The Neighbors

The Neighbors (written by Judy Todd in September and October 2011)

During the last quarter of the 20th century, I lived in Pacific Palisades. It was just beginning to go upscale when I moved in on New Year’s Eve, 1975 with my 18-month-old daughter. My neighborhood was then composed of small tract houses that were thrown up after World War II to house aerospace and other workers. My particular house had been built in the 1920s as a beach house or shack. At 800 square feet on a 40x70 foot lot, it was the smallest house in Pacific Palisades. I know because I once checked the property tax rolls.

It was all I could afford. I had sold my half of a flat in London, had some other savings, borrowed $1,000 from my parents and smaller amounts from every friend I had for the 20% down payment. I went to Glendale Federal Savings and Loan for the mortgage, as S & Ls were the only source of mortgages in those days. They paid 4.5% on savings accounts and lent mortgages for 5.5%. My first year in the house I had no social life and scrimped and saved and managed to pay everyone back in that time.

When I was growing up, we moved every year or two, and I never wanted to move again. After my father died, my mother stayed put for two dozen years until she died. I stayed in my Palisades house until my older daughter, Kelly, was in graduate school, though I added to it here and there until it was quite a large house.

It was an odd little house. It was built into the side of a ravine that extended deeply down behind my house and the neighbors. As a result, the back yard was several feet lower than the front yard. There was a large crawl space at the back of the house, one that one could stand in, and plumbers and electricians were always thrilled to see it. Eventually, I turned that crawl space into a little two room (plus bath and kitchenette) apartment. The rent helped, since I was a single mom for most of those years.

I walked to town almost every day to Sav-On or the grocery store or for ice cream. As a result, I got to know quite a few of the neighbors between my place and town. A tall, white-haired man with military bearing was often sitting down on his lawn, carefully cutting it with a pair of scissors. He seemed a little fierce, so I usually just nodded at him. One day he no longer appeared and the yard got ratty. I saw his pale, mild wife and said how sorry I was for her loss. She told me she missed him terribly and that he was the best husband possible, always taking such good care of her. “Why, even the night before he died,” she said, “I had seen a car I really liked, a yellow Cadillac, and I couldn’t get it out of my mind, and when we went to bed, he said, ‘Let’s go buy you that yellow Cadillac tomorrow.’ But in the morning, I woke up and there he was beside me, dead.”

Across the street and around the corner stood a small Christian church, an evangelical, fundamentalist branch. For the first few years, it was small and quiet, bur for reasons I never understood it began to grow. The liberal, tolerant Methodist church up the street from it shrank and got by on its core congregation of ten old ladies because it had owned a great deal of nearby property for years and sold it as needed. Young people began flocking to the fundamentalist church, and I believe this change presaged the huge growth of fundamentalist Christian religions that in the 21st century have yanked the Republican party far to the right. 

This church had a community service called “Moms Morning Out” every Monday, and you could drop your toddler off there for a couple of hours for free. With my younger daughter, Emily, I took advantage of this service several times, even though I am an atheist. Perhaps this kind of family support is what helped this church grow, though the Methodists had a preschool and a children’s choir and other services as well.

This church owned the house across the street and three houses up from me, and there it housed their youth ministers, usually an attractive young man with a young stay-at-home wife and several children. One such family had a very ill two-year-old daughter who gradually could not sit up, and her mother pulled her everywhere in a little pillowed wagon. This poor child died after a couple of weeks in the hospital, and when I went to her funeral, kindly women firmly took my toddler away from me and provided free childcare during the service. This family moved away or were transferred soon afterwards.

The youth minister family I remember best was the Waggoners. They had four children, the eldest, Paul, being Emily’s age. The mother, Gina, was a very pretty and, to me, very young woman who was always cheerful, smiling, and kind. Emily liked to play at Paul’s house, and several times I took advantage of Gina’s generosity and left Emily with her when I had some sort of sudden obligation or work event. One day, when she was 6 or 7, Emily came home from their house very upset and in tears. When I asked why, she said because we were going to hell because we didn’t believe in Jesus. It took me a while to convince her that some people believe that, but that doesn’t mean it is true, and lots of people (including her mother) don’t believe that.

Directly across the street from us lived the Moreland family, a single mother and four children. I rarely saw the mother, but once I spoke with her about her nice children, and she exclaimed, “I can’t WAIT for them to grow up and get out of the house!” When her youngest daughter, Joaun, was about 13, the mother gradually moved out, leaving the four kids to finish growing up on their own. Joaun, a painfully self-conscious child, occasionally baby sat for me, and I taught her to drive, since I consider it an essential life skill and it was clear that no other adult was going to do it. 

