Her name wasn’t really Cedar. If she’d been younger anyone in Berkeley would believe it, but she was a Boomer, and her parents had never been eccentric. Her birth names were Sharon Elizabeth, and she took on the tree name Cedar when she was 19. She always loved trees, especially evergreens.

When I met her we were both in our 40s. I moved into the house next door, just north of hers, across the creek. I was a newly single mother (raw and reluctant from divorce) and she was a happily-married mother of one. My two kids were years older and younger than her daughter so they didn’t play together. But Cedar seemed to derive pleasure and solace and other positive effects from hand-hosing her garden, so she was often outside, and we naturally got to talking.

Cedar and Carl were an attractive couple, and their daughter Autumn, coltish and platinum blonde even at nine, was eye-catching. Cedar was well-shaped and about 5’9.” She had thick wavy shoulder-length hair in the usual array of blonde streaks. Carl wasn’t much taller than his wife. He was slender and blonder. He did some sort of business consulting, out of the house. Cedar wove, knitted, crocheted, and quilted items for home and body, mostly forest-inspired, mostly marketed online.

Except for the winter months, every morning I could hear her hose on greenery even before I got out of bed (my head aimed south when I slept, and my headboard was two casement windows, one of which was open every night). It was a relaxing sound, and I could imagine the accessory sensation of the cool, almost vibrating hose in hand, so I understood Cedar’s irrigation pleasure even though I didn’t get the regularity – behavior that appeared to be compulsive.

I don’t think I would have paid so much attention to Cedar and family if coincidence hadn’t occurred. But I had a commute friend named Terry, and one day she got off the bus at my stop and came to my place for an afterwork glass of wine, and when I walked her to the sidewalk to say goodbye, Cedar and Autumn were passing by. It turned out that Terry knew Cedar from before she and Carl bought the house. Terry had been in the apartment next to theirs before Autumn was born.

The next day Terry talked about that old apartment. She said her bedroom was adjacent to theirs. She used to hear the sound of their lovemaking through the wall. The remarkable memorable quality was the amount of laughter she heard. Terry said she’d never been close to such a healthy, happy couple.

Terry was an oddball. She was rail-thin and always cold, and she wore layers of scarf-like clothing around her body. Her face makeup was applied like paint: red circles on her cheekbones and iridescent blue on her lids all the way to her brows. She tended to writhe a bit when she sat. Cat-like. In fact, the only times I ever saw her genuinely smile were when she fondled her cats and when she reminisced about Cedar and Carl.

Terry told me she’d been a heroin addict. She said she used to drive a cab, nights in New York City. She claimed to have been a nude model, and she’s the only person I ever knew who festooned her refrigerator door with black-and-white pictures of her unclothed younger self, in ostentatiously “artistic” poses.

She described herself as bisexual in orientation, but with a relationship history populated largely by men, largely by passionate large men, largely by men who were sexually aggressive with Terry in ways that abutted abuse but amounted to provocative gymnastics, at least the way she told them.

I let the friendship with Terry peter out after my visit to her place and my viewing of her refrigerator. Not that I was offended (or aroused) by the pictures. More because I found Terry boring and superficial and affected. And also because I got the strange but undeniable feeling, while we were looking at that refrigerator door, that Terry was waiting for me to make a move on her. I believe she was giving me what I’ve heard guys call a “come hither” look.

As if. I’m incurably straight. And I’m never the sexual initiator. Terry had to know those facts about me, if she was paying any attention.

She wasn’t paying attention. And I stopped regarding her. But I kept noticing Cedar. We often encountered one another over the creek, while she watered her trees and I moved leaves around. The first time I conversed with her after hearing Terry’s memories, of course I mentioned them.

“It was just a lovely recollection,” I announced. “Hearing how often you guys laughed. Terry seemed to really enjoy those neighbor sounds.”

“Oh yeah,” Cedar agreed. “And I remember Terry’s cats.” She directed her water away from the oak tree between us and toward a big bay laurel. “Carl and I were new then. But I feel a little weird now about our laughter. It was all about his wife.”

I’m sure I looked questioning; I hope I didn’t drop my jaw or anything.

“Carl was really unhappy in his marriage. I worked for him then, and I knew all about it. What can I say? An office relationship grew into a friendship and that developed into more than either of us intended. Meanwhile Mary got more and more demanding, and Carl moved in with me. Mary used to call us at all hours, haranguing Carl or threatening to kill herself if he didn’t come back. She even made some aggressive comments about me. We had to get a restraining order.”

