DANA JOSSLIN

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

PUBLISHED IN FOLIO 2024: VOL. 39.

“I smelled gas in my kitchen,” Elizabeth yelled. “I’m really scared.”

I turned around from my mailbox in the courtyard and realized she was talking to me. My downstairs neighbor Sergei’s door was open. I looked into the shadows of his living room. Elizabeth sat beside him on his sofa. I hadn’t known they were friends, but maybe they weren’t, because why had he left his door open on a chilly October night?

“You smelled gas?” I echoed.

“There might be a leak in the building.” Her voice lilted high and breathy.

I wanted to get home, drop my bags, and have a drink, but I didn’t move. In the six years I’d lived in this 1930s apartment building in mid-city Los Angeles, this was the first time Elizabeth had spoken to me. “Hey,” grunted the other four tenants when our paths crossed, but she swept past wordlessly. Black sunglasses often blocked her eyes. She wore capes, wasp-waisted vintage dresses and heels that made her look stagey, like she was playing the role of a femme fatale. She didn’t own a car. Her assigned spot in the garage remained empty, except for some nights when Sergei’s boyfriend used it. Once my boyfriend parked there. The next morning, Elizabeth made it known through the landlord that from then on, if anyone parked in her spot, she’d have them towed. She was that neighbor. In her ground floor unit beside Sergei’s, she hid behind closed, dusty vertical blinds. One was broken like a tooth.

“I called the gas company and left, like, nine messages with the landlord,” she said.

“He won’t do anything,” I scoffed.

“Because we’re rent-controlled.”

“He probably caused the leak himself,” grumbled Sergei. “That way he can kill us and double the rent.”

“He’ll call me back though, you guys,” Elizabeth said. “I have a babydoll voice. You know what I mean?” Her eyes shone in the dark. “It’s that little girl thing. Men have a hard time saying no to that.”

Did they? Then why was this the first time I’d seen her with a man? “Well,” I said, “let me know how it goes.” I climbed the stairs to my apartment, and once inside dumped my bags. My kitchen did not smell of gas. I poured myself a big glass of wine.

Later that night, I was reading The Savage Detectives when a knock reverberated in the stairwell on the other side of my wall. An apartment door creaked open below.

“Can I come back in?” Elizabeth pleaded. “I really don’t want to be alone.”

“Don’t you have anyone else you could visit?” asked Sergei.

“No. And right now, I could use…some companionship.”

Their voices lowered.

Repulsion welled up in me. When I grew up in the eighties, the number one goal for parents was to raise girls into strong, independent women. In my dad’s words, I’d need to stand on my own two feet. Even as a teenager, I never rebelled against the importance we placed on self-sufficiency, or stopped wanting it for myself. The worst fate was to become a damsel in distress. For Elizabeth to beg Sergei for his company struck me as weak and dependent, and thus gross. But then again, wouldn’t a strong, independent woman ask for what she really wanted?

Elizabeth was hard to read. I assumed she hadn’t spoken to me in the last six years, but maybe she had. Within a year of moving in, I’d come home to a note taped to my door. Its black, bubbly cursive had read:

I know what you did. Don’t try to deny it. I saw you.

No, don’t speak to me about this! I don’t wish to discuss it further.

What horrible thing had I done, put my recycling in the wrong bin? And who had seen me do it? The letter had been unsigned. Our apartment building didn’t have a secured entry: every front door opened onto the courtyard or stairs that led to it, so anyone could have left the message. But I’d had pleasant exchanges with every neighbor except her. Who else could it have been? This overly dramatic “Letter from an Unknown Woman” had felt consistent with Elizabeth’s fusty costumes and refusal to meet my eye. I’d trashed the note, dismissing her as crazy.

Elizabeth wanted companionship in autumn 2019. Five months later came the pandemic. The governor ordered all residents of California to stay home until further notice. Businesses shuttered. Elizabeth and I quarantined in our one-bedroom apartments.

The pandemic didn’t affect me much. I was happy to skip the commute and zoom into yoga class; jog on empty streets; have groceries delivered not out of slothfulness, but an abundance of caution. I often worked from home anyway, had a stack of books I’d been meaning to read, and could visit friends at their backyard fire pits. Also, the lockdown reminded me of my childhood.

