Jeneration X: One Reluctant Adult's Attempt to Unarrest Her Arrested Development; Or, Why It's Never Too Late for Her Dumb Ass to Learn Why Froot Loops Are Not for Dinner

by Lancaster, Jen

  If you think about it, by learning to sew, I could (in theory) save an entire (fictional) family.

  Plus?

  Then I’d have an excuse for playing with dolls!

  Reluctant Adult Lesson Learned:

  It’s not always what you do that makes you a grown-up; sometimes, it’s how you spin it.

  C·H·A·P·T·E·R N·I·N·E

  I Wish I Could Quit You, Gladys Kravitz

  In retrospect, the whole spying thing seems pretty childish.

  In my defense, keeping tabs on my neighbors’ comings and goings was a necessity when we lived in the city. I mean, someone had to act as block captain because the police certainly weren’t on patrol.

  I can count on zero fingers the number of times the Chicago PD responded to 911 calls when we lived in Bucktown, and I’m not talking the usual, “Hello, Jeannie, who’s bothering you today?” reports about assholes parking in front of my garage. [Listen, blocking the alley violates fire code and I’m pretty sure that’s a crime or violation or at least very annoying every time I had to drive around and park out front.]

  Squad cars never rolled when we phoned about the sound of gunshots or the knife fight on our sidewalk or when acts of prostitution were committed in the vacant lot next door.

  Yes, the van was rocking but did five-oh come knocking? Negatory.

  I’m not sure what the Chicago PD considered real crimes in that godforsaken neighborhood, but they included neither drug deals nor domestic violence.

  Clearly I had no choice but to name myself Neighborhood Hall Monitor, [I should have bought myself a sash and a beret to go along with my whistle, cell phone camera, and good whacking shovel.] and it’s totally not my fault that this dovetailed nicely into my natural propensity for observation. Could I help it if my Constant Vigilance™ occasionally turned up a few hidden truths about my neighbors?

  After I spent a full day on Neighborhood Watch, Fletch would return home from work and I’d fill him in on each transgression I witnessed, like which of our idiot neighbors drove her kids around without seat belts and who threw an empty McDonald’s bag on my lawn and did he know the McRib was back? Then Fletch would call me Gladys Kravitz [Other Notable Nosy Neighbors in Television History include Messrs. Roper and Furley. If you don’t catch any of these references, turn on Nick at Nite, like, immediately.] and suggest (urge, plead, implore, demand) I find another way to occupy my time.

  Every day we had some version of this conversation while he changed out of his grown-up clothes after work:

  “You don’t understand,” I argue, sitting by the window on the bed where I can keep one eye on my husband and the other trained on the street, like one of those creepy chameleons with the swivel-y eye sockets. “It’s my civic obligation to note comings and goings.”

  “What did I tell you about your ‘citizen arrests,’ Deputy Fife?” he sighs.

  I sigh right back. “That I’m ‘not allowed to dole out street justice with a shovel.’ Even though the dipshit who doesn’t believe in car seats deserves a solid whacking. Have you ever seen those highway safety videos they used to show in Drivers’ Ed? An unsecured baby flies through a windshield like a watermelon launched by God’s slingshot! Slam on the brakes once and, ka-blammo! I’m talking front-row seats at a Gallagher show, wiping juice from your cheeks and picking seeds out of your ears.”

  He eyes me curiously. “Don’t you have a book to write?”

  “That’s the beauty of it,” I explain. “See, I’m, like… an amateur detective. As a writer, it’s my job to be a quiet observer of the human condition.”

  “Really?” he says, poking his head out from behind a bifold door. “Because I thought your job was to work out with your trainer today and then write up your notes on the Weight Watchers meeting. How’d that go?”

  Sheepishly, I admit, “I gave myself carpal tunnel scrolling through GoFugYourself.com so I had to postpone,” punctuating my malady by flexing my sore wrist. “Hey! Stop that! I can see you smirking! Listen, paying attention to what’s happening around us is just as important as exercising for Such a Pretty Fat.”

  From deep in the closet I hear, “You justify that… how?”

