The Neighborly Thing to Do

By Scott Edelman

I was dreaming of Elaine again when the slow, gritty scrape of metal on concrete jerked me awake, and I found myself in the arms of another woman.

Seeing Jessica there in my bed, holding her while I was still half asleep, I felt a stab of guilt, but as I became fully conscious, it faded — most of it, anyway — for I remembered there was no one left in this world for me to betray. So I smiled to see her there, happy to know she’d felt comfortable enough to drift off in my arms.

And realized something else — I’d felt comfortable enough to have fallen asleep in hers.

It was something I hadn’t expected, at least not so early in our relationship, or perhaps ever, and acknowledging it there in my bed — a bed which for the longest time I could only think of as our bed, mine and Elaine’s — that made my smile grow wider, for I understood exactly how much my willingness to be made comfortable meant, how much progress I had made.

How much progress we both had made, me and Jessica.

Then that scraping came again, and my smile faded as I winced at the sound. I tiptoed to the window, hoping I wouldn’t wake her as I slipped away to peek through the blinds. Parting them, I spotted outside exactly what I’d feared I might find — Jessica’s father, Joe, awake.

And at it again.

Jessica’s house and ours — mine , I corrected myself, a hard thing to remember to do, harder even than remembering the right way to refer to my own bed had been, though Elaine had died more than two years before— were close together, side by side with just a small strip of lawn between. Which meant I could see her father clearly, just a few feet off the front steps of their wraparound porch, at the beginning of their narrow paved walkway which stretched toward the street.

It was a crisp night in early April, with not a snowflake on the ground or in the sky, yet for no reason I could figure, Joe had a shovel in his hands. He was moving slowly forward, scooping up a whole lot of nothing, then mimicking being useful and tossing that emptiness first toward the patch of grass on the left side of his path, then to the right. He’d move forward a step, and do it again.

It was early yet, but late, too, just a little past midnight, and I hated having to stir Jessica from a sleep where she could for at least a few hours escape the worry of losing her father to dementia. At least I hoped her dreams were worry free. But she had to be told. I’d have wanted to have been told.

Then I felt her arm slide around my bare waist, which had me grateful for many reasons, but mostly in that moment because it meant I wouldn’t have to feel bad about stealing that sleep. I was feeling good lately about not feeling bad, and I wanted that to continue.

We stood there silently, horizontal moonlight striping our naked bodies. Having her over and in my bed was still new to me — this had been the first time any sleep had been involved — so I wasn’t sure what to say about her father that wouldn’t make her feel worse. Which meant she was the first to speak.

“Well,” she said. “At least this time, he remembered to wear his pajamas.”

She snorted, and I wasn’t sure whether it was a laugh or just the sound she made when holding back tears. Probably a little bit of both. I’d done a lot of snorting like that when I was losing Elaine. And even more after.

I gave Jessica a squeeze.

“I’ve got to go,” she said. “I don’t want him waking up the neighbors.”

“I know,” I said. When loved ones start to lose it, protecting them from the judgement of others comes with the job. They’ll say they understand, but they won’t, not really. At least not until it happens to someone they love.

She scooped up her clothes from where we’d scattered them by the side of the bed, and dressed quickly.

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Not this time,” she said. “When he goes off this way, it’s better he sees my face only.”

“Whatever you think’s best,” I said.

As I watched her finish dressing, I could hear Joe begin to whistle, an unsettling counterpoint to the gritty, pointless scrape of the shovel.

“I’m sorry he’s getting worse,” I added.

“I know,” she said, her answer, echoing my earlier one, acknowledging more than one thing — both her father’s behavior as well as my concern. I was pleased I’d been able to recognize it.

And then she was gone.

I watched as she walked up to him and took hold of his shovel, calling out his name while she gave a slight tug. But he wouldn’t release his grip. He seemed immoveable, surprising for what appeared to be such a frail man. He was only 70, I remembered, because he’d turned 69 the year before, at a party to which I’d been invited along with many other neighbors on a day Jessica decided the early signs of Joe’s deterioration meant he should move in with her.

