I weeded the yard around 5 a.m. to avoid the amused eyes of the neighbors, a thirtyish couple that employed lawn specialists, and smirked hello each time they saw my push mower. I tried to ignore them but the woman, a pin thin lawyer, insisted on waving until I ceded a nod.
Besides the intrusive neighbors, I had cat problems. Their cats. My vegetable beds were their toilet. I dropped sharp-toothed holly branches around the arugula and onions, but the cats daintily evaded the prickly edges with a squatting technique that deposited fecal matter without self-injury. Pooping in soft warm soil was bred in the bone. It made complete sense. What didn’t make sense was the constant baby talk the two highly educated professionals indulged in with the cats. Maybe Emily Dickinson or the immorality of Israeli policy in Gaza was discussed inside the home, but outside it was all cat talk. He ran a hedge fund, and she worked for the same corporation. An elderly neighbor that visited everyone on the block reported back that they were married to other people when they met. They were self-absorbed— not even a glass of water was offered at their home, she added, as I refreshed the plate of homemade cookies.
The houses in our neighborhood stood cheek to jowl; in the 1890s it was apparently the fashion to build right up to the property line. I heard every word uttered in that backyard. We all did because the yards were so close. My neighbors on the other side tended to whisper, and still, they recently hired a stonemason to build a thick wall. Luckily the houses were sited for privacy, so windows did not look into windows, and front porches hid front doors. But the large yards were practically shared space, as only cedar fencing and shrubs separated one from the other.
The evening performance usually started with the husband whistling for the cats to come in. (He was probably a dog owner before he married his wife.) The cats never responded to his incredibly annoying whistle and instead stayed parked on my deck until I tiptoed out. The back door automatically slammed shut so I had to quietly close it and pick up the cats. I’d carry the two big tabbies, like wet towels in my arms, and set them down at the fence line. They usually stared at me and licked themselves as their lord and master whistled. If I was lucky, after a minute or two, they climbed up the old lilac, leapt over the fence, and were welcomed on the other side with wild cries of joy and relief.
I didn’t understand why the neighbors let the cats out all day if they were worried about their return. My cats lounged safely inside the living room window and ran no risk of being snatched by a deviant scouring nice neighborhoods for cats to sell to labs.
Summers I liked to sit on my deck and enjoy the sunset with a drink, usually a screwdriver. But if the neighbors were home, the baby talk with the cats would ruin the mood. I’d hear lots of Mommas sweet little babykins! or What has Colonel Whiskers been up to today? or Doesn’t daddy look good in his new suit? Then comments on how nicely the tabbies walked on the picnic table, or swatted flies, followed by occasional loud cries if one or the other cat seemed to head for my yard. July and August, I got play-by-play accounts late into the night as the neighbors dined al fresco. Besides the cat talk, the Whistler, as I called the neighbor, and his bride just ate and drank. Sometimes a cell phone rang, and I heard work related conversations, mostly one-word back and forths. Otherwise when they talked to each other it was in Catlish.
I was grateful they didn’t reproduce and hire an immigrant woman, at a cut rate, to raise their child; I’d be subjected to a foreign language all day as the lonely woman tried to maintain her sanity by speaking her mother tongue with the baby. Followed by a good dose of cat talk once the couple returned in the evening.
One morning, as I pulled fennel volunteers from the herb garden, I considered other scenarios— a bunch of frat boys, for example, would surely make worse neighbors.
I should be grateful for what I had I reminded myself. Weeding sharpened my thinking. I was on all fours in the farthest reach of the yard—a sunny spot where the garage served as a sound barrier. I made the mistake of planting fennel because it attracted bees, masses of them, but I didn’t anticipate fennel’s insane ability to reseed. I was determined to pull out every last seedling. I’d cut down the main stem the day before with my Hori knife and spent a good amount of time maneuvering out the bulb and roots. It was satisfying to see the large hole left behind. I’d find something else to plug in later.
Pulling the bronze fennel seedlings reminded me of plucking a chicken. Something I often saw my mother do that turned me into a vegetarian at age eight. The memory of the headless prickly chicken corpse made me flinch. Humans were gross. Earth would be better off if a virus culled the entire human race. I pulled a handful of seedlings and tossed them into a bucket. Then I heard an odd sound.