  “It’s my duty to piece together the lives that I observe, like a jigsaw puzzle. It’s up to me to fill in the blanks. Example? Remember the people on Superior who had the cameras trained on the doors, bars on all their windows, even the second and third floor, and two perpetually pissed-off Rottweilers roaming the front yard? Why do you suppose they did that?”

  “They lived in a shit neighborhood and were tired of getting robbed.”

  “No! They’re ex-spooks. Former CIA, totally. I mean, come on. They’d never make eye contact and the wife sounded like a big-haired Bond villainess. Clearly the guy was an operative who fell in love with his Soviet confidential informant. He left the Agency and now they live here in witness protection. That’s why they always cross the street when we’re out walking the dogs. They know I know.”

  “Quite a story. You been watching Burn Notice again?”

  “No.” Yes.

  “Then, Special Agent Kravitz, how do you explain that I used to work with the guy back when I was at AT&T in the nineties?”

  “Really?”

  “Uh-huh. His name is Seth and he’s a security consultant. His wife is Zofia and she’s from Poland. She worked for AT&T, too. He was her project manager; that’s where they met.”

  That takes the wind out of my sails but I quickly rally. “I’m sure they told you that’s where they met. Besides, people in witness protection can have jobs. Wait, they should have jobs. Yes. This makes perfect sense. If they didn’t work, what would they do all day? Stare out the window at their neighbors?”

  “Are you familiar with the concept of irony?”

  “Not always. Point is, my theory holds.”

  He says nothing but his raised eyebrow says so much. I press on. “I can see you’re not yet sold. So riddle me this, Fatman, if they weren’t ex–field agents, why would they always cross the street to get away from me?”

  “Because you don’t have full control of the dogs and Maisy can’t keep her tongue off their baby.”

  Oh. He’s got me there. “Well… she is affectionate. Whatever, bad example. How about this? How come the old guy on the top floor of our place on Orchard never once had a visitor the whole three years we lived beneath him?”

  “Because we were busy at our day jobs. Or maybe his friends were also elderly and couldn’t handle all those stairs.”

  “Bzzt! Wrong. He was anthropologic, which means fear of people and social situations.”

  “I think you mean anthropophobic. And I used to run into him with some blue-haired lady at Starbucks all the time, so no, he was neither anthropologic nor anthropophobic. Still not convincing me that spying is a legitimate use of your time.” He pulls on a polo and zips up his cargo shorts. “Are we done here? Can we go downstairs now?”

  “No!” I refuse to accept defeat. “If you’re so smart, why don’t you tell me why the girl across the courtyard in Lincoln Park moved out at three a.m.?”

  “You mean the moron who left her laundry in the washing machine for a month because she couldn’t find a quarter? Her?”

  I place my hands on my hips, filling up the doorway so he can’t pass. “Yes. Why do YOU think she moved in the middle of the night? I suspect she had an abusive boyfriend and had to move to a women’s shelter.”

  “I suspect she was a dingbat with poor time management skills. Can I go to the bathroom now?”

  “Yes. As soon as you admit that I’m a good detective.”

  He kisses me on the forehead before wedging past me. “Fine. You are a veritable Sherlock Holmes… in footie pajamas.”

  I feel vindicated. “Thank you.”

  “Hey… did you shower yet today?”

  Obviously not.

  Constant Vigilance™ doesn’t take bathroom breaks.

  In terms of Constant Vigilance™,
best thing that ever happened to me was moving into our last house in the Logan Square neighborhood of the city. After we’d been there a couple of days, I noticed all kinds of detritus in the breezeway between my garage and back fence. At first I was pissed off, thinking, “So I’ve moved into yet another throw-our-McDonald’s-bags-into-your-yard kind of place, have I? We’ll just see about THAT.”

  While I stomped around picking everything up, I eventually realized that due to a heavy wind, this was just overspill from the construction site next door. What blew in were documents the neighbors had left behind.

  As I examined them, I solved the mystery of why no one wanted to rent my pretty house with the huge transom windows. Turns out the vacated-as-of-November-1 place next door wasn’t a cute, vintage apartment building. Rather it was a fifty-unit SRO [Single room occupancy, guaranteed to drop property values for a three-block radius.]… essentially a transient hotel. No wonder the apartment broker remarked on how happy she was that the place next door was going condo.

