Chapter Twenty Five - Gossip
The Misery of Mrs. Geesky Number 25. The Red Reticule.
Before Chapter Twenty Five
Living like a leaf… the “Don’t Know Way” of Layman Pang.
Layman Pang was a married man that wanted to follow the Buddha’s path without all the rituals and formal monastic life. Instead of the life of a monk, he chose a life as a wandering devotee. His wife and daughter were as engaged in the Buddhist life along with him.
They got rid of all their goods and left their house. Layman Pang’s lifestyle led to him receiving the understanding that he and his family lived like a leaf… a don’t know mind of the past, the present, and the future. They ended up living out their lives in a cave nearby a city where they begged for food.
One of Layman’s Pangs essential teachings was concerned about time and change. See below.
By Layman Pang
We cannot regain the past…it is gone.
The present moment does not stay…don’t try to grasp it.
The future has not yet come,
The future is not ours to see. Whatever will be, will be. Que sera sera.
In this chapter Jane is disrupted by a neighbor’s hysterical phone call. She is puzzled why she should get such a phone call? She seeks an answer from her backyard boarder, DeeDee.
DeeDee’s response to almost every question Jane asks is “I don’t know.” DeeDee’s answer is followed by her contiuous focus on the work in front of her.
Jane makes an effort to get an answer from DeeDee not recognizing DeeDee does not have the answer. DeeDee is not witholding an answer it is simply she does not know. She is unwilling to speculate about why Jane got the phone call and what will happen in the future.
What about you? Do you go into the past? Try to grasp the moment? Want to know the future?
What if you began to live with the attitude of “DON’T KNOW MIND? To eat when hungry, to sleep when fatigued, to work with what is given to you right there moment by moment without frustration, fear, anger and worry.
Chapter Twenty Five - Gossip
Gossip
“Shit someone! Shit someone! She screamed the moment I said hello. I thought that’s what she was saying, she was so frantic. That’s what I thought. But she kept on screaming. I didn’t know who it was when I first answered the phone,” said Jane catching Dee Dee by surprise.
They both moved around in the fading, dying flowerbed. When Jane stopped her contagious frenzy and explained. “I got another phone call this morning from Julie Berker, the neighborhood secretary, the one entrusted to be the messenger for the Baines.”
“You did?” Dee Dee asks as she bends forward to dead head the yellow Chrysanthemums.
“You don’t know what I am talking about, do you?” Jane says as she pokes her fingers in the cold, wet dirt around the enduring starry-shaped asters.
“Not yet.” Dee Dee replies as she kneels on her knees in the dirt. Then, rambles on about the early frost and the flowers left behind. With a sturdy stalk of a purple cone flower between her index and middle fingers she strays from the mentioned phone call.
“I do hope these daredevils aren’t killed by the fickle frost this time of year. They are the adventurers of autumn,” says DeeDee with no interest in Jane’s upsetting phone call. “Despite the changes in weather they show up in full bloom when everything is so unpredictable for them.” DeeDee adds.
Jane knew DeeDee stayed a distance away no matter what was said. It was her ability to withdraw judgment from her senses that kept her remote and calm.
Awakened earlier in the morning by the phone call, Jane found she couldn’t go back to sleep. It was for her an either get up and do something or go mad repeating over and over what she thought she heard. Gardening, a sedative for others, was for her a last choice activity. It meant gardening or continued obsession with the phone call.
Jane wasn’t accustomed to this pain of intrusion that pushed her out of bed. She was used to small elegances; the aroma of coffee, linen napkins in neat tight folds and fresh flowers left outside her door. Often silly men would leave notes of juvenile love with the concierge after a long day on the catwalk. Her foot scrambled to find her other slipper as she hurried to find out who would be calling at such an early hour….on her house phone!
The memory of the weird phone call flushed up in Jane’s mind as she watched Dee Dee sever the flower from the stem. Dee Dee concentrated on her task, without even a sideways look toward Jane. She gave no encourage to Jane to carry on with her morning tale.
Having this boarder in her backyard, Jane learned to accept Dee Dee’s unemotional, long-suffering attention. Tempted at times to try to shock Dee Dee, Jane knew better. If she wanted her to offer up some advice or comment, it was best to give the plain facts and that’s all.
