A Match Made in Heaven
Feuerherd, Peter
A MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN Peter Feuerherd s I write, I can hear Mildred A and Sam in the next apartment, as usual, yelling at each other. It's one of the benefits of living in a New York...
...We have been forced into a kind of intense long-term relationship in a way we never could have imagined...
...You b...," he yells at the top of his lungs, the words slurred but the meaning intact...
...They are like uninvited visitors who barge through our apartment walls, carrying on an argument which has been going on in various forms for decades...
...In fact, they are contemporaries of Ricky and Lucy, who on TV reruns are forever young and forever in the same apartment...
...Old age is part of the continuum of life...
...it promises no abrupt change from the past...
...There are times I wished I lived in a "Seinfeld"-type apartment universe, where hip yuppies closer to my age share common insights into life...
...It's as if Ricky and Lucy are still where they are on television, frozen in place by their 1950sstyle rent, but now too old to go out hoofing with Fred and Ethel...
...So will happy relationships...
...In a family magazine, one can't even begin to describe the tone of their verbal abuse...
...In the style of New York apartment living, we know our neighbors enough to say hello...
...Most are gentle and pleasant people living out their retirement years...
...They are reminders that what I am now--my relationships, idiosyncracies, habits, obsessions--are sure to remain with me, for better or worse...
...Sam and Mildred are legendary in the building...
...Sam gives as good as he takes...
...now, in his dependence, he mostly gets it from her...
...New York renters stay put, especially if they have rent-controlled apartments...
...Seinfeld" has offered the nation an image of New York apa~-tinent living as a kind of singles dorm where over-aged adolescents walk through unlocked doors and banter in a party-all-the-time atmosphere...
...They are old...
...Miserable old arguments will continue...
...Sam is wheelchair-bound because of a stroke and dependent on Mildred for everything--an uneasy dependence, it is fair to say...
...Mildred and Sam fit right in, agewise...
...Just beyond my wall is a loud statement that misery begets misery, and that the cycle of recrimination practiced upon those we are supposed to love is a long, lonely road to nowhere or the bare walls of an apartment in Queens...
...Sam and Mildred's regular arguments remind me every day that the important relationships, husband and wife, parent and child, can never be taken for granted...
...Reality, of course, is very different...
...The stories are right there through the thin walls next to the breakfast nook...
...If I were living in the suburbs, as a forty-one-year-old, I'd be firmly ensconced in middle age...
...He would yell at her...
...And apparently Sam and Mildred were at it long before we moved in three years ago...
...And many New York apartment buildings, like mine, are filled not with yuppie singles but with older adults...
...But my neighbors, even Sam and Mildred, offer their own kind of insights and lessons...
...My fifteen-year-old nephew, who lives in a quiet suburb, expressed a fascination with the arguments during a recent visit...
...Commonweal 3 | November 20,1998...
...We live on the first floor of a six-story building, but tenants on the top floor tell us they can be heard there...
...In their younger days, he owned a business and held the upper hand in their relationship...
...The "f" word is a regular part of her banter...
...Someday I may be old...
...Is that why so many writers gravitate to apartment living...
...Nearly everyone is past sixty, and some are bearing down on the century mark...
...Their arguments are now part of the background noise, only highlighted when a visitor asks what's going on next door...
...Even in Mayor Rudy's idyllic nearcrime-free city, no sane person would leave an apartment door open...
...She will complain about his incontinence, his slurred speech, his demands to be fed...
...The result is a combination of stagnation and stability...
...Her trump card is a warning: if he doesn't shape up, he will be sent to a nursing home...
...Instead of a college dorm, our building is more like a nursing home...
...But that is not the case with Sam and Mildred...
...Cool," he said, listening in on a verbal blast from next door, experiencing a kind of warped vicarious adolescent thrill...
...All in all, we exist amidst a cultivated and pleasant distance that suits all parties fine, such as the older Jewish woman who made sure to leave me a vacant washer in the laundry room last month and wished me, her Christian neighbor, a happy holy day last Christmas...
...A few are infirm...
...Living in my Queens apartment building, I'm still something of a young Turk...
...They moved here with many of the other tenants after World War II...
...Peter Feuerherd/s a frequent Commonweal contributor...
...Or maybe a house in the suburbs in a community where parents come together and enjoy the routine swirl of children's soccer games and high school proms, then retreat to their homes, all at a safe distance from one another...
...It's one of the benefits of living in a New York apartment: there's always a drama going on...
Vol. 125 • November 1998 • No. 20
