Neighbors

It gets hot in Stockton, during the summer and early fall, the heat is relentless and leaves most stuck by their air conditioners. The heat had that effect on our neighbors, Doris and Bernard, both retired, both overweight, and looking back, both probably concerned for the skinny lonely girl that lived next door to them. Doris had large wiggly upper arms that were usually exposed by her bright floral mumu. She would sit in her rocking lazy-boy recliner and talk with mom about bonsai gardening and knitting. I was always bored when we visited D&B, but also grateful to have a respite from the barren loneliness of our life. Bernard was balding, simple, kind, wore polyester plaid pants and matching shirts with topstitching, and was my escort at the Campfire Girl’s Father-Daughter dinner when I was 9. I was embarrassed as hell to have this old dork fronting for my dad. A neighbor! In my apartment building! All the other girls in my troop were from the good side of town. They had architect dads and doctor dads and lawyer dads, all of whom came to the dinner, and lived in plush real houses with moms that got up in the morning and played tennis and made them casseroles for dinner. Me, skinny as a toothpick, polyester knit headband over greasy hair, so excited to be eating “real food” from a “happy home” at the potluck dinner, fending off the questions, “Is that your dad? Where is your dad?” I would do my best to disappear, which wasn’t hard.

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On the other side of our apartment, in #39, lived Dorothy, another single mom, and her mentally handicapped teenage son, Martin. Martin was obsessed with Elvis. Sometimes when I hear Elvis, I can still smell Martin, a mix of hormones, stress and nerves buckling under his giant frame and through his perfectly pressed shirt. Mom was afraid of him, afraid of me being alone in his room with him…I was too young to know why or understand, but her fear, his scent, and Elvis became cobbled in my little brain. Elvis was sexual frustration.



Dorothy was sexual frustration manifest. Not a hair out of place bee-hive, frosty blue eye shadow, frosty pink lipstick at all times, a house so impeccably clean and orderly it astounded or horrified. Her collection of white porcelain cat statues with turquoise blue rhinestone eyes lined up in perfect dust-free order on her coffee table. The little bowl of after-dinner mints I looked at in awe but was never invited to partake of. The same avocado-green-shag carpet, but hers was always fluffy.

Dorothy was a waitress at a venerable lunch spot on the Miracle Mile. The kind of place that had pie a la mode and a “diet plate” that consisted of a scoop of cottage cheese presented on a piece of iceberg, a hamburger patty and a sliced tomato. I used to dream of going there and getting a malted. Dorothy spent her time off work cleaning, dusting, polishing, perhaps in some mad hope that she could scrub away the "stain" of her son’s handicap, her divorce, and her empty life.