But you will be able to look at your children asleep in their beds and feel that unbearable surge of awe and thanksgiving. You will be able to keep others alive in your heart long after they are gone. You will have genuine friends. Unlike the hollow, risk-pursuing few who are deprived of a seventh sense, you will go through your life fully aware of the warm and comforting, infuriating, confusing, compelling, and sometimes joyful presence of other human beings, and along with your conscience you will be given the chance to take the largest risk of all, which, as we all know, is to love.
Conscience truly is Mother Nature's better bargain. Its value is evident on a grand historic scale, and as we will see in the next chapter, it is precious to us even in our ordinary day-to-day dealings with friends and neighbors. Along with an entire neighborhood, let us now try to spend a day with an unfortunate and sociopathic woman named Tillie. From Tillie, we can learn—though she never will—that conscience makes everyday experience worth having.
ELEVEN
groundhog day
What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee.
—Marcus Aurelius
Tillie is someone personality theorist Theodore Millon would call an “abrasive psychopath.” She is sociopathic but, regrettably for Tillie, she lacks the sociopath's customary charm and finesse. Instead, to use Millon's words, she “acts in an overtly and directly contentious and quarrelsome way,” and “everything and everyone is an object available for nagging and assaulting.” Tillie's specific talent is to take the smallest, subtlest whisper of conflict and amplify it into a shouting match. She excels at the creation of hostility and bitterness where there was none before, and specializes in provoking people who ordinarily are gentle and peace-loving.
In Tillie's universe, Tillie is always right, and she takes self-righteous pleasure in opposing and frustrating her opponents, who are seemingly everywhere and somehow always wrong. Her mission in life is to correct the world, a calling she heeds without hesitation or conscience. In this mission, she perceives that she is unappreciated by others, which further justifies her behavior toward them.
This morning, Tillie has discovered a groundhog in her backyard. As she watches from her sunroom, it sits back on its round haunches in the grass and turns its alert little face in every direction, as if surveying Tillie's property. When Tillie opens the sliding door to get a better look, the animal freezes in place for a moment, then waddles away and vanishes into the ground at the edge of the lawn, at a point where Tillie's yard meets that of her neighbors Catherine and Fred.
Tillie makes a mental note of where its hole must be, then goes out to stand on her deck, a white-haired woman of seventy in a blue-checkered housedress, appearing for all the world to be the archetypal kind and wise old woman. As she gazes with interest across the lawn, anyone looking on might remark that her demeanor and bottom-heavy shape are not altogether different from the groundhog's.
Tillie's neighbors on the other side of her house and up the hill, Greta and Jerry, also happen to be having breakfast in their sunroom and can see Tillie there on her deck. They are too far away to notice the groundhog. All they can make out is seventy-year-old Tillie, standing very still in her blue-and-white dress.
Thirty-five-year-old Greta, the manager of a local department store, says to her husband, Jerry, a building contractor, “Damn, I wish that awful woman would just move away. How long has she been here now?”
“Fifteen months,” replies Jerry.
Greta smiles mirthlessly. “But who's counting, right? I know I shouldn't wish people gone, but she's just so incredibly mean. And controlling. I don't know how she can even stand her own self.”
Jerry sighs and says, “Maybe we could buy her out.”
Greta is about to laugh, and then she realizes that Jerry is not joking. All of a sudden, she understands that her normally even-tempered husband despises Tillie every bit as much as she does. She feels chilly, and a little guilty, and goes back into the kitchen to get some more hot coffee.
When she comes back, Jerry is still staring at the old woman on her deck. He says, “No, we really can't afford to buy her out. Maybe she'll just move. Seems like you'd move if everybody in the neighborhood hated you as much as everybody hates her.”
Greta points out, “Well, the thing is, I bet she gets this reaction wherever she goes.”
“Yeah, probably. Where was she living before?”
