Won't You Be My Neighbor?

by Vanessa Gray Bartal

  “Maybe that was enough when I was a teenager, but it’s not enough anymore. Everyone is busy; groups of friends are already established. I’ve lived here for two years, and I haven’t progressed past the acquaintance stage with anyone. Relationships are hard.”

  Blair was stunned. She had always envisioned Tanya with scads of friends. Now she was learning that wasn’t true. Maybe the reason Tanya stayed in such close contact wasn’t because she felt sorry for Blair, but because she actually needed her. Being needed by anyone felt odd; it wasn’t necessarily a good feeling, especially because she had been such a bad friend.

  Asking people questions about themselves didn’t come easily to Blair, but she tried to think of a couple to ask Tanya. And when Tanya answered, Blair tried hard to pay attention. After the initial discipline needed to keep her mind from wandering, it wasn’t as difficult as she thought it would be. Tanya’s life was fairly interesting when Blair tried to put herself in her friend’s shoes, tried to imagine caring for two small children and keeping house. She was exhausted just thinking about it, and decided to say so.

  “You must be exhausted. How do you do it?”

  To her dismay, Tanya started to cry. “I’m sorry,” she sniffled. “I didn’t mean to cry, it’s just that I feel like I haven’t slept in four years. Steve is always working and doesn’t seem to realize that I’m drowning here. I have no friends. I never see anyone but my toddlers, never do anything but mom things. I know I sound whiny, but you asked, and I’m just so tired, Blair. If I had known marriage and kids were like this, I think…” She trailed off and cried harder. “I can’t believe I almost said that,” she added when her tears died down. “I love my husband and kids, I really do.”

  “Everyone needs a break sometimes, Tanya, and everyone needs some down time. This might come as a surprise to you, but I need a fair amount of quiet time to function properly.”

  Tanya laughed. “You? Quiet time? Nah.”

  “I know I give this image of being surrounded by constant people and parties, but it’s not true.”

  Tanya laughed again, and Blair smiled. Poking fun at herself felt good. She hadn’t done it in way too long. There was a time when she’d had a lively, self-deprecating sense of humor, but so much time spent alone had robbed her of some of her good humor. Now she felt stuffy and serious, and she hated that.

  They talked for a few more minutes until one of Tanya’s kids began to cry and she had to go. Blair hung up feeling good about the exchange. A couple of days ago when she called Tanya, it had been done grudgingly, as part of her assignment from Tristan. Today they had talked because they wanted to. Perhaps there was a little piece of her heart where Tanya’s friendship remained because Blair felt a little bit of a warm glow as she looked down at the names of Tanya’s children. She thought about buying toys to send, and there was an answering flutter of excitement in her chest. She had never bought toys for anyone. The prospect of buying presents was more fun than she thought it would be. After her next therapy session with Tristan, she would shop. She smiled, not sure which event she was anticipating the most.

  Sully was doing it again. He was staring at Miss Prim’s house. He had watched as she parked her car and stepped outside. She didn’t look his way, not once. He was strangely annoyed by that. Was she really not interested in him, or was she that good of an actress? In his experience, single women couldn’t leave an eligible bachelor alone. Her words from earlier came back to him. Even if you were the sort of man I was interested in, I would never blatantly throw myself at you. The phrase hadn’t given him pause before, but now it did. Why wouldn’t she be interested in him? What was wrong with him?

  Nothing. She was the one with the problem. Though she didn’t seem to have a problem as far as he could tell. She had said hi once, asked for help when her house was broken into, and returned his robe. Somehow he had misconstrued those actions to mean she was pursuing him. As far as problems went, he was the one who had one.

  She had let herself into her house a couple of hours ago and closed the door, and she hadn’t come out since. Sully realized he was still staring at the silent house through his window, and he turned away in disgust. What was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he stop thinking about his reclusive little neighbor? No more. She piqued his curiosity and his ill temper, but he had made his point clear; they wouldn’t have anything to do with each other again.

