Well, it's probably not what you think, especially since he is in nonstop MBA/work mode. This one's a downer. A neighbor a few doors down killed himself last week. Whenever I see or hear about a nearby tragedy I have this tendency to count the number of walls between me and it. It's a bad neurotic habit. Maybe I'm trying to reinforce the idea that I'm pretty fortunate (or maybe it's just luck) and I wonder how I get to live this way while others do not.
In 2003 my neighbor killed herself by jumping ( or is it falling?) out of her 22nd floor window onto the parking lot below. I didn't know her well, but well enough to know her name and be intrigued by her. She was always kind to me when others were not. She dressed to the nines though she just worked at the pet shop on Western Avenue. She sometimes covertly acted as a foster parent for small dogs. We never spent much time together and never crossed the thresholds of each others' homes, but it felt good knowing she was just beyond my door, across the dingey hall carpeting, and beyond her own door. Whenever she entered her unit she'd wave, smile in her demure manner, and I'd see the sky blue walls and African mask collection disappear behind her door. I know that her daughter is a prominent professor of women's studies. She boasted about her often. I Googled her.
The night of her death I was alone with the baby, sleeping with earplugs. An hour before the police came I heard a terrible noise loud enough to wake me. Later, the news chilled me to the bone. For the next two months I would wait for Ben to come home before going up that elevator and looking at the coronor's order taped to the door across the hall. One night I waited for him almost two hours. Another night I crept out into the hallway while everyone slept, listened at her door, smoothed down the edge of the coroner's sticker, and put my eye to her peephole. I could hear the cold December air whistle softly through the door jamb.
On yet another evening I saw her daughter arrive to put the unit on the market. She was tall, confident looking. Just as a successful young professor should look. What separated me from her mother? Two doors, one three-foot hallway, and one open window.
What separates this older gentleman from me? A basement, three doorways, a flight of stairs, a 20-foot span of pavement, a neighbors house, and my front door. He's lucky the first shot took, for most people it takes more. I didn't hear the gun fire.