“Don't know,” answers Greta. Then, beginning to feel somewhat gratified that Jerry shares her sentiments, she says, “Do you believe this? It was last week, I think, she called me and said we shouldn't have any more fires in our fireplace. She's ‘allergic to wood smoke,' don't you know?”
“What? You never told me she did that! That's crazy!” Jerry clenches his fists, and then changes his assessment. “No, that's not crazy. That's just horse crap. We'll have a fire in the damn fireplace tonight. In fact, I'll bring in some more wood before I leave for work.”
“But it's supposed to get really warm today.”
“Who cares?”
This time, Greta does laugh. “Do you know how we sound?”
Jerry looks at his wife sheepishly, and the corners of his mouth begin to turn up. He unclenches his fists and cracks his knuckles a couple of times to get rid of the tension.
Greta and Jerry's neighbor across the street and down three houses is an elderly widow named Sunny. At this very moment, though she cannot actually see Tillie on her back deck like Greta and Jerry can, Sunny too is thinking about how mean Tillie is. Yesterday, Tillie called the police because Sunny had parked her car on the street in front of her own house. Sunny has always parked her car in that big space between the street and her house, since her husband passed away ten years ago, because she is afraid to back out of her driveway into the traffic. The young policeman came and made her put it in the driveway. He apologized several times, but still he said Tillie was right. It was a violation. Sunny has not even had breakfast yet, and already she is dreading her trip to the grocery store today, because she will have to back her car out alone. She feels like crying. And that car was nowhere near Tillie's house!
As Sunny laments across the street, Tillie, on her backyard deck, decides that the groundhog is not going to reappear right now. She goes back into her house, where she can no longer be seen by the breakfasting Greta and Jerry up the hill. While Greta and Jerry drink the rest of their coffee and try to talk about something else, Tillie, in her kitchen, picks up the phone and calls Catherine, the next-door neighbor with whom she now shares a groundhog.
Catherine teaches the sixth grade. She has taught school since she was twenty-two, and now her sixtieth birthday is coming. She thinks she ought to retire, but the notion only makes her sad. Her teaching, her kids, mean the world to her, and she really does not want to stop working. Her husband, Fred, who is seven years older and already retired, understands this and is patient with her.
“Whenever you're ready,” he always says. “I like to putter around the house and fix things anyway.” And then they both laugh. Fred can barely replace burned-out lightbulbs. Until he reluctantly gave up the mantle a year ago, he was the editor of their regional newspaper. He is a good, quiet, bookish man who loved his work, too, and still contributes an “emeritus” human-interest column called “People You Should Know.”
When the phone rings, Fred is reading in the living room, and Catherine is in the kitchen, getting ready to go to work early. The trill of the phone at such an hour makes Catherine jump. She answers it quickly.
“Hello?”
“Catherine,” says Tillie abruptly, snipping the word as if she were angry.
“Yes, this is Catherine. Tillie? Tillie, my goodness, it's seven in the morning. Are you all right?”
“Yes. I'm fine. I just saw a groundhog in the yard, and I thought you'd like to know.”
“A what? A groundhog?”
“Yes, in the back, between our properties.”
“Well, that's . . . in
teresting. Must have been cute, I guess. Was it?”
“I suppose. Anyway, I know you're busy. I just thought you should know about the animal. We can talk about it later. Good-bye.”
“Uh, right. Talk later. Well, good-bye then, Tillie.”
Catherine hangs up the phone, baffled, and Fred calls to her, “What was that?”
She walks into the living room, where he sits with his book, and answers, “That was Tillie.”
“Oh,” says Fred, rolling his eyes. “What did she want?”
“She wanted to tell me she saw a groundhog in the backyard.”
“Why did she want to tell you that?”
Catherine shakes her head slowly and says, “I don't have the slightest idea.”
“Ah Tillie!” pronounces Fred, raising his right arm above his head in mock salute.
