The Neighbors

The neighbors next door were foreigners, a group that seemed to add and subtract members by the week.  First, a group of short, dark-haired men worked to repair the run-down house.  They wore white shirts and black pants and stood on the porch and smoked and talked at the end of the day.  Richard listened and thought they might be Armenian.  

Eventually, a single man moved in.  On the nights Richard experienced insomnia, he would often see this Armenian neighbor arrive home around three a.m.  Some nights he was drunk.  Always with a cigarette in his mouth, he had almost burnt the place down one night in February, cleaning car parts with gasoline on the kitchen floor.

In May, this neighbor was suddenly gone, and others came -- a family, it seemed, an older woman, a couple of children, a man who paced the porch and talked on the phone, and a younger woman.  They were quiet and appeared to settle in. 

Richard and Mary didn't go out of their way to get to know their neighbors.  Since Richard’s retirement, life had become narrow, reined in.  He and Mary mostly kept to themselves at home.  An occasional movie, a once a year trip to the beach and another to Vegas to play the nickel and penny slots, three or four times a year a visit to see their unmarried son in San Bernardino -- that was all.  Because they had time on their hands, they watched their neighbors' daily goings-on from their facing windows, but did not engage.

No one took care of the wide front yard next door.  In the spring, after the winter rains, it grew tall and luxuriantly green.  Grass grew long and spiky; fern-like plants sprang out of the ground and shot toward the spring skies, only to brown and dry in summer's heat.  The yard wasn’t kept up, but Richard didn’t complain to anyone besides Mary.  He didn’t care like he once had.  He didn’t know these people, had no idea how they would react if he suggested that they chop down the weeds and clean up the yard, and he didn’t want to find out.  They would probably see him as a meddling old man who should mind his own business.

The neighborhood had changed.  When Richard and Mary had bought the little house thirty years before, people had kept their yards immaculate.  Of course the couple knew everyone on the block, family people with kids in local schools.  Opportunities and death, earthquakes and fires had taken or driven many away.  There were a few left, old ladies mostly, widows, but they kept to themselves and hardly ever came out of doors.  Richard and Mary knew only a few of the younger people in the neighborhood, and then it was only to say "Good morning" or "Merry Christmas." 

Even minor variations to the daily routine could be disturbing and bring out Richard’s querulousness.  A neighbor moving in or out, an unknown car speeding down the street, or the men from the Department of Water and Power working in the street, taking forever, one guy working, the rest leaning on shovels -- all became topics that ruled his thoughts and conversation.

       He was in the habit of rising early in the morning to read the paper and feed the cats, standing on the porch as the cats ate behind him; he spent those moments checking the sky and the neighborhood.

     One August morning, the Armenians' yard was covered in toilet paper.  It had been strung around the columns and across the porch, twined around a small tricycle, brought out into the yard and spun around the rose bush and mailbox and the dried stalks of a tall weed in the middle of the yard.  An old tire was near the front door, and some white stuff -- glue, perhaps -- lay in a puddle next to it.  DWP cones and sawhorses had been taken from the street in front of the house and strewn all over the yard.  Pages torn from magazines were everywhere.

That was a stunt high school kids played on one another.  It didn’t make sense here.  No one was in high school over there, and those people wouldn’t understand. 

 

There was already activity at the house, even though it was just a little after six.  A short, rumpled man with curly hair stood in the doorway, phone to his ear, surveyed the yard and gestured with his free hand as he spoke.  The next time Richard looked, the same man stood in the doorway again, without the phone, but cigarette in hand.  Suddenly, he reached down, picked up the tire and heaved it off the porch.  He yelled as he threw it.   

Later, after he had started the coffee, Richard saw the same man in the street talking to the young woman from across the way.  She stood next to her car, ready to go to work.  Richard went outside to pick up the newspaper and to hear what was going on.

                   "Richard," the young woman called, "did you see who did this to

           his yard?"  She was handing off the man to him, but Richard didn't    

           mind.  She was a cute little thing.

"My sister," the man said. "My sister's house."

"No, no I didn't."

"It's no good," the man said. "Why they want to scare my sister?  I don't think this is kids.  What do you think?"

