strandedinredneckparadise

[strandedinredneckparadise]

Vanishing Act

No one knew her given name and no one thought to ask otherwise when she introduced herself as Sally. The name didn’t fit her Arabic heritage, her exotic features or her tall, voluptuous build. But Sally was in New Jersey on a student visa, granted with far more fanfare and aplomb by her Syrian government than the visas her female cousins in Saudi Arabia would have given limbs to obtain.

“I’m studying medicine so that I don’t have to depend on a man,” she announced one night over the club music hammering our eardrums. “Boys are fun but where I come from, it never stays fun.”

Sally’s father had been furious when she insisted upon obtaining an education. It was her mother, working behind the scenes, who’d soothed and cajoled and, little by little, brought her husband around to their daughter’s extraordinary gifts. Begrudgingly, he allowed her to go, but he refused to pay a cent toward her education.

“My uncle is very progressive,” she announced proudly. “He wants me to return to Syria as a surgeon or a cardiac specialist.” “Do you have a choice in this?” Brianna asked her, agog. No one had offered to foot her school bill just because they believed in women’s rights. “Yes...and no,” Sally said carefully. “I can be summoned home at any time. If I don’t keep top grades, my family feels I’ve behaved indecently or there’s political unrest, it’s over for me.” The smile stayed firmly fixed on her face as the words tumbled from her mouth. She wasn’t one to worry or to borrow trouble in worrying.

Thousands of miles from any watchful eye, her head remained uncovered. Her makeup ventured into swooping cat-eye eyeliner and her thick lashes further helped along by Maybelline. But her skirts stayed long, paired with her favorite clunky pair of Doc Martens boots. Pants did not happen in her world, even in the dead of winter. Necklaces tinkled and jingled at her neck, bracelets hanging from her delicate wrists.

“My sisters would kill for this,” she would always sigh, lifting a handful of my waist-length blonde hair. “But this would not be good for you...in my home town.” “Sally, I have no intention of visiting your home town.” She burst into a fit of giggles. “Well, if you ever have trouble finding a husband...I know a couple guys.”

She began attending Christian services, carefully avoiding mention of these trips to a heathen church once or twice a week. She experimented with Catholicism, Lutheranism, Presbyterianism...none seemed to stick, but that didn’t deter her from attending. Letters home did not account for these weekly gaps in study time.

Teachers loved her for her enthusiasm and the obvious fact she was willing to work hard to get what she wanted. She kept top grades, studying late into the night, disappearing to wander through the basement tunnel connecting the university to a hospital.

This was the ultimate teaching hospital, where we logged hours taking classes in the basement rooms and amphitheaters every day, then rushed to our rooms to change for afternoon clinicals. Up in the rooms where beautiful fall light illuminated some of the saddest scenes we could have imagined. The crisp fall leaves outside the windows brought no joy to those in our care. We had the catch-all wing, filled with respiratory ailments and diseases, failing hearts, cancer patients and elderly dementia patients all waiting to die.

“I love these people,” Sally sighed late one afternoon as we rushed the elevator. It had been a five-hour shift for most of us and if we hurried, we could sneak in some of the unhealthiest veggie burgers around by getting to one of the hospital’s cafes before it closed. “You love the dying?” Brianna’s nose wrinkled. It was no secret she was attending college in hopes of landing a doctor herself. “I have grown up with this,” Sally said softly, her words interrupted periodically by the ding of the elevator as we slid past each floor, further and further into the bowels of the building. “I have seen so much suffering; it was such a normal part of my childhood. I have wanted nothing more than to help people since I was a small child.”

Hours later we piled into our favorite club, Sally in her long skirt and Doc Martens, her wavy black hair a flying mass as she threw herself into the music. This was her escape.

Letters had begun to arrive from home with alarming regularity, filled with strokes of heavy black ink none of us could understand. The letters made Sally sigh, her nostrils flaring as her lips compressed.

“My father says I’ve wasted enough of my uncle’s money,” she said one night as we sat in the hallway together just outside the morgue. It was her favorite place in the hospital, where she found it quietest. No one could find her there or disturb her thoughts. It was the one place I hated going with her, always ready to jump out of my skin. “He wants me to return home and marry his business partner.” She shuddered convulsively, her black eyes filling with tears. “The man is 25 years older than me and I would be a second wife. I would be expected to bear his children, keep my mouth shut and act as a servant within his home. All because he wants to buy me for some ridiculous amount of money.”

An orderly glided silently past, a cart of very particular length and shape in front of him. The edge of the sheet brushed my knee as he passed, the blood draining from my face. What was I doing here, so close to death every day, completely unable to make peace?

It took effort to bring my concentration back into focus.  “I thought your father ran a very successful business.” “He does,” she said flatly. “This is an ‘honor’ for him. There’s just the added bonus of buying a new luxury car once I’m married off. He’s not the one really paying the price. Just ask my sisters.” She hiccuped. “The men never do.”

Sally’s uncle intervened repeatedly, persuading her father to allow the girl to obtain more schooling. She was brilliant, he argued, and to boast his daughter was a trained medical doctor--surely this would fetch a far more handsome price in the future.

“I’m going to finish my studies,” Sally announced, eyebrows furrowed as she consulted the calendar in her lap. “I can be done in eighteen more months and then apply for a residency. I think...” her pretty face was tight. “I think I will need to apply for political asylum.”

Her brother arrived three days later. Tensions were heating up in the Middle East, he reminded. She had been sent for, her visa called in.

Sally disappeared without a trace.

[strandedinredneckparadise]

Accidental Eternity.

This is ridiculous, she was telling herself. It’s just for fun. You’ll sleep with him because he’s kind of cute...and he’s tried so hard to get your attention...and then you never have to see him again. You can make sure Scheduling never puts you on the same plane again.

It was unusual, she thought, how confident he seemed at dinner. He knew she was going to sleep with him that night and he ordered their meal quickly. Flirted with the waitress. Tipped back three scotches to her single gin and rye.

“You don’t do this often, do you?” Was that a smirk? He was staring at her skinny, unshaven legs as she peeled off her thick black tights. “Northern winters,” she sniped. “I have to wear a skirt to work, unlike you, and I need every bit of insulation against Philly winter that I can get.” She wasn’t about to tell him that if she’d cared a little more, she’d have showered. Shaved. Maybe rubbed on some scented body lotion. But this? This was going nowhere. She wasn’t pulling any punches.

She almost made it out the door before he woke up. “Where you going, Babe?” She froze. Shit. Busted. Babe?

“Er...I have to report by four. My flight leaves at six.” “We’re on the same flight.” He had a mouthful of pillow. “Can’t go anywhere without the captain anyway,” and he heaved himself out of bed. God, he was freckly. Everywhere. How had she not noticed that before? It certainly hadn’t been passion that blinded her. Maybe he’d slipped something in her drink? His uniform was already on, only slightly worse for wear. He noticed her looking at him oddly. “This is my last run and I’m off for a while. I’ll be home in...” he glanced at the garish red numbers of the bedside alarm, “less than five hours. So come on. I’ll get you breakfast.” Well, that was acceptable.

She crumpled the waxed paper wrapper in her hand, wishing her hand were larger so she could fully hide the evidence in her fist. No matter, their matching coffee takeaways would tip off the co-pilot and the other two flight attendants. There were no secrets in the sky.

Amanda’s lips twitched as she watched them board together and they set to prepping the cabin. Passengers would begin boarding in a few moments and Amanda didn’t have much time to get it out of her. “Him? Seriously?” It came out as a hiss and she wondered if Amanda was jealous. In their small world, everyone within the airline crossed paths with regularity. It was a rotating buffet of sexual options and far be it from many to abstain.

“Come on, a wild night and he buys you...” it could have been a sniff or a gag... “an Everything bagel and coffee for breakfast?” “At least I got breakfast,” she said flatly, taking the last glug of her coffee before chucking it into the galley trash and shoving a revoltingly minty piece of gum into her mouth. That should shut her up.

What the hell, Scheduling? She fumed as she looked over her cabin crew for the next overnight trip. She had specifically requested some out-of-the-way place. Some place he would never fly. Yet here he was...in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. And Grand Rapids, Michigan. And Cleveland, Ohio. And...Milwaukee? Come on. Which Scheduling God had she pissed off? It was fucking November, after all. Who went to Wisconsin in November, on purpose?

“Let me take you to dinner,” he was all schmoozy charm again and she wondered if he was desperate enough to be fishing for a repeat performance. He was no Robert Redford, but he wasn’t bald and in their industry that was currency enough. She knew he’d been around. She’d asked. But Chicago wasn’t all that far away and she hadn’t eaten a decent meal in the last week. She was tired of ramen in the galley, smoothies in the terminal and stale French fries in the shuttle van.

She couldn’t feel her toes. These were the most expensive, cutest boots she’d ever purchased on her minuscule salary. And she couldn’t feel her toes. “Sorry it’s a little...brisk in here,” he was smiling, fiddling with knobs she knew wouldn’t work. The man could fly a plane without the help of a computer but he couldn’t seem to keep this piece of junk van working. In fact, she’d been astonished when it slowly chugged to life in the miserable Wisconsin cold, parked in an airport lot for months at a time. But they were off to Chicago, functioning heat or not. At least she could call in dead of exposure, she thought. This was good for at least one frostbitten toe.