  Because I’m all about urban archeology, I scooped up the wet pile of garbage, drying out the pieces on paper towels lining my counters. And, oh, the pay dirt I unearthed!

  I found a letter to an ex-resident from the State Unemployment Office explaining that one cannot file for unemployment if one has never actually held a job. [Ooh, burn!]

  Another piece was a bill for six months of car insurance for thirty-six dollars. Thirty-six dollars. For six months. Seriously. What the hell were they driving? A rickshaw? Conestoga wagon? One of those old-fashioned bikes with the enormous front tire piloted exclusively by he-men sporting handlebar mustaches, wearing leotards, and carrying anvils?

  I discovered programs from gang members’ funerals and receipts for inmate commissary purchases in the Cook County Department of Corrections. [Ask me how much a pack of Kools cost in 1997 at Cook County lockup because I totally know.] Plus there were tons and tons of those tiny zippy plastic bags that my creative girlfriends use to separate beads for when they do crafts. (Clearly the ex-neighbors were running a jewelry-making business.)

  Then I found a letter that was like winning the Gladys Kravitz Nosy Neighbor Memorial Sweepstakes. Here’s what it said:

  Dear Pat,

  Hey, baby! How are you today! I hope and pray that you and the kids are fine.

  Well, this is one of those situations I just won’t be able to slick my way out of… and [only] by chance if I did. By any means, my mind would still be at a blank. Meaning that you’re there and whether [I’m] in here or out there you and the family is still there. But I ain’t mad at ya! Believe me when I say that OK, baby, I’m sorry I took so long writing you. But I just had to find someone—myself. [I’m going to award him a couple of bonus points here for self-awareness.] And now that I have done that, whatever life throws at me, I can catch it and run with it.

  Yes, I’ve gained weight [Oh, honey, who hasn’t?] and gotten my health up, smiling and laughing now. But I shouldn’t have been so hard-headed. And had to come here to do this. I blame no one but myself for that. If by any chance I lose you or my family, I don’t blame you. Please, please don’t spin a brother. I can take it in the raw if you’re with someone else or talking about getting with someone else, I won’t trip. [This is where I start to feel sorry for him.]

  Stop!! Before responding, play it like it’s two thirty in the morning and me and you are having one of those “honesty nights.” You do remember that I could be honest with you. I’ve never lied to you during one of those honest nights. So let’s play like we are having one… starting now.

  Patricia, I love ya, I’ll always love ya. I miss my family and everything. I can’t imagine myself without you. But you really want to ask me the thousand dollar question. Have I been conversing with Natalie and Regina or Kimberley? Right. You don’t have to say it, I know. Well, Kimberley asked me to call her about twenty times but I didn’t… until today. Regina and I talked about two or three times. Nat I haven’t called but Moms relays a message to Ronnell for me, both talking the same old county-jail-shit about how they’re going to be there for a brother when I get out. I really don’t want to hear that, let alone their voices. But a [very bad word]’s here and sometimes I get BORED. I’d rather talk to you but at the same time, I don’t want to be bothering you too much either… I ain’t new to this but true to this. [I am so stealing this line.]

  I know how it is when a [very, very bad word] gets LOCKED THE FUCK UP. His ass is out and motherfuckers want to spin ya ass like a top. Well, I ain’t about to get dizzy. [Again, I feel this is a bit profound. He’s beginning to win me over.] My dizzy days are OVER… so I ask you now to be real with me and level with me about your life now.

  The last thing I need is for my wife [Hold the damn phone! Wife? WIFE? Pat is your WIFE? So what you’re saying is that instead of writing to your wife, you choose to converse with Regina, Nat, and Next Door first? You had me and then you lost me.] to be lying to me because she feels it’s the right thing to do. Not in this case it ain’t. Hey, baby, I’ll always love ya! But if there’s another, let me move on…

  That’s where the first page ended. Fletch arrived home to find me scaling the construction Dumpster with my good whacking shovel in search of the second page because I couldn’t stand not knowing what happened next.

  Yes.

  That was well received.