"I don't know.  Did you call the police?"

"She calls at 5:30.  I come over in minutes, and I call the police."

"Don't touch anything," Richard said, recalling that the man had already thrown the tire off the porch.

“Yes, don’t move anything,” the young woman said.  “Richard, I have to go to work.” She turned back to the Armenian man.  “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged as though to say it couldn’t be helped.  “It’s okay.  You go.  Come,” he said turning to Richard.  “You look.  You tell me if you think it's kids."

"Oh, I..."

"Yes, you come."

They entered the yard.  Richard picked up a page of the magazine -- naked women on their hands and knees and a naked man standing in back of them, hands at his crotch.  The text was in German.  Pages from the same magazine were all over the yard.  The curly-headed man picked up a page, glanced at it, and threw it down in disgust.   Richard picked it up and as many of the torn pages as he could find and threw them in the trash bin at the top of the driveway.  He didn’t want Mary to see them.

"It was on the door, this magazine.  Pictures on the door.  Next time it could be a gas tank.  Boom!  The whole house goes up.  Look.  Glue.  Eggs."  He was on the porch.  "I move them out.  It's no good here."

"No, not glue.  It's lotion."  Richard pointed to an open plastic bottle on the porch still oozing the white lotion.  He looked up and saw the remains of eggshell and yolk plastered above the door and next to the window.

"You don't know anyone...?"

"They were on the porch.  We can shoot them.  Next time I will shoot them.  My mother sleeps on couch right here," he said, pointing to a place on the other side of the house wall.  "My sister woke up and saw them.  She was scared." 

"How many did she see?"                                                                

He called inside to someone, asked a question in Armenian.  A woman's voice answered.

"She couldn't see.  It was too dark still."

"Where are the kids?"

"I take them and my mother right away to my apartment.   They won't stay now.  I move them.  I live just down there."  He pointed to a street below.  Finally he seemed to hear Richard's earlier question.  "Who I know?   No one.  What means this?" he asked.

"It's a prank, a . . . trick, something high school kids do to their friends."

"This is no friends."  He looked at his watch.  "Police.  Where are they?"

"They take their time.  We were robbed once..."

"You think it's kids?"

"I don't know.  Probably."

The young woman called from inside.

"Coffee,” the man said.  “You want coffee.  Yes, you have some coffee.  Come on," he said as though the older man were about to refuse.   He called inside again.

"I'll just go over and tell my wife."  After he had told her, Mary said she was going to call the police again.

"Come in," the curly-headed man said, "you have some coffee.  My sister and her husband don't speak English."

He ushered Richard through the doorway.  There were two couches in an L, one beneath the window, one facing the television against the wall.  Cartoons were on with the sound down.  Next to the sliding glass doors along the side wall were a bare table and chairs.  The man Richard often saw talking on the phone and pacing back and forth on the porch as he talked, stood by the table, once again on the phone.  His face was square and strong, and his heavy beard cast a bluish tint to his cheeks.  He nodded to Richard.   

The kitchen was dark, but Richard could see where the linoleum tile had been replaced after the fire.  The young woman, short and a little heavy, in her twenties still, Richard guessed, emerged from the kitchen.  She had thick, dyed- blond hair.  She smiled sweetly, shyly, revealing crooked teeth.  She brought a tray of coffee in small cups to the table in front of the couches.

"Richard.  My name is Richard," he said, standing up from his seat on the sofa.

"Hello," she said, shaking his hand.

"My sister is Arux.  Her husband is Alexander.  I am Moses."  Alexander came to shake Richard's hand.

"The police take a long time," Moses said, sitting down on the couch; Richard sat down again next to Moses.  "I go to school."

"What are you studying?"

"Computer repair.  I go five days a week."

"That's great."  He was truly surprised. "How long?"

"I finish in one year."  He looked for a word. "June.  I don't go today."

"Is that okay?"

"Sure.  Sure.  I call my teacher.  My teacher understands."

Alexander had taken a seat on the couch facing them.  Arux came from the kitchen and took a seat, too.  She and Alexander watched as the other two spoke.  The girl had eager, lonely eyes.