When I was in fifth grade and my younger brother Burke in third, our parents moved us to Bainbridge: a small island by Seattle that felt isolated compared to Los Angeles. My mom rented a studio far from the house where she could paint. In this time before cell phones, she didn’t install a landline, because she didn’t want to be interrupted. A self-proclaimed introvert, she wouldn’t let me join the Girl Scouts because she didn’t want to hang out with the other moms. Meanwhile, my dad went from practicing law in a bustling downtown firm to studying the commodities market from a desk in his bedroom.

On this island, alone in his so-called office, dad’s behavior became increasingly destructive. He threw televisions over the second-story banister, so they smashed on the hardwood floor below. He cleaned my room by tearing down my posters, unspooling my cassette tapes, breaking my lava lamp, and stuffing all the remains into giant Hefty bags. He bred a pack of eight Great Danes, who chewed and peed on the furniture.

The largest male, a hundred-and-seventy-five pound Dane, attacked Burke, a fifth grader. A pediatrician stitched up Burke’s scalp and the gash by his eye. Dad continued to let the Great Danes run freely through the house. As a result, my brother and I spent a lot of time hunkered in our bedrooms behind closed doors. Alone at my desk, I ate cheese sandwiches—which were easy to make—and underlined key passages from Emerson’s essay, “Self-Reliance.”

Later, I entered Reed College in Portland, Oregon. The school prided itself on its academic rigor: students holed up in the library for days to study. At the time, the mid-90s, the college was rumored to have one of the highest suicide rates in the country. As winter neared, constant rain turned the quad into a gooey mud pit. My roommate stopped leaving our dorm room. She replaced her assigned reading with books on clinical depression, flunked out, and returned to Vermont. I was fine. After all, wasn’t I a strong, independent woman?

So, the lockdown didn’t faze me. I already knew I could shelter in place for a long time. To some degree, I’d been training my whole life for this.

“I know, right? Can you even believe?” Elizabeth’s monologue floated past my desk. She paced around the building on her cell phone, having the endless, meandering conversations of teenagers: “then I said…and then he said…” Men might have a hard time saying no to that voice, but not me. I slammed the windows. Her jabbering penetrated the glass, and seeped into my now sweltering room. Where was social distancing when I needed it? Didn’t Elizabeth know the best neighbors in LA were silent, especially when we had to quarantine cheek by jowl? While I cursed her under my breath, I knew it wasn’t illegal to talk on the phone. Plus, almost every day, The New York Times had a story about a loneliness epidemic, the importance of checking in on loved ones, the health risks of isolation.

For hours, I bore it. But at midnight, once I turned out the lights and collapsed into bed, only to keep hearing her prattle, I’d had enough. I threw open the window. In the darkness, I could make out Elizabeth’s shadowy form on the back stoop below.

“Would you please keep it down? I’m sleeping right here. Thank you.”

She didn’t reply. When I shut the window, she resumed her call as though she hadn’t heard me, the way she’d swept past as if she hadn’t seen me. The next few nights, I blasted country & western songs out my back window. But Merle Haggard’s Greatest Hits soon became their own annoyance. Disgusted, I stopped “Silver Wings,” and fell into bed. Elizabeth instantly returned, along with her big mouth.

I leapt up in my tank top and underwear, threw open the window, and started shrieking like a fucktard. “If you keep talking, I’m going to call the cops!” The cold air gave me goosebumps. I wanted to sign off with an even bigger threat, a knockout punch, but had nothing. “So, if you want the cops to come,” I spluttered, “keep talking!” With that, I slammed the window.

Elizabeth blabbered on. Under my blanket, I tried to lull myself into sleep, but adrenaline coursed through every limb. My heart pounded. The only way to release the tension, I felt, was with a fistfight. Maybe then she’d shut up.

“Thank you,” Elizabeth gushed when I next overheard her. “Thank you so much.”

I peered out my living room window that overlooked her front door onto the courtyard. A bag crinkled as a delivery guy handed her a dinner-for-one. The pandemic was now cruising toward its second anniversary. In the interim, protests had roiled our neighborhood. Tear gas cannisters had exploded into the night like gun shots. Stores had burst into flames. Helicopters had chopped low, their fumes mixing with the smoke. Our Trader Joe’s had appeared in the background of a photo on the front page of The New York Times. Meanwhile across the country, a mob of militiamen, white supremacists, and self-described Nazis had stormed the US Capitol. I read each day’s ever-updating headlines while chugging water I wished were gin—sometimes it was—and feeling scared, ludicrously irrelevant, and starved for entertainment. I was not above spying on my neighbor.