Jessica and I, though we’d seen each other around when picking up the mail or grabbing a newspaper from the end of our driveways, hadn’t spoken to each other much before then, which had been more on me than her. But that day, watching her divvy up the cake, seeing how much she cared for her father, I sensed something special about Jessica, something I was surprised I’d allowed myself to feel.

Joe had been starting to have spells of forgetfulness, moments of irrational behavior, just as his mother —her grandmother— had experienced, the both of them much too early. She didn’t think him safe to live on his own anymore, and to her, a nursing home was, well, out of the question. So she took him in, believing it her duty to make sure his final days were good ones.

I knew that feeling, too. But I also knew that however much we try to live up to that sense of duty...the final days, they never are good ones.

I could tell from the look on Jessica’s face out there in the dark she knew there was no moving Joe, so she stopped struggling and let her father continue his illusory snow clearing. She moved back to sit on the front steps and merely watch his odd pantomime, which went on until he’d scraped all the way to the street, after which he turned to look back up the length of what he’d done, back up at the house. He let the shovel drop, paying it no mind as it bounced off the curb and landed in the street.

She rose then, and went to him, taking one of his hands in both of hers. He nodded. As she slowly led him inside, it seemed as if all the energy he’d shown while shoveling was gone. He had returned to what had been his former, quiet, vanishing self. Before Jessica shut the door, she turned and waved to me. I returned that wave, but couldn’t tell whether she’d seen me before the front door closed on them both.

It didn’t matter, though. That she’d known I’d been watching was enough.

We’d come such a long way in such a short time.

Their lights went out, first in the living room downstairs, then in his bedroom, and then, finally, hers.

Once I was sure I wouldn’t distract Jessica from getting Joe settled in, I padded outside in my bare feet and retrieved the snow shovel. I wouldn’t want a car running over it in the night before she remembered to retrieve it from the road herself in the morning.

Besides...returning the shovel the next day would give me a good excuse to check on them both.

When I woke that next morning, the sun seemed unusually bright, and squinting out the window, I discovered— I was going to be able to use that shovel for more than a good excuse.

A surprise storm, unexpected and unusual the second week of April, had blanketed the neighborhood under half a foot of snow. I’d have to do some digging out of my own before I could ever return the shovel and find out what kind of night Jessica had spent with her father, whether he had gotten into any further trouble on the other side of that closed door.

After a hot cup of coffee, I dressed and went outside to grab the shovel where I’d left it on my porch, and began my backbreaking work. It was only then I noticed —not a speck of snow had been removed— the street hadn’t even been plowed, which made me glad my tech job allowed me to work out of a home office— save for a perfectly bare pathway which led from Jessica’s house to the curb.

All I could figure was that Joe must have snuck out during the night, retrieved his shovel, and cleared the pathway for real. His returning the tool to my deck made no sense, though. Had he hoped I wouldn’t notice, with the evidence of what he’d done right there? Hoped I wouldn’t tell Jessica about his middle-of-the-night escape?

Who knows how a man’s mind works when he gets to be that age? I wasn’t looking forward to getting there and finding out for myself.

I wondered, though, as I hefted snow this way and that down the path which split my own lawn, how I’d managed to sleep through the sound of his efforts, the scraping of metal against concrete which had woken me the night before. All I could assume was that once I was alone, once Jessica was no longer tucked against me, I’d slept more deeply.

After my own walkway was clear, I shoveled along the sidewalk to Jessica’s already clear path. I paused a moment to catch my breath, standing as Joe had the night before to consider the house. Then I stepped up and knocked on her door.

“Oh, my,” said Jessica, as she came outside and saw the openness behind me. “I see you did mine, too. Thanks.”

“It wasn’t me,” I said. “Joe did it. He must have snuck down while we were both sleeping, and ... you know.”

I leaned the shovel against her front railing.

She stepped onto the porch, pulling her robe tight. She shook her head as she looked more closely at the path behind me.

“What am I going to do with him?” she said. “I can’t afford to quit my job, and I don’t want to put him into one of...those places. But he’s going to hurt himself if I don’t do something , I know it.”