 "You speak English well.  How did you learn?" Richard asked Moses.

"I learn myself.  I speak four languages.  Armenian, English, Russian and Persian."

“Four languages?  Wow, I only know one,” Richard said.

"Yes.  Spanish I don't know.  It is --" he shook his head "-- very hard.  I don't like Spanish.  Those people come here and never learn English.  Ten years, maybe twenty.  I learn right away."

"When did you call the police?"

"Right away.  Six o'clock.  Early."

"When we were robbed, the police took four hours to respond," Richard began.  He told the story slowly, pausing to make sure Moses understood, allowing time for him to translate for the others.  Finally the police arrested the boy who had robbed them after he broke into and robbed the house on the other side of Richard and Mary’s house a few months later.  The boy’s sister turned him in along with his cousin when she saw the jewelry and a handgun spread out on the boy’s bed.  This family lived on the street, too, just a few houses further down.  (Here Richard pointed the direction they had lived).  When the boy's father returned home, Richard and Mary and the other couple who had been robbed were still standing together in the street, along with the sister, the thief, and the police.  Before the police took the boy away, his father asked, "What's wrong with you?" He put a hard, dirt-lined hand on the boy's shoulder.  "Don't you know no better than to rob neighbors?  If you're going to rob someone, go over on the next block."  The police took the boy away, and his family left the neighborhood a few months later.  The cops didn't even bother to search the house for more stolen goods, accepting what the girl found.  Only a few of Mary’s things were retrieved, none of the valuable jewelry.

  When Moses had finished translating the story for Alexander and Arux, they shook their heads. 

Moses repeated, "Go over on the next block," and laughed bitterly.

Mary came to the door carrying a coffee cake ring they had bought the day before.

"Come in, come in," Moses said.  Richard introduced her.

“I thought everyone might be hungry.”

"Have coffee," Moses said.

"It looks good. Is it Armenian coffee?"

"Yes.  You like Armenian coffee?"

"I don't know.  I've never had it.  Is it very strong?"

"A little bit strong.  It's good.  She'll show you how you make it."  He spoke to Arux, and she motioned them toward the kitchen.  The winter rains had browned the kitchen ceiling and caused it to sag, Richard noticed. 

Moses translated what Arux said while she went through the motions.

“Put a teaspoon of coffee for each cup, water, and a teaspoon of sugar for each cup in small coffee pot.  Wait until it boils.  Before it boils over, take it off the heat and pour into small cups.  Easy.”

 Arux poured a cup for Mary now and took it out to the living room for her.  She then brought out little plates and handed them to everyone after they were re-seated.

“Sorry,” she said to Mary as she handed her a plate. The plates were from different sets and didn’t match.

“They’re lovely, dear,” Mary said and smiled at the younger woman. 

Arux went back into the kitchen to bring out the coffee cake already cut into wedges on a plate.   Everyone took a piece.  It was warm.

After Arux sat down again, they sipped their cups of coffee and ate their cake.  Everyone agreed the coffee and the cake were excellent, just right.  When they were done, Arux tipped her cup upside down on the saucer, pouring out the grounds.  She swished what was left against the sides of the cup and then looked into the cup.

"She’s telling future," Moses said.

“What does she see?" Mary asked.

The girl listened to Moses' translation of the question and studied the cup some more.  She told Moses what she saw.

"Someone will take a trip, over mountains maybe."  As Moses said this, Arux tipped the cup down so that the neighbors could look into it.    "It will take time to get there, but everything ends okay.  Are you taking trip?"

"You never know," Mary said.  Richard looked at her.  "Things are changing."

"We already went to Las Vegas earlier this summer.  Lost our money and came home," Richard said and laughed. "Have you been there?"

"Oh, yes, yes. I've been to Vegas," Moses said.  "They haven't.  They want to go, but . . . "

No, of course not; Alexander didn't have a job.  Can't go to Vegas without money to lose.

Alexander spoke to Moses in a quiet voice for a while.  When he stopped, Moses seemed to search for a way to translate it.