“I think I’d like to spend more time with you,” he was saying over the sloppiest pizza she’d ever seen. So this was Chicago-style pizza. She scooped ladles-full of sauce and cheese into her mouth as he talked. Maybe she could gain five pounds at dinner. That would be nice.

He was wearing her down. It was obvious he had someone on the inside at Scheduling, because she couldn’t get away from him. Coworkers were noticing and she caught jealous, hateful glares from some. This wasn’t “An Officer and a Gentleman.” They wanted the security, however temporary and tenuous, but no one expected to marry a captain. She’d begun to accept this wouldn’t end any other way. But why?

She called her dad reluctantly, painfully knocking her left hand against the outlet as she tried to plug in her phone. Damn it. She was never going to get used to this thing. She paused. Held her hand up to let it catch the light. The setting was small, but it was vintage. It was lovely. It was perhaps the best thing about the entire relationship. “He asked me, Dad.” Her father didn’t seem surprised and she realized with a sinking feeling that last weekend’s joint trip to see him in Alexandria had been for a reason. This should make her happy...it just made her feel like everyone had it out for her. This was only supposed to be a one-night stand. What am I doing? Is this the best I can do?

They began shopping for a house within a 20-mile radius of his parents. His idea. Not terrible, she had admitted. His parents were odd and religiously zealous, but sweet, whereas her mother was a hot mess and her father a total transient. She had no desire to live in New Jersey and subject herself to her mother’s mood swings and she’d bunked at her dad’s long enough to know he didn’t turn on the heat until January.

I’ve really made it, she thought, surveying the soaring ceilings of their ridiculously large house. Can we afford this? Everyone is so jealous of me. Well, except his daughter. We’re just not going to get along. But that’s ok. He chose me over her. I win. She gloated a little on the inside as she tapped another nail into the wall. Up went another picture.

“This is a really bad idea,” one friend whispered to another as they parked outside the venue. “She looks completely miserable. This should be the happiest day of her life.”

The wedding was beautiful and they struggled through their vows. Friends looked on in concern. He looked happy. Was he? She certainly wasn’t. She’d always thought she’d feel...something. Excitement. Happiness. Contentment. Relief. She felt nothing but trapped. Eyes wide open.

“No more overnight trips,” she barked. “You don’t trust me.” “Damned straight I don’t.” She’d seen his phone light up at three a.m., sending off a beacon of retina-searing light from his bedside table. Texts from Alex, Sandra, Jessica, Kaitlyn. Very familiar texts from people she didn’t know at all. Women he never talked about.

“I think she’s having an affair,” she overheard, and she sidled closer to the sliding glass door. It was late and he was easily seven drinks in. Who was he talking to? “No, I can’t prove anything. She’s so secretive and she’ll never forgive me for making her quit. She wants back in and I’ll leave her before that happens. No, I know...it’s my hang-up. Ever since Jaime...well, you know...that marriage did not end well. This one would take me to the cleaners.”

She looked up the required number of years before she could apply for alimony. It was just a joke, right? Something she could hold over his head when he’d had too much to drink and got mean. Again.

“He’s cheating on me,” she confided in a friend. “It’s been happening for a long time. In fact, I’m not sure it ever stopped. And it’s not with just one person.” Her friend hardly looked shocked. “You’re certain of this? You know it for a fact?” “That he’s so suspicious of me, but he refuses to stop talking to all these women I don’t even know...doesn’t that count for something?” Her friend shook her head. “This was a bad idea. You two are poison to one another. The cleaner a break you make of it, the better chance you have at getting on with your life.”

“I want a divorce.” He was standing over her, the hallway light filtering around him and she blinked her eyes sleepily. It was two a.m. When had he started getting a gut? “What the hell,” she said sleepily. “Fine. Whatever.” He threw her phone onto the bed: “Every text, every phone call, everything you do on that phone...I can see it.” “Bullshit.” “Then explain who this Connor person is.” Oh my God, are you serious? Connor is gay. I’ve known him since I was eight.

She was in. Training was over and with this airline she’d never have to accidentally or purposely cross paths with him ever again. She put in for a base in Chicago.

I miss you. I’ve fixed things. The texts were pouring in. Come back home. We can make this work. I’ve been through a program. I’ve found Jesus. Weren’t you the one to accuse me of cheating?

“You’re such an old lady,” one of her six roommates teased. “You never go out and have fun.” “I can’t afford it. I’m getting a divorce, remember? Besides,” she looked up at the corner of the common space where the ceiling was starting to sag, “we pay all of our money to a slumlord.”

He’s playing you, friends said. You should see the string of girlfriends he’s already been through. None of them can make it stick. Stay away. He’s co-dependent.

“I hear you’re dating someone barely older than your daughter,” she spat across the table as they attempted counseling. Again. He had the good sense to look sheepish and she wondered for the first time whether she might be just as damaged as he. She looked down at the expensive new watch on her wrist. Well, he didn’t have to know who’d given that to her...

“There are conditions,” she’d instructed, thankful to escape her Chicago tenement. She wasn’t about to tell him that her very-much-married boyfriend of the past six months had just left her to return to his pregnant wife. She needed stability. She was already tired of the game.

His daughter’s face was red, her eyes swollen from days of crying. You’re both crazy. You deserve each other.

She surveyed the vaulted ceilings of the house once more. Yes, he could afford this.

Everyone is so jealous of me, she thought with a superior sniff. He just chose me over his daughter. Again. I still win.

Tap-tap-tap went the nail. Another picture up on the wall.

Eyes wide open.

[strandedinredneckparadise]

Rush Limbaugh Makes Me Break Out in Hives.

When you’re a child, it’s to be expected you’ll adopt the same political views as those of your parents. These are the people who shape your perceptions of the world; help feed your theory conspiracies; point you in the direction you’ll likely follow for the rest of your life.

So what happens when you grow up and develop a set of political beliefs diametrically opposed to everything you were brought up with? 

In my hardcore Republican hometown, God, country and family come first--and in that order. That is the second-most sacred trinity, a belief system akin to a religion in of itself.

The days of young adulthood introduced the novelty of Libertarianism and I found myself fully embracing the party switch. It was just disengaged enough from my prior political stance to pique curiosity. I had been a reasonably hard-core Republican in my own opinion, considering attending the RNC and finding a way to join the New York Young Republican Club while we lived in NYC.

Time and experience change all things...if you’ll let those two elements work together. (Firsthand witness to intense corruption does seem to help speed this process.) I began reading extensively, following news sources outside of the mainstream, particularly those with an excellent (independent) track record. Those who weren’t owned by a political faction and had no skin in personal interests. And for myself I determined it was no longer a fit. I was no longer a Republican, but I could not fully get behind Libertarianism either. I’d connected the dots and realized the Republican party had been reshaped into Libertarianism on steroids, and I was terrified. (My opinions fell on deaf ears.) 

I watched my family disintegrate into Fox News-spewing, Breitbart-loving, fact-allergic individuals. The seeds had always been there: talk radio, conservatism, conspiracy theory... But suddenly the administration could do no wrong: things that paled in comparison to the things they’d accused the prior administration of being involved in. These folks were convinced there was a vendetta, a skew, and that the media couldn’t be trusted. This was the last straw, as I am a trained journalist by trade and though I understand many news outlets are bought and paid for, to write off an entire group of people as shills, as hypocrites, as cheap hacks...it made my blood boil. Go ahead, I told them. Get behind the movement to suppress the media. Regimes always start this way. “Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Politics. Racism. Religion. All powerful keys to effective divisiveness in the hands of the narrow-minded, the power-hungry, those with an agenda. Tools to keep us from focusing on the true issues: Poverty, mental illness, homelessness, oppression. The fact we all bleed red. That for those who subscribe to a religion, we are all worshipping the same God, no matter what we call Him or Her.

Identifying as an Independent is no longer a viable, registrable option in my new home state. So with a shudder to identify myself as any one political expression, I filled out a new form. For the first time in my life I would call myself a *Democrat. The asterisk was intentional, to account for Green leanings and a healthy dose of skepticism for any one party. And yes, it will fail me. As humans we can do nothing but fail one another, despite even our loftiest ambitions. The heart of our government has long been off the right path. No longer do we focus on selfless service, equality, and caring for our poor. We have lost our way, bowing at the Altar of the Almighty Dollar. Dystopian, indeed.

[strandedinredneckparadise]

The Little People Suffer

Moving into #19, our neighbor at 21 introduced himself cordially enough. He was happy to see a young family moving into the neighborhood. This, he felt, would increase his property value as we were almost guaranteed to make the little old house a better, prettier place. He was aghast we’d paid $35,000 less for our house than he’d paid for his the previous fall. They were three of a kind, the homes at 17, 19 and 21: all tall, narrow three-story Colonials at around 1,300 square feet. All built in the late 1800s through the early 1920s. (Ours was a rebuild on a secondary foundation--no one seemed to know why.) All nearly derelict.

He was a tall man, Nigerian by birth and educated very briefly in England. His wife, he said, had been raised in England and I peered over his shoulder to see whether I might catch a glimpse of her. I was thankful there was someone remotely within our age group living next door and hoped we might get along.

