Good Neighbors

by Joanne Serling

  “I know what you’re thinking. That this won’t last. It probably won’t. That’s one of the things I love about it. The idea of impermanence. I’m not even arguing with Phyllis. You should try it. It could really help you come to terms with your anger issues!”

  “I’m not angry!” I said, clenching my jaw and beginning to wander around my house, wishing it were bigger, that I could get exercise while talking to her. Even though it was plenty big.

  “Anyway, I know you won’t want to do this, but I’m calling to ask you a favor,” she said, her voice suddenly low and serious.

  “Okay,” I said noncommittally. Assuming it was for a large sum of money. Not that we couldn’t afford it.

  “I would love you to spend a weekend here with me sometime. Next month they have family weekend. They have therapists on hand to do, you know, family therapy stuff. We could even ask Phyllis to come.”

  I opened my mouth. Too shocked to speak.

  “Nicole?”

  “I’m in Massachusetts.”

  “You could fly out here,” she said quietly.

  “Let me think about it,” I said, squeezing my eyes tight, wishing I wanted to go. Aware I had no intention of confronting my sister about how she had hurt me—and that I didn’t want to be confronted about how I had hurt her, either.

  Penny sighing. Penny saying, “I totally understand. You’re not into it.”

  “I didn’t say that,” I protested, aware I should grab the out she’d given me but not willing to give up so easily. Not willing to let her down. Or myself.

  “Nicole, stop. I don’t think it’s right. I don’t want you to come here. This is actually a really special place for me and you have a tendency to overshadow things.”

  I swallowed. Aware that she was hurt and felt rejected. Aware that I was. Wishing there was a way to make it right between us before we got off the phone with each other. “Do you need any money?” I offered, knowing this was an easy out and hoping she would give it to me.

  Penny sighing deeply. Penny saying, “I’m all set, but I want you to know how much I appreciate everything you’ve done for me.”

  I felt my sinuses flare. “I know you do,” I said, my voice husky, pushing back tears. Both of us promising to try to get together when the time was right. Aware that moment was elusive and impossible to predict.

  * * *

  Nela invited us all to her backyard for a pre-Halloween party. The party just pizza and candy, which Lorraine was miffed about when Nela first announced it. Lorraine boldly suggesting that Nela hire a guy she’d heard about who could barbecue and wait on us. Which Nela pointedly rejected before asking me if I wanted to help her with the setup. Nela friendlier to me since our return from Bermuda. Which made me nervous even as I embraced it. Uncertain we’d learned the same life lessons from the childhoods we’d both survived and chosen not to talk about directly. But I was happy to help her. Nela standing at the end of her driveway wearing a sexy Catwoman outfit as I approached for my duties. Drew next to her, dressed as a motorcycle guy, or maybe that was just his outfit. Both of them looking intently at Paige and Gene, who were standing in the street in front of them. I waved and called to everyone, wearing my Charlie’s Angels wig and ungainly seventies-style boots.

  No one seemed to hear me. Or see me. Or they heard me but seemed determined to continue to stare at one another. Gene without a costume, in his customary loafers and a cuffed sport shirt. Paige dressed as a dogcatcher in high boots and a short pleated skirt, a shiny black cap resting atop her silver-white hair.

  “You look great,” I called to Paige, determined to make someone notice me. Confused about why they were all in the street when the party didn’t start for another half hour. But already Paige was saying something to Nela that I couldn’t catch. When I was a few yards away, I heard Paige say, “She’s a child. How can you defend a babysitter over a child?”

  I stopped in the road, not wanting to get closer, feeling suddenly ridiculous in my Farrah Fawcett wig and boots. Nela shook her head like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing, and then a red head bobbed into vision. It was Nela and Drew’s babysitter—Colleen. She was standing behind Drew, crying, rubbing her eyes with her fist like a child.

  Nela turned toward Colleen and said something softly, and Colleen walked up the path that led to the Guzman-Venieros’ glass sunroom. We all watched her leave, as if she were on TV or in a movie.

  When the door shut behind Colleen, Nela crossed her arms over her chest and said to Paige, “You have no right to talk to my babysitter like that,” her voice full of attitude and more Spanish accent than I’d ever known she possessed. Like she was back in East Boston, where I knew she’d grown up.

