The Good Neighbor

by William Kowalski

  Marly lay in a coffin in the outer living room, having already been dressed, washed, and laid out by the undertaker and his staff. Her children and the neighbors from several miles around kept up a vigil that lasted through most of the night. Toward sunrise, the neighbors went home to rest, and the children filed into their old bedrooms with the docility of trained pets returning to their cages. The Philadelphia husbands did not give any thought to keeping their wives company, but settled for bunking together in one of the empty bedrooms, for comfort—though neither would admit it, both of them were terrified of the old house, and were sure it was haunted. It went without saying that no one would sleep in Marly’s bed, though it was the most comfortable.

  In the morning, Lucia was the first to rise. She brewed pots of coffee and fried ham steaks and eggs, and soon, awakened by

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  these delicious smells, the others began to drift downstairs. Ellen was the last to get up. When she came into the kitchen, where the others had been eating in shifts at the small table, her appearance gave her sisters a shock. Her face was smeared with dust, and her dress, which she had not bothered to change out of before bed, was torn along the sides, as if she had been dragged for some ways down the road.

  “Ellen!” Lucia said. “What on earth happened to you?”

  Ellen looked bewildered. She smoothed her hair back self consciously and stared at everyone staring at her.

  “Why, I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

  “You’re filthy! And your dress!” Lucia cried. She went to her sis ter and spun her around, pointing to the tears in her clothing. “Were you sleepwalking?” she asked.

  “I—yes, I must have been,” Ellen said quickly. “I think I remem ber waking up in the barn.” She gave a faint smile.

  Hamish looked skeptically at her bare feet, which were clean. Had she been walking around in the barn at night, he thought, she would have certainly had to step through the manure that Kloot Flavia-Hermann rarely bothered to clean up.

  “First time I’ve ever heard of a sleepwalker stopping to put on their shoes,” he remarked.

  “Now, Hamish, you know very well that sleepwalkers do strange things,” said Lucia. “And Ellen has often walked in her sleep before. Remember the time Mother heard a noise, and found her on the porch roof?”

  Hamish did remember that time, and so did Ellen; she also re membered that she hadn’t really been sleepwalking, but had merely crept out of bed to explore the house at night, something she did often, though she had never been discovered before that time. Marly’s assumption that she was sleepwalking was a chari table one, made for her own peace of mind, for girls who left their beds at night to amuse themselves could not be trusted in the slightest; it was easier for Marly not to believe such a thing. Oth

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  erwise, she would have had to tie Ellen into bed.

  “I remember that,” said Olivia. “Though I am rather mortified to think that she hasn’t grown out of it by now.”

  “Et moi aussi,” said Margaret, sniffing.

  “Ellen hasn’t sleepwalked in years,” said Hamish. “It’s being back home under these trying circumstances that’s doing it to her.”

  There was a general murmur of assent and understanding— Hamish could always be trusted to come up with the right expla nation in a pinch. Thus diagnosed, Ellen shot her brother a grateful look, and scurried back upstairs to clean herself up and change her dress.

  ❚ ❚ ❚

  The funeral was held that afternoon. The same minister who had consecrated the graves the year before arrived around one o’clock, in a black surrey drawn by two black horses. Since after breakfast, the mourners had begun to gather once again in the living room to bid farewell, and by noon their numbers had swelled to more than a hundred. Marly had not been the most outgoing of women, but she had been respected in the community. Laid out now in her black dress, a silk kerchief tied under her chin to keep her mouth closed and to hide the worst of her injuries—ruined head propped on a small pillow, hands folded at her waist—the adult Musgrove children could scarcely believe how small death had made her. In their memories, she would always loom as the largest figure any of them had ever known, eclipsing even their frightening military fa ther, whom Olivia and Margaret barely remembered—but now they suddenly noticed that she was really only a tiny woman, barely five foot four, and that whatever spirit, had possessed her mortal self and lent it such stature had fled for good.

  The minister intoned a blessing over the casket, which was then closed. As Marly’s face disappeared from view for the last

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  time, Hamish felt a terrible tightening in his chest, and he sensed that the floor was falling away beneath his feet. Ashamed of him self, he had to be supported by the Philadelphia husbands until he regained his equilibrium. His sisters, unrestrained by the dictums of manly comportment, set up a collective moan that grew into a low wail as the coffin was transported out of the front door.

  Hamish recovered enough to assume his position as one of the pallbearers. The men moved a step, then paused, then took an other step, then paused. In this solemn manner, accompanied by the periodic thud of a muffled military drum that had thought fully been provided, as a tribute to her war-widowship, by the lo cal militia, they headed around the house and toward the family plot. The mourners fell into line behind, forming an undulating black-clad dragon of grief, the head of which had already stopped at the open grave site just as the tail was leaving the house.

