Good Neighbors - Caution: Dark Tale

There’s a strange dynamic between neighbors in today’s transient neighborhoods. Everyone pays attention but no one remembers what they see. People come and go around here, sometimes in the middle of the night. We’ve lived here five years now, my husband, children, and my disabled sister. I’ve learned not to extend myself, at least not the way I did when the neighborhood was more stable. As it is, I take a meal to welcome a family when they move in, and that’s the first and last time I see them. They disappear in a month or two, and another family moves in.

A middle-aged couple moved in next door about a year ago, and stayed. The husband is short and wiry. If you saw him from behind, you’d probably peg him as a seventh grade boy from out in the country. He walks with long steps, keeps his hands in his pockets, and looks straight ahead, focused on where he’s headed. The wife is an attractive woman, about four inches taller than her husband. Six months ago, the husband drove to Florida and brought his wife’s mother to live with them. Seems she has Alzheimer’s disease and can’t live on her own any more.

The old lady used to wander out of the house and get lost, after everyone went to bed. This isn’t the safest area for confused old women, and you can imagine the chaos that resulted. Finally, the husband rigged a lock on the gate so she couldn’t get out of the yard. After that, she’d slip outside and wander around the yard until she got frustrated and yelled for help. The porch light would come on and the husband and wife yelled back and forth a minute. Then one of them staggered outside to retrieve the old lady. She’d taken to slipping out at night more often – maybe two or three times a week – since the weather warmed up.

* * *

My mother was real nosy. Our living room curtains had a permanent bend from Mom standing, watching our neighbors. I developed an aversion to looking out the window at all. I’m in my late forties and couldn’t identify most of my neighbors in a police line-up. I don’t look out even when there’s gunfire – and this neighborhood has its share of gunfire. Once I called 9-1-1 and the dispatcher asked me what the shooter looked like. “Do you really expect me to show my face at the window and try to identify who’s firing a gun?” Sometimes police are just idiots.

So it wasn’t unusual when at first I didn’t pay much attention to the man next door making thumping noises on his front porch. It was about 10:00, late for him to be outside, and I wondered what the hell he was doing. I heard the wife come outside and curse – something about “don’t put the damned trash can on the washer any more.” At first, I thought he was getting the garbage together for trash collection. Then I realized trash collection was two days away.

Normally, I wouldn’t have given it another thought, but something just struck me odd about the noises he was making out there. I was playing a video card game – one of those with no sound. The window was open because it was still warm outside. It’s one of those high windows, the kind that opens like a refrigerator door. So here I was, sitting right under the window playing video cards. My neighbor was four feet from my head, pounding and thumping something on his porch.

I was in a bad mood. My schizophrenic sister was staying with us, and she’d been acting up all week long. We took her in when she fell and broke her ankle, running away from maggots or some other hallucination. She ended up losing her apartment when the government pulled funding for her group home, so we ended stuck with her. Her psychiatrist called and warned me to keep her away from my little girl – said my sister voiced “extreme hatred and intent to harm” my child. I told the psychiatrist I wanted my sister out of the house – for him to find her someplace else to live – but he told me all the facilities were full and I’d just have to “tough it out” until they could find placement for her. Said everything would be just fine as long as I kept my sister away from my daughter. Told me I could be charged with abandonment if I threw my sister out. Ain’t that some shit? Something wrong when the law starts siding with the criminals and the law-abiding citizens have their hands tied.

Anyway, I was in a bad mood. They say a person’s home is their castle – well, at least until the government starts interfering. I wasn’t sleeping too good, worried that my sister would get it in her head to hurt my baby, and I felt trapped by circumstances. I’d been paying real close attention for unusual noises and such, in case my sister decided to go for a kitchen knife and try something. The man had been thumping and pounding for over ten minutes, and my nerves were bad. I decided I’d bust if I didn’t figure out what the hell he was doing. Mind you, I’m really not nosy, and usually I couldn’t tell you anything that was going on outside my own home. But this was a special circumstance.

I unscrewed the light bulb on the lamp in the living room and slipped over to the window in the dark. The guy’s back was so close I could’ve reached out and poked him. I kept my head to the side of the window frame so if he turned around, he wouldn’t see me, and let my eyes adjust to the shapes on his porch. I almost gasped out loud when I finally made out what he was doing. Damned if he didn’t have his mother-in-law wrapped in a garbage bag, like a big roast or something tied up with string, and was steadily pounding her body with a sledgehammer. I could tell it was the old lady because a sliver of light from their house fell right on her foot sticking out of the bag.