It was some weeks before I caught sight of her, dressed in a swath of cloth wrapped around her body like a towel. It reached from beneath her arms to her calves, tucked in a bunch between her breasts. Her hair was wild, though she’d tried to tame it by pulling it back into a short little pigtail. She was sitting in their overgrown backyard, on a five-gallon bucket. With an enormous Rubbermaid tub at her feet, filled with dishes, she was washing dishes with the garden hose. This, I thought, seemed a little unusual. Was there no functional kitchen sink? This was certainly not the way things were done in England--Nigeria, perhaps? Could this be a cultural holdover?

She was very quiet, this new neighbor, rarely seen outdoors. She was friendly, but it was never she who took the initiative. In the six years we lived there, I don’t know that we ever knew one another’s first names.

The trouble started when Ellison* began buying vehicles to resell. We had no off-street parking, no driveways to speak of (only easements into back yards) and oftentimes his purchases sat on the street for months, clogging up the precious parking spot in front of our house. These were a portable shed for him, we soon discovered, as the minivan that sat in front of our house for five months disgorged a lawnmower from its rear hatch one day. We watched incredulously as he unloaded it. Not only did he own a lawn mower (and was actually going to mow his lawn--something that happened perhaps twice each summer), but that piece of equipment lived in a minivan parked in front of our house. The logic was baffling.

Something he hadn’t counted on was the speed with which the NY DMV descends upon the transgressor of the expired registration. After shifting several vehicles, paying ticket after ticket for expired registrations, he began stowing the vehicles in his back yard. This meant navigating the tight space between the houses and more than once our house shuddered as he clipped it with a bumper. We shouldn’t be concerned, he told us, as he owned that side of the property. It was no matter if he ran into the fence, because he owned it. The fence. Surrounding our deck. Connected to our house.

When the neighbors at 17 moved out, a vehicle mysteriously appeared in the easement. Parked for months. No one seemed to know whom it belonged to and only after several complaints to the local PD (and subsequent towing) did we learn he had taken to parking his vehicles on property not remotely his own. This meant, of course, that he began parking the vehicles between 19 and 21, completely obstructing access to our oil tank. But again, this was to be none of our concern because that was his property.

A palette of construction materials arrived early one morning, on the street between our two homes and left. No one signed for the materials in the pre-dawn hours and it wasn’t long before he’d stolen everything off the palette he could conceivably carry into his home. It was the neighbor across the street who told us the palette had been mistakenly delivered to the wrong address. We knew he was putting money into his home, with an eye toward resale, and we’d believed the materials were his.

One cold, dark fall morning we were wakened by flashing lights, the red and blue strobes retina-searing in the early morning darkness. He was being led from the house in pajama pants and a t-shirt, in handcuffs. She was being escorted from the house in a flimsy nightdress, tucked into an ambulance. Wait...she was pregnant?

The neighbor across the street related the sordid tale. It was their first baby. He’d discovered the child was a girl and he’d beaten his wife nearly unconscious. She’d opened a bedroom window, screaming for help: “He’s trying to kill me!” and an old woman at 23 heard and called the police.

It was late the next summer before they returned. No explanation and no baby. They returned together.

Not long after it became obvious she was pregnant again and we watched her closely, half fearful. He was jovial and as gregarious as he could be--it must be a boy this time.

Around this time the neighbors at 23 moved out and he, deciding he didn’t like the tree in their backyard (because it dropped leaves into his), paid a couple migrant workers to take it down. They arrived late in the evening with two ropes and a chainsaw and with a mighty crash, the tree came down. Crushing our fence and obliterating my garden. Not to concern us, we were told. He owned that fence, remember? The one built right into our house? He would not be reporting it to his insurance company to repair. Nor would he be fixing it.

Their son rarely played outside, the weeds in the back yard too dense to allow the passage of toddler legs. There was little front yard to speak of and only on occasion would I pass the house and see the little boy standing in the doorway. He was speech-delayed, his mother confided to me in a rare moment one day. She was concerned, as he was nearly four years old and still not speaking. I wondered to myself whether there were any incidents during her pregnancy which would have accounted for this, or whether it was the metaphorical wrath of God. I had knocked on the door to deliver a package to them, left mistakenly on our doorstep (strangely, it had not been stolen). She let me into the house as it was the dead of winter and apologized for the state of the place. There were stacks of neatly folded laundry taking up most of the sitting space in the living room, she had a leg up on me there. Most of my laundry was sitting on the sofa, unfolded. But a glimpse through the doorway into the kitchen convinced me every cockroach in the neighborhood must live there, as what must have been every dish they owned was piled in the sink, on the counter, on the stove top. Every conceivable space was covered with dirty dishes. It took me a moment to remember her sitting in the yard, scrubbing dishes in a Rubbermaid--now I knew why, and I remembered a realtor telling me she’d been in to view the house some months before we’d first listed ours. She’d relaxed visibly when she saw the kitchen and she exclaimed, “You cleaned for me!” It was later explained that she’d walk into a total tip at 21.

Their daughter--officially their second--was born days after our own daughter. They threw a lavish celebration, inviting family and friends over to celebrate the birth of their princess. I wondered what had happened to the first daughter, if the wife ever stayed awake late at night thinking of her first baby, alive or dead.

They still live there, though we’ve been gone over five years now. They’d taken out a HELOC just before the bubble burst, sinking tens of thousands of dollars into fixing up the tiny house. To this day they have far more money invested in the house than it’s actually worth. I choose to believe he’s been confined to Purgatory for the time being, right where he belongs. It’s unfortunate his family has been dealt the same sentence.

[strandedinredneckparadise]

Keeping it Classy

Over the fall months the house next door sat empty, the property manager occasionally showing up to check in.

Early one winter morning, as I loaded Ryan into the car to go grocery shopping, I noticed a truck parked in front of the house. A real estate agent was leading a girl wearing a puffer jacket, carrying a baby seat, from the house. Another woman stood at the truck with an old man and a little girl. The woman offered a tenuous smile and I thought “Uh-oh, these might be new neighbors.” I smiled back, hopeful, but terrified. (Your gut is ALWAYS right.)

The motley family moved in a few weeks later and I realized that had been the first and last time they would exhibit any friendliness, as the hostility was apparent the instant the last box was in the house. They filled up the backyard with boxes, tires and furniture and parked their car in the easement, completely blocking access to our back yard. No amount of asking nicely would convince them to move the car--there was a driveway lip, after all, they argued. It was not going to be treated as shared property.

As spring arrived, it was determined this family would also be “porch sitters,” cramming as many family members onto the narrow front porch as possible to smoke, to crack open a Corona at 11 a.m., to harass passers-by and eventually to deal drugs right off the front step.

While there was no sub-woofer on the porch (this time), they thought nothing of throwing a birthday part in the back yard. For the child’s fourth birthday it made perfect sense they should hire a DJ and invite 100 people, the old panes of glass in our windows vibrating at a whine as 50 Cent went on and on and on...well past our son’s bedtime. And no, they would not be turning it down, thank you.

While five people had moved in to the house, a two-bedroom home of just under 1,300 square feet, by that summer there were seven people and a dog in residence. An eighth showed up on occasion, to crash--another brother, from what we could deduce.

One sticky, overcast summer afternoon, a Saturday, the street filled up with police cars. There was no real movement. No one was being arrested. None had their lights on. But all seemed keenly interested in our neighbors. In fact, the “drifter” brother was being watched, said a neighbor across the street. It was suspected he’d killed someone at his workplace in lower Manhattan. DNA results were pending. He was howling about his innocence, but someone let it slip they’d taken scrapings from beneath his fingernails--damning evidence indeed.

Sitting down at the computer to Google the situation, I was horrified to look out the window and see satellite trucks and photographers swarming up and down the street. There it was, all over the local news networks: he was suspected of assaulting a cleaning lady at his workplace. She’d been bound and gagged and shoved into a ventilation duct, where she suffocated.

There was a family powwow in the back yard that night, all hushed tones and alcohol and come Sunday morning he and his girlfriend were out in the yard bright and early. (Let me just point out this was the girlfriend he’d attempted to assault--with some success--some weeks earlier, prior to throwing a bowling ball through the window of her car.) He was covered in scratches and looked a mess, and we scratched our heads when the two began moving furniture and boxes, stacking the tires, cutting down tree limbs to drag across the yard. It was the most activity the yard had ever seen (or would see ever again). The two of them were certain to let the photographers see them hard at work, as this would corroborate his alibi for all the scratches covering his neck and arms: yard work.

Thanks to a reference in one of the stories, I then Googled his father--and froze in terror. The old man living next door was a registered sex offender, a rapist, and there I was pregnant with our second child, a girl.

The youngest sister sat on the porch and hurled colorful insults at the officers, screaming to anyone who would listen about the innocence of her brother. It didn’t much help her cause that she often had a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other. The local media ate it up. It was Staten Island, after all. Less than five miles from a world metropolis, trash was real. It existed right here! Look, everyone: A pocket of uncivilized hotheads!

The police were there for seven glorious days. The street was safe and quiet, with at least four squad cars on the block at any given moment. We begged them to stay.

That following Friday he was arrested and hauled off to the local jail. He was charged the next morning and his girlfriend, in a show of support, showed up at the arraignment in a tight black dress (plunging in both directions) with leopard stockings, defending his innocence. The papers loved the show of pure class. (I couldn’t be more sarcastic if I tried.)

