hello yello

I like the new neighbor already.

Not only did she bring this chair into our lives, but the other day I walked up behind her and said hello. She screamed and jumped a foot.

my inching progress

Well I don't want to jinx myself or anything, but today I started a small painting. I know, I know....

Before I could talk myself out of it, I got my shit together and set up a spot near the window downstairs.

Didn't hurt that it was a nice day, and I left the door open to let the cat out while I puttered around --

the turpentine smells good.

Nothin Heavy Here

Just a few things.

Louise

I didn't know Louise's life. She was just "the lady next door" for a while, until she poked her head out one day while I watered the roses and said to me in her quiet drawl, "I lost my husband last night."

It was a little shocking that these were the first words she ever spoke to me - I awkwardly offered condolences, but in all honesty, she seemed relieved - seemed happy to poke her head out and talk to someone without having to worry what he'd say or do about it. It dawned on me that in the year or two I'd lived there I had really only seen him, sitting on an upturned chunk of log near the front door, keeping watch on the street...waiting for her to come home. We grunted at each other in the polite way that neighbors do, but never really talked about much - maybe a few observations about gardening and such.

Every morning she'd wait for a taxi. We never asked each other about work, but I always thought she went to a factory, that maybe she sewed. I don't know. She didn't have a car, so taxis would come to take her to the grocery store, too. It didn't seem as if she ever went anywhere else - maybe the post office. A couple times I saw her at the store with all her bags, waiting, but she never let me give her a ride home.

Over the years details emerged: her husband used to hit her. He accused her of sleeping with every man she ever spoke to (which if you knew Louise you knew that shit was preposterous - the musings of a paranoid and spiteful man). If she came home from work even a little bit late, he'd be waiting for her with his shotgun in his lap. He had argued with a neighbor years before, firing a gun to emphasize his point. The bullet went through the wall of the house and struck Louise in her hip; she was treated but it wasn't removed. After she died the morgue called me to ask how a bullet came to be lodged in her hip, and I told this story. It felt strange to be the keeper of Louise's history - I was just the neighbor of most recent vintage.

Once a week a lady came by to collect an insurance payment from Louise. It seemed like a pretty old-school, small-town way to do things, and I always wondered if it was legit but this woman was the only person who went inside the house. Ever. One evening she knocked on my door to say that Louise wasn't answering the door, had I seen her? We couldn't raise her, so the lady called the police and they came and knocked on all the windows and walls 'til she answered and shouted she was fine, to "go away and leave me alone!" We did, but the next day I noticed her ungathered paper, so I tried the front door and found it was unlocked. I went inside and there she was, in the bathtub where she'd been for three days, sick with the flu and too weak to climb out. The tub was empty except for Louise and the shower curtain which she'd pulled down in her attempts to get out. I brought her a bathrobe and lifted her, put her to bed, and got her to drink something. It was the most help she'd ever allowed me to give her. Afterward I kept a closer eye out for signs of life from Louise, who suddenly seemed so fragile, but remained fiercely independent. I was able to force very little of my attention on her without her snapping at me to leave her alone, to "never mind!"

She had a son named Clarence who lived near Sarasota. A fortyish, helpless man-child who never once came to visit despite his mother's proximity in Tampa. She wrote him letters, and allowed him to call her collect; she made excuses for his absence in the way a delusional lover adapts to the failures of a loved one. When I finally found her, one rainy summer night, dead on her living room floor, Clarence was notified and at last made his pilgrimage to Tampa to claim what was left of his mother's estate.

I tried not to despise him, tried to feel sympathy for him, but I was angry on her behalf, disappointed at his stupid inertia, his absence, his ineptitude - his inability to plan her funeral. He came to my door one day, mutely handing me the yellow pages, his eyes pleading ignorance as to who to call. I looked him in the eye and said "Clarence. She was your mother. You need to do this." He sighed and turned away, and I assume he figured it out.

I don't really know. I wasn't invited.