A Stranger Here

Mother and Son:

I pull up to the complex, cut the engine, watch them leave their apartment. They stand outside the front door, about to set off on one of their daily outings. The son is about fifteen years old. He has shaggy black hair and is wearing blue jeans that are both too loose and too short, allowing a gap of skin above his pale ankles. His mother looks to be in her forties, though it’s difficult to put an exact age on her. She too has shaggy hair, yet it falls in a way that most would call a mullet. Every time I see them—even several miles from our complex—they are on foot. They do not own an automobile. Instead they haul a wagon around, usually filled with laundry and groceries. At night they park the wagon behind their apartment and shield it with a cobalt blue tarp. But today they’ve left the wagon behind.

They are my first neighbors since I moved from Ohio to Tallahassee, and a wall of sheetrock is all that separates their apartment from mine. I often find myself excited when I hear their wagon’s axle crooning low, crawling through the back lot underneath the canopy of magnolias and slash pines. Some days I split my blinds and observe them from my back window. They’re usually just unloading the wagon; however, the other day I saw the son dragging a unicycle through the pine shade, his mother close beside him. I have attempted to speak to them before, but every time I get near they keep their eyes down, away from me, walking by like ghosts. To me, they do not seem to belong to this world. They seem to be from another time, when life was more primitive, and they’re only here in Florida for a brief visit.

I step out of my car and into the unfamiliar southern heat. They are marching down the broken sidewalk toward the main road. The son is talking, and I try to understand what he’s saying but I can’t hear. It’s landscaping day and the blowers and trimmers and weed eaters are making noises like a nearby freight. They stroll on, the son walking on the tips of his toes, the mother with her feet pointed inward.

The way they are never apart, the way they laugh with each other, how the boy stands a half foot taller than his mother, makes me question whether they are actually parent and child. Perhaps they’re married and the boy is not really a boy, but a grown man. There’s a disease like that; I’ve read about it online. I also read that there’s a twenty-nine-year-old Florida man who has the face of an eleven-year-old boy. And maybe that man is my neighbor. But despite the nature of their relationship, their camaraderie is impressive. It is difficult for me to see that kind of togetherness, and to see it so often.

The pair disappears down the main road and I head inside my apartment. I sit down on my futon and continue to think about them, the mother and son. About how I should’ve followed them. How I should’ve found out where they are going. I’m tired of not knowing what they do all day, not knowing the places they go.

I stand up, kick on a pair of sandals and sprint outside to Tharpe Street. I try my hardest to disregard what I’m doing—following these people—but there is a rush within me. I reach the sidewalk and catch my breath. I look east and west, but the mother and son are nowhere in sight. Cars speed past on the road in front of me. What the drivers see is a young man spinning around, twisting his head back and forth, looking for something he can’t find.

During the night, I will picture them with the wagon heading down some back road. The wheels winching up dirt and bruising [End...