TheBanyanTree: Won't You Be My Neighbor?

[Margaret R. Kramer]

Do you have a neighbor who drives you nuts?  I have one, and even she's very
nice and quiet, she drives me insane every time I talk to her.

Our mortgage lender bought the house next door to us shortly after we moved
in.  It was a foreclosed house and it was a wreck.  He spent $70,000 to fix
it up and decided to rent it out rather than sell it in this down market.
It's a three bedroom home, two baths, a finished basement, central air
conditioning, a double garage, and has a remodeled kitchen.  It really is a
nice house, although it looks pretty plain on the outside.

He rents it for $1,500 a month, plus utilities.  Mary moved in last August.
She is from Oklahoma, although she grew up in Iowa, where her parents still
live.  She has a sister who lives in South Dakota.  Mary has two daughters,
one who will be a senior at St. Olaf, which is a good private liberal arts
college in Northfield, MN and her younger daughter who will be a sophomore
at Olin in MA.  Mary told me that she  wanted to move to MN to be closer to
her aging parents and I also think because she would closer to her eldest
daughter.

Mary is a nurse and was employed for a while at Children's Hospital in St.
Paul.  She worked the night shift.  However, being at the bottom of the
totem pole, she told me she had to work every holiday, and when she found
that out, she said she just cried.  It didn't take me too long to find out
that Mary really doesn't want to work, she wants to play.

I think Mary is in her late 40s or early 50s, my age, and she reminds of
some people who get to middle age and turn into teenagers again.  The
mid-life crisis, I think.  They're the ones who buy the sports cars, party
all night, and act younger than they are.  That's Mary.  I never did see her
work a holiday, I'm sure she changed shifts with other nurses in order to
get her holidays off, but my mother was a nurse, and in order to be fair,
they alternated holidays.  It seems strange to me that someone can work
around getting holidays off, but that's how Mary operates.  It's all about
her.

Mary talks a mile a minute.  She almost blew me over the first time I talked
to her with the air that flies out of her mouth.  Holy cow, that woman can
talk.  And if she isn't talking to a real live person, then she's on her
cell phone.  She should wear one of those blue tooth things rather than
having her shoulder hunched to hold her phone.

Blah, blah, blah, blah.  Have you ever met someone who immediately tried to
pull status rank on you?  Like I had an interview with someone once who had
to tell me almost one minute into the interview that her husband was an
airline pilot.  OK, what does that have to do with anything?  Well, it was
her attempt to pull status on me.  Besides telling me her life story within
the first five minutes of meeting me, Mary had to make sure to let me know
that her daughters were more brilliant than Albert Einstein, more talented
than Wynton Marsalis, more beautiful than any model, and they were the
perfect girls who did nothing but study.

Yeah, that's true.  When those girls are home, they seem to have no friends
or boyfriends, they don't work, and spend all their time with their mother.
The older one has a car and you would think she would be OUT THERE doing fun
stuff that 20 somethings do, but no, she's home every night with her mom.
They're pretty young women and nice, so why would they spend so much time
with their mom?

At that age, I was living with my boyfriend, and spending time with our
group of friends was more important than spending time with our parents.  My
son has a vibrant and much more interesting social life than I do, and I
would feel uncomfortable if he felt he had to center his social life around
me.

Now when they're at school, that's when Mary goes into overdrive.  It's like
she can't be by herself.  When we've talked to her when her daughters are at
school, it's like she's hyperventilating, she almost clings to us.  She has
her sister come and stay with her on weekends or her parents.  Or someone.

She did pick up a skuzzy boyfriend who shows up when her daughters aren't
home.  He looks to be in his 30s, with a mullet, and drives a beat up old
car, and when he spends the night with her, he has his dog sleep in the car.
His dog, a boxer, must not get along with Mary's dachshund mix.  I never see
him around if her daughters or other family members are there.  I guess he's
not the type of guy she wants around her family.

I would bet that along with the mid-live crisis, Mary is also going through
the empty next syndrome.  She seems to be tight with her daughters, so I'm
sure it's difficult not having them around all the time.  I know from my own
experience, a child moving on into adulthood is a weird transition for most
parents and it does drive you a little crazy.  Mary is definitely all over
the map with her behavior.

