The Man Across the Street

     I used to live across the street from him.

     We moved away years ago, but I remember him well.  A scrawny little guy, dark hair, beak nose, hunched shoulders, always seemed to be leaning forward.  He never looked comfortable. 

     I could see his house from my kitchen window.  I’d see him taking in the trash cans, driving to and from work, shuttling his kids on weekends.  And that’s about it.  Sometimes I’d see him while I was out walking.  I’d say hello without breaking stride. 

     I remember his wife too.  Couldn’t forget her if I tried.  A massive woman, grotesquely overweight, she must’ve have a glandular problem or something because it’s hard to imagine anyone eating her way to that much weight.  It’s a wonder she could walk.  I remember watching her squeeze into their station wagon, wondering if she’d get stuck, her lower body in but her upper body out, struggling for an opening.  I’m sure I thought of Pooh in Rabbit’s hole. 

     It might not surprise you to learn that she was often angry, her face set in a permanent growl.  Sometimes she’d yell so loud inside her house we could hear her across the street inside our house.

     They had kids, but I never met them.  They never played in the front yard.  I never saw them riding bikes up and down the street.  Instead, I’d just see them running between the house and the car, seemed to always be late for something.  He often drove, perhaps because she couldn’t.

     Our street wasn’t very neighborly, so it wasn’t unusual to never meet the man living across the street. 

     I did know a few other neighbors well enough to find out that one or two of them knew him better.  I heard he was a nice guy.  I learned what he did for a living.  I heard she came from money, which explained how he lived in our neighborhood doing what he did for a living. 

     And that’s the sum total of my experience with him until a few weeks ago I picked up the paper and saw his name and discovered that he’d shot himself in a park early one morning.  The article mentioned a pending dismissal from his job.  Why would anyone kill himself over a job?  Then reading between the lines, it seems he had an affair with one of his underlings.  That explained why he would be dismissed.  And, having struggled to maintain a toehold on the upper-middle echelon of life, his meager living boosted by his wife’s funds, he faced losing it all, or so he thought.  And so he did. 

     His little gleam of time is over.

     It makes no sense, they say, and I agree. 

     But as I ponder once again the eternity that surrounds us I wonder:  When does any life ever make sense?

Comments

[R J Keefe]

Thanks for the "little gleam of time between Eternities." It seems very apt to this sad tale.

[i, squub]

Wow. You really know how to tell a story. Even such a sad one.

[Oorgo]

Wow, that's such a sad tale, but a familiar one. Our previous neighbours were similiar, the husband though was overly friendly, almost to the point of frantic. The wife was frighteningly large, and extremely two-faced and vile. I would mow the lawn and you could hear her screaming at him in the house to go mow the lawn. She wanted everything no matter if they could afford it. Crazy.

One week I noticed he was no longer around, apparently he had had a mental breakdown. He came back for a short time before she punted him out of the house, divorced him and started seeing some sleezy young guy. Now whenever I see him he has the clothes of a homeless man. They eventually lost the house and who knows where the family of the damned is living now.

[Andrew Duffin]

The "gleam of time" is a nice metaphor but I still prefer Bede's sparrow flying through the lighted hall...

[Andrew Duffin]

Aha! Here it is in translation from the Old English original:

"The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your commanders and ministers, and a good fire in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door, and immediately out at another, whilst he. is within, is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which he had emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant. If, therefore, this new doctrine contains something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed."