What The Neighbors Knew
/The feeling when everyone in the neighborhood knows what's going on except you.
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It was one of those gorgeous spring days, so Sam was on his patio enjoying a cold drink and reading through his emails on his phone when he heard it.
“That’s where it happened. Right over there,” said a female voice.
He stood up to see over the hedges a man and woman walking on the sidewalk. She was pointing toward his neighborhood.
Sam usually couldn’t hear the people talking as they walked, jogged and rode their bikes along the path. He only heard them when the speaker was louder than normal and the breeze was blowing toward him. Those conditions were just good enough for him to hear the woman’s voice.
He listened trying to learn more, but they were walking away and he couldn’t overhear the rest of their conversation.
Sam sat down and continued with his drink and his emails, but his curiosity got to him. It was built into him. His inquisitive nature helped him in his job as a financial advisor. He always needed to know what changes were going on in his clients’ lives so he could make adjustments to their accounts. He also needed to know about their personalities so he could press their right buttons when they called complaining their friends’ investments were going up while theirs were going down.
He decided to take a walk down the street to see if there was anything unusual the woman might be talking about; maybe a ribbon of yellow crime tape would be wrapped around a front porch.
Sam didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. The houses were well kept, some lawns were greener than others. Some had bikes in the driveway and a basketball hoop attached to the garage, others had gardens and flowers in pots on the porch.
He came across a woman getting out of a blue Mercedes. She had shoulder-length black hair and was dressed casually in jeans and a light-striped shirt.
“Hi, I’m Sam,” he said as he approached her driveway.
“I’m Susan,” she replied as she sized him up.
He was wearing a t-shirt and baggy shorts. Not making a good first impression, he said to himself.
She was attractive and a little taller than him. He saw that she didn’t have anything on her ring finger, not that he went out of his way to notice that since Lisa had moved in with him two years ago.
“I heard something happened in our neighborhood, but I don’t know what it was,” he said to her. “Have you heard of anything unusual?”
“Oh,” she answered. “That might have been me.”
“What happened?”
“There was a bit of a scene in my front yard,” she said with a slightly embarrassed expression. “I caught my husband cheating, so I put all his clothes in suitcases and when he came home, I threw them at his car.”
She paused for a moment and a slight smile appeared.
“There was some yelling, and the neighbors probably heard it.”
Sam was not expecting that story, and not knowing what to say, replied, “I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” she said. “I’m on my way to my new life.”
“Well, good luck and nice meeting you,” Sam said. “By the way, I’m a financial advisor so if you need any help I’m right down the street and my rates are very competitive.”
“Thanks,” she said, giving him a where-did-that-come-from look.
“By the way,” she said. “Are you the guy who drives that red SUV?”
“Yes, that’s me.”
She nodded and then said bye.
When Sam got home he told Lisa what happened.
“Are you kidding me,” she said with her voice rising. “She’s going through a divorce and you’re hitting her up for business and you’re dressed like your homeless. Geez, Sam.”
“Yea, you’re probably right,” he said. “Not good timing on my part.”
Lisa was good for him that way and he knew it. She could tell him when he was wrong and she did it in a way that stung, but only for a short time.
They went out to the patio to discuss what the woman on the sidewalk said.
“Who do you think she was talking about,” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “In the time I’ve been here, it’s been a pretty quiet neighborhood.”
Lisa had an easy smile, which she often used to reassure the patients who came into the emergency room. The smile is what caught Sam’s attention the first time they met. He had sliced his finger while cutting limes to put into his drink. When he arrived at the hospital with his finger wrapped in paper towels, she was the nurse who walked him to a room where she inspected his finger.
“You’re going to need stitches,” she said. “The doctor is with another patient. She’ll be here in about ten minutes.”
While they waited for the doctor they talked about his job, about her job, about where they lived, the restaurants they liked, the movies they preferred. After the doctor stitched him up, he asked Lisa out. They had dinner the next evening, hit it off and six months later they decided she should move into his house.