  Not only did Fletch forbid me from additional adventures in urban archeology, but he made me store my shovel in the garage before washing my hands no less than six times.

  At his behest, I grudgingly promised to hang up my (figurative) binoculars because we were in a nice house and an up-and-coming neighborhood and he didn’t want me to alienate myself exactly like everywhere else we ever lived.

  “Fine,” I replied. “Then I’ll just watch television.” [We all know how that turned out.]

  Unfortunately for those of us in the Gladys Kravitz Anonymous Twelve-Step Program, this proved difficult not because I lacked the willpower, but because we lived in such tight quarters with the house to the right. Our homes were so close we could hear our neighbors sneeze and the ding of their microwave when their Orville Redenbacher Kettle Corn finished popping. We heard them yawning and watching American Idol and running their dishwasher. And the night one of them had a bad egg salad sandwich?

  Let’s just say there’s some stuff you can’t unhear.

  Our balconies were practically on top of each other with nothing between us but two iron porch rails and a three-foot strip of sidewalk. Such was our proximity that I could identify every legume in their three-bean salad picnic suppers.

  Many of our windows lined up with those next door, so the first thing I did upon move-in was to hang completely opaque blinds because I’m a big, fat hypocrite who believes in spying but not being spied upon. [I said it so you don’t have to.] However, we had a particularly large set of transom windows over the stairway in that house and they couldn’t be covered with anything that wasn’t custom-made. We immediately sought out estimates on drapes because my desire to not be seen without pants outweighed my thirst for information.

  Due to excessive width and the height, we’d have to pay over a thousand dollars to insure no one saw my underwear as I dashed from the bathroom to the bedroom. I wasn’t about to drop that kind of cash on a rental home, so I spent seventy bucks on a pink terry-cloth robe from L.L. Bean. Monogrammed and everything! Problem solved, problem staying solved… or so I thought.

  Here’s the thing… if you can see into my house, I can also see into yours. That’s how regular glass works. Why the sight of me zipping past in a blur of damp hair and shame didn’t spur some flash of realization with the folks next door, I’ll never know. Ergo, I felt… somewhat justified in seeing snatches of their lives, rationalizing if they didn’t want me serving witness, they’d close their blinds. I mean, all I was doing was climbing my stairs—no crime in that, yes?

  At first, the window into their home office was a lot like watchi
ng the boring bits of Big Brother, only with a lot fewer camera angles and no Power of Veto competitions. Due to our proximity, I could read the titles of the books on the shelves. I could tell whether or not the wife had dabbed on zit cream. Like it or not, their world was my (voyeuristic) oyster.

  Gazing into the fishbowl of their lives was kind of what I’d expected back in the day when I ordered the sea monkeys advertised in my Archie comic books, except they didn’t run around in crowns carrying scepters. [Anyone else still pissed off about the whole sea monkey thing? They were supposed to hang out in front of their castle and read and be our friends, but all they did was flit about in a bowl of brackish water.] The best part was that I wasn’t spying so much as simply walking from the bedroom to the bathroom—repeatedly—and I was able to keep my promise to Fletch. Hey, I’m not spying! I just happen to need to brush my teeth thirty times a day!

  A while after we moved in, they rearranged the room and suddenly I could see what was on their computer monitor, too. Oh, boy! Now it’s getting good, I thought.

  The wife was a big fan of Facebook and Zappos and LOLCats. She spent an awful lot of time uploading photos of her dog who had a shockingly large number of embroidered sweatshirts. Every time we saw Pippen, a highly strung Bouvier des Flanders, in the yard with a fresh haircut and a new shirt, Fletch would whisper, “How badly does she want a baby?”

  As for the husband’s viewing pleasure?

  That’s where it got troubling, bless his XXX-rated heart.

  The (thankfully) odd part is he never seemed to be… um, enjoying [If you know what I mean. And if you don’t know what I mean, please don’t make me explain it.] all the bare-bottomed babes on his screen. His actions were never untoward. Rather, he’d simply click through page after page of GIFs for hours in a highly clinical manner, almost as if he were sorting, rather than ogling. He had all the passion of a gynecologist flipping through a bunch of pap smear results. I felt oddly comforted by this.