The Nuisance

I prefer to write words that are like the legs of little ballerinas: secretly strong with vintage beauty and emanative grace, but right now all I really want to write are clumsy run-on sentences where my bottled up belligerence flies from my fingers like the glistering yellow goop of burst blisters. A note has been taped to the front door of our apartment. “I don't know if you know this,” the note reads, “but your dog is a nuisance to the neighborhood. She barks the entire time you are not home.” I crumple the snobby scrawl inside my fist like a vexed detective trapped inside the grainy gray walls of his pipe-smoking genre before storming from the kitchen to collapse onto my bed for an old fashioned fit. 

Forty-seven seconds later, Scott leans on the doorframe, watching me wipe my one summoned tear. 

We will fix this, we declare, pumping our bicycle pedals to the pet store. With backs bent, we grasp our handlebars and side by side, discuss whether this neighbor has written condescending notes to all the houses on the street with barking dogs, landline answering machines, surround sound televisions, continuous construction work and garbage disposals. 

The ride soothes our hostile humiliation. 

At the store, we choose a collar that will send a small startling shock to Penny’s neck whenever she bellows out a bark. 

When home, Scott clicks the collar around Penny's thick mane and sends her from our bedroom to scare Mark's sister, who's just arrived. As she bursts from our bedroom, four full woofs rush from my dog's muzzle, followed by immediate whimpers, which then fade to a soft silence as Penny adjusts to this sudden and seemingly cruel bark-free existence. 

One drunken night, a few days after our pet store purchase, Scott sets out to test the bark collar's level of barbarism. Meticulously, he presses the collar's metal prongs to the center of his naked neck and begins to bark. Mark, Amy and I stand by, gawking at this suspenseful and yet strange audacity. After three or four deep bona fide barks, my husband yelps and stumbles backwards. Several seconds later, once our cackles have quieted, he reassures us that his shrill scream was not from pain, but merely from surprise. We, therefore, deem the experiment a success.     

Both women, downstairs and next door, want to get us out of earshot and out of sight. They miss the old woman who lived in the apartment before us, we presume.

This past April, Amy builds an herb and vegetable garden to the left of the back door. Rustic with dark chocolate soil and yellowish green tomato sprouts, this tall wooden box of future food pretties this previously plain piece of backyard. A couple weeks later, Scott and I push our grill to the other side of that same door. 

The next day, Downstairs Lady's lowly flowerpot (from the front porch) sits suspiciously beside our grill. I suspect she's trying to claim back this space she never thought to use before. 

A few days after her pot placement, Downstairs Lady asks Amy to move her garden. She's bought a basketball hoop for her son and wants to put it there, she says. Amy complies and Mark moves the entire garden arrangement to the only other place available: a shady spot at the top of the driveway. 

This strange woman's unequivocal bossiness throws me into a repetitive rage that night when Amy informs me of this most recent request. “A basketball hoop? There? Five feet from where we park our cars?... A basketball hoop.” 

One week later, Mark sits alone in the basement playing with his Lego's while Amy, Scott and I sleep upstairs in our beds. At around 11 o’clock that night, Downstairs Lady notices the music Mark is playing and it causes her to be so upset she calls the landlord in Pennsylvania. Take note: we live in Massachusetts. “Call them.” She demands, but Mr. Landlord asks that she speak with us herself. She she doesn't feel comfortable doing that, she says and hangs up. Then she decides that Mr. Landlord is "going to chicken out from calling” us and leaves her apartment to tell us to be quiet. When she discovers that the music is not coming from our apartment upstairs but from the basement below hers, she clomps down the dirty wooden stairs and the first thing out of her mouth is, “I’ve already called the landlord. Your music is too loud.” She then sort of snickers the part about the landlord chickening out from calling us (as if Mark will side with her) and begins a new tirade on how inappropriate his music is.  

Mark, ripped from his sublime solitude, looks up, and with utter befuddlement, slowly clarifies, “You called the landlord?” 

