“Nice shot,” I say. My daughter smiles.
The garage across the alley opens. I fetch the ball and congregate with my daughter in our little alley driveway. I put my arm around her shoulders and we are safely out of harm’s way as the car backs toward us.
We wave to the pretty woman behind the wheel as she proceeds on her way. She waves back, smiling. This is the extent of our relationship, she having moved in with her husband over a year ago. I always thought to take them a housewarming gift but could never bring myself to do it, and now the appropriate window of time for such a gesture has expired.
An awkward sense creeps over me and I wonder for the millionth time if she knows anything about the tragic events that transpired in her house before they moved in.
• • •
I got to know Dave, who’d lived there before, pretty well during the few years we were acquainted. Casually meeting outside our garages in the alley, we realized that we both surfed and worked in the same industry. Still, our promises to go surfing together or for him to come over and check out my video editing system always seemed to fall through.
I met his wife, Mary, too. She was lovely and outgoing, athletic and funny. She was the one who invited me in from the alley one Friday evening. I had just come home from work and she waved me over to check out their remodeled kitchen.
We had a beer and laughed and joked, his eyes twinkling, his long hair unapologetic. He reflected the spirit of a free and easy soul – an artist. Someone it would be easy to call friend. He was sincere, listened, shuffled his flip-flops and nodded as we discussed their remodel, houses in general, the Middle East crisis and gas prices. Mary, too, was articulate and bright – the two of them components of what appeared to be a strong, happy couple.
Mary’s teenage daughter from a previous relationship came downstairs, and I met her briefly. She was beautiful and polite, a wonderful addition to a little family in a charming home, making their way through life.
• • •
A month or two later, my wife and I were at a neighborhood party. It was raining on and off, so everybody mingled inside.
I had gotten into a conversation with a Rodney Dangerfield type who lived around the corner.
“The guy down the street … killed himself,” he said in passing.
“What?” I asked, suddenly paying more attention, diverting the conversation.
“Who down the street killed themselves?”
“You didn’t hear about that?” he said. “Oh, yeah, Dave down there slit his own throat yesterday.”
Sadness and horror washed over me as I remembered Dave’s face.
“What are you talking about?” I said. “Why would he do that?”
“Got himself in a pickle and couldn’t see a way out – the guy was a loser.”
“Shut up,” I said, not able or wanting to believe it. “That sounds like a bunch of neighborhood rumor garbage. Who’s passing that around?”
I was disgusted, sad, wanted to hit the guy I was talking to, as if that could erase what had just come out of his mouth. Maybe it was his nonchalance.
Whatever the circumstances, the simple fact that my friendly acquaintance across the alley had found himself in a situation so dire that he killed himself in such an awful way – not to mention all of the other people he forever touched – left me sick with sorrow.
I found my wife and we left the party, walking home through the rain.
I saw Mary in her garage across the alley a few days later. Dave was still in evidence behind her: his surfboards, bike, tools on the workbench. She tried to smile, the poor woman’s pretty face a torn landscape. I tried to smile too as we met outside her garage.
Without a word we hugged. I’ll never forget how she shook as she cried; a booming hollow shell. With all of my heart I wished there was something I could do – or maybe could have done. But of course it didn’t matter anymore at that point.
Dave really was gone.
• • •
“What are you looking at?”
My daughter is squinting up at me, watching me as I watch the new neighbor’s car turn out of the alley and disappear.
“I was just thinking,” I say. “We really need to take something over to those new neighbors, welcome them to the neighborhood.”
My daughter looks up at me, her head cocked to the side like a puppy that’s just heard a funny whistle. “They’re not new,” she says. “They’ve lived there for like … seven years!”
“Only about one,” I say, smiling at my daughter as she grabs the ball away.
“No,” she says. “At least two or five. And that’s not new.”
I look at Dave’s old garage and for a moment I see him standing there. I hear my daughter serve, the ball bouncing, and realize there’s no winning an argument with a 6-year-old.
