Varieties of Loudness in Chicago

100 100 Varieties of Loudness in Chicago Elizabeth Crane Paolo Pagano Jr. aspires to be louder. It runs in the family. Little Paulie, as he’s known, is the loudest. Loudness is to this family what college is to others. It’s their pride, and it’s what they’re good at. Jennie Watson is almost as loud. Paulie Pagano and Jennie Watson live approximately one hundred yards apart, separated by one building, one alley, a universe, and you. The stabbing couple, two porches down, is close behind, but that’s a story for later. Jennie lives in the new condo across the street, a warehouse rehabbed into a unique urban loft-style experience. Paulie lives next door in a singlefamily home with his mother, who has, in her small parcel of land, an impressive vegetable garden. You won’t be invited anytime soon, them not really knowing who you are, but you guess that a meal with the Paganos would be both interesting and delicious. You have never seen Paulie’s mother smile, and suspect that it’s been a long time. When she talks to the neighbors (a group with a surprising number of tenants who show some indications of being one family, although after several years of observation, you’re still not sure), they connect by complaining over the fence. My back, Paulie’s mother will say in her thick Italian accent. The weather. My son. The neighbors nod solemnly. They know about backs and weather and sons. Your tomatoes are gorgeous, they will say. These are people who traded in their grass for cement. Too much trouble, they had told Paulie’s mother, who nodded solemnly. Miscellaneous other people are also in apparent residence at the Paganos’. These might include his sister, a girl who looks like his sister, and a heavyset guy who might be a cousin, but they’re all frequently seen in the adjacent yard, so you can’t be sure which sister belongs to which house. The girls who might be his sisters are also given toward loudness, although they aren’t as ubiquitous and therefore appear somewhat less invested in their loudness than their possible brother. The girls who might be his Elizabeth Crane 101 sisters look just like Paulie, except they wear their hair in tight, shiny ponytails. These ponytails look like they could only hurt. Jennie, in any case, likely has no such aspirations of loudness. She just is. Little Paulie is twenty-three years old. When you moved in, he was seventeen and already bald. Upon hearing the news of his being a teenager , you spent some time examining him from your porch window whenever possible, trying to process this information, trying to understand how a seventeen-year-old anywhere could pass for forty, trying to understand what in seventeen years adds up to bald and forty-looking . You will come to know that possibilities include a dead dad and a close association with a bunch of local gangbangers, also loud, and who have no interest whatsoever in Paulie’s front door, or any parts on or adjacent to it that might ring in a pleasant way, a way that only its occupants might hear. When they want to see Paulie, they come through the alley, and they yell Paul-ee. Paul-ee! Paulie never comes on the first eight or nine Paulies. Usually his mother will intervene with a few more Paulies, a final loud Paolo! and some words in Italian. She is a small, square woman, but you sense that she can and has and will again hit him and it will hurt. Little Paulie has one expression. It’s a scowl. Jennie, blonde, is twenty-six, a size four, and owns a clothing business and her condo, directly across from your front window. How you know this is she spends a good deal of time on her balcony (actually, it is more or less a railing in front of a set of sliding doors, with a plank just wide enough for one Jennie-sized person to stand on) talking on the phone and telling people these things. Jennie used to be a size two, but...