She doesn't understand the concept of renting an apartment.  Doesn’t understand that we don’t have to do the things she’s requested. That we've been the friendly cooperative neighbors she hasn't been. Sure we can turn down our music. Sure you can sensor the sound waves and we'll avoid playing lyrics littered with mother fucking shitty ass damn swears. Sure I can take the back stairwell when I walk Penny in the early morning because the front stairs creak. Sure we won't use our front porch light because it shines near your bedroom window. Sure you can have the good parking spot because you’re “the oldest.” Sure Scott can help the delivery guy carry in your dresser. Sure we can take the trash out. Sure we can move our garden. Sure you can take up more than half of the basement because you had to downsize from a house.  Sure you can set up a basketball hoop on the hoods of our cars. 

Downstairs Lady likes to have someone to hate, something to complain about. We have been that for her, I think. "I just can't stand that I want to avoid someone who lives downstairs from me." I say to Scott loud enough so that she might hear me through our open windows because I just don't care anymore. Scott says then that I can decide whether she bothers me. This stumps me so I go to the bathroom to rinse off the green facial mask I have applied to the pimples that have formed due to this unnecessary domestic stress.

With pockets of dog treats, a plastic bag for possible poop and music playing in my ears, I walk Penny to town. As we trot together, the sun shows itself for the first time today and it is warm and so are the faces of everyone we pass. That's when I realize that maybe I also just needed something or someone to complain about. Maybe I've had Downstairs Lady just as she's had me, like secret Santa's at some horribly crappy Christmas party. As this realization belly flops onto my brain waves, thick tension in my shoulders and chest loosens. Scott is right. I can choose to not complain about her and in doing so, I choose me.

Drawing from his interpretation of Downstairs Lady's inability to communicate clearly, Scott proposes a plan: we roommates will regard Downstairs Lady as a socially disabled person. (You need not be offended by the use of the word, "disabled," for this tactic is to prevent the flipping of tables, the screaming of fighting words and from the throwing of things like rotten tomatoes from Amy's garden.) Ultimately, the plan encourages us to not be frustrated by her frequently rude comments and requests, but to pity her for her written and verbal impotencies.      

A few months later, we are awarded, it seems, for these efforts. However it is possible you will think we are insensitive and even cruel for the satisfaction we feel for the following events. 

On the ground below, in the blue tint of twilight, two small dogs join by one obstinate jaw.  

"Oh NO!"

"Stop! STOP!"

"OH NO NONOOOOOO!" The woman next door wails from her wheelchair behind the railings of her side porch. Her tiny gray lamb-like dog (her beloved best friend, who is without a leash because he is always) wines in submission to the dog that lives downstairs from us, a characteristically insane canine who is also without a leash because he has, we learn later, bitten through his backyard dog run. 

When the scuffle started, a moment before, both dogs were growling and barking and as soon as Wheelchair Lady started screaming and Downstairs Lady began yelling, both dogs went into a full-fledged furry ferociousness.  

Penny stood on her hind legs, her front paws clinking a crowd of white votive candles on the windowsill. A small bark escaped her muzzle, but her collar startled her to shush, and she retreated behind the couch to lay inside the cool shadow of the cornered coffee table.  

Wheelchair Lady's puppy is limp now, dead or playing the part. "Stop it! STOP IT! NOOOO!" Wheelchair Lady projectile weeps, wheeling in and out of her kitchen to hide. A middle aged man, a visiting friend of Wheelchair Lady's, works to pry the dogs apart, skittishly circling the attempting homicide, reaching for the lifeless pup. 

"Shit! She bit me." He says, pulling away his hand.

After three awkwardly cacophonous minutes of violence, the man manages to free Wheelchair Lady's stiff pup and carry it to the wailing woman's lap. 

"She won't be here tomorrow." Downstairs Lady's wobbly word falls out and forward onto the cement walkway between the houses where there is now drying droplets of red. Next door, the kitchen door has closed, leaving a swift sudden stillness.   

With eyes and mouths stretched to the seams of our hairlines, Scott and I back away from the window of our second floor apartment.  

"That dog is a maniac." I whisper.  

"I'm so glad that had nothing to do with us." Scott says. 

A few minutes later, we watch, again from our window, as the gray haired man, now with bloodied paper towels around his hand, carries the puppy on a pillow.  