While he awaited trial, the family rallied the troops. A yard sale was held for four or five weekends in a row, presumably to help raise money for his legal defense. The girlfriend showed up faithfully to dump more crap in the yard, her tank top doing little to conceal what she considered her charms. But just in case that didn’t work, she paired it with cut-off short-short sweatpants, the waist band rolled down so her thong was on prominent display.

I did my best to keep our son away from the windows, so as not to sear his young retinas.

He languished at Rikers for three years by the time the trial was conducted and he was sentenced. Somehow he convinced his girlfriend to marry him despite the incarceration, though that was prior to the sentencing. He was handed a 25-year sentence and hauled off to prison.

News outlets went crazy: more senseless violence in America! 

By this time the family had (finally) vanished. They’d managed to cram ten people and two dogs into the tiny house and when we awoke early one spring morning, they were gone.

By the time he was officially sentenced, we were gone, having abandoned the neighborhood ourselves.

[strandedinredneckparadise]

The Ruinous Forty.

The neighbors stared at us sullenly while we moved in, some from windows and others from their front porches. It was still cool outside but it wasn’t uncommon to see people sitting on their cramped front porches in sweat pants, heavy coats and hats. This was where they could go to escape their overcrowded houses. This was where they could have a few moments of peace to chain smoke or to start on that 40 at 11 a.m.

The yellow house, number 17, was a rental. The adults were in their 40s, with only one daughter remaining at home. The others had grown and moved out, which made this couple grandparents at a very young age.

The man of the house had been born and raised locally and liked to talk a big game, though he was tall and scrawny and was rarely sober enough to do anything about it, if he remembered from one day to the next what irked him the day before.

The woman was the responsible party, always out the door early in the morning to commute to her workplace. She often returned in the mid-evening hours, handbag slung over one shoulder and a grocery sack in the other hand. She’d climb the rickety porch steps, scuff over the worn Astro turf covering the rotting boards and let herself into the house. Inevitably her husband would be sitting out on the porch with two or three friends, all in varying stages of inebriation despite the hour of the day.

As the evening wore on, someone would drag out a joint to pass around and we’d run around the house closing the windows, gagging over the fumes of cheap weed filling our living room. This was hardly better than apartment living, with neighbors who practically lived on a porch six feet from our living room windows.

Eight or nine beers in, the men were too drunk to register they were high anymore and conversation often turned ugly. Who’d done them wrong. What they were going to do to those people. Bemoaning their relative youth and the fact they were unemployed. Their bitterness over the fact others were employed, oftentimes overlooking education altogether and pinning it entirely on color.

Aimless and angry, he often stayed up long after his friends had left or had walked through the back yard and let themselves into the basement apartment to sleep it off. He kept the loud, thumping music going as long as possible, drinking and cursing, falling into his own little reverie.

At three a.m. I once awoke to hear a lawn mower firing up and I stumbled from my bed to follow the sound. Looking out the back window of my son’s room (thank God he was a sound sleeper), which overlooked several of the back yards on the block, there he was. Mowing his lawn at three in the morning, weaving in nonsensical fashion. Chasing the dog with the lawn mower.

As years wore on we developed an uneasy relationship, probably best described as a truce. We didn’t complain about the smells or the sounds and eventually he began to observe a slightly more normal set of social expectations, going so far as to keep an eye on our place while we were both off at work.

With their daughter attending a rough local high school, they decided to relocate and we secretly rejoiced in the relative peace. The house would sit empty for a time, as there were no other tenants lined up just yet. The landlord wasn’t at all involved and left the decisions to a property management company who would show the house, screen and approve applicants.

We were silly to think the next set of neighbors might be an improvement.

[strandedinredneckparadise]

Delusion.

After three relatively blissful years of life in Hoboken, we were getting the distinct impression our landlady had the itch to sell. It was a hopping seller’s market, properties snapped up almost as quickly as they hit--most of them in various states of antiquity.

We were adamant: No more than $250k and it had to be a single family detached. Both our realtor and our loan officer thought we were insane. “You could easily qualify for at least $350k,” our loan officer cajoled and I sighed, praying for patience and the ability to speak to him like he was a small child without him knowing it. “No.” I was rarely so firm. “We have a child and student loans. We have an old car. You’re not taking a lot of very certain monthly expenditures into account. If one of us were to lose our job, we’d need to be able to make it on the other person’s income. Three-fifty is too much house.” “This will limit where you’re able to buy,” he was trying another tactic. “I know. I’m not picking up a broom closet in Manhattan or an over-garage apartment in the Hamptons. I know this means I’ll end up in Brooklyn or Staten Island. But...no more 3 a.m. drunken Christina Aguilera songs while my neighbor showers next door. I need space for a kid and a dog.”

We’d set the bar pretty low, knowing only to draw the line at Stapleton. We had no desire to die in our beds and, surveying the neighborhood, that was exactly what would happen.

We fell hard for a condo in Todt Hill and quickly put in an offer. No go, said our realtor. The 1,100 square foot condo was set at a firm $265k, as the owners were rolling the money into their next mortgage. We sighed and started the search again.

It was my mother-in-law who found the house we’d end up buying. The street seemed sleepy and there was a tall, shady tree just in front of the narrow three-story Colonial. The asking price was $280k, though after seeing the interior we offered $250k and it was accepted. (Looking back, the things I know now...)

In typical fashion, the windows faced the front and the back of the house. The only window on the side of the house was in the stairwell--it looked into the stairwell of a neighboring house.

The carpet was the color of spruce needles, aged by 25 years and serious neglect. The lip of each step on the staircase was completely bald. I refused to walk barefoot on it.

The kitchen floor was thick with dirt and wax buildup. The walls were covered in a blistering, peeling Laura Ashley wallpaper with a gag-inducing profusion of pink flowers and silvery-blue bows. It was the first thing I did on the day we closed: I ripped the wallpaper from the walls in great big tearing sheets.

We’d been in our house for all of two weeks when Eric’s department was dissolved. Gone. There was no recourse for him: He’d been employed as a freelancer and it was made immediately apparent that everyone in the organization was busy looking out for him or herself.

One answer, we both knew, was for me to trade up. I needed a job that paid better and I began rabidly studying to take the appropriate licensing course, landing a new position just down the street from my old one. A stone’s throw from the South Street Seaport, on Water Street in a glossy black skyscraper.

I had a week off between jobs, time I used to study, sitting in a chair on the back deck, wrapped in a blanket to ward off the cool fall air. It was nearly October. We’d been in the house for four months, scraping by and fixing up whatever we could afford.

It was a Saturday morning. I stood at the stove stirring a pot, brewing coffee and generally engaging in the preparation of breakfast. Drip. What the... Drip. Splatter. Right into the frying pan. Looking up, a great bubble had formed on the ceiling and water oozed downward like the leak from a stalactite. 

Eric opened up the ceiling after breakfast, a whoosh of water and damp plaster crumbling all over the stove and the floor. “I can fix this,” he said confidently. “The shower trap went.” I took a moment to feel completely unnerved, realizing hundreds of pounds of cast iron bathtub sat over my head as I cooked breakfast every morning. Those joists were definitely notched.

It was the first of many home improvement/repair projects that taught us nothing in that house was standard, up to code, or done correctly. The plumbing was several different sizes. The cast iron main was showing signs of wear. The furnace was old and needed to be replaced almost as desperately as the roof.

We’re young, we thought. We can make this work.

[strandedinredneckparadise]

Common Denominator.

Thirty seconds left to bid...yes, I was going to make it before the end of the auction! Enter my bid...press the button...

“Argh!” the entire office erupted into screams of dismay as monitors blinked out and overhead lighting went entirely black. For a building with so many windows, on the floor where we the grunts sat, in little grey cubicles, it was almost impassably dark.

“Lights are out across the street too,” someone called from one of the offices. “Maybe a rolling brownout--it is awfully hot out there.” It was August in NYC, after all, a season better described as “Hell Fire and Brimstone.” The time of year Brooklyn suffered power losses thanks to an overburdened, gagging power grid.

The emergency lighting wasn’t kicking on and we all groaned at the prospect of a trip down the stuffy, claustrophobic stairs. It was 14 flights down to the street; thirteen if you didn’t believe in the age-old superstition.

The revolving doors vomited office after office of irritated people. It was mid-afternoon and everyone had been kicked out of a project, a document--something that hadn’t auto-saved and they hadn’t thought to save, as quite reasonably no one expected a blackout.

We milled around on the street in the thick humidity, saved only by the fact it was late enough in the day that the sun wasn’t directly overhead, shining down between the tall buildings. The traders from the floor of the Stock Exchange were sweating anyway, in an uproar. This had certainly been a disruption to their business day.

“I can’t get a signal,” someone announced, holding up their phone. Everyone dug around for theirs, confirming the same.

As it turned out, 9/11 had taught everyone well. All the women wore flats, their handbags already over their shoulders, ready to run at a moment’s notice.

Our department head glanced down at his expensive watch and adjusted his glasses as they slid down the bridge of his narrow nose. “Well everyone, it appears this will be going on for some time,” he announced, 20 minutes having already ticked past. He craned his neck and pushed himself up onto tiptoes in his tight, creaking leather shoes. He was looking for the company president, awaiting the pronouncement it was safe to release his department. “If the power comes back on during business hours I expect everyone back,” he tried to holler over the sound of gleeful evacuation. “Says the man who can drive his BMW over the bridge to his home in Morristown,” sniffed a coworker. She lived in Queens and took the subway to work every day--a subway that ran on electricity. She pulled a pair of sneakers from her large tote with a meaningful look in his direction.

