The Clock Keeps on Ticking in the Neighborhood

As humans, we have no idea when we will die. When the clock will run out, when it'll all be over. It's a rather depressing ideology, so most people don't spend much time pondering it. The threat--death, of course--begins to loom around a certain age. Sixty-five, let's say. Some have a month left, and some, thirty years. But nonetheless, the clock keeps on ticking.

First in the neighborhood, was the old man on Windsor Lane. Widowed, a nice man. I could see his yard if I strained my neck left. He gardened, frequently. He was particularly fond of petunias. A quiet man, he rarely spoke to other neighbors. He liked his yard, I could tell. He had a dog, a Rottweiler. No children, so it seemed the dog was his main form of companionship. They coexisted, peacefully. He would play some fetch with the dog on occasion. In the front yard, far from the petunias. He stood, unmoving, and without exerting too much physical energy, managed to play fetch. Throw it, a light flick of the wrist. Remove it from the dog's mouth, a gentle pull of the shoulder. He had some heart issues, from what I've heard. Two hospitalizations. I don't know how old he was. Old. The kind of old where you know you're closer to one side of the universe than the other. It was the third hospitalization that got him. I'm not sure of the specifics. The ambulance came, took him away, and there was no return this time. There was a small gathering at his house after the funeral. I found it intrusive and violating to hold the party at his own house. A party where the guest of honor never shows up. But the clock keeps on ticking.

A couple months after Windsor man died, it took the Lewis woman. Time did. The mom of the Lewis family. Joan? Julie? Might've been Joanne. She must have been in her mid-forties. Their house was a couple streets down. Out of my line of sight. But I often saw her and her nurse go for walks, back when she could. They would pass my house twice, there and back, and I'd watch through the front window. I hadn't seen her for weeks before she died, so I assume her cancer progressed, and walks were no longer such a simple task. The kids weren't too young anymore. Teenagers now. I felt for them. The husband worked a lot. Don't know his name, never spoke to him. Her, I made small talk with at Windsor man's funeral. It must have been uncomfortable for her to be there, knowing it might soon be her. That didn't occur to me at the moment. I only know she died because I saw the nurse leave that one Sunday. She drove past my street in her little yellow beetle car and didn't come back. I knew then, that Joan Julie Joanne had gone. That it had taken her. She knew it was going to, she could see the clock, reach out and touch it. She could feel the hands moving, from eleven to twelve. The clock keeps on ticking.

Next, it chose that young man on Starch street. Starch is the street perpendicular to mine, so I could see his house quite well. Very handsome, and young. Definitely in his thirties. Engaged to a pretty blond woman, bright and happy. She lived with him, and I remember when he bought her that golden retriever last Christmas. He was a medical researcher. Trying to find a cure for something. He talked about it a lot. At block parties and such. Apparently, he was close. So, what I'm describing is that he was close to perfect. Close to it all. Close to curing something ambitious. Close to getting married. Close to the perfect life. He had driven up to Massachusetts for a conference on disease research. I heard him talking to Mr. Lupin, my next-door neighbor, while I was out getting mail. He was going up north for a weekend, he said. He didn't even make it there. Speeding, interstate, skid, dead on arrival. I was intrigued by a police car approaching Starch and peeked my head out the door to get a closer look. Two policemen knocked on the man's door, and his fiancé opened the door. I saw the men's backs and her face and watched her cover her mouth and cry. Time doesn't stop for perfection. It doesn't stop for how close the cure you are, or how close to the wedding. The clock keeps on ticking.