“Isn’t it a lovely evening?” Elizabeth inquired. “Do you have any weekend plans?”

The delivery guy muttered a response that produced peals of girlish laughter.

“Oh, you’re too much!”

Elizabeth soon ordered food several nights a week. She reminded me of Blanche DuBois with a gentleman caller. Some seemed grateful for her attention. Others rushed off as she shouted, “You have a wonderful night!”

When first I heard Elizabeth chatting with Nick, I assumed he was from GrubHub. Then I came to recognize his nasal voice. As far as I could tell, she never invited him inside, but would join him for frequent twilight talks in the courtyard. Nick’s tone often sounded pleading, like he was trying to get her to go out with him. Hers was gentle, in an aw shucks, you have a crush on me kind of way.

He brought her a cake for her birthday.

“You’re a real sweet guy,” she cooed. Then she burst into tears.

I hovered behind my curtain to check if she was really sobbing. She was.

“My neighbor is openly crying in the courtyard,” I texted my boyfriend.

“That’s kind of sad,” he replied.

“Yeah, but mostly pathetic.”

The following Monday, the first day of Thanksgiving break, I lay on the couch reading Americanah. Someone hammered on Elizabeth’s door so hard, it rattled.

“Elizabeth,” Nick shouted, “Open up! Let me in, Elizabeth!” I set down the novel, got up, and peered out the window. Unshaven, Nick kept screaming and pounding as if he wanted to make a scene. “I’m calling the cops!”

A neighbor crossed the courtyard.

“Do you have the landlord’s number?” asked Nick. If Elizabeth had never let Nick into her apartment, would she want him to have her landlord’s number? But the neighbor was already reading the digits off his phone.

Moments later, sirens wailed. They grew louder then cut off at our building. A radio hissed with feedback as police officers strode onto the courtyard. They were greeted by the landlord. He unlocked Elizabeth’s door.

“If Elizabeth’s okay,” Nick moaned, “she’s going to kill me.”

Two cops entered her apartment. A hush fell. Everyone seemed to hold their breath. I held mine. The situation felt theatrical—an off-off-Hollywood production about the girl-next-door with a babydoll voice and the lonely-heart who loved her. I almost fell out my window trying not to miss the denouement.

“She passed,” exhaled a cop in her doorway.

“No,” Nick keened. “Aaah! I can’t believe this is real!”

“Yeah, I knew Elizabeth,” an unfamiliar guy said that afternoon in the courtyard. “We went on a couple of dates.”

“And then?” a cop asked.

“Uh, we became just friends.” I wondered who’d appear after my death to broadcast our relationship was better off platonic.

“She just had a birthday,” Nick told the officers after composing himself. “She was too sick to see anyone. She thought she had pneumonia. She was coughing so hard, her lungs hurt. I offered to take her to the hospital, but she wouldn’t go. I kept calling her this weekend. Normally she’d answer, but this time she didn’t. The calls went straight to her mailbox, and it was full. I couldn’t even leave a message.”

“A friend of hers just moved to Chicago. When I last saw her, she cried because she was going to miss him so much. She’d spent the pandemic, almost the last two years, alone in her apartment. The pandemic really took a toll on her. Her friends don’t know how big a toll.”

The silence that night enveloped me. Lying in bed, I wondered if Elizabeth was still next door, lying in hers. The coroner had come and gone, lights flashing on a white SUV, but I hadn’t seen anyone remove a body. I pictured ants carrying their dead. Where did they take them? I admired ants: they knew what to do, and together they did it. The next afternoon as I was getting my mail, I saw a package on Elizabeth’s stoop. I snooped closer. Her name was printed on the address label: Elizabeth Merzon. Upstairs, I googled her.

Elizabeth Merzon last week had turned thirty-seven. She’d majored in Comparative Literature at Princeton, was the president of the Film Society, and had written her thesis about 1940s murder mysteries. She’d co-hosted The Price of Patricia, a podcast with over a hundred episodes that analyzed Highsmith’s crime fiction. This Spring, Elizabeth’s fold-out map would be published, a guidebook entitled Film Noir Location in Los Angeles. “What are your desert island books?” she’d recently tweeted. “I’ll go first: Anna Karenina, To the Lighthouse, Austerlitz, Five Little Pigs, Ada, Book of Common Prayer, and Hopscotch.”

