Just Neighbors by David Fitzpatrick

       My neighbor Jade makes high-pitched yodeling sounds when she’s having sex – it’s a combination of screaming, guttural squeals, and some sort of spastic vocal cord reaction. Sometimes it happens so rapidly that you’re not really sure if you’ve heard it in the first place. Her apartment sits directly across from the elevator and, because she’s in a wheelchair, has an eye hole forty-two inches off the ground. I’m one door down to the left. Our building is a promising but dilapidated four-story number that remains a bit shabby, both in terms of the conditions of the building and the residents. Also, the walls are thin so the chirping and banging makes you feel like you’re part of the action.

       “Take me, Johnny. Take me!” I heard her groan as I got off the elevator one Friday evening. I hesitated outside her room, both embarrassed and aroused, before walking to my apartment. Suddenly, an Ecuadorian man on the floor burst out of his place, rushed past me in the hallway, and banged on the door. I stood still.

      “We got kids trying to fall asleep, lady. They ask questions about your noises. Can’t you keep it down when you entertain?”

      “I don’t do a lot of entertaining,” Jade shot back from the other side of the door.

      “I beg to differ,” Alberto said with a sardonic laugh.

      “Excuse me?”

      “I’m doing my best to avoid being blunt,” he said.

      “I prefer blunt,” Jade said, opening the door a crack and straightening her mussed hair. She was a diminutive but curvy forty-three year old with long brown hair and weary, faintly yellowish eyes. I had met her several times in the lobby by the mailboxes, where she had told me she worked at a bank downtown.

      “Fine,” Alberto began, “You want blunt – I’ll give it to you. I have a four year old child who gets scared when you’re doing the nasty and moaning with your men. People hear the events up and down the East Coast.”

      “Now don’t exaggerate,” his wife said suddenly, coming up behind him.

      “I think you’re prudish and heinous and I’m going to ask you to not knock on my door anymore. Please leave me alone.’’

      Alberto threw his hands up in the air and said, “Hold on a second – you think we’re prudes? We’ve got a great sex life – we have a child. We just keep it down when we’re…entertaining.”

       “Maybe there’s no fire left in the relationship,” Jade said, nodding towards Alberto. “Maybe you’re approach is all wrong and you’re wife finds you tremendously boring and listless and prefers secretive sex with three lovers.”

     “Bitch!” Alberto barked. “I’ll complain to the management!”

     “No green card. Show me your green card!” Jade yelled, slamming the door. “I hear things through the porous walls just like you. We’ve all got our secrets.”

     Two weeks later when I came back to my building, Jade was being taken out on a stretcher by two EMT’s. “Don’t ask,” she said quietly as they loaded her into the waiting ambulance. Her arms were bandaged, and her face was a bruised purple and yellow mess. She was sweaty and pale; her hair was matted. She was crying.

      “That girl’s crazy,” Alberto was saying to the crowd that had gathered out in front. “She spends half her days performing with the guys and the other half destroying herself. She’s a slut.”

      “Come on folks,” Dom the super said. “She’s one of the walking wounded.”

      “No pun intended, man,” someone chuckled, which caused Dom to glare over at the retreating offender. A squat, balding fifty-five year old with a gap-toothed smile, Dom seemed to be the voice of reason.

      “What’s her story?” I asked, walking up to him.

      “She’s got some degenerative disease. Husband left her when she got sick – it’s quite a tale.”

      “She was very kind when I spoke with her,” I said to no one in particular.

      “Oh God,” Alberto said, glaring at me as he threw his hands up in disgust. “You’ve got that look of someone who wants know her Biblically. You’ve got to get a life.”

      I looked at Alberto and shrugged, conceding he was probably right.

      I had been at the apartment for six months and had only met a handful of people in the building. Previous to that I was two miles up the street at a halfway house for the past decade. I watched everyone drift back to their apartments, wondering about Jade and also wondering about my experience so far in the real world. I’ll take this any day, I thought before heading back inside.

