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Diddlie’s Place
I saw Diddlie outside her front door as I walked up the hill past Jake’s place, not knowing her address. She was emptying a pail of water onto a hydrangea when I waved and she came towards me. She now lives seventeen feet from Jake’s new house at 1661 Oval Road. The fourth garage door is the nearest and the biggest door behind which he keeps his stretch Hummer. This Hummer is the sample he used to convince the Snaz franchise to market them nationwide. Diddlie Drates hates Hummers. She colored with outrage when I asked her feelings on Jake’s huge house next door. Diddlie had measured the exact distance from the property line over to the corner of the garage to substantiate complaints she voiced in a recent Fauxmont newsletter. She alluded to problems over the newsletter, community activists, and other tensions. She would get to those later she said, then as if to bring up another subject “We need to talk.”
Diddlie seems perplexed. The subject had put her in a bad mood. Her response to my question left her disoriented. I had forgotten how volatile the issue had become in her mind, though I might have been reminded when reading the news letter that she is concerned about Jake’s huge house.
“Yes, okay, what else is going on? I mean I’ve been thinking, and there’s plenty to tell you. Like you said I have a lot of memories, and we can get into that, but I am not through with you about that other stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“You are going to tell me who you are: alright?”
“Okay, we can talk. Go ahead I am listening.”
Diddlie explained that her house was built in the early 1940s. It is unimproved, and she takes pride in its being well maintained and in original condition. She has some original appliances that her late husband was restoring, set aside under tarps in the carport.
“This is a historic neighborhood” she states emphatically, pausing for effect before going on. “We bought this house from my Aunt, Maria Gostrey, when she moved to Paris back in the fifties and she used to visit us regularly. It is hot in summer but we live in dappled light under here she said gesturing up towards the tree tops with a sweep of her arms over her head and raising her face towards the sky “and it’s cooler here than the ‘burbs’ down the street.” She gestures again to the east where Orchard Close, far larger than its name suggests, stretched all the way to Route One. Diddlie danced on into the house, beckoning me in, and skipping over a small fallen branch. “These homes here in Fauxmont should not be knocked down to make room for mansions” she insisted. Her one story house is built on a concrete slab, surrounded by tall white oaks, hickories, azaleas, ivy and the wilting hydrangea now recovering outside her front door.
“First they cut down the trees next door, then there was all the construction noise, that nearly drove me crazy” says Diddlie as she goes into the history of Jakes’s construction next door. She picks up the crouching white rabbit that is still in the hallway leading to her living room. “This is Mr. Liddell” she says through the strain of bending and picking him up, stretching out the sound of his name. Now it is Jake’s new lights that Diddlie complains about. He has more than a dozen high intensity lights installed on his outside walls by the security firm, Urban Safety Security Solutions. They come on in response to motion detectors, as deer, possum, fox, bunnies, cats and dogs, but so far no terrorists, wander through the narrow margins of Jake’s property, and into Diddlie’s ivy.
“When those lights come on, I feel like I am living on a movie set and the cameras are about to roll” jokes Diddlie, smoothing the rabbit’s ears. Then more seriously “That man’s dream house is my nightmare. No not a nightmare. If it was a nightmare I might wake up and it would be gone.” She squeezes Mr. Liddell in her fury, and he wriggles and protests. No that’s the trouble. I am stuck with it.” She breaks off and excuses herself, apologizing to Mr. Liddell and says she is going to put him back in his hutch. I can’t hear what she says as she goes on talking while walking away towards the back door which slams behind her, cutting off the sound of her voice.
She soon comes back in, her voice sounds as if she has been talking all the time she was out with Mr. Liddell, but it is clear she claims to have broken through Jake’s usually unflappable good humor. She reports that he called her “a slab dwelling low life busybody.” That is when she accused him of being a Hun, a Goth and a Vandalizing Mansioniser. I ask her if Jake has offered her a gift card from Snaz, but Diddlie says “He knows better.”
The sound of a loud crack broke into our conversation. It was a Toyota Prius rolling quietly up the driveway snapping the branch Diddlie had skipped over on the way in. Diddlie leads me out the front door and says “We still need to talk!” and runs out to meet someone in the car. “I can call back tomorrow,” she yells as her voice was cut off again by another slamming door.