  Chapter 4

  Two days later, Sully was leaving his house for work when he noticed Miss Prim. She stood in her driveway, the hood of her car up as she peered inside. Seeing her outside early in the morning was strange enough, but seeing her bent over a car engine as if preparing to do work was downright unheard of. He told himself to keep driving, to not stop and check. He said it even as he pulled into her driveway and stepped out of his car.

  She winced when she saw him, which annoyed and amused him at the same time. “Car trouble?” he asked.

  “My battery. I’ve already called a service.” Her hands clasped behind her back. She bit her lip and lowered her brows, a clear sign that she was flustered by his presence. It had been a long time since Sully flustered anyone. He enjoyed the fact that he was thirty five and could still have that effect.

  He came up beside her and she scooted aside, giving him a wide berth. He bit his cheek to keep from smiling. “Call and cancel the car service; I’ll give you a jump.”

  “You don’t have to do that. They’re already on their way.”

  “Nonsense. Why call someone all the way out here when I’m right here?” He didn’t give her a chance to answer as he removed the cables from his trunk and attached them to both cars. She stood aside, looking from him to her phone and back again. She didn’t want to do what he said, didn’t want to give in and accept his help. At last she pushed the button and canceled the car service.

  “Keys,” he said, holding out his palm in front of her. She looked at it like it was a dead rat before fishing her keys from her purse and dropping them into his hand. He started her car and let it run a few minutes before disconnecting it from his.

  “Don’t turn off the engine. Drive straight to town and get your battery fixed,” he commanded.

  “I don’t have time to go to the dealership. I have an appointment.” She sounded so distressed that he wondered what could possibly draw her from the house at such an early hour. He knew nothing about her, not even her name.

  “Don’t go to the dealership,” he said. “You should never take your car there for repairs. Don’t you know how badly they overcharge?” She blinked at him in confusion. Women. “Take it to the auto parts store. They’ll replace it in a matter of minutes.”

  She nodded, probably trying to figure out where the auto parts store was.

  “It’s on Green Street, just off the boulevard,” he added.

  “Oh, okay.” She paused. He could see politeness waging battle with dislike. Finally she choked out a, “Thank you.”

  He nodded, not letting himself indulge in a smile. “You’re welcome.” He slid behind the wheel and stuck his head out the window as an afterthought. “What’s your name?”

  She blinked at him in surprise. Clearly that was the last question she had expected. “Blair.”

  He shook his head.

  She frowned. “What do you mean no? That’s my name.”

  “Doesn’t suit,” he said. “Blair’s a bad girl’s name.” He did smile at her expression, but she probably couldn’t see because he rolled up his window and drove away.

  “What an odd man,” Blair muttered, but she didn’t have time to mull her neighbor’s strange behavior, or the fact that he had rescued her again. Today was her appointment with Tristan, and she didn’t want to be late. Punctuality had to be an important quality for someone who made his living by the hour. For that reason, Blair hustled to her car and hurried to the auto parts store. They were as fast as her neighbor said they would be, and she was still two minutes early for her therapy session. Score one for punctuality
.

  Tristan was so proud of her accomplishments that she left her therapy session fairly glowing under his praise. Perhaps she could do this; perhaps she could talk to strangers, make friends, be a part of the world. Make her therapist fall in love with her. No, strike that last part. Making friends might be a reality, but Tristan was an impossible dream, someone who belonged in the fantasy realm with chocolate cake that made you skinny and vegetables that didn’t taste like they were grown in dirt.

  Next on her list was toy shopping for Tanya’s kids. Andy and Rachael. Learning their names made them seem real She had seen pictures of them throughout the last couple of years, birth announcements and Christmas cards, but she hadn’t paid much attention. Now she couldn’t recall what they looked like, and she was suddenly curious. If she was going to one day leave them all her worldly possessions, she should probably know what color hair they had.