It was a good fit for both of them. Lisa and Sam were hard workers. She frequently had long shifts at the hospital and he would often bring work home. They made a conscious effort to set aside time for each other, leaving them little time to spend with their neighbors. The exception was the Lawrence family.
One day Lisa saw the Lawrence’s young son ride his bike into a light pole and take a bad fall. She stopped her car to help him and that’s when she met Larry and Gail Lawrence. They came running when they heard their son screaming and saw Lisa holding his arm. She told the parents she lived two streets away and was heading home when she saw their son crash his bike. She told them she was a nurse, and it looked like he might have broken his arm. She called the emergency room, telling them the boy and his parents would be arriving shortly. Larry and Gail frantically thanked her as they rushed their son into their car and headed to the hospital.
Later that day the Lawrence family showed up at Sam and Lisa’s front door. Little Larry had a cast on his arm. Larry and Gail brought them a bottle of expensive wine and flowers from their garden. After that Lisa and Sam occasionally would run into Larry and Gail for talks about little Larry’s arm and his improving bicycle-riding ability. The conversations usually ended too soon, with someone needing to rush off.
When daylight saving time started, Lisa and Sam decided to take advantage of the longer days with evening walks. They never ran into the Lawrences, but they would see some of their neighbors outside enjoying the end of winter.
On one of those strolls they met a couple who were on a walk of their own. They looked sort of athletic. The woman was wearing shorts, a shirt that said Sport on it and carrying a water bottle. He was wearing a baseball cap, a tank top shirt and sweatpants.
“Hi, how’s it going,” said Sam.
“Good evening,” the woman replied with a smile. “It’s a nice night for a walk.”
“It sure is,” said Sam, as they stopped to talk.
“I’m Sam and this is Lisa.”
“I’m Carol and this is my husband Burt. How are you?”
“Great,” they answered simultaneously.
“Oh, you must be newlyweds,” said Burt. “You answer the same way at the same time.”
As they laughed, Carol said, “We’ve been married 22 years. Sometimes we’ll be talking for five minutes before we realize we’re talking about two different subjects.”
They laughed some more before Lisa jumped in, “We’re significant others.”
After more small talk, Sam decided this would be a good time to ask the question.
“Did you hear of anything unusual happening in the neighborhood?”
They gave him a quizzical look, until he explained what he heard from the woman on the jogging path.
“Well, that might have been us,” said Carol.
“Should we even tell them,” asked Burt.
“Might as well. It really wasn’t our fault,” said Carol.
Turns out Carol and Burt had a run-in with their neighbors last year. The way they told it, the neighbors walked their small dog every day. One morning Carol spied them letting their dog make his deposit on the side of her yard. Carol was annoyed, but didn’t really care because they didn’t use that part of the yard. Burt was angry.
“It’s the principle of it,” he said. “They don’t carry the plastic bags to clean it up.”
Burt came up with the idea of picking up all the poop on his shovel and putting it on the neighbor’s walkway leading to their front door.
“I did it at night, so they’d see it first thing in the morning. What a way to start the day,” he said.
Burt was focused on dumping the contents of his shovel on the walkway and didn’t notice they had a ring camera that’s sensitive to motions. The dog owners saw Burt on the camera near their front door and rushed out of the house. He was waving a golf club and she was yelling that Burt was trespassing on their property. Burt held his shovel up like it was a sword and shouted back that their dog was trespassing on his property. The dog ran out of the house barking at Burt. The yelling and barking were so loud the neighbors started coming out of their homes to see what was going on.
One of the neighbors walked over and angrily told them, “Knock it off you two.”
That’s when Burt and the dog owner both realized they were looking rather foolish fighting over poop. Burt lowered his shovel, the dog owner lowered his golf club. They nodded to each other as if they were declaring a truce and both walked away.
“We can laugh about it now,” said Carol. “But at the time it was really embarrassing.”
“That dog and those neighbors don’t come near our yard anymore,” bragged Burt.
By that time it was getting dark and they were saying bye when Carol asked which house they lived in.
