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From Dear Me — the Diarmuid Cleary tales

It was unseasonably crisp that evening in early spring when she appeared at his doorstep asking him to sign the paper. Just a formality, she said. Something about construction she was planning, and the Town asked her to make sure neighbors on both sides were aware. She spoke as if she’d rehearsed the meeting a few times before finally approaching. She was direct but tentative; somewhere between formal and familiar. If there was frost in the air, he’d recall later, it had less to do with the temperature outside and more to do with the distance she’d cultivated since buying Gloria and Frank’s place a few years back. She didn’t even live there, as far as he could tell. She was an absentee landlord, a house flipper. And though Diarmuid had said “hello” to her now and again when he did see her in the neighborhood, she never returned the courtesy. Head buried in her phone, she seemed too busy, too distracted, or, perhaps, she was just pretending to be.

“A driveway, huh?” Diarmuid said.

“Yeah. That’s right,” she responded.

“Makes sense. I was gonna put one in myself when I first bought the place. My wife — ex-wife now — well, she wanted a birch tree out front. And then of course we discovered the main sewer line runs right underneath the lawn, so it —

“Eh-hem,” Serafina rubbed her arms and pulled her cardigan closed. “I’m so sorry, but, can you …?”

“Oh. Yeah. I’m sorry. Where are my manners? Why don’t you come inside and — ”

“No, no. That’s ok. Really. Thank you. I mean, I’m kind of in a hurry, so …” She glanced down at the paper in her hand.

“Yeah. Ok, sure. I get it. No worries. Let me just give it a glance and then, you know … ”

Diarmuid took the paper and read it to himself.

“Looks fairly straightforward.”

“Yeah. Again, I’m not seeking permission from you to build. This is really just a courtesy.”

“A courtesy.” Diarmuid chuckled. “Ok, well, what’s the point of getting the signature if you just need to make me aware that you intend to build? What’s the point of — You know what? It doesn’t matter, right?” Diarmuid smiled.

“Exactly. So, if you could just …”

“Yeah, ok, let me just grab a — ”

“Pen? Here ya go. Use mine.”

“Alrighty, then.”

Diarmuid grabbed the pen, placed the paper up against the door, and scribbled his name at the bottom of the page. He noticed the date on the signature line already filled in as if his signing was a foregone conclusion.

He handed back the paper.

“By the way,” she said. “Have you ever thought of selling this place?”

Hmm, he wondered. She’s out there freezing. In a hurry. And yet she’s got time to ask this?

“Yeah, I think about it on occasion,” he answered. “But I’ve got my son at home now. So … let’s just say I’m in no hurry. Gonna hold onto this old manse for a bit longer.” Diarmuid nodded and made an attempt at a smile.

“Well, if you ever do think of selling it — I mean, seriously consider selling — keep me in mind, ok? I’m interested; very interested.”

“Ok, sure. Will do. Well … Good night to you. Stay warm.”

Just another millennial house flipper, he thought, as he closed the door. She’d probably gut it, even though he’d just renovated the interior after the …

It had been a rough winter. A rough couple of years. Diarmuid had to couch surf with family and friends while his house was gutted after a fire in the basement a few years back. He’d made it out alive, but the road back was arduous. He’d travel back and forth to manage things as best he could, but there were frustrating periods of inaction; times when he thought he might never return to the place he’d called home for 15 years.

He finally did make it back and, this time, his son joined him too. Robbie, Rob, as he liked to be called now, lived with his mom after the divorce. But the summer after graduating high school he decided to come live with his dad. He moved back into his childhood bedroom just as Diarmuid prepared to make a fresh start in the family home, too.

Two months in, sometime in mid-October, they realized the heat didn’t work. Damn contractor subcontracted the HVAC work to a plumber who didn’t know how to pitch pipes properly. It took two months of angry emails and threats of getting lawyers and insurance agents involved before the issue got resolved. Diarmuid and Robbie ditched the blankets and space heaters and turned up the thermostat just in time for, well, spring.

In fact, it was delightfully cozy inside the house that unseasonably cool evening when Serafina blew in and right back out of their lives, secure in the knowledge the signature she “didn’t really need” had nonetheless been secured.

