The Woman Downstairs

(What you're about to read is not a happy story, but it explains my brevity and melancholy over the past few days. I had to write it down to process it, and it felt okay to place here. If you'd rather not read anything sad today, please return to the puppies in yesterday's post.)

Two nights ago, our neighbor died.

She was not old. This was sudden. We've known her for almost ten years through the sounds that come up through the floorboards. She was the woman downstairs, the neighbor whose voices lessons we'd imitate when friends came over, singing arpeggios with the fake vibrato of an opera soprano. The neighbor who hosted Christmas singalongs around her baby grand. Whose Oscar parties we eavesdropped on because they sounded so lively. The neighbor whose coughing we heard each morning. Whose screams we heard sometimes late at night.

10pm, the doorbell. A different neighbor was at our door; two policemen stood behind her. "These gentlemen are wondering if they could go through your fire escape," she said. "No one has heard from her in a few days."

We let the officers into our apartment, moved a cactus plant out of the way so that they could get through the fire escape. Moments later, they came back through the window.

"Can you see her?"
"We can see her. She's lying on the bed."
"Is she okay?"
The cop shook his head and said "We're going to have to break the door down."

We advised them to go through the window; we told them how easy they are to jimmy open. We heard more police outside, shouting to each other to come up the fire escape. One of the cops was afraid to go in the room, not because of what he might find, but because of the dog who sat watch over her.

"My buddy won't go in there because of the dog," one of the cops shouted up the fire escape. His head was poking out of another apartment, the mostly deaf lady who lived next door.

J shouted down that the dog wouldn't hurt them. I poured myself another glass of wine and listened to the sound of doors opening and closing below. Another neighbor woke up, saying he thought he could smell something coming in through the window. J went downstairs to see if everyone was okay. He came back ten minutes later, and told me that our neighbor was dead.

Her glasses were on the bedside table, and a book folded down. She seemed to have passed away while taking a nap.

I had seen her a week before. I told her I hadn't seen her in ages, asked her how she'd been. She told me she was sick for a long, long time, but she was getting better. She looked like hell. But she said she was feeling better.

Neighbors crowded the hall outside her door, biting fingernails, clutching at cardigans. The friend who had alerted the police looked to be in shock, I offered for her to go sit down, have a glass of water or some tea. She shook her head and began to cry. "I should have been a better friend." I gave her a hug and told her she had done all she could.

The deaf lady next door frowned and crossed her arms. "She was just so vibrant." Arrangements were made for the dog, for calling the sister in Atlanta. Efficiency.

They had to leave the body there until someone from the morgue could come pick it up. I went to bed, knowing she was below me, and not knowing if I could sleep, but knowing I had to.

* * *

I dreamt that she was giving a lesson below us. That she was playing her piano as loud as she ever had. That she was singing for life, singing with all her strength. The music swelled up into our apartment, louder, louder until the pictures on the walls rattled. She was living in the music, and more vibrant than ever.

The next day, J told me he had snuck up onto the roof to watch them take her away.

* * *

The birds get confused in the fog. Ingo Schulze wrote a story about it, seagulls diving and swooping between St. Petersburg tower blocks, flying low so that people couldn't pass on the streets.

This morning the pigeons were diving and swooping, low under the fog. Patches of it moved north along the river, floating like ghost ships. I wondered if in that fog the birds sensed something the rest of us couldn't. Something shifting.

* * *

"The music is leaving our building. Soon there won't be any music left."
"We'll just have to make more music than usual. I'll have to get that accordion I’ve been threatening to get."
"And I'll get out my spoons. And a washboard."
"We'll play them as loud as we can."

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.