“The fourth one down on the right-hand side,” said Lisa.
“The one with the red SUV,” asked Burt.
“Yup, that’s mine,” said Sam.
As they walked home Lisa asked, “You think they’re the ones?”
“They could be, but I’m not sure. We need to do some more investigating.”
They didn’t need to investigate much longer.
The following week they caught up with the woman Sam heard on the sidewalk talking about the incident. He was sitting on the patio on a Saturday afternoon when he recognized the voice. He jumped up, saw her walking and could hear her talking on the phone.
He yelled to Lisa.
“That’s her! That’s the woman I heard talking about something happening over here.”
They cut through the hedges and walked quickly until they caught up with her.
They waited until she stopped talking on the phone, introduced themselves and proceeded to tell her how Sam had overheard her talking about something happening in the neighborhood.
She told them her name was Sarah and said she knew exactly what they were talking about.
“Oh yes, it happened about six months ago. People are still talking about it. You might be the only ones who don’t know about it,” she said.
“The story goes this guy is driving down the street and he sees these two guys carrying one of those big-screen TVs, so he pulls over and asks them what they’re doing.”
They immediately knew what she was talking about. One day Sam was driving home and noticed two men carrying a TV at the Lawrence’s home. Sam and Lisa didn’t know the Lawrence family had moved.
“He thinks they’re stealing it and yells at them to stop,” said Sarah.
She’s now becoming animated and waving her hands.
“One of the guy’s carrying the TV says he just bought the house last week and he’s moving in. The guy in the SUV says they might be burglars and wants to know if their pick-up in the driveway is filled with stuff they took from the house.”
Sam and Lisa looked at each other.
“The guy calls 9-1-1, gets in his SUV and parks it right in front of the pick-up so it can’t move. It was a red SUV. The police show up with their sirens on and their lights flashing.”
Sam tried to say something, but Sarah wasn’t pausing to let him get a word in.
“The cops think they’ve cornered a couple of burglars. The guys put down the TV, and put up their hands. The guy is trying to explain that he just bought the house. The police are telling him they want to see the paperwork to prove it. The guy says his wife has it, calls her and tells her to bring it over. By now there’s a bunch of people on the street watching what’s going on.”
Sarah then explained the wife arrived with the mortgage papers. The police matched the names on the mortgage with the name on the guy’s driver’s license. The guys went back to carrying the TV into the house. The police talked to the driver of the red SUV and he drove away.
Sam was about to boast that he was the curious guy in the red SUV whose suspicion could have stopped a burglary.
But before he could say anything, she said, “He’s just a nosy guy. He doesn’t even live on this street. What a way to welcome someone to the neighborhood.”
When she finished, Sam thanked her for explaining what happened.
As Sam and Lisa started walking home, he said to her, “I had no idea that’s what people were saying.”
“I remember you telling me the day it happened,” said Lisa. “You were proud of yourself. You were calling yourself the Crime Watch guy.”
“I didn’t think it was a big deal,” he said. “But now it turns out, everyone has been talking about us,” said Sam.
“Hold on,” replied Lisa. “They’ve been talking about the guy in the red SUV. Nobody said anything about me,” she said with a smile.
They returned to their patio, poured a couple of drinks and talked about what had just happened.
They knew as long as they lived there, the neighbors would be referring to him as the nosy neighbor.
“Maybe we should start looking for a new house,” he said.
“Or you should get a new car,” Lisa replied with a giggle.
“But curiosity is good,” he said.
“Nosiness is not,” she responded.
“How are you supposed to tell the difference,” he asked.
“There’s a fine line that separates them,” she said. “It’s just sort of an instinct.”
She tried to give him a reassuring wink. He managed a brief smile. Lisa led him to raise their glasses as if it were a toast. They took a sip and she guided him to a warm kiss. They leaned back in their chairs and closed their eyes. Soon after Sam opened his eyes and wondered what he would do the next time he heard somebody on the other side of the hedges say something interesting.
By Tom Kastanotis
From: United States
Twitter: TKastanotis