And then, just like that, six months passed. Diarmuid got through the lean ones with help from the government and with money Rob pulled in from his job at the Korean rib joint. Diarmuid never quite found his way back to the dad-mentor role. Most times Rob treated him more like a friend when he wasn’t straight up ignoring him in that way some teens do to maintain a buffer between themselves and their parents.

Diarmuid tried not to take it personally. Ghosting was definitely preferable to fighting. Diarmuid could be stubborn, but Robbie, Rob, well he was often unwilling to relinquish the upper hand even in the most banal situations. And neither son nor dad was particularly deft at de-escalating minor quarrels, which could erupt into personal attacks with little or no warning. It got so bad a few times Diarmuid had to retreat to his girlfriend’s place till things blew over. But after five years of 8-hour drives just to see him, Diarmuid was grateful to have his son home, fair and foul weather.

The news was a reliable source of frustration. A new president promised a return to normalcy, but continuing partisan rancor put that notion to bed. A divided electorate was easily duped by agents of chaos and intolerance, which made cooperation and progress on any issue of national import near impossible. Increasingly intense and destructive storms brought on by climate change made the storming of the Capital by an angry mob seem almost quaint by comparison (almost).

Diarmuid found it pointless to discuss any of this online. He’d long since stopped expecting reasonable debate from either side. You were likely to be called a libtard by one or called out for white privilege by the other. Some days Diarmuid wondered how long before he hailed a bus to Port Authority to take his inevitable place alongside the other wigged-out weirdos warning passersby of End Times. It was only a matter of time.

But that was a remote kind of existential dread. When tempers flared closer to home it was gardening that kept Diarmuid sane, grounded. He’d rarely paid it much attention before. His ex tried to get him to garden many Saturday mornings. But back then he preferred to sleep off the hangovers that followed his frequent Friday night debaucheries.

Now three years sober, he found gardening therapeutic. It gave him stability and control; a sense of balance. The heating pipe debacle was what happened when you put your destiny in the hands of others, Diarmuid told himself. Sticking his own hands in the earth and planting seeds he could nurture and cultivate … that was empowering, transformative. And though he loved tearing out invasive species and pruning his favorite, front-yard maple, he also liked leaving it a bit wild, as Mother Nature intended. He hated when things were too neatly shorn; tightly trimmed. Might as well just pave it over with concrete, he’d say.

Then one Saturday in late August, nearly a year to the day Diarmuid and Rob moved back home, and six months since her last visit, Serafina breezed into their lives again. It was around 10:30 p.m. when she called over to Rob on the front porch and asked him to call out his dad for a chat. Diarmuid came out in his PJs and slippers. She was there with a male companion and they seemed to want to draw him in closer for something … a consultation. But Diarmuid kept his distance. He stood on the porch and looked down at them as they talked from just behind the chain-link fence that divided the two properties.

“Hi, Diarmuid! You remember me, right? Serafina?” She was friendlier than he remembered, but still in a way that seemed studied.

“Yeah, I know who you are. Hey.”

“This is my friend, Sanjay, or Sunny as we call him. We wanted to let you know that the demo crew will be here Monday. For the driveway and the staircase?”

“Oh, ok. Right. That construction project you mentioned a while back.”

“Do you know if there’s a retaining wall between your properties?” Sunny asked.

“Retaining wall? No, I don’t think so.” Diarmuid came down, slippers and all, to get a closer look. “Yeah, No. There doesn’t appear to be. Just the chain-link fence.”

“Ok, well, I just want to let you know that we’re gonna dig on this side,” Sunny said, “but that might cause some dirt on your side to, you know, slide … to give way.”

“Give way? Ok, well, I trust you won’t destroy my front yard,” Diarmuid chuckled, “especially the wall with the mural on it and this tree here.” Diarmuid reached over and grabbed one of the maple’s branches. “You know — ”

“No, no, no.” Sunny interrupted. “We’re not gonna destroy anything. Don’t worry.”

“Yeah, don’t worry,” Serafina chimed in with a softer tone than Sunny’s. “Whatever gets damaged we’ll repair. Of course, we will. We just want to do the right thing.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Sunny said in a tone that reminded Diarmuid of a parent humoring a confused child.

After the chat, Diarmuid went inside feeling like he’d just been lathered up with soap. And yet, he felt defiled in a way he couldn’t quite articulate. It was a feeling that something, some unseen force beyond his control, was about to impose itself on him and there was nothing he could do about it.