The middle boys got a large, young dog, and let it romp around their front yard. As seemed inevitable, it dashed into the street and was hit by a car, leaving it crumpled and screaming. The boys drove off with it and returned without it. Later I asked about it, and they said they had had to have it put down because they couldn’t afford the vet bill to treat it. I expressed sympathy on their loss and sadness, and they seemed surprised, as those Moreland children always did, to hear a kind remark rather than criticism.

As they turned 18, each child left the scene, except for James, the oldest boy, who stayed in the house and tried to be a rock star and occasionally walked around the neighborhood in a dress. He married and brought to the house a petite, young blond woman, and he was abusive towards her, screaming at her in their front yard and threatening to do various things to her. When I heard him, I would go stand in my front yard and openly watch, so that he would regain control of himself, or to call the police if he didn’t. 

For weeks I watched carefully for James to depart while the young woman stayed home, something that rarely occurred, and I went over and knocked on the door. She answered the door with a stricken look, and before I could say anything, she began to apologize for causing disturbances and to make excuses for James. I told her that I had not come to complain, but to explain to her that no one should be treated the way James treated her, that he is dangerous, that she needs to get away safely, that she can come to my house any time of the day or night, etc., etc., all the right stuff to say to abused women. She seemed to listen, and a few weeks later she left him. She telephoned me to tell me that she had, and sobbing, asked, “Will you check on James for me and make sure he is OK?”

Some months later, maybe a year even, three very well dressed attorneys came to interview me about James and those events. It was hard for me to tell what they really wanted, but I finally concluded that the young woman was not just any young woman and that she was trying to divorce James in such a way that he could not be connected to her, as if the marriage had never existed. I also think maybe they wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to go to the tabloids. I did not want to hurt either James or the young woman, and tried to tell them the simple truth. It turned out that the young woman was Courtney Love, whom I had never heard of, but saw later that she had quite a successful rock career, though her life remained difficult.

After James and Courtney divorced, the little postwar house across the street was sold and torn down. In one day a couple of tractors obliterated that house and all its associated pain and drama. A very wealthy couple from an Asian country built a huge, architecturally striking house in its place, and practically hid in there, although my mother did manage to back her car into their parked Jaguar and so we were all forced to meet. Mom felt terrible, but the couple were nice about it, and insurance took care of it.

Next door to the Morelands, on the north side, lived an older woman alone. One year when I baked Christmas cookies and took some to all the neighbors, she in return cut me a slice of some sort of ethnic loaf filled with dried fruit and nuts. At first I thought she was being ungenerous in cutting me one narrow slice, but it proved to be incredibly rich and one only needed a bite or two to feel full. Eventually she wandered about her front yard naked, and she was put in a home.

On the south side of the Morelands lived an older retired couple. Harry had been an engineer or aerospace worker, and he was very helpful to me and other neighbors, fixing things and lending tools, etc. His wife Lillian was sweet and warm, but often seemed a little flustered. She told me that she had had a little girl with a heart defect and that she had held her in her arms when her heart burst and she died at age four. It had been 50 years, and she still thought about her every day. She had another daughter, Barbara, a middle aged woman who lived nearby and frequently looked in on her parents. Lillian sewed little purses, shopping bags, and pot holders from scraps of cloth, and she and Barbara organized garage sales about once a month. I always bought a few things for little gifts. Perhaps this was how they made ends meet. 

Eventually, Harry developed Alzheimer’s, and Lillian constantly asked me questions about what she should do. I gave her what guidance I could, but I wish I could have helped more. Once I needed to borrow their dolly, as I had done at times before, and Harry was at home alone. I explained that I was their neighbor come to borrow their dolly, that Lillian had said it was OK and I would bring it back right away. Poor Harry looked at me as if he were wondering why this crazy woman was robbing him in broad daylight. I brought it back right away and tried to reassure him that I had not stolen it, but he had forgotten I’d taken it and I just confused him further. 

After a few years Harry died, and Lillian and Barbara did some traveling together. But Lillian’s health steadily deteriorated, and one day an ambulance was at her house. I knew the minute Barbara walked up to my front door that she was there to tell me her mother had died. We cried together. Then that house was sold and remodeled.