“It’s a cool, crisp day, perfect for cleaning up the plant scraps.” Jane tries to pull off a laid-back attitude.
DeeDee looked up from the plants and went along with Jane’s mimicking. “It’s perfect. Not too hot. The dead ones fall off into my hand.”
“Yes, I can see that. You’re clipping right along. No pun intended.”
Dee Dee continued her focus. She pulled another few heads off. Jane puzzled by her boarder’s attention on the flowers wondered if the old woman was hard of hearing or worse. There wasn’t the usual amusement in rumor and chitchat. Neither was there any disinterest. DeeDee was unreadable and transparent at the same time. There she was plucking off the lifeless petals one after the other with the ease and commitment of the wind. It was self-determined custody, a keeping guard of whatever was in front of her.
Jane speaks with caution.
“Well...I was telling you about the phone call.”
Dee Dee lifted her head. “Oh, yes so you were.”
With less caution Jane continues. “I hope you don’t mind me telling you about the phone call, the phone call I mentioned earlier.”
“Not at all.” Dee Dee does not push or pull for more explanation. Her words seem to pinch and fall off in the air much like dead blossoms giving Jane freedom to go on or not.
“Well….” Jane begins. “Julie Berker, I think I mentioned her name to you before.” Another pause, Jane waits for some confirmation from Dee Dee which comes in the form of a quick tilt of her head acknowledging Jane’s prelude.
“She, this Julie Berker, called this morning at some ungodly hour. I was sound asleep. You know the kind of sleep that wakes you feeling groggy and disoriented?” Jane waits for some avowal from Dee Dee. Nothing is offered. Jane decides it is Dee Dee’s way of listening.
“She was completely off the wall.”
This time Dee Dee frowned and sat back on the cold ground and stopped cleaning up the mums.
“She was practically screaming. She started by saying something like…. she hit someone…. she hit someone.” Jane, amused with herself, confesses. “I thought she was saying shit someone, shit someone. The woman was panicked. Once she calmed down, I realized she was saying she hit someone. I am telling you; she started the conversation with this…. I mean there was no hello or how are you? Just screaming…. she hit someone. It turns out to be a kid on a bike.”
Dee Dee’s eyes were now focused on Jane giving a knowing signal of her full attention. The morning air not yet chilled enough to silhouette the breath compels her to wrap her loose cardigan around her chest before she clasped her hands and rests them on her knees.
“You know! You know this already, don’t you?”
Dee Dee fidgeted with the loose cloth of her pants. She squinted as if to hold back a perceptive smile.
“Don’t hold back with me.” Jane encouraged tacking on a please. “I am in the dark here.”
“Did Julie Berker say what she wanted?” DeeDee asked as she cupped her cheeks.
“You mean besides expressing her nutty side on the phone to someone she hardly knows?”
With dirty hands still on her face, Dee Dee consoles Jane. “She must feel safe enough to scream at you.”
“No, thank you very much. I don’t want to become the old grandmother of the neighborhood. I need my beauty rest! And besides, I am not signing up to be a neighbor. Never have been, never will be.”
“It may be a foregone distinction.” DeeDee says.
“Oh no it’s not. I’ll be more like you. Invisible!”
“There’s no guarantee how others will mark you with a distinction. I’m invisible because no one sees me as credible. You?” DeeDee half chortles. “Your distinction is already set in the eyes of Julie Berker.”
“I’m not having it.”
This uncanny ability led DeeDee to redirect Jane’s adamant refusal to accept the possibility DeeDee suggests. “Did she say anything else besides shit someone?”
Both grin.
“Well…. after she calmed down, she told me there was another neighborhood meeting. She said something about a meeting where something needed to be done. Something like that. Anyway, she said it was important and believe me she said that as if it were life or death.” Jane stops, derailed from her recount of the phone call. “Do you know what she is talking about?”
Dee Dee stretches her legs in between the miscanthus grass and the tidied mums. “I can’t say I do. I don’t know what Julie Berker was talking about, but I can tell you what I know. What I heard about the accident.”
“That’s good enough. I’ll take whatever you’ve got.” More relaxed with this promise, Jane sits back on the palms of her hands.
“And I do mean apparently, a child was on a bike over by that small park. I think you know the one?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“I am not sure, but I think it was a boy. You know, just a kid. Nine or ten. He doesn’t live on that block. I think he lives over here. You know how kids are at that age. They want little adventures. He was over there on his bike, on his own.”