I didn’t say what I was about to, what I knew I should say, what anyone else would have said— that the help Joe needed couldn’t be gotten at home. And the main reason I didn’t say it was because I wouldn’t have listened to that kind of advice either. And I hadn’t.

I took her in my arms then, and it was only in that moment, with her warmth sheltering me against the crisp air, with me sheltering her, that I knew what to say. What I wish someone had said to me.

“You can’t keep your eyes on him 24 hours a day,” I said. “You’re going to need some help."

Before she could object, tell me that was an option she couldn’t afford, I added —

“I can help.”

And that’s how I began babysitting a 70-year-old man.

The first day was relatively drama-free. The three of us had breakfast like a family, a moment as unfamiliar as anything which had happened in my relationship with Jessica so far, and also at the same time, as surprisingly comfortable. I wished her well as she took off for the hospital on newly plowed roads, and it felt good to see her go, knowing she would return.

Once she was gone, Joe looked at me more intently, and I hoped he liked what he saw, or at least, was not set off by it. It had become important to me not to fail Jessica.

“So what do you think you’re up for today, Joe?” I asked. “A book? Some TV? What can I get you?”

But no matter how I tried to engage him in conversation, though my attempts didn’t seem to discomfort him, I couldn’t draw him out. He’d look at me as if I was a puzzle he was struggling to figure out, but never speak, and after a few minutes of putting up with my babbling, he wandered off to the living room, from where I soon heard the blare of the television.

I cracked open my laptop in the dining room, close enough to Joe so I could keep my ear out for anything amiss, but far enough away for him to retain some dignity, and got to work keeping my clients’ sites from crashing. I broke for meals, Joe’s medicines —which didn’t seem to be helping, though Jessica couldn’t stop hoping, as I had— her occasional nervous call to check on us both, and whenever Joe wandered in needing to...well...not chat, but look me over for a few silent moments, only to then return to his television. He didn’t seem confused I was the one there instead of Jessica, did not forget who he was or where he was —or if he had forgotten, pulled off a much better act of remembering than I ever could— and did not attempt to wander off.

There was no repeat of his middle-of-the-night excursions, but then, I probably could have predicted that if I’d thought about it. Because that’s what I’d heard about people who get lost in the mists of dementia, even those who begin to vanish younger than the average. Things get worse as the day wears on, and since my shift would end whenever Jessica returned, that meant she’d be the one who’d have to face the brunt of whatever strange behavior might crop up. But luckily for all of us, that first day was relatively calm, and as I’d learn the following morning when I shuffled slowly over through the icy slush, so was the night.

The second day, Joe and I were not so lucky.

I was on the phone, talking to one of my needier clients, when I heard a buzzing outside, one loud enough to punch through the talk show I’d left Joe watching in the next room. At first, I thought the noise was some motorcycles speeding by, which definitely wouldn’t have been wise on our streets, still slippery from a night of melt and freeze, but since my conversation was animated, our voices mostly masked the true sound, and I pushed it to the back of my mind. But during a pause when neither me nor the client was speaking, I realized in that silent space the buzzing was continuing, and then to my horror I knew what it truly was— the roar of a chainsaw in the backyard.

I abruptly ended the call and raced outside.

And found Joe in the backyard, on a scuffed up patch of lawn between the house and a large maple tree. He’d moved the rattan furniture from the spot where Jessica would host barbecues, and stood in their place, slush up to his calves, pants damp to his knees, waving the whirring machinery around the empty air in front of him, pretending to be useful just as he’d been doing with the snow shovel two night’s previous.

“Joe!” I shouted. “What are you doing? Put that down, Joe! Joe!”

But he either couldn’t hear me over the sound of the machine, or was deliberately choosing to ignore me. Or what was worse —and what was more likely, based on what I knew of Joe from the few months I’d known him— he was lost in the fugue state of losing himself, conscious of nothing but his delusion, and the fantasy world he thought he saw. I wondered what he did see, if what he was doing now, what he had done the night before, was aping being of value again to the world, the way he once had been?

Which and what and why didn’t matter. I still couldn’t let him continue.