As she finishes her morning routine, Catherine feels confused and slightly ill at ease, knowing that with Tillie there is always a thickening plot, and that the denouement is likely to be controlling and upsetting. But for the life of her, she cannot imagine what this thing with the groundhog is about. Does Tillie want to have it removed? Is Tillie asking her permission in some roundabout way? Also, Catherine and Fred have lived in this same house for thirty years, and they have never once seen a groundhog in the yard. How odd.
As she is about to leave for school, the phone rings a second time. She thinks it must be Tillie again, but instead it is another neighbor, sweet, soft-spoken Sunny, and she is in tears. Sunny tells Catherine that Tillie has made her park her car in the driveway, and now she is trapped. Can someone help? Can Catherine and Fred take her to the store today? Learning about this newest exploit of Tillie's, Catherine feels the blood rushing angrily to her face, but in her calmest voice, she reassures Sunny that of course Fred will drive her to the store. How about lunchtime? Also, Fred knows the chief of police very well, and maybe something can be done about the problem with Sunny's parking space.
Teaching her class of sixth graders all day, Catherine forgets about Tillie, but when she gets home at about 4:30, she remembers the early-morning phone call and begins to feel uneasy all over again. She was planning to take a nap before dinner, but as she sits down on the bed, her uneasiness gets suddenly stronger, and she is drawn to the window. The bedroom is on the second floor, and from here, Catherine has a clear view of the whole backyard, and Tillie's as well. The day has been unseasonably warm, and all those nice forsythias Fred planted at the back edge of their yard are beginning to bloom. There is the wide back lawn, and beyond that the long row of little yellow forsythia blossoms, and then the gray-brown shadow of the still-leafless conservation forest that borders all the backyards on this side of the street.
And also, rather strangely, there is Tillie, standing right in the middle of her lawn. She is still wearing her checkered blue-and-white dress and has added a wide-brimmed straw hat, as if she were about to do some ladylike gardening.
But Tillie never gardens.
As Catherine watches from her bedroom window, Tillie looks around the yard, seems to spy something she wants, and marches over to it. She bends and, with obvious effort, lifts an object from the ground that looks to Catherine like a large white rock, about the size and shape of a small watermelon. Studying the scene more intently, Catherine realizes that the object is indeed a rock, a small boulder really, and nearly too much for Tillie to hold. But Tillie embraces the rock with both arms, stooping in a way that is painful to watch, and begins to waddle unsteadily in the direction of Fred's forsythia plants.
A phrase from the morning's phone conversation echoes in Catherine's head—“in the back, between our properties”—and in this same moment, Catherine knows exactly what Tillie is doing. The groundhog's burrow! Tillie is going to use that rock to plug up the den of the groundhog she told her about.
Catherine is appalled. She feels light-headed and sick, almost as if she were witnessing a murder. She needs to do something, but going out and confronting Tillie directly would be like arguing with a rabid wolverine. In truth, though Catherine does not like to admit this to herself, Tillie frightens her in general, for reasons she cannot even put into words. Why should a rather insignificant seventy-year-old woman frighten her?
And how did Tillie know she would be watching from the house right now? Did she know?
Catherine begins to pace across the bedroom, from the window to the old oak dresser and back to the window. She sees Tillie drop the rock clumsily onto a spot just beyond the forsythias, midway between two small willows at the edge of the woods, and she marks the location carefully in her mind. Then she paces back to the dresser and stares at herself in the antique mirror. While Tillie swipes at loose dirt on the front of her dress and parades back across the lawn to her deck, Catherine continues to stare into her own eyes in the mirror. That poor little animal, she keeps thinking. What if he's trapped?
Finally, Catherine knows what she wants to do. And she must tell Fred. He can help.
Fred has been at the newspaper, visiting with some of his old friends. When he comes home, Catherine tells him what Tillie has done. He says, “Well, I guess in this case Tillie got two with one stone, literally.”
“What do you mean?”
“You and the little woodchuck, both.”
