Idiot - Laura Clery Page 0,74
Stephen and I held our breath while passing their front door. “Their scent makes me appreciate the sweet smell of our apartment even more!” Stephen would say, trying to look at the bright side. They paid only four hundred dollars a month because of rent control. Both of them just stayed in the apartment all day, every day. They barely ever came out.
Since they were on the bottom floor, they had free rein of the front yard, where they kept their huge, angry dogs. The dogs would lunge at anyone who passed in front of their apartment, and they would only be stopped by this tiny little gate that looked like it was weakening with every lunge. It was terrifying. Their rabid barking would be our morning alarm clock and our soothing bedtime soundtrack. But tell me all about that bright side again, Stephen?
Then, next door to us was this sweet young family with two children, ages one and three. The dogs would lunge at the kids every time they left their apartment. The family would constantly ask the hoarders to put their dogs inside, and the hoarders would ask them to go die. Stephen and I had moved into the middle of a full-on feud.
One day, the barking from downstairs stopped. Wait, how was I supposed to sleep without their vicious barking? I was used to it now, and the silence was unsettling. The next day, the young mom knocked on our door with tears in her eyes.
“So . . . I called animal services on the dogs.”
“Ohhh, that’s why things have been so peaceful here!”
She nodded sadly. “I wasn’t trying to be mean! I had to. They just kept lunging at little Elliot. So . . . they got back at us by calling Child Protective Services on us and said we were abusing our children.”
Damn, that was cold. “Oh no.”
The woman continued shakily, “And the worst part is that little Elliot just fell and hit his head and . . . he has a . . . a . . . BLACK EYE.” She started sobbing. “So if anyone from Child Protective Services comes to your door, can you tell them Jeff and I are—are good parents?”
“Yes, yes of course.” She hugged me for an awkwardly long time.
It was a fucking weird place. Beautiful apartment, though! Big windows.
We had been married a year and a half when we were in this apartment, and both of our careers started to get really busy. Stephen was doing well at work, which meant he was getting more responsibility, which meant more pressure. He slowly started to change. At first, he just became reclusive, staying awake at his keyboard, figuring out musical cues until late into the night. I’d go to sleep alone in our bed and wake up much earlier than him to pray and meditate and go to yoga. We were on completely different schedules. I’d eat dinner at seven, and he . . . well, I wouldn’t even see him eat. He would bring all food to his desk.
He became more testy when things would go wrong. Things used to roll off his back so easily before, but now he fixated on his mistakes and became angry and frustrated . . . and then mean and spiteful to me.
Then he spiraled further. He would bang his head against the wall as hard as he could after trying to come up with a particular tricky cue for a film. I wondered if he was losing his mind. Who the fuck is this person? In the back of my mind, I wondered whether he had relapsed and was hiding it. I never knew Stephen when he was using. I had been a different person when I was using, so maybe this was Stephen on drugs.
Things were tense between us. We would fight constantly, with me wondering what the hell was going on and him in complete denial of his state. One day we were having a particularly loud yelling match in our apartment and I heard a knock at the door.
It was the young mother from next door. “I heard you guys yelling.”
I awkwardly wiped the tears from my eyes. “Um, I’m sorry. We can quiet down.”
“No, no, I get it. I understand.” She pulled a book out of her purse. The title read, Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence. “I wanted to give this to you.”
I read the back cover. “Mating in Captivity takes a hard line against one