I moved closer, crunching through the crust of ice which masked the melt, but couldn’t get close enough. Joe was jumping forward and back, and swinging from side to side, his chainsaw slicing the air in dangerous patterns, and though I danced around him, hoping to match his movements and find a way in, there was no moment I could reach him to take the thing away without the risk of one of us losing a limb.

I was overwhelmed by a sense of panic —for me, for him, but most importantly —and, I’ll admit, to my embarrassment— for what this event meant for the thing that was growing between me and Jessica, for what was already there. I couldn’t, just couldn’t, stand by and let Joe injure himself, but no matter how many circles I made around him, looking for an opportunity to safely intervene, none came. With no way to reach my hand in closer without losing it, I stopped trying, and stood as close as seemed prudent, praying for him to end his gyrations, all the while fearing he would tire long before felt ready to stop, and drop the chainsaw against a leg.

I didn’t tell Jessica how my day had gone with Joe the first time she asked. It wasn’t a thing to do while he was there during our dinner, because it would have meant talking about him as if he wasn’t there with us. It used to kill me when doctors would do that to Elaine, and I wasn’t going to do the same to Joe, because I believed, whether it was true or not, that somewhere inside —whether their affect revealed it or not— he would know, as she had known, and it would hurt. So instead, I gave Jessica a look —a look which to my relief, and to be honest, a little bit of joy, regardless of the sad moment, she correctly interpreted— which told her there were things we needed to talk about once the two of us were alone.

I excused myself after dinner and went back over to my house, leaving them there so I could catch up on the work I hadn’t been able to do that afternoon because I’d been too worked up to concentrate after the incident. Too worked up, and also unwilling to leave Joe unwatched for even a moment, out of fear it would happen again. I’d hidden the chainsaw, but who knows what else he might find in a house I was just beginning to know?

 After Jessica got the old man his final round of medications and got him to bed, she texted and let me know she was free. I went out to my deck, and she to hers, and we looked at each other across the crusty, refrozen snow. I whispered the bad news into my phone, and even at that distance, I could see her face crumple. It made me wish I’d shoveled a direct path between us, so I could go to her, comfort her, without needing to head down my walk to the street and back up again. I could tell she knew what she needed to do, but didn’t want to do it. She’d brought him home once from such a place, and wasn’t yet ready to admit defeat.

“Maybe,” she said, her voice quivering. “We could give away the chainsaw.”

“There are plenty of less obvious ways a 70-year-old can hurt himself than with a chainsaw. Things we can’t plan for. Things we can’t see.”

“You’re right,” she said. “I know you’re right. I’ll make the call tomorrow. I have to, right?”

I knew the answer to that question. I’d learned the hard way— the answer was yes. But I didn’t want to say the words, because I knew how much hearing them would hurt, and I didn’t feel ready yet to tell her all the details of how I’d learned that answer myself. So instead, I walked directly toward her through the slush and held her as she cried, saying nothing.

I cried as well, though not just for her, and not just for Joe.

Jessica stayed home from work the next day, and I came over to sit beside her as she made the call. She decided to do that before telling her father what she’d planned for him, figuring it would be easier that way, easier if she presented it as a done deal.

I don’t believe there is any easier way for a thing like that, no matter how we search for one, no matter how much we try to tell ourselves we found one when we later take a look back in the rear-view mirror.

We sat in silence that morning —she not having the energy to pretend all was well, me not wanting to insult her with the kind of small talk which would lie and say all was— until a social worker arrived from the facility, the one where Jessica couldn’t bear to leave him before, but which she’d come to realize she had to leave him now. We explained to the woman what had happened —the late night shoveling, the mid-afternoon chainsawing, and all the smaller confusions which surrounded them— and she nodded in understanding, even if she didn’t understand. Some do, but not all of them, and I try not to judge. There were papers to be signed, and once Jessica signed them, slowly, ever so slowly, she turned to me.

“How do I tell him?” she asked.

“You just do,” I said, remembering, remembering. “You just do.”

She went upstairs to explain it all to Joe, figuring it was best if she told him when it was just the two of them, leaving  me at the kitchen table with the social worker. We looked at each other awkwardly, uncomfortably. Or maybe that was just me. I’d spent so much time with medical professionals I can no longer tell.