  Paige spluttered for a minute. Uncertain, I could tell, how to proceed. She didn’t know this side of Nela. Clearly didn’t know anyone like this version of Nela. A woman who might swear and call her a name. Who might even hit her if provoked.

  Gene, suddenly aware that Paige was out of her league, or perhaps just used to defending Paige whenever she got into these situations, stepped in front of her as if both protecting Paige and making her irrelevant. He looked at Drew instead of Nela and said, “Let’s be reasonable,” his red face betraying his anger, his voice steady and confident. “Colleen was one hundred percent wrong. You don’t say to a child, ‘I don’t know how you have any friends left.’”

  Drew rubbed his hands up and down over his eyes and his beard, obviously trying to figure something out. I sensed he was angry. But clearly in a bind, too. He liked Gene. Watched baseball with him. He couldn’t yell at Gene. He couldn’t dismiss what he was saying. But you could tell he wanted to. Or rather, he wanted Gene to dismiss it, to drop the protector routine and be a normal guy friend to him. Which clearly Gene was not going to do.

  Finally Drew said, “Look, it was probably a little insensitive, but c’mon. Cameron kept swinging the baseball bat around. And Colleen kept telling him not to. And after the twenty-seventh time, Colleen lost her patience. We all would have lost our patience after the third time, or even the second.”

  “I will not stand for this,” Paige said, stepping out again so that she was in her dogcatcher suit alongside Gene, a fact that was at once both disturbing and silly. Did she have any idea how ludicrous she appeared?

  Paige said, “I want Colleen to come out here right now and apologize to me and apologize to Cameron, and then I want you to send her home. I am not coming to a Halloween party with an abusive babysitter who is unkind to my son!”

  I waited to see how Nela would get out of this. Would she walk away and let Drew settle it? Have Colleen apologize and get Drew to talk to Gene, who would talk Paige off the ledge? That was the only way. Silent surrender. Compromise. We needed to have the Halloween party. We needed a babysitter to handle all of these children!

  Very, very quietly, Nela said, “You’re the one who should apologize. Number one, you screamed at Colleen without giving her a chance to explain herself,” she said, holding up her thin, crooked finger and pointing it at Paige. “And number two, you’re the one who spoils Cameron and lets him disrespect the babysitter,” she said, pulling out her second finger. “And let’s face it, you’re the one who’s abusive. You treat Winnie like a second-class citizen. You didn’t even buy her a real Halloween costume!” Nela said, her voice finally rising as if to make her point more believable. The argument about the Halloween costume thin and insubstantial as soon as she said it.

  And yet she’d said it. Had attached the word abuse to Paige, and Paige was immediately taken aback, then stricken.

  “How dare you!” Paige said, her face crumpling, then openly crying, shaking her head like she knew all along that Nela wasn’t her true friend. Then turning and running toward her lawn in her high boots and short skirt, the cap obviously pinned to her head, teetering but never falling as she ran up her front path.

  I knew I should leave then, get away from the ugliness and pretend I hadn’t seen this. I could hear
Jay’s voice urging me to. But I was rooted to my spot, determined to see how it would play out, already thinking how I might salvage it. The hurt feelings. The group. How I might maneuver everyone’s interpretations slightly so that no permanent damage was done.

  In front of me, Gene suddenly stood up straighter, took a deep breath, and started counting on his own fingers. “One, you are never home,” he said, looking meanly at Nela. “Two, you have no idea what goes on with your kids. And three, Sebastian’s got massive issues, and you are in complete denial about it!” And with that, Gene calmly swiveled on his foot, turned his back to Nela, and started to slowly walk back to his own house, his brown loafers shiny in the late-afternoon sun.

  When Gene had gone inside, Nela and Drew both looked at me, their faces contorted with anger and fear. Clearly concerned about Sebastian. Clearly looking for me to take their side. It was true that Sebastian had delays. He was six and still didn’t speak much or seem to be able to follow a simple board game. It was something we had all tried to ignore and had never mentioned directly. Even if we all thought it and subtly alluded to it. With eye movements and furtive glances. And now everything was laid bare. Our fears about Sebastian. Our misgivings about the Edwardses’ parenting. How could I support one and not the other? They were either both true or both false. And it was important—for their feelings, for the future of our neighborhood, and for the peace in which we coexisted—that they both be untrue. Patently false.

