Let's Not Meet Again

Carmel the Maintenance Guy

Years ago, when I was still a young mom, I became friends with a couple who lived a couple doors down - the maintenance guy, C., and his wife. My daughters called him Carmel because it was close to his name and seemed to amuse them. Anyway, shortly after we met, Carmel's wife left him and somehow I became his shoulder to cry on. He would tell me how he parked in front of the house where she was now living for four hours to give her roses despite her telling him not to contact her, for instance. No matter how much I told him he was never going to win her back by refusing to respect her requests, he kept doing things like this.

Eventually he gave up on wooing her back, I suppose, and we remained friendly but I didn't see as much of him. I did ask him for a lift to go see my boyfriend, who was in the hospital. I did not have a car, and it was a hot summer day, so I didn't really want to walk the two mile trek each way. He dropped me off, and after my visit, I walked home as I originally planned, arriving home in time for my ex to drop off my daughters, all three of whom were kindergarten age or younger.

The following day, I was out of cigarettes. My youngest two were napping, and my five year old was awake. I admittedly didn't use good judgment when I walked across the way to my neighbor's to bum a cigarette, even if I could hear my daughters if they called out. I was gone 3-5 minutes. As soon as I got home, my daughter told me Carmel had called while I was gone.

I called him to see what he needed. "Hey, yeah, how come you didn't call me to come get you yesterday?" he asked. I told him I didn't need a lift home and after a minute or two of conversation, I hung up.

As I did, my daughter said, "Mom, I don't know if you want to know but I think you want to." I asked what she was talking about. "When Carmel called yesterday, he said he likes to take off his clothes and play with himself and do I want to watch?"

Obviously, that was the end of my acquaintance with Carmel, but it was not the end of the story. I filed a police report, but they couldn't really take action because they said a crime had not been committed. Ooookaaay.... I told the apartment manager and he was fired.

However, in the months that followed, my middle daughter started saying odd things when she woke up at night. She'd always awakened at night to go potty or to get a drink in her semi-conscious state, and then always settled back to sleep instantly, but now said "Carmel talked to me at the window" on several different occasions. I always went to find out if he was there, but never saw anyone. I wondered if it was her imagination, even, but every time she said it, she told me that he said he wold be her friend if she let him in, and it happened every time she said he was at the window.

It was scary, but I felt confident enough. After all, I was always home at night and would do anything to protect my girls. These things never happened before midnight, and I was always up until later than that.

Then one night I hired a babysitter while I went to a dance with my boyfriend. We got home around 10:30 or so, only to find the police at my apartment. An unidentified male had tried to convince the babysitter to open the door to him. She said he yelled at her when she wouldn't open the door and that he had walked around to the patio and started waggling his tongue at her through the window, so she called the police. My oldest daughter said, "It was Carmel, mama."

So, even after two police reports, it did not end. The final incident was when I awakened to loud pounding at my front door. I looked through the peephole and it was a police officer. I invited her in, and she said they received a phone call about a man looking into one of the windows of my apartment - my daughter's room!

She said the caller had apparently startled him and he ran, but the caller was able to get a license plate number. "Do you know a man named" and spoke his real name.

That was the last time he messed with my family, but it was not the last I heard about him. My boyfriend ran into him at a convenience store a few months later and said Carmel acted like nothing had happened and they were just great friends.

So... Carmel the stalker abuser pedophile, let's not ever meet again.