"He says more people should know what is going on in Armenia.  No trees left to burn for fires to keep warm.  All the trees are chopped down, all around.  People die from the cold and from no food.  His mother died six months."

"His mother died six months ago?"

"Yes, six months ago."

The couple shook their heads in sympathy.

"He thinks people don't know."

"No, I don't suppose they do," Mary said.  “Did you know that, Richard?”

He shook his head that he didn’t.  “These days I mostly read the sports pages,” he said.  “The Lakers.  The Dodgers.”

“They’re good,” Moses said, and then the room grew quiet.

After coffee, Moses showed them how he wrote his name in Armenian.  His hand was precise, the letters decorative and distinct.  He taught the couple how to say "Hi" and "Good morning" and "Good bye" in Armenian.  They practiced and laughed, and the Armenians nodded approval.

 

When the police arrived, first one car drove up and then another a few minutes later.

"When I called, I asked for someone on the Hate Crimes Task Force.  Maybe that's why they sent two cars," Mary said quietly to Richard.

"Probably."

The two from the first car were a white man in his thirties and a young Latino.  He smiled pleasantly at the expectant group.  The white cop had a thick brush mustache.  He nodded to the group.  The cop in the second car was a tall, black man, a sergeant with braces on his teeth. 

The three policemen walked around the yard stiffly as though their pants were too tight and shirts too snug and they had sat in their cars too long.  They continually pushed at their belts.

"There's no question what this is, but they didn't leave anything behind -- no graffiti, nothing to identify them," the white cop said to the assembled group standing in the driveway.

In desperation Moses pointed out everything to the young cop again, with the hope that the accumulated wrongs would provoke them into action. 

"Let me see what the sergeant wants to do."  The sergeant spoke to the officers quietly in short, cryptic sentences.  Richard overheard him telling the officers to just file a short form. 

"There's really nothing we can do here," he said.

                                                                                                         

When the cops had gone, the group stood in the driveway in dejected silence.  The air seemed to have been taken out of the day.  The sky was white in the west.  Thin streaks of cloud were painted above them.  It would get hot soon.

"Well, we can clean it up now," Mary said finally.

"No, no.  We clean up."

"It will only take a minute if we all work.  It's okay.  We'd like to help."

"Okay," Moses said after glancing at Arux and Alexander who stood in the doorway and watched them.

“Jesus Christ, they didn’t stay five minutes,” Richard said as he and Mary went to get the hose and scrapers and brushes.  He looked down at his hands as he reached for the hose.  Brown spots.  Skin like crepe.  It bruised and broke open easily, healed slowly.  Old.  Of what use?  What if this had happened to them?  It would have been no different.  They would have been discounted in just the same way.  File a short form.  Too goddam insignificant for the long one.  Fill it out, file it and forget it.  Frightened Armenians who don’t understand.  Old couple who don’t matter.  Old neighborhood sinking into disrepair.  Who gave a damn?

It didn’t take them long to scrape and hose off the walls, to gather all the toilet paper and throw it away.  Mary came across a page from the magazine that Richard had missed and looked at some of the photographs before she threw the page away.  Richard glanced at it over her shoulder.  The people posed in group sex shots had dreary, workaday expressions on their faces.  The photographer was an amateur.  The bodies were too white, too lighted, and the setting clearly someone's hastily arranged den or bedroom.  Pedestrian.  The close-ups of the women were clinical, anything but sexy.

“Here.  Let me have that.  I’ll throw it away,” Richard said as he took the page and crumpled it.

        "Neo-Nazis," she said when Richard came back from the trash bin.  "Neo-Nazis or Skinheads.  Playing with themselves and then trashing the place.  Perverts."

Richard was surprised by her blunt language.  She was right, of course, surer in her instincts than he was, quicker to understand, ready to call something what it was, quicker to act.  He’d spent so much of his life agreeing with people he didn’t truly agree with or disagreeing too mildly with bosses and demanding customers.  He couldn’t remember a time when he had taken a firm stand.  Sometimes he completely lost the thread, couldn’t find the way back to the truth or to what he actually believed.  He had to ask Mary.

“Well, what do you think?”