On our south side resided a silent UCLA geology professor, his stay-at-home wife, Ellen, and their two teenage sons. When the boys were young teens, I’d have water gun fights with them over the back fence. After they left home at age 18, it seemed that they never came to visit their parents; perhaps they had moved out of state. I don’t know, because by then, Ellen wasn’t speaking to me. I had added a second story to my house and blocked their mountain view, and she didn’t forgive me for that. She even snubbed my baby! I was pushing little Emily in her stroller past their house, and Em smiled and waved and made greeting noises to Ellen, and Ellen refused to respond. I think something bad must have happened in their lives around then, either to them financially or perhaps an illness of one of their sons or grandchildren -- something. They seemed very sad, and once, when she finally began speaking to me again, she mentioned that they owned some land in a forest where they had planned to retire, but that was not to be. They were the only neighbors who were there when I moved in and still there when I finally sold my house and left the Palisades.

Our next door neighbor to the north was a single middle aged man, Mr. Green, with adult children whom we never saw. In the middle of one night I heard what I thought was someone breaking into Mr. Green’s house. I got my flashlight to look, before calling the police, because I had been fooled by night noises before, once when I thought people were playing in the kiddie pool in the middle of the night and found a family of raccoons in the pool. I was on my deck above Mr. Green’s house, and I creeped out and suddenly turned my flashlight on towards the sounds. A male voice immediately cried, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” Turns out it was Mr. Green’s son trying to check on his father, and I scared him good.

For some reason, Mr. Green wanted to move and sold his house to a young couple with a baby daughter, a little younger than Emily. He was a chiropractor, and she was a marriage counselor. They made pleasant, friendly neighbors, and our children played together at times. When my then-husband left me for an older woman, I confided to Nina what had happened, and she said, “I can tell you how to get him back.” When I asked how, she described a plan that I realized would work and then I realized I didn’t WANT him back. 

North of our next door neighbor a couple of houses lived Monty, a tall old man with white bushy mustaches, and his sickly wife, who had grown a wonderful cactus garden in their front yard. I also had an extensive cactus collection at the time (actually a cactus and succulent collection) in pots, and they offered me cuttings. Some people called my house the donkey tail house, because I had those fantastic succulents growing all over my front porch. I also had a collection of Mexican pottery parrots about the front porch and inside my house, and some people referred to my house as the parrot house. I wish I had gotten to know Monty better, because other neighbors told me that he had lived a very adventurous life and had great stories to tell.

A couple houses still further north, lived a disturbed woman with small dogs, “Teeny” and “Tiny.” She would walk the dogs and let Kelly play with them. Sometimes she would lay down on the sidewalk in one of her unusual outfits and let the dogs crawl all over her, while she kissed them and cooed at them. She talked a great deal, but it was difficult to follow her reasoning or story line. From somewhere she had some money, and one day she told me she wanted to give it all away. Yet one night the police brought her home because they had caught her “stealing” from the Good Will truck. As far as I knew, she had no children, but eventually a young couple showed up and took over her house and apparently institutionalized her. They told me that she had hired them to help her give away her money. Perhaps she did give it all away, and perhaps she became a street person. I just don’t know, and that bothers me.

A young man named Rick bought the house north of her. I remember wondering how such a young man could afford a house in the Palisades, one that he extensively remodeled and enlarged and filled with every electronic gadget then available. He did elaborate Christmas decorating every year, with mechanical figures and a jillion lights, and he usually won the prize for best decorated house. Just storing all that stuff required a big house. For several years, there was no evidence that he dated or had a social life at all. Finally, one year a nice young woman named Chris showed up, eventually moved in, and married Rick. They had a daughter who Emily baby sat. Last I heard they had bought and moved into an even bigger house down the street.

I didn’t know the neighbors south of me very well. There was a couple on another street, highly educated (a lawyer and a professor I recall), whom I knew by sight, but had never talked with. They had tried for years to have a child, and finally in their 40s, they had one. When the baby was a few months old, they came home from shopping, left the baby in the stroller while they went to put away their purchases, each thinking the other was watching the baby. By the time they got back to the baby, it had slipped down and strangled to death on the safety belt. The entire community was shocked and grieved for this couple and their friends rallied round them, but they and their marriage were devastated. Soon after, they sold their house and went their separate ways. I wonder if they managed to recreate meaningful lives for themselves. 

Also south of us were the Fiksdals with their three beautiful blond daughters (they divorced when the youngest was a teen); the socially awkward Schlessingers with their four super bright, socially awkward children; and Susan Brook, a single mom with two kids (she fell in love with a dentist in Oregon and moved to Ashland, though they broke up after that). I sometimes wonder what happened to all of these people, though I make little effort to find out. The oldest Fiksdal daughter is my friend on Facebook; she lives and works in New York City and is married. I think Kelly knows about one of the Schlessinger boys. I lost touch with Susan after she told me her daughter had a brain tumor. Perhaps one can see why I don’t try harder to follow up these stories. 

