Friday, November 11, 2005

The Mail Man

Miss me?  Oh don’t hand me that.  We’ve all been busy and there’s no need for excuses.  Not from me, anyway.  Regardless, since we’re leaving in 8 hours for a weekend in the Northwest for to meet my new nephew and see my inlaws, I figured this was a good time to throw down a freshie, so to speak.  I’ve held off posting this one for some time, because I don’t know what it means.  If you figure it out, drop me a line, will ya?

“Wry.  That’s a funny name,” I thought to myself as I thumbed through the mail that first evening.  “Wry Wigglesworth.  Heh.” It was a phone bill for the guy next door.  He’d moved in a year or so ago; I sort of knew who he was but I wasn’t even likely to recognize him in the driveway our buildings shared.  He was just a guy next door.  And now he had a name: Wry Wigglesworth.  And that was a funny name.  That’s all I thought. 

A little piece of me already resented Wry for developing a name, and thereby a nascent persona, allowing himself to be introduced into my life.  I harbored this petty resentment as I walked downstairs with his phone bill and rang his buzzer, about ten feet to the right of my own and nearly identical to it, though in better repair.  I heard an intercom crackle - looking up, I could see the speaker, just inside the steel gate behind the jamb of the entry arch.  “Yeah?,” the voice challenged querelously. 

“Um, Mr, uh, W?  I got some of your mail, here?  I’m from next door, it was in w’mine?”

“Yeah.” The intercom crackled off, briefly, and then on again.  “Yeah.  Yeah, um, I’ll buzz you in - can you just leave it on the bench down there?”

“Shu,” I replied. I heard the flat electric buzz of a gate unlocking and I stepped into the entryway.  The bench was unmistakeable, a faux rococo abortion in poured concrete that hunkered in the long terazzo hallway under a single naked bulb like an aged and unsuccessful ballerina crashed out in the hold of a cargo jet.  I laid the phone bill down as requested and left without looking back.  This Wry guy sort of creeped me out. 

Three days later I got more mail for Wry: this time, a card or invitation of some sort, and his weekly delivery of a popular news magazine.  I flicked briefly through the magazine over a glass of seltzer and then walked the Wrymail next door again.  I rang the bell, heard the intercom and the voice again: “Yeah?”

“Got your mail.  From next door.”

“Yeah.  Um, bench, please?” It wasn’t really a question.  The gate buzzed and I left it open behind me as I entered.  I put the envelope and magazine down next to the phone bill from before.  He hadn’t yet bothered to take it upstairs.  That irritated me. I brought that damn phone bill over; the least he could do was to take it upstaris.  And here he is with his snotty little “bench, please” over his antisocial little intercom.  No way, dude.  Not cool.

As I walked out of the dark hallway, the voice emerged again from the speaker - just as I was passing under it.  It gave me a bit of a start, actually, as he asked with a little giggle, “you didn’t paw through my magazine, did you?” The box crackled off.  I felt invaded.  I went back home and cracked a beer.

A few weeks passed before I got Wry’s mail again.  This time it was two pieces of advertising, a book in a mailer, and something from a medical office.  If it hadn’t been for that doctor letter I’d have thrown it all into the recycling, but maybe it had to do with some delicate health issue he was dealing with so I took a deep breath and a short walk next door.  It wasn’t his fault that I was getting his mail, after all.

He buzzed me in as soon as I announced myself; as I walked into the hallway he spoke to me through the wood veneer speaker: “Mmm, thanks so much, sorry for this inconvenience, the bench would be fine please....”

Once again, he hadn’t touched the mail I’d brought him before. I muttered, “this stuff just sits here, wonder why I bother....”

He buzzed in promptly: “Oh, I really appreciate you bringing the mail over, I can’t alway get to it right away but it’s so important to me to I know I’ve received it, it’s critical you know, vital,” he explained in a voice both mechanical and uncomfortably intimate.  “You’re doing me a wonderful service.  Honestly, I don’t know what I’d do without your help.  Bless you.” Then he moaned, low and slow, like pork cooking, a sound that somehow turned into “very much.”

“Shu, yeah,” I replied automatically, thinking that this guy was weirder than I’d even thought, but at least I wasn’t too concerned he’d be coming after me any time soon.  He seemed pretty immobile, and that made him both much less actively threatening, and something more of an entertaining mystery.  I decided to find the whole thing amusing.

As weeks spun into months, his packages continued to find their way occasionally to my door, and I begain to form a sense of who Wry Wigglesworth was through the prism of his misdirected mail.  I always returned it to him promptly and unopened, but the scant clues I gleaned from it found fertile ground in my overactive imagination.  Letters from the phone company: he had a billing issue.  Magazines about current events and medicine: he was a concerned citizen with a health-related issue.  Something from the library: he was literate; a thrifty, thinking man.  Letters and cards, handwritten; from across town, from across the state, from England, from Peru: he was cosmopolitan, well-travelled.  Warranty information for his intercom.  Astronomy newsletters.  Astrology newsletters.  With each new mis-delivery I tried to reshape my sense of Wry Wigglesworth to conform to the new things I thought I was learning about him.  I started thinking I knew who he was and how he ticked.