Well, she changed jobs from Children's Hospital to the U of M clinics, which
is a straight 40 hour a week kind of thing.  Of course, she rarely works a
full week.  She takes an incredible amount of time off.  If her hair is out
of place, then she doesn't go to work.  So she takes all this time off, but
somehow, she can take this coming week off to go to the Black Hills.  She
just started this job, how can she have so much vacation time?  I don't ask,
because I don't want to know.

Whenever she's outside, she stares into our open windows.  She comes over
and asks me what I'm doing.  And a simple conversation with anyone else
turns into an hour long marathon with her, because she can't shut up.  She
must talk in her sleep; I've never seen anyone talk as much as she does.

Last winter, she locked herself out of her house.  Ray was just leaving for
work, so he told her to wait for her landlord in our house.  I hated the
thought of her alone in our house.  Not that she would steal anything, but I
would bet you money that she took the time to wander through our home, just
looking, just nosing around.  I can imagine her opening drawers, peering
into closets, and looking into nooks and crannies.  Ick.

Mary and her daughters have been getting ready for their camping trip to the
Black Hills over the past couple of days.  It's agonizing to watch, because
Mary is not the most organized person in the world.  Her garage is full of
boxes, she has room to park her minivan and that's it.  So whenever she
needs anything, she has to go through all the boxes.  They dug out the tent
and the sleeping bags and other camping stuff.  They made 18,000 trips to
the store to get stuff.  They washed clothes.  They cleaned the house.  They
mowed the burnt out grass.  Great.

Here is a typical Mary conversation.  I was watering my front yard yesterday
and she walks up to me and says, "We're going to the Black Hills for a week,
just in case you see the house empty and were wondering what happened to
us."

She paused for a moment, and a pause is a big deal for this non-stop talker.
She acted like I should be so jealous at this exotic vacation she's taking.

"Well, you never know what can happen, so if a tree falls on the house, then
you'll know we're not home, and you can call Mark (her landlord)."

"OK."  I try to keep to one word answers, so I don't encourage her to keep
talking.

As I winding up my hose, some thought must have popped into her head.  "In
case you were thinking about using our water to clean something or whatever,
I want to let you know that if you tried to use it, the water will flood the
basement.

"Last winter the pipe burst and if you try to use the outdoor spigots, the
water will run into the basement.  Mark told me to call a plumber and then
send the bill to him, but it's not a priority for me right now."

I kind of looked at her in amazement.  First, for some strange reason, she
thinks I'm going to use her water while she's gone.  I never go into her
yard, except last winter when Ray and I were kind enough to snowblow out HER
driveway while she sat in the house.  Yeah, you guessed it, she didn't go to
work.  She called me later to thank me, but she had a bad cold, so she said
anyway, and wasn't able to help.  Then she said her phone was ringing off
the hook, because Children's was calling her to come into the work, they
were short nurses, but she wasn't answering, because she didn't feel like
going to work.

Second, the pipe burst LAST WINTER and she still hasn't dealt with it.
She's a moron.  I tremble to think of her as a nurse, taking care of other
people when she can barely take care of herself.

Then she said, "Are you doing anything for the 4th?"

I said no, because I don't like her knowing my business.  "You mean you're
not going to spend time with your grandchildren?"

"Our plans haven't jelled together yet."  They have.  We usually have a big
picnic, an exciting game of croquet, and fireworks, but she doesn't need to
know that.

"Oh."  She looked disappointed.  Yes, Mary, people don't have to party every
single minute.  It's OK to have down time once in a while.

They spent most of yesterday packing up the mini-van with their camping
equipment.  I thought they would leave early this morning, but they're still
here.

Oh, please, please go soon.  I can't wait to begin a whole week without
being tackled in my own yard and then listen to you talk endlessly on about
NOTHING.

I've had worse neighbors - neighbors who were loud and obnoxious.  Mary is
saint compared to them.  She's just weird.  But I guess even weird can get
on my nerves.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at comcast.net
margaret.kramer at polarispublications.com

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
~Wallace Stevens