"Doesn't look like it's moving." Scott says, while Wheelchair Lady gets into the car and drives them away.

A few days later, Wheelchair Lady’s Puppy, cone-headed with stitches in its neck, returns home on its pillow throne. I haven't seen anyone walk Downstairs Dog in days, I say, starting apartment-wide rumors that Downstairs Dog has either been sent away, as promised, or been taught to use a litter box. A couple nights later, I get the courage to ask Downstairs Lady to retrieve her cold dry laundry from the dryer (usually, I just wait). I knock on her back door. Downstairs Son opens it and behind him, Downstairs Dog's claws scamper across the dusty wooden floor for me. The door is slammed shut in my face, leaving me in the dark stairwell to listen while Downstairs Lady scolds Downstairs Son for opening the door before putting Downstairs Dog into its crate. She then opens the door two inches and says something about needing to keep her dog in his crate, you know, she says, after what happened. I nod my head and say, "I was wondering if you, if you could get your laundry out of the dryer?..." Proof that I should also be regarded as socially inept.

Weeks later, Downstairs Dog is sent away to "a farm in New Hampshire." This isn't the first time he's done this, killed or attempted to kill a smaller animal. We're told the night of the near murder when we bump into Downstairs Lady and Downstairs Son at a play in town. I give our neighbor a surprised look. Not because I'm shocked her dog has killed or attempted to kill before, but because she expects some sort of sympathy from me.  

Now, at the end of August, we must move. Six months we have shared this second floor apartment, all five of us: Mark, Amy, Scott, Penny the dog and I. Sharing this small kitchen with its tall dark wooden cabinets, large double porcelain sink, a short fat refrigerator that has the tendency to freeze fruit and a white gas stove with black metal burners. Six months of sitting at our blue tiled kitchen island, drinking white wine, chopping vegetables, and making pots of coffee and sausage leek soup. Six months sharing our dining room table where Mark's pencil sketches of zombies, dinosaur monsters and sharks fight naked, heavily equipped mermaid Amy's. "He's gotten really good at drawing my boobs." She smirks. Six months of sharing one living room with a television designated almost exclusively for violent apocalyptic video games. Countless hours of Mark and Scott leaning into the amber glow, fiercely clicking fingers to kill and steal the rations of fictional fortune teller gypsies, elfish hunters and starving rabid children. Months of Amy working in the sweltering triangle-shaped attic, building her wedding dress of feathers, brass rings and clasps, white pleated cotton, a pale pink corset and cream-colored lace on a headless mannequin. Fraying antique lime fabric hangs from the rafters like a material mote meant to keep Mark from seeking out her slowly assembling gown. Six months lying in two separate beds in two separate bedrooms, split by walls and a bathroom. Nights where we'd all lay laughing at our dark ceilings while blunt dessert flatulences honk like smothered ducks from beneath our cotton sheets and feather down comforters. Or like the other night when Mark called me into his and Amy's room to watch him slap Amy's underweared ass. The point was to get Penny to do that cute thing where she stops domestic violence by pushing the aggressor's hand away with her muzzle. However Penny wouldn't really do it and so it just turned into Mark slapping Amy's bum while I stood in the doorway, laughing at this odd, unintentionally violent act. Six months walking home from dinners out in town like the time we ordered two pitches of red sangria at the pizza restaurant and Mark climbed that metal fire escape ladder in an alley and I nearly peed myself on the cracked sidewalk in front of our apartment because Amy made me laugh. Six months sitting on the front porch drinking coffee. The porch Mark wanted badly to pee off of, but was prevented by Amy one early morning. Prevented because this "porch" is not really a porch, but a room of windows that faces a neighborhood of middle aged homeowners. I had been on a walk with Penny before the sun had risen and as I walked into the kitchen I saw a blur go by. I thought it was Scott. With my headphones blocking all surrounding sound, I kicked the kitchen door closed and as I did Amy leapt from the hallway, scaring a full body spasm out of me. She wore a tank top and underwear, her usual pajama ensemble, and landed in the kitchen like a savage gorilla. "Did you see Mark?" Her coarse morning voice demanded. "He might have gone that way." I said, pointing to the living room. While I took Penny's leash off and my heart beat softened, Mark shuffled back through the kitchen. Amy followed. "He wanted to pee off the porch." She said. Apparently he once expressed interest in peeing off the porch and this morning, while she was half-asleep, she heard Mark mumble that he had to pee. She then noticed that the shower was going. Knowing Mark would not ask to pee while Scott was lathering up behind our transparent shower curtain, Amy drifted back to sleep. Seconds later, she woke to an empty bed. Still somewhat asleep, she stood and ran to the kitchen and then ran on to the porch where she stopped Mark from peeing off the porch, which is again not really a porch. "Just ask him." Amy told him in the kitchen. "Scott, can I come in to pee? I won't look." Mark asked. A side note to this story is that when Mark was a college student he had a plant in his dorm room, a thriving plant. When Amy met Mark she thought it was strange that a boy who could barely take care of himself could care so well for another living thing. It wasn't until later that she learned that this plant was "watered" solely by Mark's urine. Six months gathering rent from between couch cushions and savings accounts to mail to our landlord, a man who took the second syllable of his title too literally for after several threats to remove our kitchen sink disposal or shove our dog inside a travel crate, has cast us out by suddenly raising our rent by $200 a month and requiring a lease too far into all of our vagabond futures to be feasibly possible. Usually Scott is the speaker of our house, however he is in Israel when we receive this news from our lord of this overpriced land.