  Blair hadn’t been in a toy store since she was a child. The salesclerk looked up with the sort of hopeful expression that people who work on commission always adopted, as if they were the last puppy at the pound and if you didn’t buy their products then they would be put to sleep. Overly friendly salespeople were to Blair what sharks were to a wounded diver. She averted her eyes and veered left as the woman came out from behind the counter. Thankfully someone else entered the store just then. The new customer must have looked friendlier and more approachable because the sales clerk diverted to her, leaving Blair to herself.

  She wasn’t sure if she would know what to buy for a two year old and a four year old, but the store seemed to be divided into age groups. She selected a few little things for each of them, trying hard to remember if the toys were something she would have liked and played with when she was a child. She couldn’t remember what it was like to be little. The quick pace of her childhood hadn’t been her imagination. Being an only child, she had always only been surrounded by adults, namely her parents. They had been good parents, but they hadn’t ever talked to her on her level. Instead they had treated her as if she was another adult. The advantage of that sort of upbringing was that Blair was mature, quiet, introspective, and intelligent ahead of her years. The downside was that she had never learned how to communicate with kids her own age. Reason would dictate that she would know how to interact with other adults when she became one, but apparently those skills needed to be learned during childhood. Blair wasn’t any better at finding common ground with grownups than she had been at making connections with other kids when she was a child.

  Once the toys were in hand, she drove to the post office and mailed them. On the way out the door, she saw a local bake sale for a kids’ day camp. Blair usually looked the other way when children with big eyes cast pleading looks in her direction, but today she was feeling altruistic. She bought a load of treats and stared at them in recrimination as she set them on the passenger seat of her car. What was she going to do with so much food? Her grumpy neighbor flashed through her mind before being quickly shooed away. There was no way she would ever give him treats, even if someone else had baked them. Knowing him, he might think she was propositioning him in order to have his child.

  There was another neighbor, though. Now might be the perfect time to meet the older woman. She didn’t want to, but she bolstered herself with the thought of being able to report more good news to Tristan. Plus she would be able to get rid of some of the food she had purchased. If her attempts to connect with people kept up, she would soon be much poorer and fatter.

  Blair arrived home, gathered the goodies from the front seat, and went to greet her neighbor, hoping against hope that things would turn out better with Mrs. Caruthers than with the other guy. After a fortifying breath, she knocked on the door and waited. And waited.

  There was no answer for what felt like a very long time. Blair turned uncertainly toward her house. Should she go home? Mrs. Caruthers seemed to leave her house even less than Blair did. What were the odds that she was out on the one day Blair came to call? Unless, what if the scenario was much worse? What if Mrs. Caruthers had gone the way of the old man who died down the street? Did Mrs. Caruthers have cats?

  Blair shifted her weight and tried to see through the frosted glass at the side of the door. Rescuing someone in peril or finding someone’s remains was way over her head. She had barely worked herself up to a “hello.” There was no way she was ready to identify anyone's body or notify their next of kin. Just as she was contemplating leaving the treats on the doorstep and dashing away, the door slowly opened. Mrs. Caruthers stood on the other side, a perplexed frown on her face.

  “May I help you?” she asked.

  She was small, barely reaching Blair’s shoulder. Blair soon realized this was because she was leaning heavily on a walker. That must explain the delay in answering the door—she had trouble getting around. All these things combined to make her feel much more at ease with Mrs. Caruthers than she had with her neighbor on the other side. “I’m your neighbor,” Blair said, pointing to her house. “I came to say hello and bring you these.” She held the tray of cookies out for the older woman’s inspection and immediately realized her mistake—Mrs. Caruthers had no hands free to carry them.

  “Well, isn’t that nice,” Mrs. Caruthers said. She smiled. Unlike Susan’s smile from the children’s party, this one wasn’t alarming or false. This smile made a little of the tension ease from Blair’s chest. “Would you mind carrying them into the kitchen for me?”