      Sometimes I wake before dawn and chat with perky telephone operators who sell exercise equipment on television. They’re always happy and cheerful to speak with and they ask about my goals in terms of weight loss and life in general. Their first names are Tiffany or Pamela or Andy – or at least they’re the people I’ve ordered from so far. First I ordered an inflatable plastic device that looks like a giant hand called The Bean; then I ordered some dance DVD’s from aerobic superstar Charlene Johnson; and last month I got the Malibu Pilates machine from soap opera star Susan Lucci. They’re all designed to tighten, tone, firm, and strengthen the body in one way or another. I’m usually faithful and diligent in using the equipment when it first arrives. But five months later, I’ve got five-hundred dollars worth of machines, devices, and tapes sitting in my closet doing nothing. My sister says I’m overly susceptible to false hope and foolish or just unusually gullible. My brother tells me I’m a sucker for cheesy advertising. When I lived at the halfway house on Howe Street and struggled with depression and all its miseries, I would study those infomercials incessantly and think, “When I get out, that’s the first thing I’ll order.”

      Sometimes I’d call back to Tiffany, the infomercial operator who sold me The Bean. I’d order an extra accessory – a full color poster showing all the possible exercise positions. Then I’d tell her about my life, and she offered her own brand of wisdom. “Keep staying active, David. I can feel that you’ve already soaked up the new Bean momentum – you’re going to lose weight and get in shape and meet the girl of your dreams! Stay curious about each soul you meet.”

      “I’m trying,” I’d tell her.

       I thought of Tiffany’s words as I walked to work the next morning at the Tri-County Mental Health Facility in New Haven. A corroding grey and brick five-story monster of a building, it holds the folks who’ve been soundly defeated and marginalized in the city. My colleagues are five former patients who’ve been put through the wringer with an amalgam of diagnoses – schizophrenia, bipolar depression, obsessive disorders – the whole deal. Generally our job is to keep the patients busy while they’re waiting to be seen by their therapists in the lobby and up on the second floor of the inpatient unit. We counsel them, play checkers, draw, run music groups and even help fill out disability forms with them.

      My experience at this particular spot frightened me for the first few months I worked there. I had foolishly thought I’d find huge differences between these patients and the ones I spent time with on my own travels in the private psychiatric hospital circuit. I know that probably sounds base and horrible and elitist but it took me a while to learn that psychotic women will see Christ on their pinky toe just as frequently whether they’re on units with great food, expensive doctors and manicured grounds that overlook the ocean or whether they’re homeless and destitute. Ill is ill. Crazy is crazy, no matter how you slice it.

      The place is relatively crumbling as far as wards go – fading dark grey carpet and pale blue walls with a few stray watercolors hanging. It holds fifteen people with its enclosed nurses’ station in the center. It’s where I saw Jade a week after the ambulance took her away that night. She rolled up alongside of me in the television room where I was playing solitaire. She had just showered and was dressed in a sky blue nightgown. She smelled of fruity shampoo and her face looked less swollen. Her arms remained bandaged and she had a gold necklace that was in the shape of a minute wheelchair. I smiled, happy to meet her again and relieved to see her looking better.

      “Hey there, neighbor,” she said. “Are you in here, too?”

      “I was in similar places,” I said. “Right now I’m the executive in charge of card playing and I do some peer counseling on the unit. We don’t have to talk though if you don’t feel comfortable.”

      “Why can’t we talk?” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “What should I call you – counselor, card shark, voice of reason and experience?”

      “David works well,” I said.

      “That’s right – David. Looks like everyone is getting to know my business in our building,” she said. “I’m afraid I’ve got no friends left on the floor.”

      “That’s not true,” I said and both of us turned to watch two patients arguing over a “Judge Judy” decision on television. It was the focal point of the room – not any different than the other day room’s I’d been in. The wooden chairs and worn cranberry couches were scattered around. There were fading plants on either side. An aide stepped in to settle the dispute.

      “I’m pretty quiet and subdued here,” she said. “Thanks to the Ativan. But at the building they say I’m too rambunctious and loud.”

      “I see.”

