The house across the street is a mirror of mine. Our identical front doors look right at each other. This is probably bad feng shui or something. They have the same porch configuration we used to have (I have a photograph...). The only original difference is the bay window on their second floor above the porch. Ours is flat. I kind of prefer the flat, now. It used to be, the flat front style of house, like a children's drawing, drove me crazy. But I like the imposing chunky red brick look now.
So I've seen that house now for 12 1/2 years. Stared at it a lot while I sat on the porch talking long distance to friends I don't have any more or to my mother just a block away. It used to be Eleanor's house, hers and her son Gary's. He ran a delivery service. He grew up in the house and was older than me. They'd probably had the house 40 years at that point, which means Eleanor and Mr. Eleanor (long dead) moved here in 1960 or so--by then the neighborhood was just starting to go downhill. Most of our houses were boarding houses by that point, and had been for 20 years, so you know what that must have been like. On the other hand, maybe the Eleanors inherited it like the owner of my house did. Maybe it had been in the family a full generation before, which would mean it wouldn't have had a chance to have many owners.
Gary hated our street and hated the house. He was nice to me, mostly because he parked his stinking gasoline-leaking vans in front of my house for days at a time. But he was pretty thrilled when his mother conceded defeat and he could leave this place "to the fags that keep moving in." He was behind the times, though. They were already on their way out when Jake and I bought our house.
It sold quickly--Eleanor sold at the right time--but it was sagging and suffering from years of neglect. Kristina and Mark Walsh, who were moving back to St. Louis from New York (well, he was moving back, and she was his young second wife), bought it with, I suppose, the intention of rehabbing it. They were here right in the middle of the drug wars on the corner (drug wars is wrong. Drug detente?). Kristina would stand in the middle of the street and yell profanity down at the corner. Get in the way of cabs. She was interesting this way. And fun, in a way.
But like many fast-talkers, she kept saying how great this block was. How lucky they were. What an awesome location. And then they promptly moved into their house a few blocks south, the one they'd sunk the money into, and dumped this house on the Friedmans. Now, I'm not going to defend the Friedmans on this one: they owned rental property and had rehabbed several houses, and Bruce did this full time, not on the weekends and evenings. They should have looked a gift horse in the mouth.
They moved in and so did Eliot. Eliot was here every day for nearly a year (but ask Travis and he doesn't remember Eliot, because Eliot got here at 9 and left by 3. Every danged day). He drove a big truck with a horse trailer behind it. He was the contractor. The Friedmans were going to live here forever and wanted the house done right. He took forever. We got to know Eliot well.
The Friedmans replaced the furnace and the AC. Many of the windows. Restored some woodwork. Put in a master bedroom and bath on the third floor (my thought, and my father's: who wants to climb all those stairs when you can stuff kids up there instead?). Bruce tooled around in the front yard a bit; he annoyed the next door neighbors to the east by not cutting his backyard nearly often enough.
Other neighbors were annoyed by the dog, a big lanky fellow with no training. He would bark and bark and bark and bark and bark. They'd report him as a nuisance, and then he'd show up at my door to complain. But I liked Bruce. I always, ALWAYS, knew he would be there in a pinch. He'd call the police on the bad guys. He'd be nosy. He'd keep tabs on the shifty developer on the corner. He always had a theory and always had something going on, but he was a good guy.
The Friedman's second child was diagnosed with some pretty intense psychological issues this past summer, and they came to terms with the fact that they weren't going to be able to manage him in such a big place. So they moved behind me, and down several houses, to their rental 4-family. Tiny space, lots of people, kind of Depression-era living. I can only assume that they will move on to a smaller manageable house in the future once they sell the one that mirrors mine.
The renter, the woman who won't talk to me, in her infuriating little car and porch littered with cigarette butts, I've pretty much said what I need to say there.
Today the for sale sign went up. "Coming Soon" it says at the top. I wonder what he's listing for. My hope is that he isn't naive (he doesn't seem naive) and that he's listing it low to sell it fast. It would be great to see that place heal a bit.
I know, because I'm busy healing my house from its years of neglect and boarding house status. Every time I change something to remove the past: wallpaper, flooring, paint, whatever, I feel it take a sigh of relief like I've pulled out a splinter.
I have a feeling there's a few splinters across the street.
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