I closed my eyes. Surely I’d lost my mind – this nice little man just couldn’t be doing what I thought I saw him doing. Calling on every ounce of breath control I could muster, I relaxed and slowed down my breathing. When I regained control, I turned back and opened my eyes again. This time, both her feet were sticking out and visible in the beam of light. My heart was pounding so hard, I was afraid he’d hear it and turn around. Just as I was about to sneak away and call the police, his wife came out onto the porch.

“Ain’t you done yet? You oughta be able to fold her up inside that bag by now.” Her words were slurred like she’d been drinking. I’d never known her to drink before, but I figured the current circumstances justified tying one on if any ever did.

“Yeah, I think she’ll fit now.” Horrified, I watched as the two of them crammed the old lady further into the bag, then inside a trash can. The wife snapped the lid on tight and flipped up the locking mechanism on the top. There was a loud thud as the husband let the sledgehammer fall to the porch. Then the two of them struggled and rolled the trash can down the stairs and across the sidewalk. I had to move to another window to watch them push the trash can out to the back alley. The husband placed a cinder block on top of the trash can, then the two of them held hands and walked back into their house like sweethearts on a date.

I was stunned. Surely what I thought I’d seen didn’t happen. I must have dozed off playing cards or something. At least that’s what I told myself. I locked the house up tight, closed and latched the windows, and smoked a cigarette before going to sleep. If what I thought I’d seen really happened, the old lady would still be there in the morning. I could call the police tomorrow. Right now, it was all just too bizarre. I didn’t dare call my husband on the cell phone – what if the police picked up our conversation? They might think I’d been in on the crime. And my husband thought the world of the man next door – he’d think I’d lost my mind. No, this would keep till tomorrow. I slept restlessly and woke before dawn.

I’m sure it’s hard to imagine, but the next day I went about my morning routine like nothing happened the night before. I fixed breakfast for the kids and got everyone off to school. I woke my sister, administered her medication and made sure she was ready when the van came to take her to the day program. When my husband came home, I gave him a cup of coffee and sat down to discuss what I thought I’d seen.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” was his initial response.

“I wish I was. But I swear I saw the whole thing. The trash can’s out in the alley. All I want you to do is walk out there with me so we can check it out. I figure if we each carry a bag of trash, they won’t think anything of it. They can’t see the alley from their house, so they won’t know what we’re doing.”

Just then, I heard the roar of the city garbage truck. It wasn’t trash day! Why the hell was the garbage truck picking up on Thursday? My husband looked at me. “Oh hell, it’s Memorial Day weekend. They’re picking up a day early.” I’d never seen such an expression of horror on his face before.

* * *

By the time they found the old lady in the city landfill, there was no telling where she’d come from or who she was. The news mentioned it a few times but after all, it was an old lady and since nobody had reported an old lady missing the police figured it was some homeless person. Not much call around here to solve murders if there isn’t family hounding the police. Within a month the mysterious homeless woman’s death slipped to the back of everyone’s mind. Meth labs were a much bigger problem, and our limited police force concentrated on saving the city from drugs.

* * *

My sister’s psychiatrist still hadn’t found her a place to live, and I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in almost two months. Her counselor called one afternoon. “Mrs. Sandusky, I am required by law to warn you that in group today, your sister again made threats against your daughter. I take her threats seriously and feel compelled to warn you to keep your daughter away from her.”

A ray of hope pierced my sleep-deprived mind. “Did my sister tell you she’s thinking of moving out on her own?”

“She mentioned it.”

“I’m not accountable if she chooses to do that, right? I mean, I can’t throw her out on the street, but if she decides to leave I’m not going to be charged with anything?”

“She has the right to go where she pleases, Mrs. Sandusky. If she leaves one day and doesn’t come back, you aren’t responsible.” I felt relaxed for the first time in months as the counselor’s words sank in.

That afternoon, I baked a chocolate cake and took it to my next-door neighbors. I didn’t ask where the old woman was, but I did ask if my husband could borrow their sledgehammer. They were real neighborly and lent it to me.

My sister left in the middle of the night. Nobody’s sure where she is but as the counselor said, I’m not responsible.

My neighbor and I have a silent understanding: I don’t mention her mother, and she doesn’t ask about my sister.

There’s something to be said for good neighbors.