It was only two weeks after the police darkened the Starch street doorstep that Mrs. Lupin died. Now, this couple lived right next door to me, so I know them rather well. They were an old pair. There had been a party for his 75th birthday last fall, so around that age. They are the roots of a big family tree. Four children. Three daughters and a son, all of which are now in their thirties or forties with children of their own. The family seemed close, from what I observed. That is all I am, isn't it? An observer. They had six grandchildren, the youngest, five, and the oldest, seventeen. I watched them grow up, you could say, as I've lived here for many years. One of the middle grandchildren has down syndrome, and one of the teenagers is...troubled, as I heard his mother describe him when she sat on her parents' back porch and I watered my plants. One thanksgiving, maybe three years ago, there was a fight. I watched it through the window, the one that exposes their whole dining room. It was quite entertaining. The son of the Lupins stood up, pointed fingers, and eventually hit the husband of one of the Lupin daughters. The husband hasn't been back since. They say Mrs. Lupin went peacefully. She had gone into the hospital for a hip replacement, and something or other went wrong and she didn't wake up. She didn't know she was going to die. I suppose that's better than Joan Julie Joanne, who knew it was coming all along. The clock keeps on ticking.

This woman, I know the name of. Mandy. She wore lots of colors, went for runs frequently, and had bright blue eyes. She lived on Bricker Road, just across the street from me. It wasn't her that died, physically, but I suppose she did inside. She talked a lot, and seemed suspicious of me, but was very friendly. Mandy would ask me personal questions that caused discomfort in the room. Why do you never leave the neighborhood, why don't you own a car, why do you watch me when I run. The woman had no filter or consideration, but she didn't mean it with any ill intent. I don't mean to talk about her like she died--she didn't. She was ecstatic at the neighborhood holiday party. She was hosting. Smiling the whole night, playing with Starch man's new dog. When people had dispersed, making conversation in clumps around the room, she knocked her fork on her wine glass gently. Every eye was on her. She was nearly bubbling over. Her husband Thomas stood as well. People clapped when she announced her pregnancy, beaming. But one day, about a month later, she disappeared. Didn't come to the Valentine's Day raffle, or go for runs anymore. In fact, I hadn't seen her in weeks until one day, I saw her in the upstairs window, crying. So she's alive. I was perplexed. I had no choice but to investigate. I knocked on their door, a loaf of bread in my hand. Thomas opened it. He seemed shocked to see me there. I explained that I was doing rounds, baking bread, and sharing it with neighbors, and I even snuck in that I hadn't seen Mandy around in a while, so unlike her. He grimaced at that. Through some verbal digging, I managed to uncover what had happened. A miscarriage, a death inside of her. Her future, her child is gone, but she must continue living, time will not stop passing for her. The clock keeps on ticking.

After word of the miscarriage got out, the Carlans moved out. This would make five deaths in under a year, and Mrs. Carlan was convinced the neighborhood was cursed and wanted no part in it. It was a beautiful house, one of the best in the neighborhood, and it was bought quickly, and filled with new inhabitants. A mother, a father, and an adolescent son. I don't know much about them, just that their son built a skateboard ramp in the front yard and did tricks and things that I enjoyed witnessing. The father of the family traveled often, and I'd see the son and mother read on a porch swing together. The house burned down in the middle of the night on a Friday. The mother and son were sleeping and didn't awake from the smoke before the ceiling collapsed on them. They both died. The husband came home, and sat in the yard for two days, staring at the remains of his house. Wood fragments, really. He hadn't yet called for people to come to clean it up, so he slept in the yard and drank beer in the yard until someone in the neighborhood must have made a report, and the police came to retrieve him. He lives on. Wifeless, childless. The clock keeps on ticking.

I am an introvert. Since childhood. Preferred to watch the lives around me rather than live my own. When I found this neighborhood, some years ago, I decided here is where I could be safe. I could thrive in this bubble. Groceries come to my house. I live off my inheritance. I don't like any weather. I don't like outside. The only time I leave my house is to see the lives of the neighborhood, parties, share bread, etcetera. But now, my liver is failing and I am not far from joining the others up there, or wherever they go when the clock stops ticking. I have known for a while, but I do not fear death. I do not fear the slowing movement of the clock's hands until they come to a stop. I embrace it. See, I am fixated on time. On how it passes, how it can feel fast or slow, and how it always ends. How sixty seconds is a minute and sixty minutes is an hour, and hours are days which are weeks which are months which are years. It never stops, time. And time can't stop death. Time is angering for a control freak. There is no way to stop it or move it or rewind it. No matter what you do, the clock keeps on ticking.