After a week of silence, I write to him. 

"We have worked very hard to be good, quiet tenants here at 31. We are respectful neighbors (once we fixed the barking problem) and we keep to ourselves. To be quite honest, the four of us really love living here and want to figure out a way to make it work. We chose this apartment because of the flexibility of the month-to-month lease and the affordability of sharing the $1150 rent. It feels like you really just want us to move out and I'm not sure why. Raising the rent by $200 after we've only been here for six months is, well, kind of ludicrous." 

While awaiting for a response to this, I eat an entire green bell pepper over the sink in the kitchen. "I just ate an entire green pepper." I tell Amy and we laugh.  A little while later, I receive this response, 

"Rachel - More for me to do in transition..."

Now, despite the dog fighting frenzy, these women, Downstairs Lady and Wheelchair Lady, cling to the concept that they can like one another. Downstairs Lady has sent off her old dog for a cuter quieter one and has already introduced the tiny pup to Wheelchair Lady. When the women speak to one another now, their voices crank to their highest pitches. This is how they'd like to live. That's fine with me. I won't have to be here to witness it much longer.

"MAAAAAOM! I'm going to take my shower now!" Downstairs Son yells every night around 8PM. 

Or, from the yard with the new tiny copper colored pup, I no longer have to listen to this routine hollering. 

"Mom?" 

"Yeah?" Downstairs Lady responds from inside the apartment. 

"Is she supposed to poop?" 

"What?"

"Is she supposed to...Oh! She pooped! She pooped, Mom!"

"She pooped?! Yaaaay! What a good guuuuurl! Wanna come inside? Yay!" Downstairs Lady squeals from the doorframe. 

That poor puppy. I can leave whenever I want to really, but not that little mill pup. No wonder the last little guy went postal, probably figured pound prison or even death by a large needle would be better than his mundane existence with daily walks never exceeding its itty bitty backyard.   

"Downstairs Lady?" I'd love to bellow from our moving truck.

"Yeah?" She'd yell back, her lips pressed to the plastic panels of her air conditioner. 

"I'm gonna move out now." 

"What?" 

"I'm gonna move out!"

"You're gonna move out? WHAT A GOOD GUUUUURL!"

"Downstairs Lady, you are batshit crazy."

I'd also like to write this little note and stick it to Wheelchair Lady's ugly front door.  

Dear Wheelchair Lady, 

I don't know if you know this, but your voice is a nuisance to the neighborhood. You cackle and holler like a banshee the entire time I am home. Maybe someone should put you in a crate? Or, if you'd like, I can lend you this red choker necklace of my dog's. It clicks fashionably in the back and has shockingly beautiful metal prongs that must be precisely placed over the front of your throat. 

Let me know and I'll drop it into your mailbox!   

Sincerely,

 The Girl Next Door with the Bangs