Life with the Neighbors, Part 3

  

Part 1 is here

Part 2 is here

We left off here...

The next day I showed up at the house late in the afternoon.  We were staying at my mom's house at this point, I believe, as we waited for her closing in a few days or a week or so.  I used my key and let myself in and went to the nursery to take the crib apart and pack it up. 

As I walked in, I had just the strangest feeling.  I can't quite put it into words, but it was sort of as if the house was not happy.  Sort of like an anxiety or charged feeling hanging in the air.  I think I even said "Hello??" as I walked toward the nursery.  As soon as I got to the doorway and looked in, I knew something was wrong...

...I knew something was wrong, because I could see something not right about the crib from across the room.  On closer inspection, the blankets were sort of heaped on the crib mattress in a bunch, in a way I knew I had not left them.  And the mattress wasn't sitting in the cage of the crib quite the way I was accustomed to seeing it.  I couldn't figure out what I was seeing but I knew something was not right.  I pulled the blankets off the mattress and then the crib sheet. 

I can't vouch for having a perfect memory by any means, but I am quite sure I would have remembered DUCT TAPING my baby's crib mattress to cover up the rips. I also would have remembered that that mattress was old and sad and worn--and definitely not the brand-new one we bought to fit the crib we were given when she was born.  This one was battered and beaten and most assuredly past its prime--worse than a yard sale crib mattress, really.

I was already ratcheted up pretty good anyway, with the imminent move, leaving my home, worrying about traveling with a baby (and my mother), wrapping all these details up by myself.  So the trek from nursery to front door and then straight like a rocket to Wanda's doorstep was quick and with a head full of roiling, pinballing thoughts. Oh, and a crappy old duct-taped crib mattress that probably wasn't even safe anymore, held at arm's length.  I doubt I used the doorbell.  It was more like:

BANG BANG BANG as I rapped on her door with the side of my fist. She opened the door and was clearly utterly, utterly shocked to see me.

"Let's have it. Right now," yeah, not in the mood for small talk that day.  Like I said, I was pretty amped up.

And then she said...and then she said...

"I guess you want the rest of your stuff."

Well, that threw me for a loop.  I turned on my heel and the trip back over to my house was probably even shorter than the one to hers a few moments earlier.  I remember saying, probably shouting, some really bad words and what I remember most of all was opening my front door so hard it slammed back against the wall.  That's when I toured the house.  Remember, there were very few of our belongings still in the house.  The first thing I noticed, and the thing I still remember so clearly, all these years later, was that my clock radio was not in the kitchen.  It was gone.  I had decided to bring it to Knoxville with us and had it there in the kitchen on the counter with the few other things so I would not forget it in the bedroom.  There were also a few other things missing, I think a few tupperware sippy cups or something like that.  Nothing huge.  So I went back out, through the kitchen door this time, out the garage and back over to Wanda.  And, apparently, my things. 

BANG BANG BANG.  Much shorter time before she answered this summons. She had my baby's crib mattress by the door and handed it to me.  I looked at her and then I said, "Let's just have it all right now, shall we?" and there were bad things in my eyes. I know this because sometimes my father had bad things in his eyes and we would look at him the way she was looking at me right then.  I have no idea what the bad things look like in my own eyes, but in my dad's it looked an awful lot like "I wonder if anyone is about to die."  And I saw fear, real fear, in her eyes.  And that was a righteous fear because I cannot to this day say what might have happened had she not decided to go down the road of total capitulation.  Hey, I was 23 years old and really not quite myself to begin with.  What can I say?  I'm not proud of it but that's how it was.

So she rooted around somewhere in her house and then she handed over my clock radio, some other stuff of Beth's, and this I also have a clear memory of: the fancy spigot from my hose.  Ha, I doubt I would have even noticed that was missing.  Oh, and the key that the real estate agency had failed to pick up yet.  I didn't have to ask for the key; she just knew. 

This is what I think happened.  I think when I handed over the key and asked if she would mind holding it until the next morning, she got the mistaken impression that I was not coming back, and she decided to...forage.  Given that there was probably only enough stuff to fit into maybe a small U-haul box, less the crib stuff, her larcenous foraging was quite thorough.  I think she wasted no time trotting on over there the evening before, saw she could score a better crib mattress, and then in that wizened walnut brain of hers, she hatched a plan:  "Hmm, bet the movers are coming to get this stuff and so what I am going to do is go get the baby's nasty mattress and put it in here, and take their new one for my baby.  They will never know until they unpack it and then it will be too late and too many hundreds of miles away."  Or maybe she didn't even worry about what would happen when we made the discovery. Maybe that was too much thinking.  But clearly, CLEARLY she made two trips for this haul:  One for recon and acquisition, and one for concealment of the crime. Ohhh, she was a clever one, that Wanda.

I took the stuff and I looked at her one last time and I said "Never ever come on my property again," and went back to my empty home.  I had quite a dilemma on my hands. It was very close to the eve of my departure from the state, and I knew we were going to be gone for at least a few years, possibly forever.  I thought and thought about what to do.  I went down to the Good Neighbors but they were not around.  So I went one door further down, to a nice family where a prison guard lived with his prison guard wife and their little girls.  They knew about Wanda and Darryl, of course.  I think pretty much everybody on the street knew about these people, to a greater or lesser extent.  They were really nice to me.  They sat me down, gave me something to drink, and told me that I needed to call the police and have them come to their house.  So I did.  An officer came out and I told him the story, and we drove over to my house.  He agreed that this was not a good sign, took a report, and promised to put the house on some sort of status where they drove by more often than normal.  Since my property had been returned to me, we decided that that should be the extent of the county sheriff's department's involvement at that time. The prison guards agreed to keep an eye out, and we all exchanged information.  I felt a little better, but not really.  After all, I was leaving my biggest asset pretty much unprotected from someone who obviously was neither normal, nor law abiding. 

Having no choice, though, off we went to Tennessee and ultimately on to Texas.  The real estate agency found renters for my house, but they were only short-term renters, as it turned out.  Shortly after they arrived, they left again and I asked my wonderful friend Carol to help me out and take over finding new renters for us.  She did a magnificent job and found us some renters.  Unbeknownst to any of us, though, these renters were more suited to live beside Wanda and Darryl than most people. 

 

And that'll do it for now, I think.  Coming up:  We move to Texas and add twins to the mix, then return to Florida to find a bit of a mess left behind by our renters...and The Neighbors are still the neighbors, much to our chagrin.

Comments

[FH]

"Or maybe she didn't even worry about what would happen when we made the discovery. Maybe that was too much thinking."
....my money is on the "[that was] too much thinking" part!

[The almost 21 year old.]

Skanky renters????

[the other beth]

ahhh I've finally gotten my reading fix. Who needs books when you have a Seanna!

[Em]

yeah... skanky renters?

Mom, you need top write a book loosely based on this event... maybe like a murder mystery. Watch it become a best seller and see Wanda and Darryl cringe.

[Tracie]

Seanna, I agree with Em--- You definitely have the gift... do you ever wish you could still go back to that scholarship to U of M?
I cannot wait for the next installment.......