      “Word is I’m an awful neighbor,” she said, leaning forward to point her right index finger melodramatically at me. “What do you think?”

      “I think you’re a great neighbor who’s in need of assistance right now.”

      “That’s pretty uniformed and clinical,” she said. “Listen, do I wake you at night?”

      “I can’t really say,” I stammered.

      “Cut the shit,” she said. “Honestly, am I too loud?”

      “My television and stereo are always on.”

      She grinned and said, “Not true. I can barely hear the stereo. Do you overhear me when I get loud, when I…entertain?”

      “Yes, I suppose so,” I said, blushing.

      “I thought so,” she said, smiling briefly and picking at her bandages.  “Can I ask you a question? Why in the world would you want to come back to one of these places when you finally got out for good? Why wouldn’t you run like crazy to get as far away as possible?”

      “It’s what I’m skilled at – I know this world well. I wanted to help I guess, plus it pays ten dollars an hour. How about you – why are you here?”

      “I don’t know,” she said, reaching down to adjust the battery operated chair. She fidgeted in the seat and moved it forward, then back. “That’s a pretty direct question for a histrionic patient like me. Don’t you know you’re supposed to take it easy on us? Anyway, it’s a lot easier to talk about you, so what caused your downfall? Who damaged you?”

      “No one really,” I began. “Things seemed relatively benign for years, and then entropy entered the scene.” I pointed to her bandaged arms and continued, “Similar to you, apparently. I majored in different forms of evisceration without the total blackness at the end. You know – slicing and dicing, burning, cutting – the whole menu.”

      “I’m not much into the bloodletting phenomenon myself,” Jade said, continuing to shift and maneuver the chair back and forth as if she were fidgeting. “I much prefer putting cigars out on my arms, chest, and belly.” She was quiet as several patients drifted by towards the cafeteria. She nodded to one and looked back at me.  “And then the other night, I lost it in a way I never had before – I just started punching my face uncontrollably.”

    “Jesus, that’s what the bruises are?” I said, surprised. I had thought it was a boyfriend, perhaps that infamous lover, Johnny.

      She hesitated for a moment and adjusted her nightgown, smoothing the fabric in a downward motion. I studied her closely as she continued. “Sometimes I see my reflection in store windows in downtown New Haven and I want to gag. I don’t make much money, I feel hollow and droopy and stunningly alone. Kinda borderline crap – you’ve probably heard similar tales before. I just want to punch myself so hard that I morph into a completely new being. Until I have a new job, new body, new life. So far it hasn’t been very successful. I just wake up in the morning feeling beaten and singed or other times with a stranger smiling at me.”

     “Can you stop next time? Could you get help before you attack yourself?” I asked.

      She frowned as she pondered this. “Right now I’ll tell you yes but when the moment happens, when it’s late and I’m alone and it’s blowing and spilling me down, around and over…it’s just more complex and difficult. You remember that feeling don’t you?”

      “Of course,” I said. “I’m sorry if I’m pushing into your business too much.”

      “Oh, stop it,” she smiled and tapped my leg with her hand. “I’m glad you’re pushing me. Everyone else here, from the overly sympathetic nurses to the gentle doctors – they throw softballs at us all day. I think all these people here need to be pushed a bit more. Get them ready to go back into the world – they’re going to have to do it at some point.”

      “Yes, that’s true.”

       “I have to leave for therapy but please make sure our apartment building is kept quiet and calm without my presence.” She winked and then quickly shifted the levers, moving backwards for a moment and then rolled away. As she caught up with a few patients walking towards the conference room, I smiled watching her. I thought of the first time I saw her downtown on lower Chapel Street. She was in a torrential rainstorm - just a damaged and tiny girl zipping along the sidewalk in a souped-up wheelchair with nothing but a yellow raincoat and a flimsy, purple polka-dot umbrella shielding her from the world.