At first, I assumed it was an animal, a raccoon, or an opossum. I heard it again at a higher register and stood up. I checked around the garage, but I didn’t see anything. I walked over to the cedar fence that separated my property from that of the neighbors. I seemed to hear it again—not a moan exactly but something like it, then a thud followed by a long release of air. I tiptoed over to my safe area at the fence. It was a spot where the boards had shrunk enough for me to get a look into the cattery, but it was camouflaged by a rhodie on their side. They couldn’t see me, but I had a clear view of a lovely tulip tree as well as any activity in their yard.
The Whistler, my pet name for the man, was stretched out on the ground in his pajamas and the woman, in an oversized robe, battered him with a cement gnome she gripped by the head with red lacquered fingernails. She used the gnome like a meat tenderizer. The Whistler let out the teeniest little moan and it was over. She stopped for a long minute, dropped the gnome, and then walked toward the house. (I was amazed those spindly arms of hers could even pick up the concrete gnome.)
I waited in a crouching position for her to come back, but she didn’t. The cats stopped by, maybe to check out why the Whistler wasn’t whistling; the one with the torn ear sat on his chest, the other one meowed and wandered off. I heard some kids bike down the alley singing in a loud voice and I got up. I felt oddly exhilarated and in need of a good cup of coffee.
Around 7:45 a.m. I heard her car pull out and I returned to the fence for another look. He was still there and still dead. I took my cup of coffee and sat on the deck. It was garbage day, my favorite day of the week. I liked to hear the trucks in the alley and the men talking as they hoisted the brown yard waste cans. The recycle trucks then rolled up and dumped glass and metal and paper into their back bins. As long as the garbage men kept to their schedule all was right in the world. After they pulled out it was blissfully quiet in the back.
*
Close to noon I saw the gasman on his monthly meter rounds. The meter was located at the back of the house, so I knew when he stopped next door he’d find the Whistler. I imagined the police pounding my door. The lead investigator would ask if I’d seen or heard anything unusual. They’d probably look around the house. I wanted to be ready, so I decided to tidy up the living room and the kitchen. As I picked up the backyard as well, put away the rake and all those black plastic pots from the nursery a black thought hit me. The cops would destroy my garden. The trillium and ferns and Ladyslipper along the fence would not survive steel toed-boots or whatever they wore on their feet.
I went inside the garage and tugged the tarp off my dead husband’s “66 Mustang, then once outside I chucked the plastic covering over the fence. Out in the alley, I pushed their back gate open, and used the tarp to cover the Whistler. I didn’t take much of a look as I did it. I was not one for blood and guts up close. When I disposed of a dead bird, or any corpse, I turned my head as I picked up the body with gardening gloves. I had gardening gloves on now too as I had to retrieve the tacky bloody gnome and shove it under the tarp. I weighed the tarp down with a couple of bricks and arranged the deck furniture so that it blocked a clear view of the body. Back home I hid my gardening gloves in the worm bin just in case.
I made myself a nice lunch and took a hot shower. Nothing happened. No police and she didn’t come back until dark. Around nine p.m. I went to shut the bathroom window that faced their back porch and I saw a flashlight turn on and off. I heard her walk down the side of the house and then drive off. An hour later she returned with what sounded like a man. I sat on the toilet seat, by the window, and listened as lawn furniture was moved and doors were open and shut; but eventually I realized the process might take a while, and I needed my sleep. It was her problem anyway.
I overslept and woke up refreshed. I made an extra hardy breakfast—the kind I usually cooked on Sundays: sausage, eggs, buttered toast, hashed browns—the works. Afterward I checked my viewing spot at the fence. The body, tarp and all, were gone, including the gnome.
I walked out to the front yard to water the roses. It was a glorious morning. As I turned around with the hose, after adjusting the water, she walked down the front steps with her briefcase. She was almost at the bottom when she stopped and turned around. I looked back at her and waved.
#
author bio:
Maria Pascualy lives and writes in a little white house in Tacoma, Washington. Her writing has been published in Columbia Magazine, Pulp, Panoply, Hobo Camp Review, Mulberry Fork Review, Silver Birch Press and Nine Muses.