youngest child, my folks indul
ged and cultivated my helplessness. So much so that I didn’t know how to walk up stairs until I was six. It wasn’t that I was physically incapable of walking up stairs. I simply didn’t want to walk up stairs and my parents would carry me wherever I wanted to go. I didn’t learn stairs until I held up my entire first grade class in the stairwell. I was lifting my feet up and down but not going anywhere and everyone behind me laughed and yelled at me to get moving.
At least, that’s the story I was told. I really don’t remember any of it. Hell, how much of first grade do you remember?
I’ve been thinking on this for a couple of days now. Trying to get it all sorted out. I can live with the Empty Nesters, my dryerless neighbours and their lawn invading unmentionables. I can certainly live with keep-to-themselves neighbours who don’t take care of their lawn. I can even tolerate the shed-building anti-semite Yard Guy, because Flynnie is so blatantly and obviously ridiculous.
But it’s official. I’m obsessed with why George is picking apart the road. I’m obsessed with the Lonely Guy. It’s the third day in a row that he’s out there. At first glance, he hasn’t made much progress, but if you look close enough, you can tell he’s made a good three feet of the road and even the pre-road disappear.
I’m tired of waiting for Nick-Nick to return with some reconnaissance-type info on George. I need to know his real story.
I wait until everyone is in their home. A quick walk. I find that he’s managed to pick away another three feet of road. The road ends before his driveway now. I walk home before anyone sees me, though I’m not sure why I care if I’m seen.
Nick-Nick hasn’t been by the house for days now. Maybe I should call him. But I don’t think I have his number.
It’s Saturday. And these are the people who live near me. Empty Nesters: washing machine is broken now, so are the dishwasher and their two toilets and showers. Mr. Booth relieves himself along their bushes in their backyard. Mrs. Booth washes herself and their dishes and clothes with the garden hose. None of their towels are dry so she lays naked on the front lawn, sunning herself like a lizard. Howie and family: wearing suits, dresses, and yarmulkes, walking down our little development road and then another two miles to the Temple. Everything looks normal there, except for the road they’re walking on, or what’s left of it. Yard Guy: Flynnie has started building his fourth shed while his kids make fun of Jacob’s hair and yarmulke from the crow’s nest perch in one of their three (yes, three now, even though I never saw him put up the third one) swing sets. Lonely Guy: still picking and plucking the road. And he’s working his way past Flynnie’s house now (and I’m waiting for Flynnie to call the town on George, but maybe he won’t because of his illegal, permitless sheds. Flynnie is gutless like that).
What a mess. I’m staying in my house today. It seems my little quiet but quirky development has suddenly gone off the rails. I guess it isn’t so sudden. It’s been building for a while now.
In my own way, I love these people who share this little chunk of terra firma with me. Of course, I’m afraid of them too. And I can’t help but feel a little responsible.
Where is Nick-Nick?
It’s dark. I’m standing on George’s back porch, peering into a black window. But I can see. His kitchen-sink overflows with dirty dishes. Bills and newspapers drip off the table and chairs, and on the floor are piles of clothes and grocery bags and boxes and trash. The hallway leading out of the kitchen looks to be in the same condition.
I wonder if all this would be as easy as knocking on the door and asking if he needs help. I’m not sure how he’d react to that. I’m not sure how I’d react to that. I’m not saying that I’m in trouble like George and that I need help. Not at all. I’m just saying that I’m trying to understand my neighbour, a fellow human being who lives in the same cul-de-sac or the same development, by understanding how I’d react if I were in his situation, his proverbial shoes. Isn’t that how we all try to relate to each other? Through the filter of ourselves? The hard part is that George is probably nothing like me, but I’m trying to shoehorn him into my world so I can understand, and maybe help him.
A few minutes pass. I don’t knock on his door or on his window and I don’t leave a note or a six-pack of beer.
“I’m actually glad to see you today.”
Nick-Nick is here. He walked right in the front door without knocking, like normal. Given all the crazy stuff happening in my neighbourhood, my home, I’ll admit his arrival is a comfort, hopefully signifying a return to the routine. But there’s a car in my driveway and it’s not a ratty pick-up truck that I imagined he’d drive. There’s a woman bent over and rummaging through the back seat. I can’t really see her face from here, but she has long brown hair. Nick-Nick has three boxes of garbage bags in his arms.
I say, “About time you showed up. So what do you have on George?”
