An annoying thing happened at my condo recently. You may recall that when my friend visited on his way to music camp recently, I fell and put either my head or my knee—couldn’t tell which—through the drywall on my landing, uh, when I landed. It really didn’t hurt, but it left a sizeable hole; I posted a picture of it on a recent post (See "Four Fractured Ribs and a Roadtrip, August 18, 2023.)
Nancy and I have occasionally hired a wonderful genius of a contractor who’s an Irishman whom we adore, Seamus. He can do anything. He and I discuss everything. He’s a single father who raised a very determined daughter, an epileptic, who is attending Hunter in New York City. I admire him and her greatly. Anyway, he came to fix it and made it look like nothing had ever happened.
But while he was retrieving some materials or tools from his truck, the neighbor next door asked him what he was up to.
I wish he had intoned gently, “None of your bloody business,” as he’s Irish, but he answered in some anodyne way and moved on. These people are so nosy. I try to avoid the guy across the street because once we’ve exchanged greetings, he stares in a hulking stance at me, waiting for me to extend the conversation. I want to say, “Haven’t you figured out yet that I’m an introvert? And don’t like people?”
Speaking of my condo complex, a woman named Michelle with an Italian last name I can’t recall moved in next door to me a few years ago. She’s single. I greeted her when she moved in, saying, “I’m an introvert. I may not be out much.”
“Oh, I’m a real introvert, too,” she said. She smiled grimly, then proved it by turning away and disappearing into her condo and seldom speaking to me again.
I don’t see much of her, which is OK. One time, encountering her as she was taking garbage to the dumpsters at the end of the parking lot, I said, “Hey, we ought to say hi maybe once a quarter, anyway.” She smiled without teeth.
She seems to be a nurse; at some point during the pandemic, her compact Hyundai sported what read to me like a nurse’s hand-made protest sign about under-staffing, which we still have in the Seattle area, like everywhere else.
She was a mystery, then, though not a compelling one. Then, a development: a couple of summers ago, she appeared in the backyard courtyard that everyone in our unit shares. Following were a young woman and a young man, hereinafter Girl and Boy. They set out a lot of food on the community table, and they ate dinner together.
The conversation made clear that they were her kids, if only in that they described what college courses for which they had signed up. With what older woman do you share that but your mother? Anyway they appeared to be staying there. It’s a two-bedroom condo, like mine; who has to take the couch in the living room? I’m guessing Boy.
They don’t share a lot of physical characteristics; Michelle is short and stout, and Girl and Boy are both tall and slender. I haven’t seen enough of any of them up close to see if the kids resemble their mother. Michelle’s hair is frizzy; Girl’s is blonde and straight (easily dyed), and Boy’s is black and curly.
There could well be something exotic going on. Maybe Girl and Boy tragically lost their parents in a home invasion or the parents were bank robbers who made some mistake and met their fates from the business end of a cop’s pistol, and Michelle is their indulgent aunt. They don’t seem to spend a lot of time here. What time they do is never predictable other than that one summer. Girl and Boy don’t appear together here much.
For instance, something odd happened earlier this fall. Girl showed up and appeared to take up residence, at odds with a college calendar. She also has a Hyundai, and there’s a mystery about that. Sometimes she parked it in the driveway, and sometimes it was absent altogether. I drove down to the park adjacent to our condos one day to see if she was parking down there, but no dice, at least not then. Does she have a job? A boyfriend with whom she stays over?
I saw her a couple of times this fall. Once, she was wrestling a recalcitrant rug into the back seat of her car, and she allowed herself to lose control of it so that she could lift her hand to wave at me and smile, which I thought was unnecessary, totally unlike her mother, and kind of sweet.
Then a couple of weeks ago, I went outside simply to get a feel for how cold it was, and there Girl was, dressed in a long black dress with a lowish square neckline. She looked smashing! Usually Girl is dressed informally. A few moments later, I saw her walking down the parking lot and out of the complex. Where was she going, looking so good?
I was tempted to rush outside and say, hey, you look great, want to come in for a drink? But obviously she was off to some event, and I’m a crippled old man, albeit not without charm for someone with a psychotic attraction to elderly people.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Girl likes me, but once, a few years ago, she was unlocking her door, and I was unlocking mine, and she looked up and gave me a shy but wonderful smile. Not like her mommy!
Then, all of a sudden this November, Girl was gone. I wasn’t aware so much of her having left or her absence, but Boy was suddenly inhabiting that front bedroom that they seem to be trading off using.
I saw Boy having sex in that bedroom last summer. At night, I was driving to my place, was a few feet from my driveway, and I noticed the light on in Girl and Boy’s bedroom. There was a girl—with long black hair, thus not Girl—facing away from me, apparently on her knees, moving up and down, and she was naked at least from the waist up. She slowly raised her arms straight up in a gesture of real or performed ecstasy and threw her head back. I imagined her perky young breasts thus tugged upwards, nipples pointed toward heaven, and I thought, where’s my young dark-haired girl who’s throwing her arms up in real or performed ecstasy etc? I drove on and parked in my driveway.
I don’t actually resent Boy for his concupiscence. God knows when I was his age there were a number of young dark-haired girls raising her arms straight up etc. Sadly those years have gone.
But I am sorry that Girl is gone, for who knows how long. Maybe forever? It’s not like I can ask Mommy Michelle, who would treat my curiosity with disdain or suspicion or sheer indifference. In the worst case, I’d have a cop at my door with a subpoena.
I was driving home today and had parked in my driveway when a dark car stopped just short of my driveway. I looked into the car, an unfamiliar Audi, and couldn’t see who was there. Suddenly Boy was bounding out of the condo and joining them, leaping in that annoying way of which young people are capable into their back seat. They zoomed off.
I presume he’ll be back though his window was unlit tonight. Girl and Boy spend long times up in their shared bedroom, often in the early parts of the day. Do they not like spending time with Mommy Michelle? Do they masturbate to excess? I did see Boy in his upstairs room with boy arms extended skyward, like his girl’s, both hands were quite free of his privates.
By the way, who is Father? Girl’s and Boy’s absences suggest his existence as perhaps they alternate spending holidays with him. No adult male possibly like him has ever arrived here. He and Michelle have perhaps had an acrimonious split, which I can believe, considering how unfriendly Michelle is—she doesn’t appear to want to have any more truck with men.
I have trouble picturing him and have given up trying. There are not enough hints in his kids’ lives to suggest anyone.
In the meantime, so many mysteries. Why is Girl friendly bordering on the flirtatious (I wish you’d seen the way she raised her head and smiled at me when we were unlocking our doors) when her mother is relentlessly unfriendly?
Has Girl graduated college, or otherwise separated herself from an institution of higher learning? Boy seems younger.
So many questions. The only answer to their activities is the same for every other kid in his or her 20’s: those years are for screwing around (literally in boy’s case), finding oneself, coming home and going away, until one does settle on a path, and then zooms off on it, never to return. Someday I’ll realize by their continuing absence that they’ve left Mommy Michelle, and me, for good. That will be too bad, for they are beyond entertaining.
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