The knockers at my door

I walked outside at 6:00 AM this morning to pick up the newspaper on my driveway. Across the street my neighbor had come out of the house to set the sprinkler. I was dressed, she had on a robe which was hanging open to show a flannel nightgown, her hair was uncombed. When she saw me she pulled the front of the robe together and retreated back into the house.

The house she lives in for a long time was a rental. We moved to the neighborhood in 1975, and the people across the street were a nice couple with young children. Like most of my neighbors from that era they moved on from their starter homes and got bigger and better houses. When they moved a couple with a teenage daughter moved in. They stayed for a year or so and then they moved and they rented the place out. Another young couple moved in. They had two pre-teen boys.

One day I walked by my front door and through the glass panels in the portico I could see the lady of that house standing in the front window, nude from the waist up. I yelled to Sally, "Honey, the neighbor lady is standing naked in her window."

After a time the now-clothed lady introduced herself to us as Sharon. Her husband was Skip. The boys were hers, and Skip was her second husband. Sharon had a nice body. Even though at her introduction she was clothed I remembered from my brief look what was under the clothes. Unfortunately her face was, well...how do I put it...it didn't match her body in attractiveness. Sharon didn't have a car, and a couple of times she asked Sally to take her to the grocery store, which Sally did.

Apparently the couple was having trouble. One morning when I went to work I saw Sharon and her two sons sitting on the front porch, suitcases around them. As I drove down the street a taxi went by me. I put two and two together. We didn't see her again for quite a while, and we didn't really see the husband either. Very soon after Sharon and the boys left we saw a beautiful Asian girl going into the house with him and I swear they didn't come out for days. It was the heat of summer and his lawn was dying. It was turning bright yellow, but the curtains stayed closed.

One day I looked out to see the curtains open and Sharon, in a bikini, washing the front window. Later on that day she came over to our house and I answered the door. Sharon was still in the bikini, and was wearing high heels. Sally came to the door, "Hey Sharon! You goin' to the beach?" (The nearest one being about 750 miles away.)

Sharon told her story: Apparently Skip had kicked her out; he'd sent her and her sons home to Detroit while they got a divorce. She waited a few weeks and flew back to Utah, took a taxi to the house and walked in on Skip and his girlfriend. By this time the landlord had driven by and seen the condition of the yard, so he evicted Skip. I have no idea what induced Sharon to fly from Detroit just to clean the house.

We didn't see Sharon after that day although she sent Sally a letter detailing her troubles and that was the last we heard of her.

When I look at that house across the street, even 30 years after the fact, it's hard to forget looking out to see a nude woman in the window, or having that same woman show up on my doorstep with her basketball-sized boobs barely covered. What I think is, I wish it would happen to me now.