Nick-Nick says, “What do you think, is it too early for a beer?” and laughs that wild laugh of his. Today it makes me nervous. Then he says, “Look, we’ve been in the house and we know.”
I say, “Good, lay it on me.”
Nick-Nick talks and talks and tells me everything. Poor, poor George. And now it’s easy to imagine his life, how he lived, how he lives. So he lost his job, but he didn’t really lose it. It’s still there, he just stopped going. He saw little point to it. He has a hard enough time getting up in the morning as it is without the added stress of co-workers and supervisors and project deadlines. Besides there was no answer forthcoming to his why there. It’s easy to imagine him after his father died. He spent his life taking care of his father, becoming his own old man in the process, hoping against hope that he was the only person who could answer the why. Taking care of Dad was easy. There were rules to follow, routines to maintain, orders to be taken. And then Dad was gone, making a new why, and there was no one there (certainly not his no good, abandoning siblings) to talk to him or to take drives or play cards or to tell him to get out of bed and go to work or buy food or put out the garbage or wash his clothes or do the dishes or change light bulbs or to go up the stairs. So now he doesn’t do any of that. He doesn’t wash dishes. He throws them away and buys new ones. He doesn’t take out the garbage and his house is full of trash, old food and grocery bags and empty cartons and bottles and cans everywhere. He doesn’t do laundry. When his clothes are dirty he buys new ones. He doesn’t leave the house. He shops online, buying groceries yes, but also buying appliances that he doesn’t need or already has. When something breaks he doesn’t fix it, he buys a new one. It might sound crazy, but it’s easy for me to imagine our neighbourhood Lonely Guy making it to advanced adulthood without being capable of forming any kind of relationship with other people. He was never taught how, or never allowed to, or it’s just how he is. He’s never been independent and never been able to adjust or adapt. He always lived with and for his parents, and when Mom died ten years ago he lived with and only for Dad. He let them do everything for him and they let him do nothing for himself and they let him go to school without knowing how to walk up stairs and they told him what to do his entire adult life. And now they’re gone. But what I can’t imagine or explain is why he’s picking the road away. I feel like I’m missing something. I’m missing something and it’s making me nervous again.
I look at Nick-Nick, his hands empty without a beer or a bag of M&Ms, and I don’t want to talk about Lonely Guy anymore. I say, “I think Flynnie has started working on a fourth shed. Maybe we should help him.”
Nick-Nick opens a garbage bag and says, “Maybe later. First you have to help us start the major cleaning in here. Then we’re going to my house.”
I look out the window and see the brunette woman walking up my stairs. She looks familiar. In a weird way, she looks like Nick-Nick. And she’s carrying more garbage bags, too. It strikes me as funny that even though they haven’t been here in ages, and even though there’s no more road in front o
f my house, they still found a way to get here.
I say, “Why?”
Nick-Nick says nothing and opens the door for the brunette woman.
I say, “What about my M&Ms?”
There’s No Light Between Floors
My head is a box full of wet cotton and it won’t hold anything else. Her voice is dust falling into my ear. She says, “There’s no light between floors.”
I blink. Minutes or hours pass. There is nothing to see. We’re blind, but our bodies are close and we form a Ying and Yang, although I don’t know who is which. She says the between floors stuff again. She speaks to my feet. They don’t listen. Her feet are next to my head. I touch the bare skin of her ankle, of what I imagine to be her ankle, and it is warm and I want to leave my hand there.
She’s telling me that we’re trapped between floors. I add, “I think we’re in the rubble of a giant building. It was thousands of miles tall. The building was big enough to go to the moon where it had a second foundation, but most people agreed the top was the moon and the bottom was us.” Her feet don’t move and don’t listen. I don’t blame them. Her toes might be under sheetrock or a steel girder. There’s only enough room in here for us. Everything presses down from above, or up from below. I keep talking and my voice fills our precious space. “Wait, it can’t be the moon our building was built to. Maybe another planet with revolutions and rotations and orbital paths in sync with ours so the giant building doesn’t get twisted and torn apart. Or maybe that’s what happened; it did get twisted apart and that’s why we’re here.” I stop talking because, like the giant building, my words fall apart and trap me.
She flexes her calf muscle. Is she shaking me away? I move my hand off her leg and I immediately regret it. I feel nothing now. Maybe her movement was just a muscle spasm. I could ask her, but that would be an awkward question depending on her answer.
In the Mean Time Page 14