At 7:30 am that Monday morning a rumble shook Diarmuid out of bed. He rushed over to the front-facing window and could see men with jackhammers and pickaxes tearing down the brick wall next door that Gloria’s grandad built back in 1911. A man with curly hair shouted to his fellow crew members in Spanish or Portuguese. He seemed to be directing them to focus on certain areas and not others. Diarmuid caught a glimpse of his tobacco-stained teeth as he stuck a cigarillo in his mouth and hopped into the cab of his excavator. From the cab, he looked up at Diarmuid with a roguish grin, and, just then, the latter pulled the curtain closed.

The screech and the roar went on for a week as the crew demolished the existing staircase and removed huge piles of dirt from Serafina’s front lawn. Diarmuid could see the knock-on effect as his lawn began to “give way.”

“Don’t worry!” shouted Sunny one morning, as Diarmuid came out to collect his mail. “We’re going to backfill whatever we remove.”

Diarmuid pointed to a slab of concrete on his side slanting down like one end of a seesaw. The removal of the supporting earth was creating a sinkhole underneath it.

“I know, I know,” shouted Sunny. “Don’t worry. We’re aware.”

“Ok, are you aware of the storm coming, too? Diarmuid yelled back.

Sunny turned toward the excavator and made the “cut” motion with his hand. The roar of the engine stopped.

“I’m sorry?” Sunny said to Diarmuid. “Would you mind repeating?”

“The storm,” Diarmuid called over. “Ida. Supposed to be a big one. Heading this way as we speak.”

“Listen, Serafina is out of town all week, but she told me to make sure everything is safe and secure while she’s away. So, don’t worry. Everything’s cool. Ok? Everything’s under control.”

The day before the storm, all was quiet at Serafina’s place. The demo crew was gone, but they’d covered their work area and equipment with large brown tarps that were held in place by small slabs of concrete. At the dividing line between the two properties, they’d tossed a smaller tarp, almost as an afterthought. It flapped in the slight breeze, revealing a gaping hole just on the other side of Diarmuid’s prized Japanese maple. Notably, Diarmuid recalled, there was nothing to secure the exposed earth once held in place by Serafina’s lawn.

That next night, Ida’s heavy winds and torrential rains lashed Diarmuid’s windows and penetrated door frames and other vulnerable surfaces throughout the house. Diarmuid clamored to find buckets to collect the water streaming into his home on all three floors. He saw an overturned bucket outside in the back and dashed out to get it, the wind keening like a banshee as plastic chairs tumbled and trees danced madly overhead.

Surveying the damage the next morning Diarmuid saw that a portion of his front lawn had collapsed. The slanted concrete he’d pointed out to Sunny a few days before had fallen into the earth. Diarmuid had to jump over the breach to get his mail. All in all, though, considering the lives Ida claimed throughout his state and others, Diarmuid considered himself lucky. His home and pretty much all of his trees had stood up pretty well.

Serafina’s side fared well too, save for the large puddle that now filled the area that would become her driveway. And though his beloved maple was partially uprooted, no doubt compromised by the removal of dirt prior to the storm, Diarmuid believed Serafina’s crew would return to make things right. At the very least he expected Sunny or someone else to secure the upended maple before resuming work on her staircase and driveway.

Imagine his shock a few days later when the man with the yellow-brown teeth fired up his excavator and started beating the tree like it owed him money. Diarmuid was up early that day and ran to the window just as the monster’s jagged teeth tore into the maple, ripping it out of the ground and swinging it into his porch.

Diarmuid ran outside.

“What the f*ck are you doing?!”

Some of the workers looked up with a mix of surprise and amusement.

“Shut it down!” Diarmuid screamed. “Turn off the goddamn engine or I’m calling the cops, motherf**ker!”

Eventually, the man with the dung-eating grin turned off the excavator. The tree lay dead at the base of the porch. The shrub next to it, which Diarmuid planted himself when he first bought the house, was also uprooted and flattened.

Diarmuid could feel the blood coursing through him. He was not much of a fighter but feared he might throw a punch at someone, anyone. He hopped over the chasm and now stood a few feet from the workers. He stared directly at them, seething. One of them turned away; another snickered.

“You think this is funny?!” Diarmuid shouted, his voice quivering. “This is a joke to you, you dumb f**k. You can’t just destroy people’s property like that. What the f**k is wrong with you?!”