The tiny elastic bands on my slingbacks had stretched out just a little too much, straps slipping down toward the soles of my feet as I slip-slapped my way down Wall Street to the NJ Waterways ferries. (Vanity dictated I would not pull the blue flip-flops out of my bag until there were blisters, and vanity always won.) The World Trade Center was still a pile of rubble being excavated. Rebuilding plans were in someone’s tenuous consciousness, but this meant the only way to Jersey was by car (bridges, as the tunnels required enormous fans pump in ventilation) or by boat.

The sheer number of people already lined up was obscene. The line for the Hoboken ferries stretched across FDR Drive and up Wall Street. I slotted into place, thankful for some shade provided by the low bridge.

“Erin!” I could hear Eric calling me. There had to be 600 people standing nearby--how had he found me? His coworker smiled. “There is no cell service, so we walked down Broadway together--he said you’re easy to pick out of a crowd.”

We loaded onto the ferry, the last load to leave Manhattan that afternoon one of the deck hands told us, at total capacity. The trip was similar to piling 300 people onto a jalopy headed up a Colombian mountainside, bobbing dangerously.

Docking in Hoboken wasn’t possible we were told, and the ferry docked at Colgate, spilling hundreds of us into streets already choked with office workers participating in a sweaty, miserable exodus. We were all in this together, it seemed, and restaurants with no power were still running a brisk business, candlelit bars filled to capacity at 4:30 in the afternoon. Huge buckets of ice stood on the sidewalk, where waiters sold bottles of water for a dollar a pop.

“You two look like you could use a ride,” called a woman from the passenger window of a little Toyota. “Where you headed?” We were almost weak with relief at the prospect of a ride. It was several more miles into Hoboken. We were both holding onto hope our old Croatian babysitter hadn’t thrown up her hands in despair and absconded with our infant to some underground bunker.

It was a hot, terrible night: windows open in August, candles our only light source. The smells, the humidity, the wailing sirens rushing folks to the hospital behind our apartment, it being the only building with any power thanks to generators.

Late the next morning, power was restored to Hoboken and we gratefully fired up both window units, letting them run full blast for hours. Power wasn’t restored to Manhattan for some hours longer. Friends living in Brooklyn told tales of going 48 - 72 hours without power, the entire eastern seaboard having felt the pinch in one capacity or another.

[strandedinredneckparadise]

Maze Running

There were several potential routes home from the Journal Square train station and having lived in Jersey City only a few weeks, I wasn’t yet completely clear on which street held the larger Pakistani population and which held the larger Egyptian population. What I did know was that the windows had eyes and the men sitting on small front porches, smoking, followed my progress down the street. I did not fit into the ethnic makeup, my long blonde hair a strobe light in a neighborhood of hijabs.

It was early afternoon and I was returning from the city fresh off another round of interviews. The recruiter who’d dug her claws into my Midwestern eagerness sent me off on one interview after another, from the Financial District to the upper reaches of Park Avenue and back four, five times a day. I’d learned to tuck flats into my bag, pounding the balls of my feet into oblivion in thinly-soled heels as I stomped along the streets of Manhattan. My bones ached. I couldn’t take another day of this, I thought as I bent into the slight incline of the street. I think I can. I think I can. Just a little farther--almost home.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught a scurrying movement, tall and dark. His eyes were boring into me as I powered up the sidewalk. I’d always had a purposeful walk, something that had served me well to that point.

As I glanced across the street to the man mirroring my pace on the opposite walkway, he took my glance as encouragement and darted across the street. “You will excuse me!” he exclaimed as he fell into step beside me and I felt myself shrinking closer to the buildings in alarm. “I cannot help but notice you and I have to tell you this. You are beautiful like a model--you must try for Miss America! You will win, I know this!”

The look on my face must have conveyed some of my discomfort and he paused long enough to introduce himself. He was Tariq, his family was Pakistani. They owned a diner around the corner. Could I come visit him sometime?

He fumbled with a pack of cigarettes and I calculated my chances of out-sprinting him, locking myself behind my front door if I darted away while he was looking down. Would he catch me? He was tall--yes, he probably would--and his eyes were dangerous, terrifyingly eager.

“I can’t visit today,” I told him, “My husband is expecting me.” His eyes darted to my left hand where, thankfully, I wore my grandmother’s wedding ring. (The wedding wasn’t for another three months.) He looked momentarily disappointed, lighting up again as he continued to rail on about the Miss America pageant and surely Mr. Trump would pick me--he was certain of it. I must try out!

Cautiously bidding him a good afternoon, I resumed my pace up the street with my ears tuned to the sounds behind me. He followed at some distance and I turned corner after corner, hoping he would give up pursuit and that I would still be able to find my way home.

My hands shook as I finally let myself through the front door of the house and I sat on the steep steps for a moment, making sure to shoot the deadbolt before pulling the flip phone out of my bag to dial Eric. He was working that day, assisting at the Pier 59 studios again, and wouldn’t be home until quite late that evening.

“Some creep just tried to follow me home,” I left a voicemail. There was no way he’d be able to pick up while on the job.

He called hours later, finally on his way home. Given he was built like a Silverback Gorilla, there was little danger of anyone following him home. “From now on I’ll meet you at the station and we’ll walk home together,” he said. “It’ll be safer.”

It was only a few days later that he met me at the station. It was later in the evening and I was coming home from another round of interviews. It was hot already, for late May, and we winced against the bright sunlight, reflected off the lightly colored buildings and the bleached pavement.

There was a movement to my right, in far peripheral vision. Eric had just answered a phone call and he chatted amiably with another assistant who’d called about scheduling him for the next day. I tried not to look directly across the street. It was him, I knew, and he was now following both of us home.

I nudged Eric, rolling my eyes over toward the opposite sidewalk as he finished his phone call. “That’s him,” I whispered, and Eric dispensed with all subtlety, cranking his head abruptly over his shoulder to make eye contact with the man. He held it as we continued up the street, refusing to look away until the other man broke the gaze and fell back.

Again we took a circuitous route home and Eric was fuming with rage by the time we reached our front porch. “This is ridiculous, that you can’t even walk home by yourself in broad daylight. We’re moving out of this. I can’t travel on photo jobs and leave you here by yourself--you’ll never be safe.”

By the end of the week we were in Hoboken, walking up and down the streets. It was a Friday evening and our plan was to paint the town red, with tomato sauce. I’d accepted a job that week and to celebrate we’d driven into Hoboken, walking up eight blocks to Benny Tudino’s for a slice of pizza. (It was heaven. Those Albanians knew their pizza.)

“Hey, this place is cute,” he said as we passed a small peach-colored building with a red foundation. The basement doors were open and music drifted up over the sound of dryers whirring away. There was a sign in the window: “Apartment for rent.”

The smiling, curly-haired landlady ran a laundromat and cafe in the basement. This had been her dream, she told us as she led us up the stairs to the third floor walk-up. She’d scraped together her savings and bought the building from her mother, leaving her job as a pharmaceutical representative.

It was light, clean and just big enough for the two of us. Of course we wanted it, we told her, and we could fill out the paperwork then and there. With the deposit and first month’s rent, we could move in on the first, only a few weeks away. We signed everything in triplicate and floated back to Jersey City to serve out our sentence.

[strandedinredneckparadise]

Switch Hitting

It was several more weeks before we met Mindy*. She and Agatha* arrived together, which was apparently the typical arrangement, and Stefan was in a tizzy introducing everyone. His usual gregarious manner ratcheted up several notches as he showed off his trophy. It was unclear whether they were sleeping together yet, but Agatha watched them jealously as he fawned over Mindy.

To say we were disappointed in his choice in women is perhaps a rather large understatement. To be fair to her, it’s possible no one could have lived up to the iconic beauty he’d talked up...which she was not. She arrived in a skimpy halter top that strained to contain the saline. The skimpy pleather skirt did blessed little to cover the portion of thigh all women should hide after the age of 20. The heels were tall and silver, with sparkles. Either deep discount at a ghetto Payless or someone’s S&M shop in Chelsea was going out of business.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” he was gushing, and she fanned a hand at him halfheartedly, rolling her eyes. She was used to hearing this and took it as her birthright.

We shuddered as the three of them left together, all on their way out for the night. “That was a walking disease,” I said unkindly, and Eric nodded. “There’s so much coke in that woman, you can see it in her face.” “The tanning habit doesn’t help much.” “Or the Jersey hair.” Man, we were on a roll. “How old is she? Did you ever catch that?” I asked, still trying to banish the vision of her silvery-brown lipstick. “No, I don’t think anyone said. She can’t be as old as she looks--those have been some rough miles. But judging by her face I’d give her forty.”

Ouch.

“He says she’s really successful,” I said doubtfully. “He’s been going on and on the past few weeks about how she has such an awesome job.” “And a sugar daddy?” he asked. “How about Agatha? That’s a little weird. She’s like the little bird that rides on the back of the rhino to pick off the bugs.” Eric shuddered.