“Oh, right. That's really true, isn't it?” says Catherine glumly.
“It would appear so. Sure you don't want me to go over there and have it out with her?”
“No. She'd just do it again. I want to help the groundhog, so he'll be okay. Go with me?”
“Do I have a choice?”
Catherine smiles and hugs him. “Not really,” she says.
They make dinner together, as is their habit, and wait until about nine o'clock, when it is completely dark outside. Fred suggests flashlights, but Catherine thinks Tillie would see them.
“She'll know we liberated him, and she'll just cover him again tomorrow.”
“We'll have to take at least one, to find the burrow once we get there.”
“Yes. Right. Okay, maybe a penlight? For when we get there.”
They set out across the yard at a snail's pace, so as not to trip in the darkness. Fred takes the lead, and Catherine follows, arms held out in front of her like a sleepwalker's, to keep her balance. When they get to the far end of the lawn, they follow along the row of forsythia bushes until there are no more forsythias. Then, in wonder, like a child, Catherine takes a step into the even more complete darkness beyond, hoping that her hands, and not her face, will find one of the willows.
She feels a branch, takes a deep breath, and whispers, “Okay, Fred. Penlight.”
Fred takes the light out of his pocket, holds it close to the ground, and turns it on. After a few moments, they find the melon-size rock, somewhat more easily than they could have hoped, because the rock is smooth and white and the surrounding earth is dark. Catherine exhales and pushes a loose strand of hair behind her left ear. She and Fred bend down and lift the rock together, revealing a surprisingly small hole in the ground, considering it is used by a fat little groundhog.
Catherine has an impulse to shine the penlight into the hole to check on its occupant. But then she realizes that she will not see much, and that she may scare the animal.
Arm in arm, whispering and containing their laughter, she and Fred stumble home.
Tillie does not see them. As they return from their mission, she has already been drinking and sulking for several hours, as usual. She sits on a sofa in her living room and pours herself glasses of Glenlivet, trying to drown out the monotony of her life and the idiots she continually has to deal with. The only thing that makes this evening different from any other is the accumulation of packing boxes now stacked around her.
Inside her drunken fog, she congratulates herself on her brilliant idea not to put up a FOR SALE sign this time. She thinks, I'll take these cretins by surprise. Their stupid mouths will gape.
The good-for-nothing real estate agent keeps
telling her that not using a sign is shooting herself in the foot, and that he really thinks she should wait for a higher offer. This buyer came in under her price. But Tillie cannot wait. She has never liked waiting. She will have her moment, and her moment will be tomorrow morning. And then everyone in this whole horrible neighborhood will be in complete shock about her move. She is sure of it. The agent does not understand why secrecy matters, but he is a fool, so why listen to him? She has taken losses before when she wanted to get out of a house fast. It's all in the game, she thinks to herself. All in the game. You can't stay in a place where the people won't listen to you. And giving them a parting shot is extremely important.
Tillie has a trust fund from her deceased father that has supported her for most of her life. These days, she says she is “retired,” but she never really worked. She used to paint watercolors sometimes when she was younger, but she never sold any of them. She would like to purchase grander houses, but her wretched mother keeps hanging on, and so she cannot get her hands on the rest of the money. Her mother is nearly a hundred years old, and still she has not died. Tillie is stuck in these dreadful middle-class neighborhoods, knowing that, by rights, she should have a wealthier lifestyle. She visits her mother periodically, because she certainly does not want to be written out of the will, and the bedridden old woman always reminds her of a half-plucked parakeet squawking in a cage. What she has to say is just about that interesting.
Nothing is very interesting, really. Suffocating the rodent was okay for a few minutes, and she hopes Catherine was watching. Catherine would have a stroke. But then that project was over, and there was nothing else to do. She cannot imagine what these absurd people on all sides of her do that seems to occupy them so completely as they scurry about their little lives. They must have brains the size of peas.
The Sociopath Next Door Page 21