Oh, lord, I should mention my tenant. She stayed quietly in the little basement apartment for ten years. An odd woman in her 30s, Debbie was a UCLA graduate student, living on student loans. I don’t believe she ever completed her Ph.D. We came to find out she had a major hoarding problem! When I sold my house and she was forced to move out, she left behind a massive mess that had to be cleaned out by a professional company. She had been storing things in boxes stashed into every inch of the crawl space, and she had narrow trails between piles of stuff in her living area. I had not looked too closely at my strange tenant’s habits, so apparently I lived with a fire hazard all those years. What would I have done, if I had known? I felt sorry for Debbie, and she seemed close to a nervous breakdown when she had to move. Perhaps she even had one. Perhaps she became a street person. I try to tell myself that at least she had ten good years of living independently in a safe, tolerant environment that didn’t cost very much. Again, I don’t know, and I don’t think I want to know.

For the last several years I have been living in Seal Beach in a post-war tract that reminds me of Los Angeles in the 1950s, in a house that came with a tall clear plate glass window next to the front door. With the front door open, I have an even better view. I can sit at breakfast, drink my tea, and watch the morning parade of children walking to the elementary school at the end of the block. Now that I’m retired and sit and drink my tea frequently, I have gotten to know these neighbors quite well.

It seems a peaceful, quiet neighborhood from the 1950s, and YET -- there are at least FIVE very disturbed or dysfunctional people living on this little block. The old lady on the corner used to chase her husband with a knife, and it is quite difficult to follow a conversation with her. One house across the street has such disturbed and disturbing people in it that we refer to it as the “dysfunctional family house.” The very first day when they moved in, the two children ran into the middle of the street and started pounding each other while screaming the f word at the top of their lungs. This tradition of abusive, screaming relationships has continued now that they are teenagers and young adults, only now the brawls are at 3 a.m. The lawyer at the end of the street verbally attacks people without provocation. And our next door neighbor on the south is a large, muscular, loud-mouth bully who emotionally abuses his girlfriend and her daughter and screams abuse at anyone who offends him in any way, such as by parking in “his” space in front of his house. 

The peculiar man three doors to the north decided he had had enough of the neighborhood cats using his back yard, so he just up and poisoned them! Neighbors who discovered this reported him to the police, and he freely admitted it, while smiling. Several people lost beloved pets, and this guy didn’t see anything wrong. Another neighbor spray-painted “Kat Killer” in huge letters on his garage, but another neighbor sprayed over it. The district attorney declined to prosecute, much to everyone’s dismay.

But the most disturbing neighbor of all lived right next door to the north for a year around 2003. In October, 2011, he shot nine people, killing eight, including his ex-wife, at a hair salon behind Finbar’s, thus committing the worst mass murder in the history of Orange County. It is creepy to think that I used to have regular conversations with a mass murderer. He seemed an affable, kindly fellow, though simple and not very bright. What was clear was that he absolutely adored his baby son. His wife was a loud, brassy woman with an alcohol problem. He would go to sea for days at a time, and while he was gone, the wife would neglect the baby and have loud drunken parties. They got divorced, and apparently he got custody of the boy, but it seems that she had perhaps stopped drinking or otherwise improved herself and was trying for more custody. There was a court date a couple of days before the shooting.

In addition, a year or two ago, he was involved in an accident at sea, and his personality completely changed, it has been reported. In this accident, he was severely injured, and a woman was killed despite his efforts to save her. He naturally became despondent. It is possible to feel sorry for him, but what he did was so terrible and ruined so many lives. He planned the killings and wore body armor so that he would be OK. It is horrifying and despicable, and yet also sad and pathetic.

Still, it feels like a safe neighborhood, with everyone knowing everyone. Children play in their front yards and ride their bikes around the neighborhood and sell us Girl Scout cookies and go trick-or-treating. I watch them grow up and disappear into junior high. I watch the neighbors walk their dogs that quickly go from limber, playful pups to grizzled, stiff old things that look like I feel. One neighbor -- a true soccer mom, she carried several soccer balls to practice at the school yard for years -- is on her third Rottweiler. I watch the cat population go up and down as coyotes periodically come through. For a few years until he died, I kept an extra watchful eye on an elderly neighbor, making sure he managed to get back inside his house after he tottered out to get his newspaper.  Sometimes I wonder if when I’m gone the neighbors will say, “Remember that old woman in the gray house who used to spy on everyone?”