Unfortunately for both women, neither had demonstrated great brain trust abilities and there was little salvation. Sadly, it was immediately obvious why Agatha had such a hard time with men. In a city that appreciated intelligence but fixated on looks, life was hard for her. She was of average height and build, carrying an extra 30 pounds that made it impossible for her to wear the skimpy pieces Mindy favored. Her hair was a mousy brown to Mindy’s processed platinum with streaks, and she wore little makeup; it was immediately apparent she’d been born with a harelip and the surgery had been only marginally successful, as there was a very strong lisp and an obvious scar.

Stefan was besotted, disappearing for days at a time with Mindy. They shared tales of all-night benders, going to work completely hung over and miserable, only to repeat the scenario again the following night. Agatha followed dutifully behind, like a lost puppy, luring any man she could convince into darkened hallways.

We moved from Jersey City to Hoboken in the midst of their unusual romance. Relief wasn’t strong enough a word, finding our own little place and escaping the crazy party atmosphere of the Jersey City house. The smells of late night recreational activities filling the hallways with a sour stench. The heart-pounding late night walks back from Journal Square, praying for safety with every step.

When they visited us a few weeks later, we were still settling in. All three perched precariously along the edge of our futon as Stefan and Eric talked contact sheets and sitting fees. Stefan had gotten it into his head that Mindy was Maxim material and he wanted Eric to take the photos they’d send off to Maxim. With any luck, Mindy would be featured in a photo spread at some point and this would launch her modeling career.

The next Sunday we found ourselves at the Pier 59 studios, where Eric set up the equipment and I stood in to test lighting. Mindy would bring her own wardrobe and I would apply her makeup at the mirrored station at the back of the cavernous room.

She waltzed in, Agatha and Stefan in tow, arms full of clothes, her hair pinned up in loose barrel rolls. Immediately we set to work applying her makeup and it was with astonishment that I applied layer after layer of moisturizer. Her skin continued to soak it up as quickly as I could spackle it on and I marveled at the lack of elasticity. At some point she’d let it slip that she was only 30, yet the years of hard living were already clearly taking their toll.

Short skirts, tank tops, belly shirts, stilettos, bustiers and boy shorts followed in quick succession as she posed for shot after shot. Eric’s face was tense; it was obvious he was having a hard time getting her to loosen up and vary her facial expressions. The default expression was vacant and loose; clearly at some point someone told her it was her Sexy Look and she continued to employ it shot after shot, her eyelids drooping enough to make her look high.

The lab Eric used had contact sheets printed up and by that Thursday evening, the three of them were back at our apartment to review the outcome. We’d been concerned they would notice the things we’d noticed in the photos: the lack of expression. The extra 15 pounds. The drug use written all over her face. But no, on the contrary, they raved--she looked amazing! They loved it! They couldn’t wait to send them off to Maxim and see what happened!

It was the last we heard of them. Months slid past, a year, a year and-a-half. We’d lost touch with Stefan entirely since we’d gotten married and had a son and it was all we could do to raise an infant and hold down full-time jobs.

The streets were packed with snow that evening, making travel on foot a challenge. It had snowed heavily for the past two days and the plows hadn’t yet cleared all the back streets in Hoboken. We struggled along the barely-passable sidewalk with a stroller, heading back from dinner to our apartment.

The door to the Irish pub on the corner burst open with an explosion of chimes and the crack of splintering wood and several men tumbled out into the snow. It had clearly been a long afternoon and they’d made the most of it, loudly hollering and laughing, clearly somewhere beyond tipsy. There were two with their arms wrapped tightly around one another, initially it seemed for support, but they stood there comfortably for a long moment.

Eric recognized him first. “Stefan!” The exclamation was more shock than happy recognition, and Stefan whirled in our direction, his arm propelling the other man with him. They remained locked together and Stefan lit up with recognition, astonished to find we’d increased our number from two to three, packing 18 months of catching up into two or three vague minutes. We needed to get together! He had so much to tell us! Yes, he still had Eric’s phone number.

They all lurched off together and Eric turned with a look on his face that matched the shock on mine. “You don’t think they were...I mean...maybe someone went...wrong...with Mindy?” I’d been wondering the same thing. There were bright colors. There were some over-the-top gestures. There were vocal intonations we’d never heard before. The body language indicated we were correct in our assumptions, and he’d happily introduced his companion with no further explanation and no mentions of the women in his life.

And with that, Stefan seemed to fall off the face of the earth.

[strandedinredneckparadise]

The Roommate Lottery

If you’ve ever lived in Jersey City, NJ, you know Journal Square is on the proverbial “wrong side of the tracks.” It’s where people get into arguments with homeless folks and get stabbed in the street. It’s where Egyptian cab drivers go screaming through residential streets, standing on screeching brakes to check out the backside on that hot blonde. It’s where you walk with purpose after dark, watching over your shoulder to make sure that weird Pakistani guy isn’t following you home.

Eric moved to Jersey City almost a year before I finished college, at which point we packed whatever fit into his truck and I moved the rest of the way across the U.S. with him. This was our grand adventure. We were young and game, with no money to speak of and more dreams than we knew what to do with.

“Keep an eye out,” one of the flight attendants who lived downstairs warned me. “There’s a peeping tom around here. A couple nights ago I looked up and he was standing on the back porch, staring at me through the doors. I screamed and he ran off.” I shuddered, immediately thankfully we lived on the second and third floors of the narrow Late Victorian.

“You must be Eric’s woman!” called a loud voice and I turned. This was the roommate I’d never met, Stefan*, a good four inches shorter and a solid forty pounds heavier than myself. He was a well-groomed bulldog.

Thomas* and I already knew one another. Eric’s other roommate--the “original” roommate, our joy over seeing one another was lukewarm at best. We’d worked in reasonable proximity to one another in years past, as he edited the university yearbook and I ran the school newspaper. There was no love lost and our greeting was perfunctory. A social function to be observed. Marked. Forgotten.

Thomas worked in design and often left early for the long commute Downtown, to his trendy office on Greene Street. Stefan worked in Midtown, leaving early and coming home late--oftentimes logging only three or four hours of sleep before heading out the door again. He liked to spend his evenings in clubs, sharing lurid stories on his odd self-imposed nights off or on lazy Saturdays. Stories of fast women, more coke than one could fathom, and bar tabs that made me weep.

I remembered Eric’s tales of housekeeping woe from the past year and almost immediately set to cleaning, wiping down the kitchen. Cleaning the bathroom. Sweeping every imaginable surface. Dishes were done whenever I discovered more in the sink.

Stefan returned home early one evening, barging up the stairs to find me halfway into the bathtub, vigorously applying the business end of a sponge to the dirty porcelain. He gasped. “This is a miracle! Where did Eric find you? I need to marry you when I grow up.” My eyes rolled involuntarily and I shook my head. The Italian was strong with this one.

“Dude, seriously,” he exclaimed to Eric the next evening. “This is amazing--did you see that bathtub? It’s miraculous! I need that in my life!” Eric laughed, only a little uncomfortably. Stefan had quickly established a reputation in the household as an indiscriminate womanizer, yet he was harmless.

In the evenings to follow the front door opened and a voice floated sonorously up the stairs: “Luuuuuuuucy, I’m home!”

It was a Saturday and, uncharacteristically, Stefan was home for the entire day. He’d been out late the night before and stumbled into the narrow kitchen to gratefully hug a cup of steaming coffee to his chest. His eyes were barely open. “Maaaaaan,” he croaked. “What a night I had last night.” He squinted in my direction. I was safe, accepted into his Inner Sanctum of Guyness for whatever reason.

“There was this girl there...” a curvaceous gesture with his free hand. “Dude,” he was shaking his head at no one in particular. “She was soooooo hot. Like I Don’t Have a Chance in Hell with Her Hot. Oh man, she was piece all right.” Eric had already half tuned out. He was used to these rants and had yet to see one of these epic beauties. “Problem is though,” Stefan continued, “she’s got a tail. It’s like her ugly stepsister or something, or like the ugly friend gets the scraps that aren’t good enough for Mindy.* She was bragging about how she talks guys into letting her take them into the back hallway to blow them--says she’s amazing. Not sure she knows some of the bartenders can see the back hallway on the security cameras...”

For several weeks the virtues of Mindy were extolled, the pinnacle of womanhood to which all women should aspire. And suddenly, radio silence. An interruption in the thought process.

“Hi, I’m Amanda.*” The girl sitting at our kitchen table had to introduce herself to us, the strangers walking up the stairs into the house, as Stefan hadn’t yet arrived home from work. (Er...hold on. Try not to look surprised or act like you haven’t heard anything about her. Clearly she has a key to your house.) She understood the confusion on some level and offered, “Stefan and I met at a club last weekend and we had such a great time, he stayed at my place. I came to visit him this weekend.” As we found out, that meant she’d thrown half her closet into the trunk of her car and drove several hours into New Jersey, from Pennsylvania.

They disappeared that evening, going out on the town, and I made coffee in the French press for her the next morning as we sat in the kitchen and talked over breakfast. She was small and thin, with a little belly that peeked out of the too-short camisoles she liked to wear out. She was plain and cross-eyed (I wish I was kidding) but had a sweet nature and a kind heart. We talked easily for an hour before Stefan rolled out of bed and stumbled down the stairs with all the stealth of a wildebeest, in frantic search of coffee.

