Frozen

One frigid Chicago winter morning a couple years back I went outside to throw out my trash and saw my neighbor Garrett crouching by his plastic garbage can. I walked over to say hey and realized he was sawing a frozen squirrel in half.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

“I dunno. Sadism? Taxidermy?”

“Nah. I think this guy chewed his way in, had dinner, and froze to death trying to get out,” Garrett said, sawing through the head and neck sticking out of the can.

I wondered what kind of guy sees a frozen squirrel and thinks, “I should get my hacksaw.” I would have left the squirrel there till spring. For all I know, the little guy might have woken up in April, thawed out and gone about his business.

I went back inside.

“Garrett’s cutting a frozen squirrel in half.”

“Mm-hmm,” Trish said, without looking up from her laptop. “Did you offer to help?”

“Hell no. It’s psychotic. Plus, it’s freezing outside.”

Garrett and I had been friends for a handful of years.

Now we don’t speak anymore.

When we first moved to the neighborhood, Garrett and his wife had us over for dinner before anyone else did. We hung out in the kitchen drinking wine and gorging on tapas until they said, “Let’s go outside for dinner,” and we realized that none of that had been dinner. Later that night Garrett showed me his bourbon collection lying on the floor of a spare bedroom and made me take one home.

Their annual party was apparently legendary. We went once. There were cocktail waitresses in body paint and thongs. We’re not prudes, but we didn’t go back.

Garrett gave me great advice on the business I was building, urging me to think bigger than I had been. Trish and I went to his daughter’s backyard graduation party, and he and his wife came to my son’s bar mitzvah. We were all in our forties then, still collecting new people to see who stuck.

The summer after the squirrel, my wife and I had a neighborhood barbeque, and I handed Garrett a martini and sat down to talk. An election was coming up, and I wondered where his head was at. More than once, Trish or I would read something in the news and say, “I wonder what Garrett would say.”

As I poured another drink at the barbeque, I said something snarky about a certain presidential candidate. When Garrett disagreed, I said, “Well you won’t put up a lawn sign, right?”

He glared right through me.

His wife laughed and said, “Don’t worry, there won’t be any signs,” which only pissed him off more. Within a few minutes he was gone.

Drunken texts followed. I don’t recall what I said, but I’m sure it was stupid. He texted right back and said, “My last Jewish neighbor would never tell me who I can and can’t vote for.”

He was referencing the folks who owned our house before us, who were Jewish too. There weren’t a lot of us in this part of town.

I read the text over and over. I suddenly wasn’t his neighbor who happened to be Jewish. I was his “Jewish neighbor.”

As a child of a Holocaust survivor, I carry around a private question: who would hide us if things got rough? Until that night, Garrett was pretty high on my list.

We haven’t spoken since. Garrett moved away from the neighborhood a few years after that, and our paths haven’t crossed.

Well once, actually.

My wife and I were on a trip in the Bahamas and saw Garrett and his wife checking in as we were leaving. I was excited and called out their names like we were still great friends. He flashed a smile when he saw me, then caught himself.

“The weather’s gorgeous here,” I said to his wife with way too much enthusiasm. Garrett acted like he spotted someone he knew across the lobby and walked over without looking back. The women hugged. Trish and I rolled our bags toward the exit.

Garrett cut the squirrel in half.

I walked away.

We both thought the other one was the problem.

We were both right.