“It’s good she has you,” she said, a line I’d heard before. I never knew what to say back, then or now.

Maybe, “Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure about that.”

Or, “It’s good that I have her .”

Or maybe...nothing. And just sit there in silence until what was done was done.

But before I could choose any of those, there came shouting, both from the street outside, and also from above — Jessica, desperation in her voice, calling my name from Joe’s bedroom.

I ran upstairs first, of course, where I discovered what had so horrified her — Joe was gone.

We didn’t have to look far to find him, though, because there he was, visible out the second-floor window, running in circles in the middle of the street. He was barefoot, and wearing only his pajamas— which for an instant had me thinking of Jessica’s somber joke from several nights before. He waved his arms as he leapt, stopping cars and ignoring the honking of their horns. As strangers rolled down their windows and cursed out Joe in ways I hoped his daughter couldn’t hear, neighbors whose familiar faces I recognized were urging him to come out of the street. He ignored them all, just as he’d ignored me with the chainsaw, and Jessica with the snow shovel.

I raced to the door of his bedroom, but Jessica got there before me. As we passed through the kitchen, I saw the social worker was gone.

Jessica was fast, already by her father’s side, her hand on his shoulder, before I was out the front door.

“Stop it, Dad,” she said. “You’ve got to stop it.”

He didn’t respond, didn’t even seem to notice she was there, instead continuing to bounce around the center of our street and wave his arms.

“Stop!” he shouted as he spun this way and that. “Stop!”

So lost did he seem, so agitated, I wondered— did he even understand what Jessica was saying, or was he simply repeating the first word of her sentence? What did he see that we couldn’t see? What did he hear that we couldn’t hear? I had no way of knowing. I never did.

Jessica stepped in front of Joe, not held back by whirring blades as I was, and hugged him tight. He wriggled at first, his arms trying to break free, but at last he settled down. I came up beside them then, and looked at her, her head buried in the crook of his neck.

“Come, Joe,” I said quietly. “Let’s go inside. It’s time for you to rest.”

He looked at me for an uncomfortably long moment, and I worried he would refuse. But then he gave a single slow nod and followed.

I would not learn until later the meaning of that nod.

I stayed over at Jessica’s that night. With Joe gone to the assisted living facility, she didn’t want to be in the house alone, didn’t want to sleep over at my house and leave hers empty.

“Are you sure I did the right thing?” she asked me, sometimes with those words, sometimes with questions less direct. I never had a good answer for that question, because I never had a good answer for myself.

“Whether I am or not,” I said, being as honest as I could, “there’s no way you’ll ever be sure you did the right thing. That’s the only thing I’m sure of, I’m afraid.”

We held each other that night, not always talking, but our silence told us each as much if not more than our words could have conveyed. Neither of us was able to sleep, and I think maybe neither of us wanted to sleep, because we knew our dreams would tell us the truths about ourselves that perhaps neither of us wanted to know. I’d been dreaming more of Elaine in the months since meeting Jessica than I had before, dreams which made me happy while asleep, but guilty when awake. And Jessica, I suspect, would be fearing dreams similar to the ones I used to have, right after I failed Elaine, or felt I had.

And so, neither of us was jarred awake when our bones and the building shook from the sound of something large hitting the ground in the backyard. We leapt to the window and could see, where the huge maple tree had once stood, right beside where Joe had danced and spun and scared us all so we felt he needed to be sent away to stay safe, there was only a jagged stump.

And beside it —a pile of wood, already cleanly cut into manageable lengths— the downed tree which in falling had broken the peace of the night already impossibly attacked by a chainsaw.

“What— ?” she started to ask, but then fell silent again. Her fingers reached for mine, and after a squeeze of my hand, she spoke again. “What does it mean?”

I had no idea, not at first, but as I stared out at the stacked wood, I remembered Joe’s whirling with his chainsaw, and the cleared snow out front from two days earlier, which had created a path the origin of which I was realizing I had sadly misinterpreted.

I told her what I had seen, connecting dots which surely couldn’t be connected, but had to be.

Had to be.

