Illustration by Josh George
Nearly every place I’ve ever lived has been connected to a neighbor. Over the years, I’ve shared walls with a large family of mice, three aspiring opera singers, a man who did his laundry in our coin-op wearing nothing but tighty-whities, a pot dealer, and a couple who fought at the top of their lungs and, uh, made up just as loudly.
So when my husband and I relocated from Brooklyn to Richmond eight years ago, I had one criterion for our new housing: no shared walls. For me, one of Richmond’s draws was its bounty of freestanding houses in the heart of the city. We could enjoy some space without sacrificing the urban lifestyle we prized. Plus, a buffer between us and our neighbors might help my husband and me to be, well, better neighbors. I definitely wasn’t someone you wanted to share a wall with the time I hosted a drag revue in my living room. Or the time I hired Two Dudes and a Van to move me into a new apartment and the Dudes stole three of the bicycles parked in the foyer.
Once, toward the end of my time in New York, I walked by a building similar to ours — a four-story house segmented into apartments, one per floor — that was being razed. Most of its facade was gone so you could see into each flat, much like the open side of a dollhouse. Here were four distinct lives, separated by nothing but some plaster and floorboards. When privacy is at a premium, it can feel too close for comfort to befriend your neighbors. Proximity meant we already shared plenty: I knew the guy downstairs sneezed in threes; he probably knew I sung in the shower. Still, seeing those exposed apartments stacked on top of each other, it struck me as absurd, even sad, to avoid our connection to other people.
I kept an open mind when the charming property we found in Richmond was a row house. We’d fallen in love with Richmond’s arts scene, its cafes and farmers’ markets, its walkable neighborhoods and overall welcoming way — qualities with connectivity at their core. I tried to remind myself of that when the beagle next door howled late at night, or when the undergrads a few yards down burned strange things in their fire pit that gave off noxious smoke.
One night, that cute but noisy beagle barked nonstop, and its owner, a middle-aged woman, had left on her television at top volume. The next afternoon, it seemed no one had taken out the dog and the television continued to blare. Concerned, my husband and I knocked on her door. Nothing. We tried the back; we rapped on her windows and tried to look in. Eventually, she answered, apologetic and thankfully, she was okay. We never learned what was up that day; ultimately, it wasn’t our business, but our neighbor now knew that the couple next door cared.
We’re now in our second Richmond house — a twin — and we’ve become parents. Sharing a wall reassured me the time my husband traveled for work and I was on my own with our infant daughter. “If you hear her screaming for a suspicious amount of time, come get us!” I told our friend next door. Living close to others is a way to have built-in comrades, to be part of a pack. Our daughter plays with the children on our street; my neighbors and I edge each other’s small lawns and bring mail in when someone’s out of town. Now, I love to sit with my husband on our porch at night and look up the block. The row of porches creates a long hallway. Late summer, ceiling fans whir and send along voices and whiffs of citronella. The workday is over, the kids are in bed, the dogs have been walked and the dishes washed and dried. The sense of relief is sweetened because it’s communal.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Katy Resch George is author of the story collection “Exposure.” She earned an MFA in fiction from VCU and has been the recipient of an artist's grant from Richmond Culture Works. George works for the Visual Arts Center of Richmond.