The man in the excavator came out of the cab and looked over at his crew, waving them off.

“Where’s Sunny?” Diarmuid said to him as his heart jackhammered in his chest. “Where’s Seraf — Ms. Acosta?” He practically spat out her name.

“Look, I don’t know where they are, man. But she said we got to get rid of the tree, so … you know?”

“She said! This is my house, friend. Would you like me to come to your house and start ripping sh*t out of the ground? Huh!?”

“Look, man, I hear you, ok. Please, take it easy. Calm down. It’s just, well, you know, the way she talked. I thought this was her house, too, man.”

“What? Why would you …? When did she tell you — !?”

“I dunno. Sometime before, man. Take it easy,” he said, growing impatient now.

Things got worse before they got better. Cigarillo man hopped into his weapon of mass destruction and continued digging, ripping, and smashing. At one point, he cracked the top of a front wall on which Diarmuid’s friend had painted a mural years earlier. Diarmuid called the cops, who called in the Buildings Department to mediate. A stop-work order was issued until the matter could be resolved between both homeowners, but the Town didn’t mediate themselves. Serafina called from wherever she was and tried to strong-arm Diarmuid into agreeing verbally to a list of damages so work could resume. Diarmuid’s girlfriend, Maia, advised him against agreeing to anything verbally, and said he should hire a lawyer instead. Serafina’s crew ignored the stop-work order and started building her stone staircase a foot into Diarmuid’s property line. It was at that point, Diarmuid reached out to the same lawyer he used to compel his derelict contractor to finish working after he ghosted Diarmuid midway through the post-fire rebuild of his own home.

All pretense of civility went out the window as an initial list of damages was exchanged over email. Diarmuid thought it felt like his divorce proceedings all over again.

The finer points were hashed out and haggled over: Serafina’s crew would need to remove the encroaching stone steps and rebuild them on her side of the property line; the seesawed concrete slab would be replaced and all supporting earth underneath backfilled. The cracked mural wall would be repaired and, oh yes, the tree. The type of tree was not specified in the agreement, but Diarmuid’s wild and wispy maple would eventually be replaced by a staid and neatly-groomed juniper. Diarmuid needed to be persuaded by Serafina and eventually his lawyer that the juniper was the more practical choice: It would spruce up the front yard, stand up to storms, and, possibly, they both said, even add to the property’s value.

Three months later Diarmuid stepped into the wilds of his backyard, its unkempt appearance a perfect reflection of the squalor in his head. It appalled him. If his now pristine front yard was a proud and preening Dorian Gray, this untamed mess was the grotesque painting he’d sooner hideaway.

Feral cats made the yard their playground. The stench of urine was pungent and ever-present. Branches from trees grew over and through a now-encumbered reed fence, his ex helped him erect years before. Poison ivy twisted up and around a besieged fir’s craggy yellow tendrils. Gaudy interlopers, the ivy’s glossy and venomous leaves trespassed on Serafina’s quaint and clean courtyard next door.

She hadn’t asked him to yet, but one day she would, he reckoned. One day she would. So he might as well get it over with right then and there.

He grabbed the thorny stalk of his ex-wife’s rose bush and pulled it hard. It punctured the palm of his hand. Undeterred, he pulled it again until it cracked in his grip. He tossed it into a pile for burning. He turned to the ivy and started to yank it, too. Dust and dander encircled him as he struggled with the robust and resistant stems. He paused to wipe his runny nose and rub his eyes with his shirt sleeve. He went deeper into the thicket. As he pressed and prodded, liberated branches whipped his eyes and his face; tangled in his hair. He stripped them as he pulled, and then tightened his grip in a tug of war with some unseen force.

Exhilarated, enraged, exhausted he finally collapsed onto the wobbly plastic chair. A ring of thorns wreathed his forehead. Blood and sweat trickled into his eyes; he lapped at the briny mixture coming down his cheek.

He laughed out loud until his voice cracked into a reedy cough. And then he looked up at the sky towards some smug and nameless entity. From the squalor, a wretched voice bellowed within him:

“This is my hut and I will raise it up on chicken legs! Raise it up high if I must. And when the season comes I will raze it to the ground and grind it into dust, lord. Grind it into dust if I must, I will!”

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