Guadalupe Street Vignettes: Mary
She had a box of files in her arms when I first met her.
“Hi, I’m Mary,” she said. “I’m moving in. Do you live here?”
I told her I did, at the far end of the parking lot.
She was a small woman; wiry, with bright eyes behind her black rimmed glasses. She was youthful despite the graying of her thick dark hair at the temples. Her face was lively and she kept smiling.
“I’m just moving in upstairs. Is it nice here?”
“It’s pretty good,” I answered. “It can get kind of wild sometimes but it’s mostly quiet.” She nodded her head.
“That’s good. I like quiet. Well I’d better get going. My friends are helping me move. See you around.”
Her apartment was across the yard from my friend Jeff’s place. We all lived in efficiencies in the four small buildings. Students. Veterans. Deaf people. Drug dealers. Security guards. All of us on low or fixed incomes. Getting by. Mary seemed just another face in the parking lot.
***
I heard the shouting as I neared Jeff’s end of the building, a woman yelling profane accusations in rapid fire and then a similar voice answering. I knocked on Jeff’s door and let myself in.
“What’s going on up there?” I asked, motioning towards Mary’s place.
“Oh it’s just the crazy lady. She does that all the time. She’ll go on for hours. I just turn the tv up and drown her out. She’s psycho.”
“Her poor neighbors,” I muttered, thinking of how loud it must be living across the hall or in the apartment below if I could hear her even in Jeff’s place with the tv on.
***
Juan, who lived upstairs from Jeff, did handyman work on the property for the landlord. He was a veteran in his late fifties, living on his payments from the VA and going to culinary arts school. Once he had his degree he hoped to get a job working in a school cafeteria, steady work with the summers off. We were chatting in the parking lot when Mary rode past on her yellow mountain bike. She didn’t have a car. I smiled but she looked right through me and kept riding. Juan snorted in disgust.
“You see that crazy bitch? She started screaming at me while I was watering the plants last week. She said I was always staring at her and wanting to get with her and looking in her windows. I said ‘Lady, you live on the second floor. What am I, up in the trees?’ and she started swearing and telling me to fuck off. I didn’t do anything but every time she sees me now she starts coming at me. If I see her coming I just get inside. I don’t need that shit. I hear her at night over there, yelling. She’s crazy. The girl in the apartment across from her is moving out. Says she can’t take it living there.”
***
My apartment was one of two second-floor end units. Emily lived across the landing. She was lovely, a hip and groovy graphic design student. We shared a view of the street, the oak tree and the dumpster.
I was reading with the window open when I heard singing, then a conversation approaching from the parking lot.
“Oh Ann, it must be so hard for you. I mean, I really understand. It’s so hard walking on broken glass then walking around like you’re not bleeding.”
It was Mary, taking her white bag of garbage to the dumpster. No one was with her. She wasn’t on the phone. She hardly drew a breath between thoughts. She muttered a few things I couldn’t hear as she tossed the bag into the skip but then it continued as she started back down the lot.
“Yes, it is a lovely day, isn’t it?” She laughed, high and fast.
“Oh Stephen,” she said brightly, “I found your dead friend. Yes, he’s in the dumpster.” And then she was out of earshot.
***
Sirens and the phone ringing woke me up in the dark. It was Jeff.
“There might be a gas leak. Get your clothes on incase the fire department clears us out. I’ll call you back when I know what’s going on.”
Looking out the side window, I could see the flashing lights of the fire truck and an ambulance further down the lot. Two squad cars were parked at an angle behind it, their lights flashing, too. Colors bounced off the walls and the cars. I pulled on some clothes and was about to go out the door when the phone rang again.
“Everything’s ok,” Jeff said. I could hear Emily’s door open and I opened mine to find her in her pajamas looking bewildered.
“I’ll fill you in in a minute,” I said quietly, away from the receiver, then mouthed “Jeff” and pointed at the phone. She nodded and waited.
“So what’s going on?” I asked.
“It was the crazy lady. She started yelling that she could smell gas and was banging on doors. I could hear her so I opened my door and there was a really strong gas smell so I called 911. Everything was fine outside but when the firemen got up to her apartment they found she had all the burners on the stove going plus the oven. Now the cops have got her in the ambulance and they’ll take her away again for a little while.”
“Again?” I asked.
“Oh yeah. The cops are here pretty regularly for her. She’ll be back in a few days. So everything’s good. Go back to bed.”
I closed my phone and looked at Emily.
“It was Mary. She turned on all the gas in her apartment and was screaming that she could smell gas.”
“Whoa,” Emily said. “Ya know, I hear her talking to herself and she yelled at me once when I was getting my mail.” I told her about Juan’s experience and what I had overheard at the dumpster. We both gave a shiver and said goodnight.
***
“The crazy lady was here this afternoon,” Jeff said as I walked in.
“What did she want?”I asked, handing him a slice of pizza and a napkin which he dropped.
“She knocked on my door to thank me for calling the fire department. She said she was really scared about the gas smell.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said ‘Well ma’m, smelling gas means something is wrong so we had to take it seriously and call the fire department.’ She agreed and said it was a good idea. I waited for her to go but she just stood in the doorway. Then she said, ‘I’m feeling a little anxious about going back upstairs.’ I said it was a nice day and maybe she should enjoy the sunshine outside. She looked at me and said, ‘Oh, you have cable. I don’t have cable. Maybe I could come in watch tv with you for a while.”
“And what did you say to that?” I asked, handing him another slice of pizza.
“I told her that probably wasn’t a good idea. She asked why and I said ‘well, ma’m, you’re a single lady and I’m a single man. It just wouldn’t be right to be alone together. You could accuse me of all sorts of things and I don’t want to put either of us in that situation.’ She nodded. Said she understood but then said she really liked that show that was on right now. I kind of nodded my head and said I bet they have cable at the state hospital. She said ‘Yeah, they do.’ Finally she left.”
“Jeffrey, you actually said that to her?” I exclaimed. He smiled at me over his third piece of pizza.
“You’re as crazy as she is.”
***
Several months later, my fiancé moved in with me. He would go outside to have a cigarette so I clued him in about Mary and pointed her out from a distance. I made him promise to get out of sight if he saw her coming.
When I got home from work one night he had a story to tell me.
“The weirdest thing happened. I had popped down to Jeff’s to borrow the bike and was adjusting the seat inside then there was a knock on the door. It was that Mary lady. I had only been there for thirty seconds so she must have seen me go in and came right down. She thought I had moved in and she wanted to welcome me to the neighborhood by handing me a cold can of Guinness. She said it was left over from a party she had had.” My heart began to race.
“You didn’t drink it, did you?”
“No. I put it in the fridge to show you.”
“Please don’t drink it, babe.” Asking an Englishman not to drink a cold Guinness was asking a considerable amount of restraint.
“I know it’s an unopened can but let’s not tempt fate.”
I don’t know why but we didn’t immediately throw the can away. It stayed in the back of the fridge until we cleaned out the apartment to move.
Every time we pass the old parking lot entrance, we automatically look in. Once there was a squad car in a familiar spot.
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