      Later, I met with my supervisor, a social worker from Yale that I’d always admired. She tossed her curly red hair back and smiled at me sympathetically when I told her about my conversation with Jade. “You have to watch your step there, friend,” she said. “You can’t help someone in here and then go on the outside and be buddies. It’s not right and it never works. Now obviously, she’s your neighbor, so you can be cordial. But I’d strongly discourage you from socializing with her. No romance especially, kiddo. I hear that mildly infatuated tone in your voice. You’d just lose everything – your job, your moorings. I’m asking you to steer clear of her. It’s not a movie you want to be part of.”

      A sizable portion of my life has taken place in reacting to relatively high drama. That is, getting sutured up in the back of well-lit ambulances; drooling in a medication line somewhere in White Plains or Vermont or Kansas; and living in a confined space with mentally tormented people. It’s tiresome and exhausting and I’ve been doing my best not to be stuck in the middle of the crap anymore.

      “Try to be more careful in how you proceed from here,” my doctor suggested in therapy.” If you’re not, you could petrify and always be stuck among the overly sedated and bloated; the emotionally emaciated; the self-pitying and the excruciatingly narcissistic. ‘Move on’ is the operative phrase. And as far as the girl goes, it would benefit you and her to avoid entanglement.”

      Not long after the conversation with my doctor I made my weekly trek to the Community Art Space on Elm Street. It’s squeezed in between a French bakery and an old, cramped bookstore but once you’re inside it feels larger with its two sky lights and expansive windows. It’s filled with the work of local artists. Nothing too groundbreaking really – just simple examples of color and a few sculptures. There’s one woman who likes to do tiny Rothko-like pieces. Rectangles of orange and blue, explosions of vermillion that seem ready to spill out of their frames. Sometimes she mixes it up and tries spheres. An indigo sunshine, a cinnamon moon, an erupting purple, and green meteor of color. I like those the best – I wish I could carry all the pieces in my pocket at work and pop them like candy. Little visual injections of color to assist me in floating and twisting and tumbling away through my afternoons.

      One evening as I walked home from work, two men came up to me and began asking for money. That’s not unusual in New Haven, but these men seemed particularly determined and angry. One man’s face became contorted in rage as he mimicked my answer. “I don’t have anything – I’m sorry,” he laughed and spat on the ground near my shoes.

      When I got back to my apartment I was scared, shaking. I got out the Bean and tried some abdominal moves but stopped suddenly and called Tiffany.

     “Sure, there’s always evil in the world,” she patiently offered. “But there are a lot more positive things.  My grandfather used to encourage me to seize those moments of good and cherish them.”

      “He was right,” I said.

      “Listen,” she went on. “You’re stuck a bit in the exercise world and with the girl. My gut tells me you should pursue this regimen responsibly and shoot for a twenty pound loss. Pursue the weight loss. Pursue the girl. Our word for the day is PURSUE.”

    “Thanks Tiff,” I said.

      When Jade came home from the hospital after a two week stay, she knocked on my door one evening.

      “Welcome back,” I said. “You’re looking stronger.” Her brown hair was cut shorter to reveal more of her face though she still had the remnants of a black eye. Her skirt was a frilly, modest navy and she had a yellow long sleeve T-shirt that read TRY ME! She seemed brighter, more buoyant.

      “Hey there, peer counselor,” she smiled. “I just heard complaints from the management about the noises you make in the evening with your females. For Christ’s sake, keep it down!”

      “I will,” I said, hesitating at the door and then opening it wider. “Perhaps

that new body wash I’m using is finally working.”  As she rolled into the apartment I tapped her head and said, “Really though, how you doing?”

      “Pretty well,” she said. “I’m trying to be respectful and kind to myself. It’s quite a new concept for me.”

       “Good – when will you start back at the bank?”

       She frowned and said, “Please don’t talk so…officially to me. Did they discuss us being neighbors?”

      “Yeah, they did.”

       “Your shrink probably wants you to keep your distance from me, right?”
       I nodded and she slapped the counter.

      “We could be friends – professional, courteous friends,” I suggested weakly.

      “That sounds too cold and clinical.” She looked around and said, “What were you going to do before I came – what’s a normal night like in this mansion?”