“Got it so far DeeDee.” Jane says in a way to encourage DeeDee to speed it up.
“Yes. And apparently….”
“Yes, I know apparently.” Jane sits up in a cross-leg position eager to hear what DeeDee knows.
“Yes. He was going in and out of the park onto the street and back. You know how they pick up the front wheel pretending to leap over great walls or some such thing. He was probably in some daydream. I suppose some video game fantasy, when he came out of the park, he got hit by a speeding car.”
“Hit by a car? Was he hurt? Was he killed? Who hit him?”
“Her name is Mrs. Geesky. She is known to speed through stop signs and fly over those speed bumps. You know, hell bent.”
“Is he in the hospital? Did someone call the police?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is the kid Julie Berker’s?”
“I don’t know.”
“It is a monstrous thing when a kid gets hurt, but why did I get a phone call. It seems way odd.”
“Jane.” DeeDee looks away as she says Jane’s name then looks back and repeats her name. “Jane, I think the intensity of the call might be from the fact that is was Mrs. Geesky who hit the kid.” Dee Dee stops to explain. “It’s odd to say her name. It gives a false impression as if I know this woman. I assure you, I don’t. She is more of a character in a fairy tale to me. This hearsay. In truth…. gossip. The gossip. Another neighbor saw the accident and ran out. And it was the other neighbor who called for help.”
“I hate to say this, but why me? Why call me so early in the morning?” said Jane.
DeeDee grins at Jane as a warning for what she is about to say. “I think Jane the safe old grandmother image is the best explanation.”
“Maybe so, but I am not taking up the role. Is there more to the story?” Jane leans forward and digs up bits of dirt between the asters.
“Unfortunate on both counts.”
“What do you mean?” Jane puzzled, looks at DeeDee for clarification.
“Unfortunate for Julie that you won’t play the role for her. You might be what the neighborhood needs. It may be her son who got hit?”
Jane digs up a little dirt and throws it at Dee Dee.
“What’s the rest of the story?” Jane returns a question to DeeDee.
“An unfortunate rest of the story. This woman, so I heard, got out of her car screaming at the neighbor who called the police. She was yelling and screaming it was the kid’s fault and she’d bring charges against the parents for negligence for allowing the kid to ride his bike alone in the park.”
Exasperated by the incomprehensible nature of the story Jane says, “The kid may be bleeding on the street and this woman is going to bring up charges against his parents. This is crazy. No wonder Julie Berker was screaming. But that doesn’t answer the question, why me?”
“I don’t know.” DeeDee says with some skepticism.
Jane shrugs and echoes DeeDee. “I don’t know either.”
They both return to work in the dirt when Jane asks, “Is there an end to the story?”
Dee Dee stops and in a solemn tone says, “When does something like this ever end? I’ve told you all the gossip.”
After some silence Jane adds, “The phone call was also an invitation to an emergency neighborhood meeting. The neighbors want to do something. But I can’t imagine what? A car accident is a police matter. It’s up to the police. What good will come from another meeting?”
Without looking at each other, Dee Dee asks, “Jane, are you going to go to this emergency meeting?”
“As I said, it’s a police matter. She has rights just like everyone else. She must pay taxes.” Jane said.
“I don’t know.”
“Well… Whatever! She has rights”.
“These things are complicated, aren’t they?” DeeDee says, making it obvious to both of them. “Following the rules gives us certain rights and oddly breaking the rules…. the laws…. also gives us rights. It’s an odd system we live with.”
“What else can we do?” Jane says resigned to dead-head a few mums herself.
“Love your neighbor as yourself.” DeeDee offers. “These are ideal words left over from an old story.”
With this Jane drops her head back, eyes closed and puffs out a mouthful of air. She stays there for a moment or two while she pats ten fingers into the dirt. When she sits upright, she confesses. “I think you’ve got it DeeDee, but I don’t think we live by that old ideal. I’m sure I don’t. I live by the World War I motto, live and let live with an attitude of Doris Day, Que sera, sera.
Dee Dee mumbles the words of the song as she nods her head as she sings in a whisper, “The future is not ours to see. Whatever will be, will be. Que sera sera.”
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