The OtherSide

The view from the OtherSide of our kitchen reveals an apparently single family historic home, cleverly disguising two separate apartments, one on the first floor, and the other, a spacious two bedroom suite, occupying the second and third floors. The house is like almost all of the others on the street, bearing a commodious front porch that fronts the sidewalk, that fronts the street. The distance between our kitchen window and this house is greater than on SinkSide because we are among the few with a driveway, which takes up some space. On the other side of the driveway is a little picket fence, then maybe three feet to the Otherside house.

When we moved in, the Otherside house was occupied by an acerbic octagenarian who had been born in the house, grew up and moved away, and then returned upon, as she reported it, the death of her husband. Her grandson snorted every time he heard her say that, and advised that she moved back upon her divorce, at which point, she always stared at the ceiling and she never acknowledged a marriage, let alone a divorce. He must've been pretty bad to have slid into such invisibility. She was a retired librarian, opinionated as all hell, and precise with the many instructions directed at us, which grew in scope from things like fetching her another glass of wine early on to emptying her portable bedside potty toward the end of her life.

Marian loved her liquor; time after time, her daughter would enrage Marian by coming over and cleaning out every secreted drop in the house, only to be defeated by the liquor store delivery service, which inevitably arrived within 2 hours of the daughter’s departure. Eventually, the daughter paid them NOT to deliver.

Upon Marian’s death, her family sold the house that had been in their family for nearly 100 years to Evil Investors, a husband and wife team from California. Actually, the Evil Investors turned out to be quite nice, but were not initially well-received in the shadow of so strong and fixtured a neighbor as Marian had been. They undertook a major overhaul of the house, which had fallen into disrepair, (unbeknownst to Marian, whose eyesight failed to the point that she never saw the peeling paint) and converted the 1870s dwelling, on the inside, without betraying the historic facade) into the two modern apartments, and began charging a king’s ransom for each. The quality of tenant has been far more predictable and upscale than that of the tenants Sinkside; these folks have to have good jobs or be independently wealthy, and we know that the Evil Investors do a most thorough credit and reference check before accepting a tenant for either unit. We’ve liked nearly everyone who’s lived there over the last 13 or so years since the renovations were complete.

The current downstairs tenant is a bit of a mystery. She’s young, beautiful, and Never There. She moved in about a year ago, but has been a phantom whom no one in the neighborhood has seen enough to recognize out of context. Her car bears out of state plates, and we figure she keeps the apartment as a front for her parents while she shacks up with her boyfriend, whom we’ve also never seen. Back during the summer a middle aged guy came over and introduced himself as her father, announcing that he was in town because her apartment had been broken into, and he was going to hook up a security system for her. I heard her name for the first time from him. (In keeping with lawsuit avoidance, let’s give her a pseudonym, too. Something that screams young and beautiful. We’ll call her Ashley.) Pretty clear Dad had no idea she’s never there. He disappeared at the end of the weekend and so did Ashley, only to resurface after the holidays this year with: A Puppy.

I thought she was here to stay after the Puppy sightings. She was out each morning at dawn, throwing a stick, trotting around behind the exhuberant black lab baby, plastic bags protruding from her parka pockets to clean up. She obviously adores the Puppy, stooping for kisses, and rolling on the frozen ground with it. Then about three nights ago, the place went dark, the lights came on at their appointed timer times, and went off by timer again in the morning. It snowed, and there are no Puppy tracks, nor human tracks in either the back yard, or on the front porch. Seems she’s gone again. We didn’t even get to see whether the Puppy was a girl or boy.

The upstairs tenants moved out in late December. The apartment was advertised in the usual way – a sign on the porch pillar – for longer than usual, perhaps a sign of the economic times. Then the sign went away. We assume it’s been rented, but the identity and persona of the new tenant(s) will be ongoing material for this site.

Stay tuned