     “I was going to get out The Bean,” I said and then began mimicking the commercial. “It will tighten your abs and tone your body…”

      “Will it fix my legs?” she asked dryly.

      “It fixes everything. This thing even saves your soul.” I walked over to the closet and grabbed the huge inflatable hand and dragged it across my carpet into the living room. A gigantic cushion with handles, I laid it out before the television and she laughed.

      “What the hell – I’m going to give it a go,” she said and with that she let herself drop from the chair onto her back and landed on the device, giggling. I studied her legs, how atrophied and weak they were, how tiny her ankles. No strength at all, I guessed. Her shirt had crept up her pale belly, showing patterns of chicken pox-like scars where she had burned herself. Her breasts stood out nicely against her T-shirt. She caught me staring and grinned. “So, you are a guy?”

      “What?”

      “Forget it – come show me how to operate this silly thing.”

      I hesitated for a moment and then squatted down beside her. She was stretched out holding the handles. “Now just rock it, tighten your stomach and rock.”

      She began struggling with the motion but eventually got it. I was on the floor beside her and I watched her determined body from a foot away. Her breath was quiet and measured. She smiled at me and suddenly I leaned forward and placed my hand on her stomach. I could feel her breath catch for a moment, and then I began to kiss the wounds on her belly and then her breasts. I felt the raised sores of the burns with my thumb, fascinated. She pulled up and leaned towards me and we kissed. I felt her tongue dance and her back arched towards me, the first sounds emerging from her throat. As I slipped my hand beneath her skirt four rapid gunshots erupted in the parking lot forty yards beyond our courtyard.

      “Holy fuck!” she yelled. I quickly crawled over and shut the lights off like they always do on television and returned to Jade. We held each other until the police cars began screeching and arriving two stories down. I bent down and rested my head on her stomach sideways and closed my eyes briefly. I knew I wanted to kiss her again but somehow I didn’t follow through with it. She was shivering and humming something I didn’t know. We stayed that way for several minutes, Jade humming and myself listening to the squawk of walkie-talkies and studying the red, white, and blue police lights as they danced and ricocheted around my ceiling. We could hear neighbors discussing the gunshots outside in the hallway.

      “Talk about a sign from God,” I said quietly and she began giggling.

      “I bet it was your shrink trying to remind you to stay on track,” she said. “David, if you don’t steer clear of that wench, I’ve no option but to shoot you dead.”

      “That gentleman goes the extra mile doesn’t he?”  I said. “But you’re no wench.”

      We were silent for a while, and then she patted my arm. “Thanks for saying that, but you don’t have to. I’m a resilient modern woman. I can’t walk, but my God, how I can….”

    “Sorry,” I interrupted quickly. “There’ll be no denigration of the self tonight, even if it’s sarcastic. But really, were we going to sleep together?”

      “We were going to wake everyone in this fucking building,” she said with a straight face and then giggled. “Actually, I don’t know – perhaps you need some more tattoos first.”

      “Don’t say a motorcycle, too,” I said.

      “Okay,” she agreed. “I won’t say it. But I do think perhaps it would be a mistake if we did the deed. Although we can always say our attempt was passionate and explosive.”

     “You have to promise to tell all the girls that,” I said, turning my face towards her. “Can I ask you something personal?”

      “Sure.”

      “Are you happy with your sexual life – I mean is it okay?”

      “Going in for the kill, huh?” she said.

      “No, I just-“

      “It’s okay, I’m glad you asked. Listen, after my ex-husband, anything is better. Sure, I’d like to have a steady guy, but I’m not going to wait around until I’m fifty-nine or something. In the meantime, I do enjoy the sheer, separated physicality of it, and I just don’t care what everyone else thinks. I mean, of course I wish I could get everything in one package, you know? But want to know what I really crave?” she asked, batting her eyelashes.

      “What’s that?”