Eric was gone that weekend, off on a freelance job in the wilds of Maine. As I was only a few weeks into Big City Life, I loosely formulated a plan for the day. Perhaps I would brave the city. I would take the train into Union Square and find the Barnes & Noble Eric had taken me to last week, where I would read away the afternoon in great contentment.

The desk started to squeak. That was weird. The fax machine was shuddering on the desktop and the thermometer on the snake cage, across the room, began to clang rhythmically against the glass. The penny dropped and I cringed, the inexplicable longing to rub Clorox wipes into my eyes to purge the vision imprinted upon my brain as it went on and on. Stefan was a little Italian, I had to reason: short, wide and God knew I would forever compare him now to an oil derrick as I contemplated ways to slip the girl an ice pack later.

Dirty laundry was dumped into the trunk of her car early the next afternoon as she prepared to drive back to Pennsylvania. She clung to him in the short driveway and I had to turn away. She was a lost, lonely soul looking for affection, no matter what it took to find it even momentarily. He, on the other hand, looked embarrassed and was attempting to extricate himself as quickly as possible.

It lasted another week and he was back in pursuit of Mindy...

*Names have been changed to protect the extremely guilty.

[strandedinredneckparadise]

Hit The Lights.

We’d been in our new house for a few months, adopted a mean-looking dog, established a daily routine. We had a mortgage now, and our car was on its last legs, but to further complicate matters Eric’s entire department had been dissolved two weeks after we closed on our house. The days were suddenly filled with longer commutes--time enough to stress out over where the money would come from to cover the next mortgage payment. The nights were sleepless, riddled with a toss-and-turn anxiety as Eric pulled in enough freelance work to keep us afloat.

The spring days quickly warmed into a typical New York City summer: hot, humid, smelling of a foul smog, of subway tunnels, of dirty street gutters and overripe trash bins.

Most of the homes on the north shore hadn’t undergone serious renovation in a solid 30+ years. It wasn’t uncommon to find cloth wiring hidden behind paneled walls, the only source of insulation in your little cracker box a layer of plaster and lathe. Because of this, it wasn’t a shock that most homes in those poorer northern neighborhoods didn’t have central air. Window units were an expensive proposition when you lived in a house without any real insulation and enough settling in the past 80 years to tilt the window frames. As such, box fans were the weapon of choice against the blistering heat--and gallon after gallon of water. Water and sewer bills ballooned as you took endless cool showers, only to break a sweat while toweling off.

Trouble was perpetually brewing in our neighborhood and we found ourselves marginally thankful it always seemed to stay at least a block away. The threats and curses were carried clearly on the thick, hot night air, the entire city awake and pulsating with overheated misery. A few more days of this, I thought, maybe a week, tempers are already short...there are going to be fights. People are going to die. We began to joke morbidly about “natural causes.”

I had been studying for months to take a licensing exam, the perpetual scourge of anyone involved in the financial industry. The knowledge was not coming easily, memorizing forms, contracts and actuarial information. I wondered if I was actively blocking it, my desire so strong to head back into the world of writing, interviewing, gallery openings, higher culture. But this was life and life had bills, the largest being student loans and a mortgage, so I sat down to study that hot night.

The ever-present hum of traffic created a dull white noise backdrop and I propped open the back door to the house, covered the opening with a thick piece of linen to keep mosquitoes out. Just enough to encourage breeze to sweep through. Any breeze--please let there be breeze.

Another city bus whooshed past instead, the sound bouncing off the taller buildings at the end of the street and ricocheting up the sidewalk in front of the house, bouncing unbounded across the more open back yards. The unmistakable squeal of the breaks, the screech of the doors opening and the roar of a strapped motor as the driver stomped on the gas to pull out from the stop. The stop was perhaps 80 feet away; you could smell the acrid exhaust drifting into the kitchen.

The words on the page blurred together and the heavy textbook drifted shut, the binding thick but the pages weak and flimsy. I struggled to reopen my eyes, propping the pages open with a heavier notebook on either side. Both of my boys were already in bed and after a long commute into the city and a rough day in a toxic work environment, I wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and let the expensive breeze of the box fan wash over me. Must study. Must pass this exam to advance at work. To command a better salary. To better what was clearly going to be a rough patch in our lives.

A sharp pop commanded my immediate focus. I sat frozen in my chair, trying to match the sound to a catalogue of memories and coming up blank. It was...sharp. A firecracker. My head whipped around to look out the bay window behind me, staring into a pitch-black night, the window overlooking several yards and across the next street. No movement, but more pops. Screaming.

I was on the floor, under the kitchen table before I was consciously aware of what had happened, squirming forward on my belly to hit the lights. To scrabble through the living room and up the stairs to scoop my son from his bed. His room was directly over the kitchen, the gunfire taking place on the street behind the house, closest to his bedroom, to the kitchen, and every heartbeat was another prayer there were no stray bullets.

When we’d initially organized his room, some deep inner knowledge led us to push the bed against a side wall, the immediate area obscured by the neighboring house of equal height and size. He would be safest here, with only a small portion of exposed wall space we reasoned, trying not to ask ourselves what we’d gotten into.

There were no sirens that night, though the wailing continued for some time. Whether or not police were called, they often never showed up in the rougher sections of town and many deaths were quietly swept under a rug, possibly a blurb in the local paper to acknowledge the occurrence itself. A name, an age, only the briefest, vaguest description of what had actually transpired.

“What have we done?” we asked ourselves, pale with terror. “We’re going to be murdered in our beds.”

[strandedinredneckparadise]

Raising Someone Else’s Kids.

Moving into and out of a major metropolitan area is a shock to the system, no matter your roots. What is difficult to anticipate, or to accept, is that the lack of parenting seems a national issue.

Our crime-riddled neighborhood in NYC was full of absentee parents, those who thought nothing of sending a five-year-old to the mailbox around the corner. Those who didn’t concern themselves that the mailbox happened to be in a rough local Projects. Those who allowed their small children to play out on the busy street until they decided to come inside and put themselves to bed at midnight, one, two in the morning.

Having purchased our home just before the bubble burst (”Getting in on the ground floor?” What IS that crap, anyway, Ms. Realtor?), we saw the shock wave was coming and knew we weren’t prepared.

Most of the homes on our immediate street had changed ownership in the previous few years. Elderly people or their children were selling the homes they’d lived in, or been raised in. With skyrocketing property values, adult children were cashing in on the only inheritance they would ever see.

It wasn’t unusual to find the last deed issued on the property was some 50 years old. You could be assured that no matter where you lived, your house was old enough to have seen several deaths within its walls. (Our house was built in 1924--just sayin’--and that was the secondary foundation.)

Of the 15 homes on our immediate section of a very long street, at least nine had changed ownership in the past two years, most of the homes snapped up by folks looking to enter the property game as first-time landlords. (There was gold in them thar hills!) Several were realtors, ambitiously prospecting on a market that couldn’t fail--they were sure of it--their livelihood depended upon it! They bought at inflated prices, convinced that with renovation they would double their investment with a quick flip. Besides, everyone knew a local firefighter or police officer looking for a little under-the-table income; these strapping fellows often moonlighted as unlicensed contractors or, simply, grunts, answering to an employer willing to pay them better for an after-hours job.

Less than a year into ownership, we tried desperately to sell. Faced with no equity to speak of and a market that had plateaued, it was apparent we would be hunkering down for some time.

The home across the street slowly slid into foreclosure, the tenants exchanging worried glances as people showed up at the door asking after the owner. Where WERE their rent payments going? The lease up, they packed up and moved and the house sat boarded up for years.

The homes on our side of the street flip-flopped quickly, some trading hands several times in a fire sale that ended with owners based in Long Island, India, Pakistan--absenteeism at its finest, as those homes were immediately converted to Section Eight housing and filled to overflowing with single mothers and veritable tribes of children. Suddenly our street wasn’t so quiet. It was filled with screaming progeny of indiscriminate origin, largely left to raise themselves in the streets. Their questionable behavior was observed but never corrected by the number of able-bodied men who occupied the front porches daily, not a care in the world. Sometimes a beer in hand, often a cigarette, walking down the sidewalk past them like walking a gauntlet.

The family two houses over was a family of young children and a single mother. It wasn’t long before I discovered the mother wasn’t more than eight years older than myself, yet she looked two decades older. To this day, I’m not sure how many of the children were hers and how many belonged to her sister, who conveniently lived next door for quite some time.

Of all those children there was just one little boy, only a year or two older than my own son. Clearly neglected. Dirty. His nose was always running, his face caked with dirt and streaked with tears and sweat. Hungry.

“Have you eaten yet today?” I asked him one night. As usual he’d met us as we parked in front of our house and he followed us the few steps across a hinky patch of sidewalk to our porch steps. He shook his head mutely, staring at my son as if he might know the location of the Holy Grail. Ryan was clean, wearing clothing that fit, chubby-cheeked, his translucently clear skin glowing with pink-and-white health.

We invited him in and he played with Ryan, in awe of his books and toys--”You have your own room!”--as I prepared a quick, simple dinner.

He sat down with Ryan and eyed the plates nervously as I said a quick blessing over the food. He picked up the fork to eat the only familiar food on the plate: macaroni and cheese. He was terrified by the green beans, avoiding that quadrant of the plate like oozing leprosy. “What are they?” he whispered, his eyes wide and horrified, and I wasn’t sure how to explain something completely foreign to him, knowing he wouldn’t try them anyway. After all, he’d subsisted to that point on a steady diet of scrounge-able food: pre-wrapped crackers, small bags of chips, the French fries his sisters deigned to share or a few pieces of greasy, breaded meat from the little Maryland Chicken around the corner.