  When all had gathered, the minister spoke for a lengthy time. He reminisced about Marly’s girlhood, of which he had known nothing, and spoke of the great sadness and hardships that she had endured in her life, but that were now coming to an end, as she was laid to rest among the little ones who had left her too soon. The minister once again read the names of the dead Mus- grove children aloud, and the living Musgroves cast an anxious eye at Ellen, dreading a repeat of last year ’s performance. But, to their mixed relief and surprise, Ellen remained calm, even dry- eyed—almost detached. It seemed to the others as if, in her mind, the funeral was already over, and she was back home in Pitts burgh. When the service was over and the coffin lowered into the ground, each of the children threw a shovelful of dirt on top of it, and then stood back as each of the mourners did the same. By the time they were done, the hole was nearly filled in. The under taker ’s men had only a small job to finish, and then there was a new grave at Adencourt.

  It was, the children knew, to be the last. Though they hadn’t discussed this with each other, each of them had a fervent wish

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  not to be buried at Adencourt, although for very different reasons: Olivia and Margaret because it was too unfashionable; Hamish because he intended never to return to this cursed place again, ei ther in life or in death; and Ellen because, in addition to the rea sons she shared with Hamish, she couldn’t bear the idea of sleeping side by side through all eternity next to the little brother she had drowned. It was enough, she felt, that her soul would be tormented in hell for all eternity—it was too much to think that her very bones would be made restless, too. Lucia was the only one who wouldn’t have minded. She had rarely left Adencourt in life, and saw no particular reason to leave it in death, either. But then again, being of an unspiritual mind-set, Lucia didn’t believe that where a person’s remains lay made any particular difference. She would be happy to be buried next to her husband in the Lutheran cemetery closer to town, when her time came.

  The funeral over, all the mourners went back into the house for supper. Then they bid farewell to the siblings and went home in their wagons. As the dust settled in the driveway, the women set about cleaning the place once more. They scrubbed it from top to bottom, beginning in the attic and working their way down to the basement. They had not planned to do this, it being a strange end to a day of sadness; but they found themselves at
a loss, and fell to work as a substitute for conversation.

  Ellen and Lucia worked together in their mother ’s bedroom, first sweeping out the corners and shooing an invisible amount of dust into the hallway, then getting on their hands and knees to scrub the floor with soap and water. Eventually, Lucia got around to opening the closet that had held their mother ’s few dresses. It had been years since she’d had occasion to go in there, and she was given a turn by the headless dressmaker ’s dummy that greeted her mutely, like some forgotten guest who had wandered in there long ago.

  “I’m burning this old thing,” she declared firmly. “It’s always given me the fantods.”

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  Ellen agreed with her. They cleared the closet of a number of items that nobody had any use for, now that Marly was gone, and carried them out behind the barn, where Hamish set fire to them with a sense of grim satisfaction. Then the two sisters went back upstairs to finish their work. Only then did Lucia spy the door to the hidey-hole, which had been concealed behind a pile of boxes.

  “Goodness, I’d all but forgotten about that place!” she ex claimed. “It’s been ages since I was down there.”

  “Nor me,” Ellen said—quickly. “I wonder if I could still fit in.”

  “Oh, no, Lucia,” said Ellen, ushering her out of the closet and firmly closing the door. “You and I are much too plump to be crawling around down there. Why, what if we got stuck? The boys would have to tear the house down just to get us out!”

  Self-consciously, Lucia placed her hands on her waist and smoothed her dress.

  “You’re right,” she said. “I’m as fat as a house, ever since Lincoln was born.”

  The childless Ellen colored to her forehead; she had deserved that, she thought.

  “Well,” she said, “at least you have a reason to be fat.”

  Thus satisfied at having drawn this small amount of blood from each other, the sisters left Marly’s bedroom, closing and locking the door firmly behind them.

  ❚ ❚ ❚

  It would be some months before Lucia and her husband would fi nally allow themselves to move in there, now that Adencourt was theirs, and then the closet would once again be crammed full of boxes of scraps and cast-off items. The passage to the hidey-hole was closed off to little Lincoln as he took his first steps in the liv ing room, then graduated to climbing stairs, then to exploring the empty bedrooms on the second floor. Lincoln believed that he had

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  a host of invisible playmates who made their residences there, and whom he was accustomed to visit on a daily basis, chattering away to them in a made-up tongue. He would often attempt to introduce his parents to these playmates, and would be frustrated by the fact that they couldn’t see them; to him they were as real as anything else, and most important, they kept him from grow ing lonely. But by the time he grew into a tall, lanky boy, even Lin coln had ceased to be aware of the presence of the spirits of his five aunts and uncles, none of whom had lived on earth as long as he had, and who were therefore unequipped to trail him into the mysterious reaches of adolescence, and beyond.