And after talking about what was there before us, undeniable, and realizing what it might mean, what we hoped it must mean, Jessica’s eyes went wide. She moved to the front porch, not letting go of my hand, pulling me along, and together we stared out into the street. I followed the line of her gaze, and could almost see what she must be seeing — her father the previous afternoon acting (or so we thought) irrationally, behaving (or so we believed) like someone who had to be sent away for his own protection, dancing (or so we were certain) in a way which endangered every vehicle coming down the street.

I lost track of time as the street blurred and cleared from our breath turning to mist before us, but it was much too cold, and we were much too tired from having been unable to sleep earlier, to stay for long, even though it felt as if there in the dark, we were conjuring the future.

“Here,” I said. “Come. I have an idea.”

We went back inside, and together pushed the living room couch around so it faced the front window, then settled in.

We didn’t know what we were waiting for. We didn’t know what we would see. We didn’t even speak of it out of fear we would cause whatever it was not to be. All we knew for sure, without even having to communicate it, was that once morning came, we’d need to talk to Joe, even if Joe couldn’t talk to us.

Neither of us slept that night as we waited for morning. It was more like a series of naps. Sometimes, I’d stir and find her staring at the street, head drooping but snapping back up, other times I’d find she’d nodded off, after which I’d look out at the street, but then inevitably be drawn back to her. Both were equally as mysterious.

Then I stirred to find her gone. I turned toward the jingling of keys, and had to shield my eyes from the morning sun to see her by the front door.

“Isn’t it a little early?” I asked.

“He’ll be up by now,” she said. “And the doctors will be just arriving. Let’s find out what’s going on.”

After the night we had, I didn’t think either of us was in any shape to drive, particularly on roads with refrozen patches, but after the shoveled snow, and the sawed wood, she needed to know. We needed to know.

We climbed into Jessica’s car, and began backing down the driveway, but just as we were about to reach the street, she slammed the brake. Before I could ask what was going on, she’d already jumped from the car. I twisted my head to follow her, and only then saw another car slanted across the mouth of her driveway, blocking us in. I jumped out to the squeal of brakes and could see a few cars up on the slushy lawns across the way, while others spun in the street, leaving a clean circle...

...exactly where Joe had done his wild dance the day before.

And then a power line over our heads, heavy with ice, snapped and hit the pavement in that same spot, sparking where we would have been at that instant had our way not been blocked to delay us. I could hear the people around us speak as they climbed out of their cars and looked around in confusion.

There was someone there, in the street, wasn’t there? , said one.

I saw him, but where did he go? , said another. He was there, really, he was right there.

And yet another, arm raised to shield his eyes from the sparks, muttered repeatedly, I don’t understand.

But I understood. Maybe not how what was happening was happening. But I understood why we’d dodged that disaster, what yesterday had given to today. I looked over at Jessica across the hood of her car, and could see...she understood, too.

She came up beside me, took my hand.

“We have to go,” she said. She tilted her head over to my driveway, where my car was not blocked by either the cars which had swerved, or the downed power line. We walked across the slushy lawn, hand in hand to keep one another from slipping. As I sat behind the wheel and she dropped beside me, I heard her phone start to ring.

She slipped it from her pocket as I pulled out of the driveway and steered slowly through the maze of stopped cars, but before she could even lift it to her ear, I knew, early as it still was, that the call was to tell us we were too late.

I live with Jessica now, having sold my house and moved into hers, and I no longer wake to moments of guilt. It’s Jessica who struggles with that guilt now, and I do my best to help her carry it until it lifts and fades. There was a time I wouldn’t have believed guilt could.

That it did seems a miracle to me, and miracles are not a thing I believed in before. But I believe in them now. Joe taught me they can happen...and that when they do, I shouldn’t question the why and how of it.

I don’t know where Joe has gone —me asking that question is another kind of miracle, for another thing I once didn’t believe is that there was anywhere for anyone to go— but I know now what Joe came to know before he left us— that I would be there for his daughter when her turn came.

And I also know, whenever I wake to the scape of a snow shovel, or lift my gaze from my laptop and strain to hear the distant buzz of a chainsaw…he’s still out there. With her. With me.

With us .