There was no happy ending and I can’t even report the family stayed much longer. Most of the girls were old enough, by street standards, to get a job. To move in with a boyfriend--even if it meant they would be a mother by 14. And so the family slowly disbanded, some of the kids drifting off to live with their various fathers, and the little boy disappeared. In his place an infant arrived, his mother making frequent trips across the street to obtain a quick $5 fix from the thriving local crack den.

With the final bust, the drug ring was finally disabled and as the house was boarded up, at last the mother and her infant also disappeared. For a minute it was quiet--and then the next wave hit.

[strandedinredneckparadise]

Tales From the North Shore

To anyone who’s ever spent time in the Northeastern U.S., the words “The North Shore” conjure up images of foolishly expensive, vast acreages swathed in designer trees and swimming pools the size of a reservoir. These properties often have a commanding view of the Atlantic Ocean and boast a home larger than your average airport hangar.

This was not my North Shore.

If you’re familiar with New York City’s five boroughs, you will shudder in horror at the words “St. George” or “West Brighton.” These are neighborhoods that have been described for years as “Up-and-Coming,” or “Gentrifying,” both descriptions being a flat-out lie or hopeful hallucination.

When you live in the third-floor walk-up of a small Hoboken apartment, the sheer size of real estate afforded in not-so-far-off Staten Island seems a comparative bargain. Though it takes some work, it’s possible to find a single-family detached home on the island for a price less than your standard two-bedroom apartment just about anywhere else in the Tristate area. However, with this square footage and small yard comes a price: a poor school system, neighbors with flexible definitions of ownership, high crime rates and a local police precinct more corrupt than the gangs running the neighborhood.

After a tour of some of the more terrifying neighborhoods in the area (Stapleton), living between West Brighton and St. George didn’t seem such a bad option. It wasn’t THAT far from Rose Hill--protection would surely spill over from the Italians. Besides, the homes we’d seen to that point were too expensive or guaranteed death traps and the sleepy little street seemed a sweet, quiet location to raise our little family.

Rule number one: Do not shop for a home in the north in February.

Oh yes, the realtor assured us, this seemed a lovely home--a diamond in the rough. Sure it needed some work, but we were young and handy. Surely we could spiff it up in no time--and look, other white people! This was a sign things were on an upward trend. (We traded looks in disbelief.)

Our greasy lawyer cast lascivious glances at me as we discussed contract terms and he assured us in a manner full of loud bravado that everything would be fine, this closing would be a cakewalk. By May we’d be settled into our new house and our son would be playing in the backyard, conveniently fenced off with rusty chainlink.

Living in an extended stay hotel for a week wasn’t our idea of new home ownership and our loan officer offered up little more than “Oops” as an explanation for delaying the paperwork three weeks longer than intended.

If you’re a believer in signs, interpret such things as divine indication to back out of an offer.

The neighbors across the street sat on their front porch, observing our hurried move-in progress in various states of undress. It was four p.m. and they were hammered, two children scrabbling around in the cold dirt in front of the house.

It was only a week before we woke to the first of many raids. We’d met the neighbors living on both sides of our house, neither of which mentioned the nefarious activities taking place at the house across the street. We had observed what seemed an abnormal amount of foot traffic and though it was a large house, it seemed unlikely it was split into enough apartments to house all those people.

At five a.m. our bedroom walls were awash in undulating flashes of blue and red, a sharp, piercing white light blasting the house as a SWAT team moved in to break down the door with a battering ram. We stared in paralyzed horror, rubbing our tired eyes. Almost time to get up anyway, the horrible commute would begin soon enough.

People were pulled from the house in handcuffs, one after another, and placed in the back of a large truck. Thank God, we said to ourselves, that was a narrow miss. How many people wanted to live across the street from an active crack/meth den?

It became clear over the next couple weeks that the sting had been entirely ineffective. Foot traffic quickly resumed and the 911 dispatcher seemed largely unfazed when I reported a man lying on the sidewalk, convulsing in the middle of a cold night.

It took over a year and five or six raids before the place was boarded up and a condemnation notice affixed to the front door. How we hoped it meant the home was slated for demolition. Little did we know it meant the real fun was only just beginning...

[strandedinredneckparadise]

Whirligigs

Some of my fondest early memories of childhood involve a layered piece of nylon and a collection of vinyl records.

Around the age of five or six, I stumbled upon my mother’s collection of classical records. It was a wedding gift from her German immigrant father, long since donated to charity (I will take a moment to suppress a violent attack of sobbing), produced by a company I no longer remember. In fact, it’s likely I couldn’t understand the ornately scrolled gold leaf script at the time, pressed into a heavy casing of densely weighted cardboard, stamped into a textured alligator-green covering. Truth be told, I might have enjoyed the tactile experience of those wondrous packages more than I enjoyed the music. At six, my musical taste wasn’t exactly highbrow. (Let’s be honest: At 37 it’s likely I cannot lay any loftier claims.)

We lived on a working dairy farm and flights of fancy were rare and not exactly entertained or encouraged. My brief interest in ballet lessons wasn’t directly addressed as “It’s too expensive,” but I understood there was cost involved, time, effort, and I wasn’t sure I had the gumption to stick out such a task once undertaken. (At six I had a better handle on my limitations than I might today.)

It was my inspired idea that I must dance to the utterly foreign music to be found on these heavy vinyl discs. Never mind that I hadn’t the slightest bit of training and had the coordinational abilities of a sloth on speed and stilts. (Give yourself a moment. Let that full mental image really sink in--it was THAT bad.)

A close friend of my mother’s had recently completed a closet purge, sending a box of decadent goodies for my perusal: a macrame handbag, a drapey green necklace in a plastic cast meant to emulate jade--and oh, wondrous heavens--a tea-yellow slip decades too large for my twig-like frame, displaying several decorative tiers of matching lace. In a world of Oshkosh B’Gosh overalls and work boots (on deep clearance!), it was divine.

Strangely, the memories I have of these dancing frenzies seem to group around colder months. Then again, when you live in the Midwest, most months in your year are cold and you’re quite creative when it comes to ways to keep yourself from going utterly cabin-fever-crazy.

I was still too young to be of any reliable use in the barn and though I often trundled my little red wheelbarrow about the wide alleys, most of my time was spent in the house. Listening to standard fare such as the Turtles, the Beach Boys, the Carpenters. Taking for granted that my mother was pulling another spectacular baked good from the oven, or that our home was just magically, mysteriously clean and comfortable.

Opening the tall stained pine dresser with its clack-clack-clackety decorative handles, I dug into the deepest drawer and retrieved the yellow slip with determination. It was cold out and I couldn’t play in the yard, so I would put the slip on over a long t-shirt and cabled, itchy cotton tights and yes, I would dance.

Fully prepared, I rushed down the stairs, through the warm kitchen of our split ranch home and down another set of stairs into the cooler air of the family room where the winter sunlight struggled to weakly illuminate a room where the windows were just barely above ground.

At that point in life, with no musical background to speak of, one composer was just as good as another and with wild abandon I pulled one of the bumpy green cases from its home on the metal filing shelf in the shallow closet. The coffee-stain-colored tissue paper flyleaf revealed a heavier weight paper pocket for the record, an elegant cream with swirly black script running down the front. This one might have been Rachmaninoff. (Who was that?) That one was Debussy. (Never heard of him.) That one over there was Prokofiev. (WHO?!)

Sliding the record from the pocket, I pulled up the arm on the record player and slid it back on its hinge. The volume was already up way too high, a high-pitched, almost static-like hum filling the room. The cloth-covered speakers were already taxed and I hadn’t even begun to blast my esoteric selection through the house.

The family room carpet was a short loop in a convenient lentil brown and as the record dropped onto the table and the long arm with the needle skritch-skritch-scratched its way into the opening measures of some seminal work, I was plotting out my dance moves on that short carpet.

Awkward.

Thoroughly ungainly.

Yet there I was, twirling like my life depended upon it, surely a spectacle in my under-dress.

“Dad!” I squawked, nothing short of gleeful as my father trudged up from the furnace-warmed basement, his cheeks a rosy pink from the sharp, biting wind outside. Future winters in Michigan, Ohio, New Jersey and New York had nothing on an upbringing in Wisconsin.

“Watch this!” I commanded, spinning a seriously loopy pirouette.

Bless him, he stood there to observe and encourage with a wide smile while I twirled aimlessly around the room. He’d probably never been to a ballet in his life and was thoroughly humoring me. He was younger then than I am now, by at least four years, and it almost hurts to think of my parents being that young, their lives still mostly in front of them.

The desire to learn ballet was short-lived, possibly dying a swift death right around the time I realized there was a new batch of kittens in the barn. There were more important things to be done (taming kittens) and Prokofiev and Debussy weren’t going anywhere.

I’m not any more coordinated all these years later, though I’ve learned considerably more about classical composers and have slowly cultivated favorites.

Thank you, Rachmaninoff.

Thank you, Debussy.

Thank you, Prokofiev.

I didn’t know it yet, but I loved you. You taught me there was something more, outside of a happy rural existence. You taught me where to find joy and peace--though I still can’t dance.