FRESH YARN presents: Simon and Sonia...by Cara DiPaolo

FRESH YARN presents:

Simon and Sonia
By Cara DiPaolo

Having lived in city apartments for the last ten years, my husband, Andrew, and I have had our fair share of colorful neighbors. In our first apartment in Chicago, there was the nice young couple of drug dealers, who after the police confiscated all their stuff, borrowed our phone one night and forgot to return it. Down the hall from them was the witty kitty lady, who loved telling us stories about the fascinating antics of her 19 cats. Later on, we moved next to a kind Greek lady who even at three o'clock in the morning would get up to knock lurking evil spirits from our adjoining wall with her trusty broomstick.

In California, there was the thoughtful religious couple who always apologized when the bi-monthly Christian karaoke hoe-downs they hosted in their downstairs apartment ran past 9 p.m. Across from them was the friendly Hispanic woman who took a personal interest in my health: You're getting fat, Cada. You should go to the gym. And who can forget the reclusive Asian man who for hours every Sunday would monopolize all three of the apartment building's washing machines despite the fact that he only seemed to have one change of clothes and never actually appeared to leave his house except to do laundry. And though every one of these people retains a special place in my heart, none can hold a candle to Simon and Sonia, the most memorable neighbors of all.

Simon and Sonia were our first official neighbors in Los Angeles, living in a tiny one-bedroom apartment directly across from our tiny one-bedroom apartment on Hayworth Avenue. It's hard to describe Simon and Sonia without sounding rude, because they were creepy people. Really creepy. Sonia looked like a cartoon drawing of a witch, with her exaggerated crooked nose, yellow fetid teeth and wispy white hair that always stuck straight up off her head, making her appear eternally shocked. She also had a disturbing habit of staring at me creepily, long after we finished exchanging words. She'd often end our conversations with: Yeah…Aren't you a doll! -- and then eye me up and down in a manner that can only be described as lascivious. Sonia's husband Simon, though less frightening, had a sickly pallor that was equally off-putting -- his yellow skin and big blue lips always made me think of rotting bananas. Not an appetizing look, I can assure you.

On top of being creepy, old and sickly, they wore dingy, dirty clothes that you'd swear they'd just taken out of the trash. In fact, their entire apartment was done in the style of "dumpster." Their couches were gray and tattered, their rugs stained and worn, and every level surface was covered in a film of sticky gray-brown dust. Flies seemed to flock to them and there were always a couple cheerfully buzzing around their heads at any given moment.

Simon and Sonia had no real family to speak of, having married much too late in life for children. And in the six years we lived across from them, we never once saw a friend stop by for a visit. Just the flies. Yet, despite the fact that we were secretly disgusted by them, Andrew and I tried our best to be helpful neighbors. But it was hard, because on top of everything else -- they were annoying.

The balcony of their place overlooked the street and in the afternoons Simon and Sonia liked to adjourn to their high box seats and comment on the theatre of life. My earliest memory is of them sitting up there, loudly "whispering" to each other, on the day we moved in. As we struggled sweatily to unload our belongings off the truck, their raspy, grating voices could be heard from above. They sure got alotta of stuff! They shoulda moved it all in the morning when it was cool…then they wouldn't be so hot! Though we found it amusing at the time, their balcony lookout became the bane of our existence -- as it gave them a constant window to our comings and goings.

It was about a month after we moved in that we began to notice a pattern… of them stalking us. One evening my husband and I came home just as Simon and Sonia were getting back from Trader Joe's, or "Smokey Joe's" as they consistently mis-called it, and being neighborly we of course offered to help them carry up their groceries. The next day, we just happened to catch them carrying down their laundry, and again offered our assistance. Pretty soon we noticed that the majority of our arrivals and departures conveniently coincided with one of their many chores. I wondered at first how they always managed to catch us, and soon realized the balcony was our Achilles' heel.

Often when I was running late for work or just getting home after a long day, I'd hear the tell-tale sound of chair against cement above me as Sonia scrambled up to get my attention: Cora, darling. Before you go anywhere, take out our trash! That was the other thing, the minor issue of being called by the wrong name aside, Sonia never said please or thank you, as if my willingness to help somehow entitled her to order me around. I know real do-gooders go about their kind deeds without expectation of remuneration or gratification, but it's hard being nice when the only reward you reap is a lascivious look from an old lady.