"Me?" she said, looking back at him.  "I feel violated, just like when we were robbed.  And angry and scared.  Just think what they must be feeling," she said as she looked over her shoulder at the house, "knowing no one, not being able to speak the language, not understanding what all this toilet paper and pornography and mess really means.  I'd like to catch the people who did this and beat them but good.  I wonder who it is."  Both of them looked down the street toward that part of the block on which they knew no one.

Arux motioned Mary into the house when they were finished cleaning up.  She leaned down to a cabinet beneath the TV and took out a set of little cups and saucers in their box.  The cellophane wrapper had not been removed.

"For coffee," Arux said carefully.

"For thank you," Moses said, standing next to Arux.

Mary took the cups.  She hugged the young woman warmly.  “Thank you.”

Richard shook hands all around.  There was so much to say, expressions of sympathy and assurances mostly, but they did not have enough language together.  It made him sad, and he knew it did Mary as well.  She hugged the girl again and repeated her thanks.

 

The couple didn't speak to their Armenian neighbors again that day.  Moses, Arux, and Alexander left early in the afternoon and didn't return for three days.  When they did come back, they returned to the same pattern as before, into a self-contained world that seemed to want no intruders.  Arux didn't come outside.  The children rode their tricycles on the porch, watched by their grandmother, while Alexander paced and spoke on the phone.  When Moses or Alexander came or went, they waved if they saw Richard or Mary outdoors, but they did not speak. 

Richard and Mary were relieved that things had returned to normal.  He leaned his loaded .22 rifle next to the door at night and woke before dawn to check their yard.  He hoped he might find the vandals there and heroically capture them at gunpoint, but he also dreaded that he might be too late and find even worse damage this time; dreaded, too, that he might fail, that they would realize that he was just an old man incapable of doing much harm and laugh at him.   Mary asked if everything was all right each morning when he went in to dress.  He was relieved to say it was.

         On a Sunday a few weeks later, Moses and other men loaded a pickup truck and a couple of cars with the Armenians' belongings.  It didn't take long.  They moved the refrigerator last, in the dying light of the evening, men offering advice and issuing loud commands as they worked the bulky appliance onto the pickup and tied it down.  There was a hurricane in the Gulf; the evening was humid and cloudy, and the western sky was lighted with dramatic purples and grays and oranges.  The older couple glanced across the way at the goings-on as they walked back and forth past kitchen and living room windows, or when they stepped outside.

"I hate to think that those bastards drove them off," he said.

"Poor dears," she said. "They must be very scared."

"I worry about the house being empty."

"That, too," she said, but both of them knew they weren't speaking their hearts completely.

When he went outside, hoping to catch someone's eye, no one looked up.  Everyone was busy.  He would have liked to call over and say goodbye.  It was one of the words in Armenian they had learned, and he had written it down phonetically.  He practiced it, thinking he would call it from the porch or maybe go over and shake hands.  He would have liked to call, "Good luck," too, but he didn't know how to say that.  No one looked his way, however, so Richard sat on the porch steps and watched the neighbors as they finished loading and drove away.

 

Monday morning, the couch rested half on the porch and half off, the couch the mother had slept on, the couch they had sat on and drunk coffee just a few weeks before, abandoned as though tainted by hatefulness and fear. 

"They left the couch," Richard called from the living room window.

"Yes, I see."  Mary looked up from the kitchen sink and glanced across the yard.  "Probably didn't have room for it.  I wonder if anyone will move in."

"I suppose eventually."

"I hope it's someone we like."

Richard watched the cars each day, particularly noting the ones that slowed down.  He knew a car would pass one day and the expression on the occupants' faces would be smug and self-satisfied.  They had done their job.  He wanted to be there, standing on the front lawn, to catch them in their hateful, perverted satisfaction.  To let them know that someone knew.

Moses and their Armenian neighbors never came back.  Richard and Mary never saw the owner come by.  He never put up a “For Rent” sign, so the house stood vacant.  The couch remained on the porch in the sun and the rain during the empty days and weeks and months that followed.

Richard continued to watch for cars for a while, and then he didn’t.