Sandy and I got together less than a year after I moved in, and long before she officially changed residence in December 1997, she was here much of the time. And then, of course, we lived together for thirteen and a half years.
Sometimes I'd wake in the night, thinking I heard noises downstairs that indicated intruders, and I'd be frustrated by Sandy's snoring or snuffling in her sleep. I couldn't focus on my imaginary danger with her sleep-sounds interfering. And when there were actual security issues that concerned me (cops outside looking for a man they said had "disappeared behind the blue house," for example), Sandy tended to assume that everything would play out exactly as it should without her involvement. As she said to me the night I was prowling the windows, monitoring the manhunt, "You need to tell me what you want me to do. Because my reaction is to go back to sleep."
But there is comfort in another human's presence, especially when it's the human you love most in the world. I was often more skittish at night when she was out of town. So when her life expectancy was suddenly shortened two years ago, I wondered whether I'd have the nerve to live alone again if she died. We'd been talking about getting a dog for years, and I thought I might need a dog for peace of mind if I were left here alone. We were planning to take the dog search more seriously just as soon as she was through radiation and on a new chemo schedule. But she died before we got there.
What has been unexpected is not so much that I'm okay living alone, but that I'm not living alone. I haven't felt any more vulnerable to the outside world than I did with Sandy here, and in large part that's because I feel like she is still here. Even after I started moving away from the reassuring idea that she would return (and make no mistake, I'm still begging her to find her way back), I continue to feel her here strongly enough that I feel like I'm lying when I answer a survey question about how many people live in our household.
In the early hours of Thursday morning, I woke to loud sounds coming from the kitchen. I assumed the cats had gotten themselves into trouble, or that some critter or other was trying desperately to get in through the locked cat door. It sounded very much like a body being thrown against the door. I threw my robe on and went down to the kitchen without even grabbing my glasses. No cats to be seen, but there was definitely something throwing itself against the door. I banged on the door once and yelled something barely intelligible; that's worked in the past to send miscreant critters scurrying off the deck. And then I looked out the window, afraid I'd see a large raccoon. Instead, I saw a man.
I also heard him talking, chuckling; I thought there might be two people. I pushed the kitchen cart in front of the door and called 911. The body slams (kicks? I don't know what he was doing exactly) were interspersed with periods of knocking and with him trying the doorknob repeatedly. I stayed on with the 911 dispatcher until the police arrived, which didn't take long. Meanwhile, I yelled "Go away" as firmly as I could manage a couple of times, from a distance of about ten feet from the door. His behavior would change each time, so I know he heard me. But he did not go away.
The police talked with him, and then one of them came to talk with me, and then they escorted him off the property. I raced upstairs to put on pants and grab my glasses, attempting to make sense of the world. And then the cop came back to the door to check in with me before they departed. He told me the guy was drunk, had thought he knew someone who lived here. He's a young guy, from Bellingham. I asked what they were going to do with him, assuming they'd take him to Harborview to dry out. Their plan was to put him in a taxi and send him to a hotel. I commented that it was nice that he'd get to sleep well.
I was even angrier when the cop told me that they weren't going to file a police report because "there's no way a prosecutor would do anything with this." I wanted to know how the guy would be accountable for his violent behavior, and it became increasingly apparent that the cop didn't believe me. He seems to have thought the guy was knocking loudly and I just freaked out. He didn't say that, but other comments made it obvious that he didn't have a lot of respect for me. (Later I saw my hair and was frankly amused that he wasn't laughing hysterically.) He said things like "He's never been in any trouble," and I said, "How would you know, if no one files a report?" When I said I didn't even know if he'd damaged the door, we went outside and looked at it together; I said it looked okay, and that was good, at least, and the cop said I'd probably just heard things "rattling." I urged him to listen to the 911 recording, which should have the sounds of the guy trying to knock the door down, but I know he won't bother.
When I said, "So what if he'd gotten in? What do you think would have happened?" the cop said, "He probably would have just fallen asleep on the couch." Infuriating. The whole encounter, he was incredibly patronizing. He even told me at one point, "Well, you live near a lot of bars." What does that have to do with anything?
I insisted on an incident report, which he wrote up as "trespass," not attempted breaking and entering or drunken and disorderly conduct or anything else that would begin to capture the experience I had. The guy hadn't come up to the back door and just knocked, even loudly.
After the cop left, Nada appeared, but it took me about fifteen minutes to find Belly. He'd hidden himself away securely. Neither cat was eager to venture into the kitchen. They knew how scary the action had been.
We all went back to bed about an hour later. By then, it was 3:30 a.m. It took me another hour or two to get to sleep. I'd worried that I'd be anxious about someone breaking in, but I actually found it reassuring that the door had held. Instead, I lay awake fuming about the cop's attitude and his dismissal of my report that the guy had been aggressive and violent in his behavior. I am short, and wearing a bathrobe, with my hair flying every which way, I probably looked like a woman prone to panic. But honestly, I'm not. If I'd awakened to someone knocking on the back door at 2:30 a.m., I'd have been startled and nervous, of course, but I'd have yelled through the door to ask what they wanted and informed them that they had the wrong house. This was not someone knocking on the door.
I'm still fuming, obviously, and haven't decided whether this is a battle worth fighting. I suspect it would require an expenditure of energy I can't spare for results that would anger me even more. But what I've found more interesting is my reaction to the threat itself.
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| She's here, and she's alarmed! |
After everyone was gone, I spent time calming down the cats, and then we all went to bed. As I said, I lay awake fuming about the cops, but I didn't worry about another attempt at a break-in. And my dreams were not about being vulnerable; they were about being patronized. In my dream, a niece who lives many miles away had heard about what happened and sent people to come stay with me so that I could feel safe and would be able to sleep. But I didn't know any of this people, and their presence kept me from sleeping. I finally kicked them all out, annoyed that all these people thought I was so fragile that I needed their comfort.
I have spent a few minutes figuring out a more effective way to barricade the back door, should I ever need to, after I realized that the kitchen cart was on wheels and wouldn't have deterred anyone. And I'm considering a recording of barking dogs until I someday have a dog enter my life. But those reactions are part of the emergency-preparedness game I play. They're paired with the constant inquiry into how I could have done something more effectively, and that's mostly about how to convey the truth to the cops in a way that they'll hear - audio recordings? video recordings? How can I keep from being patronized in the future?
Yesterday was a dark and rainy day, I hadn't had enough sleep, and I worked under pressure with a looming deadline all day. I stopped working at 8:00 p.m. and found the world disorienting. I didn't want to go to bed last night, dreading fear and anxiety. But I was fine.
Sandy's been here more again today, and I'm recognizing this unwanted bit of drama as a test of my nerves, a way of seeing whether I've been fooling myself in thinking I'm safe here. And in thinking I don't live alone. And in thinking that maybe Sandy can protect me.
It's not even been 48 hours, so my evaluation is preliminary. But I'm feeling pretty good about it. For one thing, I've realized that Sandy's physical presence in the house wouldn't have made a difference in how events unfolded; you really only need one person to call 911 and yell "Go away." She may have been able to get the cop to listen, but he would probably have dismissed her account, too. And I'm glad nothing like this happened when she was sick or dying, desperate for elusive sleep, and when my nervous system was stretched to its limit.
I don't know whether she had anything to do with keeping the guy out. I asked her afterwards if maybe she could work to deter someone like that before he even entered our yard, say. But having her presence, feeling it especially strongly today, is a comfort. And being in our home, alone with Sandy's presence and our kitties, gives me more strength than a gated community ever could.
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