  This was why neither Lincoln nor any of his descendants was to discover the diary that Marly had kept secret from everyone, but which Ellen had stumbled upon the night that she rose from bed and rummaged, grief-stricken, through her mother ’s posses sions, inhaling the lingering scent of her body on her bedclothes, fingering her meager collection of jewelry, pilfering the butterfly pin that Marly had woven from Henry’s long blond hair, finally discovering the journal at the bottom of a steamer trunk, hidden by a pile of undergarments. Here, finally, she had found a place where she could record her confession of what she had done, hop ing to feel relief at finally unburdening herself of her terrible se cret; hoping also—in vain—that she would find some solace in writing it in the same book her mother had written, in her child ish, uneducated hand, as if it were a chronicle of just another household tragedy.

  When she had finished her confession, she crawled agonizingly down through the darkness into the hidey-hole, nearly becoming stuck several terrifying times. There, in the place she had not vis ited in more than twenty years, she deposited the artifacts of her guilt, among the rag dolls that she herself had left down there years earlier and forgotten about, as well as the empty bottle of the poison that had consumed her father as he consumed it—an other item she had stolen so she could examine it, in an effort to

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  understand. It was her greatest hope, as well as her fear, that the diary would one day be discovered by someone who had it in them to understand the reasons why that thing had happened, and who possessed, perhaps, the ability to see through the veil that ordinarily conceals the lives of those who live in the same place at different times from one another ’s view; someone who could—by some miraculous chance, through some generous way of seeing through time—see poor Ellen as she really was, and for give her.

  Part Four

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  32

  ‌

  The Turkey of Bliss

  They rode along in near-total silence for the first hour, Michael humming some inane tune to himself, Coltrane sitting in the back

  with his legs splayed out to either side, and the old man in the passenger seat with his hands folded quietly in his lap, as though he were still in handcuffs. He’d brought what he said were all his earthly possessions. They fit into a clear plastic bag, which he kept tightly between his feet, as if afraid someone was going to steal them. The countryside of upstate New York flowed rapidly by. With all green gone from the earth now, neither Colt nor Michael saw anything in the scenery worth looking at; this was the season of dying, when the world went into lockdown. But the former prisoner preoccupied himself with staring out the window. “Beau tiful,” he kept whispering to himself. “Beautiful.”

  After an hour of this, Colt felt it incumbent on himself to make some other form of conversation.

  “You feeling all right?” he asked. The old man half turned in his seat.

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  “Say something?” he asked. His voice was as scratchy as sand paper.

  “I asked if you were feeling all right. I overheard you saying that you were sick.”

  “Oh, yes, fine, fine,” said his father. He turned forward again, but after several moments a thought occurred to him, and he turned once more and asked, “How are you feeling?”

  Colt bobbed his head from side to side. “Could be better.”

  The old man hesitated, as if afraid of transgressing some boundary. “How’d you break your arm?” he asked finally.

  “Car accident.” “Bad one?” “Pretty bad.”

  “Anyone else get hurt?” “No. Just me.”

  The old man nodded, and after a moment he resumed looking out the window. After another interlude of several minutes, he said, “This is a nice car. I guess it wasn’t the one you had the acci dent in.”

  “Nineteen seventy Camaro with a three-speed shift and a two- hundred-horsepower V-eight engine,” said Colt automatically.

  His father nodded in admiration. “You’ve done well for your self.”

  “Well enough.”

  “I always knew you would,” said his father.

  ❚ ❚ ❚

  Half an hour later, they were back in the city. Michael pulled up in front of the parking garage and handed the keys to the attendant. Nova Hart waited for Michael to let him out—to Colt it seemed that he was actually awaiting permission to leave the car—and then he stood clutching his plastic bag to his chest, looking nei ther to the side nor straight ahead, but down at his feet. When he

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  saw Colt struggling to get out of the backseat, though, he offered him his hand, and, after a moment’s hesitation, Colt took it. The old man’s skin was cool and leathery against his, and he let go as soon as he had recovered his balance, wiping his palm quickly and s
ecretly against his pants.

  “You live by here?” Nova asked.

  “It’s kind of a walk,” said Colt. The sun was below the build ings now, and there was a chill breeze, but the slight warming of the past couple of weeks had continued, and it felt more like a fall evening than a winter one. “You feel up for a walk?”

  “Oh, sure,” said the old man. “I’m up for a walk.”

  “Probably feels good to stretch your legs, doesn’t it?” Michael asked. He had kept silent up till now, occasionally shooting glances at Colt’s father in the car. Colt wondered if Michael saw something in him he liked; perhaps he had the idea that Nova Hart was some kind of counter-revolutionary hero, imprisoned for his beliefs. Well, maybe a talk with the old man would fix that misconception.

  At that moment, Colt realized for the first time why it was he had always disliked Michael so much, perhaps even hated him. It was because he was nothing more than a Nova Hart–in–training, a younger version of his own father. More than anything, Michael reminded him of Nova as he had been thirty years ago: irresponsi ble, bumbling, selfish, a little stupid, concerned only with when the next party was and how he was going to get there. Imagine Michael with a kid, and you would have my dad, he thought. And then imagine Michael progressing to heroin. And then abandon ing everything.