Every time, I added the mail I brought for him to the stack on the bench in his entry hall.  Once, I even offered to bring it up to him - his voice sounded strained as he urged me not to: “Don’t trouble yourself, the bench is fine, just put it on the bench, please.” “Please,” as he said it, sounded more like “now.” Or maybe, “now, damnit.”

He got a book - delivered to me.  I could see the packing slip; it was a book about dealing with childhood abuse.  I felt for him, decided not to press him for a response to my mail drops.  He seemed to have enough to deal with.  In fact, he became somewhat more cheerful-sounding over his intercom over time, less terse.  Maybe he was learning something from that book, I hoped.  Ours was a relationship at something more than arm’s length, but it was a relationship.  I harbored no further ill-will toward my reclusive neighbor. 

Airmail arrived, in a blue fold-up envelope, addressed, of course, to Wry.  A package that rattled.  A letter from a lawyer in Denver.  Another one.  A cd in a mailer from a financial company.  A thick envelope from a nearby hospital.  Tracking his mail had become a hobby for me, like ornithology.  I was a Wry-watcher.  I didn’t even feel bad about it.  I wasn’t taking advantage of him and it amused me.  Who could be hurt?

About a month ago I got several pieces of Wrymail - some letters, a bill, and a well-stuffed envelope addressed to him in a simple boyish hand; the return address was across town and appeared under the name of “Donny.” I dropped it all off, same as always.  I had a system worked out and it didn’t require much thought.  Who was Donny?  I was sure I’d find out eventually. 

Later on: some medical supply catelogues.  Some industrial supply catelogues.  A letter from an organization with which I was not familiar.  Giving in to an excess of voyeruistic curiosity, I looked them up to see what I could see, what it added to my patchwork knowledge of Wry Wigglesworth.  Turns out, it was an organization advocating behavior toward children that was both illegal and utterly repugnant to me.  The envelope suddenly felt diseased, contageous.  But I’m a libertarian - live and let live.  This was another man’s mail.  He had a right to it, and to his opinion, and I had no right to withhold anything from him.  So I turned it over.  I’m sure I heard him giggle when he buzzed me in to drop it off. 

A small package from the medical supply company.  A few children’s magazines.  Phone bills.  A small package from “Donny.” A big envelope from the pervert society.  A large, surprisingly light package from an industrial fixtures and fittings company.  A small envelope from a circus.  A small envelope from a local children’s theater group.  It all stacked up on the bench, creating an overall picture that I found increasingly disturbing.  Still, I continued to deliver to him.  I’m not sure why; once I’d reached a certain point I just seemed to stop remembering that I had a choice. 

Another letter from the lawyer in Colorado.  A magazine in a plain brown wrapper.  A small, surprisingly heavy package from an Idaho saddle shop.  An official-looking letter from the Center for Disease Control.  Another book - another packing slip disclosure.  This one was called, “Games Children Love.” My skin crawled.  I put the book down.  Then I picked it up again and took it to him, as if cowled.  I was a stranger to myself as I rearranged the stacks of mail already waiting on the bench so the book wouldn’t slide off.  Like I didn’t want it damaged.  I sickened myself. 

Earlier today I got home, dreading my visit to my mailbox.  My own mail was not problem - a few bills, a letter from my folks, a bunch of crappy coupons.  No big deal.  But I felt a chill every time I went to that mailbox, fearing I’d find Wrymail and it would be bad.  And I think, today, it is.  In my mailbox, behind my coupons, was a postcard to Wry Wigglesworth.  Donny wrote it.  Looks like his parents say it’s okay for him to have a sleep-over at Wry’s place.  He seems excited about it.  He wants to “play.” The gorge rose in my throat.  I didn’t want to pass it along.  I wanted nothing more to do with Wry Wigglesworth, except, maybe, to have him arrested if he did what it looked like he was going to do. Retroactively I regretted every piece of mail I’d brought to his door.  I didn’t care how harmless any of it was, or if he was sick, or dying, or an invalid, or perfectly entitled to read and write what he wished.  He revolted me.  I sat at my table with Donny’s postcard in front of me and I tried to cry, but all I managed was some dry heaves and a coughing fit. 

So here I sit in my kitchen, holding a postcard that doesn’t belong to me.  I feel disgust and I sense impending tragedy.  I’ve been staring at it for a long time now.  Hours, even.  On the front of the postcard, there’s a picture of a Nascar driver.  I can’t put the damn thing down.  And someone’s ringing my doorbell, too.  He’s been at it for quite a while now.  I can hear him outside, down on the street.  I recognize the voice.  It’s Wry.  He’s outside.  He wants to come upstairs.  He sounds really mad.  Maybe if I’m very still he’ll just go away.  Soon it will be dark - too dark for me to see that damned postcard anymore, even though I’m still holding it in my hands.  I’ve almost convinced myself that, when it disappears completely, Wry will too. 

But he won’t.  Nothing ever disappears.  Except, sometimes, me.