on neighbors & neighborhood

As I pulled into the alley behind my house last night I saw a shadowy figure approaching in the dark. For a split second I thought about various escape options—although my first thought was to protect my new bicycle, which I had been about to leave unattended to open the garage door. But then the figure called out hello. It was my neighbor, Al, coming from the house on the opposite corner.

“Woody died today.”

He’ll be buried on the twenty-third, the day his wife Fern died, one year ago.

We talked a few minutes. Al hasn’t always been very approachable or kind, but I know he was close to Woody and Fern, and to Audrey and Bud, who used to live across the street. They all moved into the neighborhood when it was built, in the 1950s. Al is a little younger than the rest, but he’s “on the top rung now, too,” and “next in line to go.”

I grew up in neighborhoods where no one talked to each other, big houses you entered through the garage door that opened for you automatically. And I never lived in any one of those places longer than a few years. When we bought this little cracker box half my life ago, I was very young, had a tiny fat baby, and felt shy and alone. Ross was better at meeting the neighbors, and they all seemed to like them.

Once, at a block party, Al introduced Ross to some other folks as if he were a celebrity. “Ross works at the university!” I worked there, too, but that signified nothing. Blank faces. Woody and Al seemed to live in a man’s world, and the womenfolk were separate.

About ten years ago I covered my front lawn in cardboard to kill the grass and make way for more garden space. One day Woody walked by when I was on my hands and knees. He put his hand up over his face and said, “I can’t look. I don’t even want to know what you’ve go going on there, Nicole.” He didn’t generally seem a hostile man, but there wasn’t much humor in his joke.

I remember Fern’s voice particularly, quavery. She was curled by severe arthritis, which must have been painful, but she was always kind.

I wonder what will happen with Woody and Fern’s quirky house now that they’re gone. The young couple who bought Audrey and Bud’s place seem sweet, and they have a gorgeous chunk baby. Although, I don’t see them very often. They leave every morning in separate cars at 7:50 on the dot and don’t return until late. I wonder what the house thinks of that that lifestyle, if it’s lonely without them.