So, my husband and I did what any warm-blooded Americans with annoying neighbors would do. We avoided them. We plotted our methods of evasion like we were planning a covert military operation, carefully mapping out alternate routes of entry and exit. To decrease risk of detection, we began parking down the street so they wouldn't hear our car pull up. We snuck up and down our shared stairwell like a couple of thieves -- refusing to turn on the light, even on the darkest of nights for fear we'd alert them to our proximity. If we had to go out during the day, we'd listen at the door to make sure they weren't lurking, then streak down the stairs like lightening, going around the apartment building and out the back gate so we wouldn't have to pass under their all-seeing balcony. If we heard so much as a distant rattle coming from their apartment, we wouldn't even stop to lock our door. When we were at home, we took to playing our TV and stereo at extremely low decibels and creeping around our apartment in socks so we could pretend to be "out" if the need should arise.

It was a terrible thing to do, I admit. Often Andrew and I would eye each other guiltily as we sat completely frozen, waiting for Simon and Sonia to stop ringing our doorbell. Though after ten minutes of DING-DONG, DING-DONG, DING-DONG -- I thought you said you heard them come in! I DID! Then why aren't they answering the door? MAYBE THEY CAN'T HEAR US. Ring the bell again! DING-DONG, DING-DONG, DING-DONG -- we felt a little less guilty. And, to be fair, we didn't completely stop helping them -- it's just, we were busy people and we resented being at their beck and call.

Thus, it was with utter annoyance that I awoke one morning to the incessant intonations of our doorbell. I got up angrily and yelled through our thin plywood door: Who is it? To which a plaintive, raspy voice replied: It's Sonia, Cora! I checked the clock and saw that it was 7:08AM and responded in the sing-song manner of thinly veiled annoyance: Sonia, I have to take a shower. Can I help you later? Sonia's voice sounded urgent: My husband's on the floor and he's not moving! And that's when I rushed next door and found Simon dead on the sticky, dusty floor, his eyes wide as if caught off-guard, a putrid mucusy pool around his open mouth. His formerly yellow and blue face, now looked gray and ashen -- his body twisted and his limbs in unnatural disarray. Anyone could tell he'd been dead for hours. Anyone but Sonia. She turned to his vacantly staring corpse and yelled -- Simon! Simon! Get off the floor! Then she turned to me -- His eyes are still open, but he won't answer me.

The night of Simon's death, I stopped by the grocery store after work to pick up food for Sonia. She went through the bags with her characteristic brusqueness, telling me I bought all the wrong stuff and never once thanking me for my trouble. But the moment I made motions to leave, she started crying. Her grief was oddly farcical, like that of a vaudeville performer. She cried without tears, literally saying the words "boo-hoo-hoo!" and I could've sworn I caught her raising her eyes to check my reaction. So, I sat on the edge of the couch that had the least amount of stains and comforted her as best I could, tapping the small clean spot on her right shoulder: I'm sorry, Sonia. I'm so sorry. The second she realized I was staying, she cheered up instantly and smiled: Let me show you a painting of me!

And there she was, stepping gingerly over the place where her husband's dead body lay only hours before. I noticed with alarm that she hadn't even cleaned up Simon's mucusy mouth pool. With great pride she pointed to a portrait of herself looking slightly less old, much cleaner, but still pretty creepy. Then she touched her greasy hair, thoughtfully: I should get my hair done like that again. Simon liked it.

In the course of that long surreal night, Sonia revealed a lot of things to me that I wish she hadn't. She told me Simon had been mean and senile toward the end, waking her at night with a flashlight and peeing in the bed. Then she revealed that at a recent doctor's appointment she learned she had cancer of the "bagina." After that, things got really weird.

Sonia told me she was a virgin, having lived with her mother until she married Simon at the age of 64 and only then learning he was "impudent!" Before I could recover from this revelation, she was leaning in confidentially to ask about Andrew's and my sexual habits: How often do you have sex? What do you use for protection, those condiments? She moved on to other, equally disturbing questions, rattling them off like she was reading from a card: What about the Ellen DeeGen-knees, the les-bean-in? How does she have sex with that other woman? Do they rub their two baginas together?

I can't remember how I responded to this comically disturbing barrage, I just remember that while she was talking the light was hitting her crooked, gnarled face in such a way that she really looked like the devil to me. Many years later, however, I was able to see our conversation for what it really was. Sonia's one chance to have life's mysteries answered before she died.

Six months later, Sonia did pass away from her "bagina" cancer. Since there was no family or friends to sort through Simon and Sonia's stuff, the landlord hired people to come over and empty out their apartment. Watching the workers chuck their things over the side of their beloved balcony into an awaiting dumpster, I got sad. There it was. The end of Simon and Sonia. Ashes to ashes. Dumpster to dumpster. And no one to witness their obliteration but me. I wanted to have a keepsake from them, something to remember them by, so when my husband came home I made him retrieve the portrait of Sonia from the trash. We have it hanging in our house to this day and it never fails to elicit a response from anyone who sees it. I actually consider the portrait among one of my most prized possessions.