  “I wouldn’t mind at all,” Blair said. She was surprised to realize she meant it. Her mind blanked as she attempted to ask Mrs. Caruthers a question about herself—something Tristan had told her to practice this week—but it didn’t matter. Mrs. Caruthers didn’t need a prompting question to get the conversation ball rolling. Whereas Blair could be silent for so long that she was sometimes startled when other people spoke, Mrs. Caruthers seemed starved for interaction. Or, rather, someone to talk to, and not necessarily someone to talk with. She led the way slowly toward the kitchen. Her feet barely moved, but her lips never stopped.

  After they dropped the cookies in the kitchen, she asked Blair to have a seat in the living room. In the background, a television blared. Blair was thankful when Mrs. Caruthers turned it off. Too much noise and confusion tended to make her shut down and retreat to the safety of her inner world. She wouldn’t have been able to listen to the television and Mrs. Caruthers at the same time. As it was, she merely had to sit back and nod for the next two hours as Mrs. Caruthers unloaded her entire life story.

  To Blair’s immense surprise, she found the story intensely interesting. She got caught up listening to what life was like for Mrs. Caruthers as a little girl, then held her breath as she recounted her courtship with her long-deceased husband. She empathized with Mrs. Caruthers’ pain over her children’s bad choices and subsequent abandonment. One of her kids had nothing to do with her, another called on holidays, and the third only came by when she needed something, namely money.

  At the end of the two hours, they were both drained and exhausted. Blair’s exhaustion was emotional—she had been social for too long that day; it was time to retreat. Mrs. Caruthers seemed physically wiped out. Talking for so long must be an athletic feat because toward the end she began nodding off mid-sentence. Blair gently cleared her throat and Mrs. Caruthers snapped to attention.

  “Gracious, is that how late it is? I suppose I’d better let you go.” She tried to rock herself to a standing position, but Blair waved her off.

  “I’ll see myself out. Please don’t trouble yourself to get up.”

  Mrs. Caruthers nodded and her smile faltered. “You could come back,” she said. “Anytime. You don’t have to bring cookies. We could talk some more.”

  “I’ll come back,” Blair heard herself promise. What was wrong with her? These were the types of situations she usually ran away from. Mrs. Caruthers was no doubt a clinger. Her loneliness was palpable. She would require too much of Blair’s limited emotional energy. Still, she co
uldn’t muster any dread at the prospect of returning. Instead, she was sort of looking forward to her next visit. Maybe next time she would bring flowers. The interior of the house, though clean, was a bit drab and closed up.

  She let herself out and walked to her house, never suspecting that she was being watched.

  What is Miss Prim up to? Sully wondered. Then when he once again realized he was watching his prissy little neighbor, he turned from the window, closing the shade in disgust.

  Two days later, Sully was watching Miss Prim again, but this time it wasn’t his fault. He heard a faint shrieking sound, and when he glanced toward her house, he saw her dash out the front door, sit on the front step, and bend so her head was resting on her knees.

  He turned away, purposely ignoring the sight. Whatever the problem, it wasn’t his business. She wasn’t his business. She was a grown woman, capable of handling whatever latest crisis had befallen her.

  Then her big, soft doe eyes rose up in his memory to accuse him. He had kicked her out of his house when she needed help the most. The least he could do was check to make sure she was all right. It was probably nothing. By the time he finished convincing himself, he was already standing in front of her. The shrieking noise was louder now, almost ear-piercing. That must be why her hands were over her ears and why she hadn’t noticed his approach.

  “What’s the problem?” he asked. His clipped tone probably sounded grumpy, but it was a safe bet she wouldn’t be able to hear it over the noise.

  She jumped as her head shot up and then she leaned back against the step as if to try and get away from him. “Nothing, it’s fine,” she said. She had to yell to make her voice heard over the shrieking alarm.

  “Clearly,” he said. Once again his dry tone was probably lost in the mayhem. Her eyes squinched closed, and she mashed her hands over her ears once more. “What is the problem?” he repeated. This time his exasperation was clear because he leaned forward and pulled her hands off her ears.