  “Sebastian is fine,” I said, a tightness in the base of my throat as I tried to make my words sound felt and not forced.

  “I know he’s fine,” Nela retorted, not looking at me, looking up toward the blue sky and thick, leafy branches that hovered beautifully above us. Willing herself not to cry, I suspected. Willing herself not to let her tough-girl persona be deflated by some asshole’s comment. She had told me that this was her motto that day we’d traded stories on the cruise. That the shit people said to her didn’t bother her, and that she had taught her kids the same thing. To be proud. To be confident. To do what they saw fit and not to worry about what anyone else thought.

  “I think you may have been a little bit harsh with Paige,” I ventured, worried that Paige was watching me, peering through her bedroom window and judging me for talking to Nela. I didn’t want to take sides. I didn’t want there to be sides! I needed us all to get back to the place where we accepted each other’s imperfections and kept our worst opinions to ourselves. It wasn’t like Nela was anyone’s role model for perfect motherhood. She worked sixty hours a week in her office and did paperwork at home over the weekend!

  Nela looked at me and said, “I know about the dresses.”

  Drew said, “Nela doesn’t put up with child abuse.”

  “Child abuse?” I asked, incredulous. How was it that we were seriously talking about child abuse? Even Nela had to know that withholding hand-me-down dresses did not constitute child abuse. Nor did her failure to buy Winnie a store-bought Halloween costume. Wasn’t Paige letting Winnie dress as a farmer? In overalls with a bandanna around her hair. Which was not nothing!

  Nela shaking her head at me. Nela chewing her cheek like she wanted to say something but wasn’t sure that she should. But already the kids were flying at us from all directions, Lucas shouting, “I brought ghost cookies,” while Josh yelled, “I made them, too!” and tried to grab the plate from him. The plate toppling as Jay ran to catch it, the platter saved but the cookies sliding out onto the sidewalk.

  “It’s okay. They’re ghosts,” I said, rushing over to reassure Josh, who was already crying. Lucas oblivious to the upset he’d caused, walking blithely into the Guzman-Venieros’ backyard while Sebastian rushed out to compare eyeballs with Gabe, both of them dressed in identical yellow Minion suits.

  Nela forced to change gears, to welcome everyone, forcing me to act normal, too, joining the stream of children as they pushed and shouted their way through Nela and Drew’s back gate, the folding tables uncovered, the packets of tablecloths and plates still in their shrink wrap. Which embarrassed me. How ugly everything looked. How I’d failed to help Nela set up.

  Nela unaware of how messy it all appeared, or else not caring. Nela telling the children that the limbo was a Puerto Rican Halloween tradition. Cuing the music and lining everyone up to try it. Asking me to demonstrate, which was fine with me. The limbo one of the few physical pursuits I was naturally good at. Nela laughing after my first success. Nela lowering the bar just inches from the ground and goading me to try it again, forcing me to fully arch my back, to stumble and fall, even as I insisted I could do it.

  * * *

  Later that night, the kids stuffed with candy and watching TV in the basement, Jay long since gone home to peruse the Internet and make overseas phone calls, Nela recounted the story about the babysitter to the rest of us. Omitting the Sebastian comment, but not the accusation she’d made about Paige being abusive to Winnie.

  “How are you going to resolve this?” Lorraine wanted to know, certain it would be resolved. Determined to not let something as stupid as a fight with a college-aged babysitter derail the closeness of our friendship group.

  Drew looked surprised. He gave Lorraine a squinty-eyed look before saying what he’d already said without saying it. “Are you crazy? We’re not resolving it.”

  “And what, now you’re officially not friends with them?” Lorraine asked, her mouth hanging open in disbelief.

  “They’re mad at us, too. About not firing Colleen. So it’s mutual,” Drew said, standing up to refill his wineglass, grabbing a handful of M&M’s from the plastic pumpkin as he went.

