It started the moment the Allied moving van rolled to a stop in front of his new home and the movers dropped ramp to start their antlike procession.This was when he pulled into the driveway, parked, and, separating from his wife and daughter, instantly marched back to his half of the garage carrying a Black and Decker cordless drill and a bag of screws and hooks.
Within the hour he’d set up his anal lawn-care storage system, with his lawnmower, shovels, rakes, brooms, weed whacker, hand spades, whisks, and seeds and spikes, largest at the entrance to smallest at the rear, all hung on the common wall of our garage.
Of course, I had no idea what he was doing at the time. I’d merely been exercising my neighbourly rights, watching from our porch with coffee in hand on a hot summer morning, as the new guy busied himself with his move — first lugging a screw gun to the back, then (two coffees later on my behalf) the gardening gear that lay waiting for him at the rear of the van. Admittedly, my first impression of him (from appearance alone, I’d thought) was a bad one; as it turned out, it wasn’t just appearance alone, and the impression he’d left was remarkably accurate.
From the beginning he radiated a pseudo-intellectuality, a decadence, that I couldn’t have described at the time — but it was palpable.Tall and pale, he sported a greying Vandyke beard. Thinning brown locks hung over his collar (just a smidgeon, mind you, but it spoke of an intellectually rebellious youth) and dark pouches, the colour of his hair, drooped under his eyes. Your basic endomorph, if that means pear-shaped, he seemed to fill his billowing short-sleeved Arrow shirt — even the nooks and crannies. But this mere physicality — his eccentric choice of moving shirt and strange, bulbous softness — hadn’t swayed my opinion. I know overweight people — smart, fair people — who struggle to find their health.The North American economy, its basic fibre, perpetrates this dilemma, pitching addictive cakes, burgers, and chips in tandem with dangerous diet plans and wonder machines, dangling the promise of rippling abs, tiny waists, and gigantic hooters to make you instantly more loveable in only three easy payments. No. What swayed me was his essence, the way he walked down the moving van’s ramp, unable to control either his gait or the ramp’s bounce under the lightest of loads, like Neil Armstrong trying to corral the grip of a strange new world, and the looks of contempt he gave the movers as they flowed easily down the ramp and past him while bearing the weight of refrigerators, sofas, credenzas.
Of course, that was mere observation, but he fully exposed himself, and his intellectual snobbery, just hours later.
It unfolded like a bad sitcom as Rachel and I hit the heavy bag together in the garage that afternoon. For whatever reason, she liked to go out there every once in a while and flail away (and still does, actually), while Eric wanted no part of it. I never knew whether to be concerned about or proud of this reverse stereotyping, but ultimately I just accepted it because Rachel seemed to have so much fun.And that afternoon started out no different.
“Do I, or don’t I,” she said to me partway through the workout,“float like a butterfly and sting like a bee?”And then, hopping about in her girlish manner, she unloaded a doubled-up left jab, a straight right, and a fluid left hook — surprisingly fast considering the full-sized gloves weighing down her slender arms.
“First of all,” I said, “where did you hear that ‘sting like a bee’ stuff?”
She looked at me, with her head tilted, for about a second. “I dunno. I just heard it, I guess.”
“Okay then. And secondly, you certainly do both of those things. But if I can make a suggestion.” I planted my feet slightly more than shoulders-width apart, the toes of the right in line with the heel of the left.“Shuffling around when you jab is fine, but when you throw the right-left, plant your feet like this — like you couldn’t be knocked over if somebody pushed you.The power comes up through your back leg.”
I threw the second half of the combination, the straight right and left hook, enjoying the abruptness of my fists stopping at the bag, the feeling of density waiting at the end of each punch, the way the bag hiccupped on contact.
Rachel already knew the mechanics of her punches, but overcoming enthusiasm isn’t child’s play. So she tried it again, this time planting, and for a nine-year-old girl (or boy, for that matter) she threw a tremendous combination, smooth and quick, with no hint of looping or awkwardness.Then she looked up at me, all flushed, with strands of hair sticking to her forehead, pretty the way Maddy must have been pretty decades ago, and awaited my approval.
Tears welled in my eyes, stopping just before they spilled out. Of course, this had happened to me before — but not often. Now it’s a common occurrence — a furtive look at a family member, obvious prose, even mediocre movies hold the power to squeeze a few out of me and make me feel as though I’ve become totally unbalanced, but back then it always took something meaningful, something as potent as Eric’s pain or Rachel’s expectations.
“That was perfect, Rach,” I said, my voice sort of shaky; but it didn’t matter.The music blared and we panted from the heat and exertion. I wanted to say more, to tell her just how great I thought she was, but an obtrusive “Halloo” shattered the moment.
I looked toward the garage door and saw only the bottom half of a man — grey flannels and a pair of beige Hush Puppies splayed out in a Chaplinesque stance. Before I could respond, another “Halloo” followed — too quickly, I thought. A loud, tinny palming of the sheet-metal door capped the intrusion.
I looked at Rachel, shrugged, and pushed down the big “stop” button on the boom box with the thumb of my sparring glove.Then I stepped to the door, rolled it up, and stood face to face with Weir for the first time.
No great revelations struck me, just your basic observations — that he looked even pastier up close than he did from a distance and that he had a bent for short-sleeved Arrow shirts (having changed into a different one after the move) — but I knew for certain then that I stood before a man I could never like.
He eyed Rachel and me for a second, his face seemingly impartial, then said, “I hate to interrupt, but your ... activities here are disturbing some of the things I’ve stored in my garage.”
My previous neighbour had mentioned that, too — until I’d apologetically, dutifully, and fully insulated all four walls and scabbed a two-by-four onto the crossbeam holding the bag. He’d never brought the subject up again.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I could have sworn I’d corrected that problem.”
“Perhaps you had — with the person who lived here last. But right now you’re endangering my gardening gear.”
I stepped out of the garage and peeked around to his side. Right in front of me, his Toro Lawn Champ, or whatever, hung half a foot from the floor. Nothing else on the wall, the brooms and such, seemed to hold any real value or breakable properties.
“I don’t want to seem stupid, but why have you hung your lawnmower?” I asked.
“The sweat from the concrete floor,” he responded, looking at me as if I were much more than stupid. “Hanging it keeps moisture from condensing under the casing and getting into the blades’ housing unit.”
“I guess that makes sense,” I said, although his explanation seemed to stretch sensibility. You want to keep your ass off of damp concrete floors — and that’s to keep moisture from getting into your casing and housing unit. Lawnmowers were made to chop up tons of moist vegetation, and I’d seen hundreds sitting on garage floors in my lifetime.
“It makes total sense,” he replied.
I didn’t want trouble, really (although later allegations would imply differently), but the garage was the only place for my heavy bag, and I wanted to address and solve the issues as soon as possible, so I pressed on.
“My garage door was open when you moved in this morning,” I said.“Didn’t you see the bag hanging there at that time?”
“Of course I saw it,” he said, establishing at that moment what would