I would have expressed sympathy, but Cedar was smiling wide as she reminisced. “Uh huh” is what I said. “So your background is in the same sort of work Carl does?”

“Oh not really. I mean, he’s the one with the advanced degree. My job was clerical, and business management consulting never grabbed me. He had ten more years in it than I by then. And I quit as soon as we got pregnant.”

It was hard for me to imagine Carl as any sort of player. He wasn’t bad looking, but he was slight, quiet, kind of shy. Not very masculine. Cedar was such a take-charge person, so energetic in her art and her nonprofit tree-planting work, that she seemed to be the dominant personality in their household.

I noticed Carl a little more after that. I even joined them for wine one winter evening (I’m friendly but a bit of a hermit, and I don’t want to be so close to my neighbors that anyone feels comfortable dropping in). I tried to converse with Carl that time. He responded to my questions but didn’t ask anything in return. He struck me as monotonous: as pale in conversation as in complexion and eyelashes. He was more attentive to Autumn than to Cedar or me. I thought it was a little weird, the amount of time Autumn spent on his lap.

A few months later, about a week after springtime watering noise had commenced next door, I woke to the unmistakable sounds of marital argument. Cedar’s voice carried better than Carl’s but I could tell from tone that they were really going at it. I heard “skinny-assed bitch” and several “fuck YOUs” from Cedar, followed by the sound of what must have been a newspaper on asphalt, finished by the abrupt ignition and acceleration of Carl’s Honda.

I’ll admit it: I found a reason to go outside even before the coffee was ready.

It was very bad news. Carl was leaving Cedar. He was now in love with the young woman who’d been working with him in his office. He planned to marry this Jennifer person. He told Cedar that Jennifer was eager to have a baby and he was looking forward to “doing it right this time.” That drove the blade deeper. Cedar had wanted another child after Autumn, but Carl insisted their family was perfect and complete as it was. Cedar had finally given up just a year ago; I remember the conversation we had when she hosted a yard sale that featured (mostly) baby gear.

It only got worse after that. Carl returned that day but moved out about a week later. Cedar grew progressively more agitated and angry. I’m sure I’m not the only neighbor who heard the yelling, the door-slamming, and sometimes shrieks from Autumn. And that was when Carl wasn’t around; the times he stopped by to pick up or drop off Autumn tended to be even louder.

I could tell from the lamplight that Cedar wasn’t sleeping much at night. Or not regularly. Often there was a glow from her house in the eerie pre-dawn hours. That’s probably when she used the phone.

We had our last conversation shortly before she moved out. She was no longer watering the garden; she accosted me from her front yard when I was returning from the market with a bag of produce.

She looked at least ten pounds thinner. Her hair needed cut and color; it straggled around her newly-narrow face. “You won’t believe it!” she started as she approached me. I had no choice but to stop. “That fucker served me with a TRO! Me! A restraining order!”

I murmured some sympathy. It was sincere. “Were you going by his place?”

“Never! I’m not even allowed to phone him!”

“I’m sorry, Cedar.”

“I just can’t believe this is happening to me. It’s like my whole life is coming apart, layer by layer.”

“Do you want to grab some dinner with me?”

“Oh. Uh, no thanks. I mean, thanks really, but my appetite’s been off lately, and I can’t settle down. Let’s do it soon though.” Her smile was habitual and didn’t even push her cheeks up.

Within another two weeks she came completely apart. I understand the catalyst was when Autumn called her father and asked if she could live with him and Jennifer. Cedar went ballistic. Someone in the neighborhood called the police, and the police called Social Services. Autumn went with her father and Cedar was taken to a rehab-type facility.

She may have improved, but not in time to prevent the house being sold. My new neighbors are delightful people – friendly and private. They have an only son named Jason who is currently fascinating me. He’s 15, probably on the spectrum, and liable to act out in weird ways. His parents bought him a trombone because making music seems to calm him; they’ve plastered his bedroom door and windows with soundproofing strips, but I can hear him anyway. Just last week he tossed a match out of his room and started a little conflagration. With all the trees on that property, less watered now that Cedar isn’t around and we’re so drought-aware, someone needs to keep an eye out.