      “Food – let’s get some goddamn food.” And so I helped her back into her chair and she patted my ass playfully. We went to the window and saw the back parking lot lit up bright as day; police were talking with witnesses. We ordered pizza from Marco Polo on Crown Street, grabbed two beers from the fridge, and listened to someone in the hallway announce that no one had been shot. It was Dom’s voice going from apartment to apartment checking on the residents. When he knocked on mine, he came in for a moment and nodded to both of us.  “Now let the rumors begin,” she laughed and we both raised our beers and tapped them together. We talked for another half an hour and ate the pizza and I thought I might drag out the other exercise equipment but it didn’t seem right. I did give Jade the autographed photo of Malibu Pilates spokeswoman Susan Lucci that read, “You will prevail. Love ya, Susan.” She laughed when she saw it, and then she rolled twenty feet to her apartment. I walked beside her, and then I bent down and we kissed.

       “I appreciate you reaching out in the hospital,” she said.  “I haven’t mentioned that, and I wanted to remember to tell you. So thanks.”

      “Anytime,” I said. “But you really steered me…you know, kept me on course.”

      When I got back to the apartment, I went to my bedroom window and looked out. Most of the squad cars had already left, but the officers were still marking the casings of the bullets down in the lot. They must feel relieved that no one was shot, I thought. It was midnight and the neighbors had all returned to their lives and their late night talk shows. I sat silently on my bed and felt a spasm of emotion, a combination of loneliness, fatigue, and disappointment but also perhaps like I’d turned some corner.

            In the morning I spoke with Tiffany briefly and told her what had happened. “Maybe it’s for the best,” she said, cheering me on as always. “Listen, hon,” she said. “My boss has been watching my calls, and he doesn’t want me to speak with you anymore because you’ve ordered all the Bean tapes and options that are available. It’s pretty rude of him but we’re going to have to terminate and say goodbye.”

      “Oh, okay,” I said, embarrassed.

      “But I want to thank you for shopping with me and for sharing your life. And don’t give up the pursuit of your dreams. Oh, and maybe get a little knickknack bag for Jade. Something to show her you care. “

      “Thanks, Tiff.”

      “Goodbye, my friend. Bless you.”

      My neighbor Jade still yodels occasionally with meandering gentlemen, but after our firearms experience we have stayed friends. We started going for tea at the Woodlawn Café on Orange Street once a week. She talks about the possible men she’s contemplating, and she also gives me tips on my kissing. “I think there was perhaps too much tongue,” she suggested once. One time she showed up crying on my doorstep, but for the most part we have done a surprisingly good job of keeping boundaries. She likes to introduce me to her buddies by saying, “This is a professional friend who almost slept with me once.” People usually clam up after that.

      I decided to leave the Tri-County Mental Health Facility a few months back. I was tired of the drama.  I just couldn’t tolerate anymore aimless, rambling soliloquies and non sequiturs on Armageddon or realizations that Jesus lived inside the radio somewhere. I got a job offer from my old English professor at college who wanted me to write a weekly column for an internet health magazine on returning to the world after sickness. I decided to take it, and lately I’ve been feeling like I’m doing better at avoiding the melodrama and mania that ruled me for so long. I’m even contemplating leaving this city at some point.

      I cashed my last paycheck from the health center and marched right over to my favorite spot on Elm Street – that community art space. When I told the owner I was ready to purchase a few paintings he patted me on my back. “Well, it’s about time,” he said. “Tell me, what larger than life experience caused you to finally make the purchase?”

      “Nothing really,” I replied. “Just gunshots and interrupted sex. And more importantly, vowing to give up infomercials.”

      “Of course,” he said. “Actually, I have no idea what you’re speaking of – but of course!”

     And so I walked home through downtown New Haven, passing the mad and the sad and the groups of students on my route. I passed a pretty girl walking her miniature schnauzer and noticed some young black girls teasing each other, taunting and laughing and cursing. Along my route I also noticed five or six people in automatic wheelchairs going through the crowded streets, getting on buses, walking their own dogs – just doing their business. When I arrived home I put both paintings on the table and chose the tiny sphere of verdant, swirling green that impressed me the most months ago. Then I walked down the hall and slid it under Jade’s door, listening for a moment for any sounds.

      I’m pretty sure she liked it.