  “You’re going to end a friendship over a fight with a babysitter?” Lorraine half shouted at his back. “I mean, c’mon. That’s not even the truth of it.”

  Drew stopped halfway to the bar, turning to face us. “Yeah, well, exactly. That’s not the whole truth of it. The whole truth of it is that we think they’re mistreating Winnie. I know you’re worried, too. Nela’s more convinced of it than any of us.”

  “If you just stop talking to them, you won’t have accomplished anything,” Lorraine protested. “If you really think something’s wrong, you should talk it over with them. Help them.”

  Nela rolling her eyes, ignoring Lorraine’s suggestion.

  “What do you think about this?” Lorraine demanded, turning to me for my input.

  I thought Paige was difficult in general and not that kind to Winnie in particular. I thought Drew couldn’t care less about how Paige treated her daughter, but was trying to please Nela. I thought Nela was determined to grab the moral high ground for some reason. Which was infuriating to me, even though a piece of me admired her. For making a decision. For not being afraid of the consequences. Even if I was determined not to let her destroy things. Not to abandon Winnie.

  “I think it will blow over,” I said, looking toward Nela for confirmation she refused to give to me.

  PRAYERS

  LORRAINE PRETENDED NOTHING HAD happened when she saw Paige the next morning, which gave Paige the courage to pretend the same. Both of them friendly, according to Lorraine, who called to tell me about it as soon as she got to her office. Nela left for work by eight most mornings, and wasn’t back until nine in the evening, a hardship for her family but a convenience when it came to ignoring people. I knew she would ignore Paige and Gene indefinitely. And Drew was a guy, which excused him from nearly everything. At least in his book. He practically told me so when he drove by on the way to the gym Monday morning. Drew rolling down his window to complain about the Williamses’ lawn, which had gone to weed, then shrugging his wide shoulders when I asked whether he would ever come to a group gathering again. Which left the true work of reconciliation to me. I knew I should call Paige, text her, tell her something untrue and reassuring, something that would maintain the facade of our friendship without promising anything too taxing. But instead I avoided her. I didn’t walk near her house to gather up my boys from their street games, d
idn’t slow my car and roll down my window to chat as we drove by each other. Although I did wave with extra enthusiasm. To be sure she knew I wasn’t mad at her. To convince her not to be mad at me!

  And then, two weeks after the Halloween incident, there she was: on the sidewalk, impossible to miss when I stepped out on my porch. The late-autumn sunshine making us both squint as we waved to each other. Paige in a navy peacoat, ankle boots, a pretty midcalf skirt.

  “Hi, hon,” Paige called. Wanly. Nervous, I could tell, about where she stood with me. I walked down my front path and gave her a hug, both of us placing our arms carefully around each other’s shoulders and giving a little squeeze. When we separated, there was a strange awkwardness, both of us no doubt recalling the fight and wondering how to spin it. If I mentioned it, I’d have to tell her how wrong I thought Nela and Drew were. Which I couldn’t do. But if I didn’t say anything supportive, she’d know I agreed with them—which I didn’t want her to think, either. It would prevent me from helping her, which I believed I could do, especially now that Paige was looking at me hopefully, like she knew she’d been wrong and wished to make amends. Or at least that’s how I took it.

  “You and Gene and the kids should come to lunch this Sunday,” I said, the idea popping into my head unbidden. The idea taking form as soon as I’d said it. Hopeful that if we had lunch, just our two families, we’d share the kind of intimacy we used to share. Which wasn’t intimacy at all but a kind of effortful joviality. Paige on her best behavior. Paige willing to listen.

  “We would love that!” Paige said, her face lighting up, turning pinker at the cheeks, reassuring me that I’d done the right thing. Reassuring me that the other Paige, the one who made an effort, was ready to make a comeback.

  * * *

  Jay shrugged when I told him what I’d done and then reminded me to order Gene’s favorite sandwich. The one with the roast beef and the thinly sliced Swiss cheese. The deli sandwiches still wrapped in wax paper in their bakery boxes when the Edwardses arrived on the dot of twelve o’clock, Paige in a long, pleated skirt and white blouse, Gene in a blue gingham oxford shirt that was far too loose around the collar, the skin of his face strangely rubbery, nearly masklike.