If I could have written a personal ad for a neighbor, it would’ve looked a lot like that. Had we been introduced at a party, I might have recognized her as a potential friend. If I had tried talking to her—perhaps on a night when she didn’t feel like being alone, and craved companionship but didn’t know where to find any—I might have made a similar discovery. But I hadn’t.

I’d been a self-sufficient kid who’d become a self-sufficient adult. But now, my strength and independence looked a lot like selfishness. Perhaps the unspoken part of wanting to raise strong, independent women was the assumption we’d become mothers. Upon delivering a baby, our selflessness would kick in and turn us into well-adjusted human beings. That hadn’t happened with me. I reminded myself of a woman who put on her oxygen mask first, then—not having kids and assuming everyone else was an adult—inhaled that sweet, sweet gas without bothering to check if anyone else was struggling. How was my younger brother? Or college roommate? Or neighbor?

Elizabeth had not made herself easy to love. But by holing up in my apartment, neither had I. During the quarantine, it was easy for me to revert to survival skills I’d learned as a kid, and stay in a defensive crouch. As she cried, I could have reached out to Elizabeth: not because I liked her, but because she was in pain. Overcoming my resistance to her—her weakness, her distress—would have been a true show of strength.

Elizabeth’s mother arrived to empty her dead daughter’s apartment. Her wails filled the courtyard. My mother had recently died, and one of the few silver linings had been she hadn’t outlived me. To outlive your child, she’d long insisted, was a mother’s worst fate.

As I left the garage, I saw Elizabeth’s mother through the open doorway. A stubby ponytail poked out of her Michigan baseball cap.

“Hi,” I said loudly. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

She came onto the front step. Her brim shaded swollen eyes. “Thank you.”

“I live up there,” I said, and pointed to my windows. “If there’s anything I can do or anything I can clean, please let me know. I’m happy to help.”

Elizabeth’s dad appeared behind his wife. He studied me. I wondered if Elizabeth had told him about me, and braced for his wrath, but he only seemed curious.

“Thanks, but no,” her mom said. “We’re almost done. Her friends have come and taken a lot of her things. It’s mostly books. You know, Elizabeth was a book person. That, and a great conversationalist. She could talk for hours.”

“Yeah. Okay, well, just…just let me know.”

Her parents left. A clean-up crew arrived. Elizabeth’s busted blinds came down. A “FOR RENT” sign appeared on the lawn. Our landlord jacked up that unit’s rent. A young blonde moved in from Beverly Hills. Determined to be a better neighbor, I crossed the courtyard to greet her. She saw me coming, bolted inside, and slammed her door. Perhaps my reputation preceded me, and she viewed me as a cautionary tale: an eavesdropper who shrieks at neighbors in her underwear.

“Hey,” Sergei said as we flung our trash into the bins. Wind ruffled his hair. The pandemic was lurching into its third year.

“I’ve been looking for other places to live,” he said. “Exploring other neighborhoods. But I haven’t really found anything.”

“Yeah. I’d do that too, but the minute I give notice, I’m gonna be priced out.”

“Seriously,” he agreed. “But I can’t stay here forever. It’s too depressing. I just need to figure out where to go. And as I’m searching for a place, what I’m finding is so much of what makes a neighborhood nice are the neighbors, you know?”

I squinted at him.

He threw up his hands. “And how do you search for good neighbors?”

These nights before drifting off, I dream of moving to Savannah, Georgia. In this fantasy, I’m the undeserving recipient of Southern hospitality. I luxuriate in depending on the kindness of strangers. The woman next door sweeps past, and I introduce myself. She’s odd and off-putting, just like me. We drink mint juleps, eat dinner-for-two, gorge on hummingbird cake. The world shuts down, and we read our desert island books. In time, she comes to see me as her stranger: the neighbor whose door is always open, the woman on whose kindness she can depend.

Dana Josslin’s essays have appeared in The Examined Life Journal and under the gum tree. A Hugo House Book Lab participant, she recently completed a novel.