by Nic Brown
Evelyn entered the pet food and paper products aisle. Through a thin stack of Charmin she heard Welborne Ray’s voice.
“Not bad!” he was saying. “Good to see you.”
“You too!” said another man. “Can’t go four feet in here without seeing a familiar face.”
Evelyn could not place the other voice, high and phlegmy, but she knew she recognized it from somewhere.
“I meant to say hi at Mary Anne’s service the other day,” Welborne said. “But I lost you.”
“Ah. Shingles?” the voice said. “Who gets shingles?”
“More people than you think. My own mother had it before she passed.”
“Mmm.” There was a moment of silence. “I did see you there, talking to my neighbor.”
Christ almighty, Evelyn thought. It’s Van Lipsitz.
“Evelyn Graham? The old president?” Welborne said.
“God knows,” Lipsitz said.
“Why is she at every funeral I go to? I mean, every single one.”
“I know.”
“She doesn’t even know these people,” Welborne said.
“I heard she told Amelia Hassel that her braces looked nice.”
“No.”
“At her own cousin’s funeral. Pointed out her braces.”
“Lord, I missed that.”
“The poor girl was in tears.”
“What can you say?” Welborne said. “I guess she’s just lonely.”
“Amelia?”
“Evelyn. Peter’s been dead for what? A decade? God, has it been a decade?”
Twelve, Evelyn thought. Twelve years.
“And who does she spend time with? Ruth Lingle?”
“Keep your voice down,” Lipsitz said. “I think I just saw Ruth come in.”
They were quiet for a moment. Evelyn looked around for Ruth.
Finally Welborne spoke again. “Look, I need some batteries before they’re all gone. Good to see you, Van. Hope you don’t wash away.”
Evelyn wanted them to see her, to know that they weren’t getting away with anything by talking about her right there in the Harris Teeter. She pushed her cart down the aisle and around the corner, up into the tunnel of ketchup and soy sauce. Welborne Ray had already walked off to look for his batteries, but Van Lipsitz was still there. He was lying on the ground with a broken jar of mustard exploded on the linoleum beside him, convulsing. One arm slid back and forth across the yellow puddle.
Evelyn rushed to him and fell onto her knees.
“Help!” she said. “Hey! Hey! There’s a man here! Hey!”
She felt light from the fear and excitement. Euphoric. The deli man rounded the bend, sliding across part of the waxed floor as he ran.
Van Lipsitz’s house was on the corner, beside Evelyn’s and between hers and Mankin Park. He was divorced and wore large rimless glasses. What hair he had was white and combed over his shining crown. He was one of the few Jewish men in Lystra, and he worked for Jefferson Pilot Insurance. To Evelyn, he always seemed nice enough. They would see each other and wave, talk about the city’s leaf pickup in the fall or how the squirrels were eating out of the bird feeders. He was a benign presence, almost invisible. Until he built the wall.
It was a brick wall around his backyard, a wall that blocked Evelyn’s view of Buffalo Creek and the park. She had gone through hell trying to get him not to build it. She had brought it to the neighborhood council. It lowered her property value, decreased her quality of life, and so on. Still, Van Lipsitz had built the wall. He even had Welborne Ray represent him. Welborne had told the council that the wall was for safety, that it would keep the dog in. That Van lived alone, and that his dog was his best friend. He’d actually gotten Van to say that to the neighborhood council: “This dog is my best friend.” Afterwards, after he had the approval, Van left two twelve-foot sections out of the wall, filling the gaps with chain link instead. Through these gaps, Evelyn could still see the creek.
Van had done this as a concession, one not even stipulated by the council. It didn’t change the fact that Evelyn was livid, overwhelmed by the idea that her own neighbor would erect a seven-foot brick wall that, although ostensibly around his own yard, was also around hers. Or at least around a third of it. And it was the most important third, she thought. The side that gave her the view of Buffalo Creek, of Mankin Park, the park where she used to walk with her husband, where her children always tried to sled in the muddy aftermath of even the slightest flurry, where she had once even seen a salamander get snatched up by an albino owl, and where she never consciously thought about gazing until after the wall was built. “And make no mistake,” she’d told anyone who would listen, “The view is not the same through chain link.” She hadn’t spoken to Van Lipsitz since. That had been ten years before she found him in the mustard.
Evelyn was tenderizing a skirt steak on her chopping block. She hit it hard and loud. She’d pulled it from the freezer earlier that morning, when the electricity had first gone out. The refrigerator had begun to thaw, and the steak hadn’t been cheap. She didn’t remember exactly how long it had been there, but it couldn’t just sit out. She might as well have it for lunch.
The phone was still working, and Evelyn had it wedged between her shoulder and ear, the spiral yellow cord stretching taut across the room.
“He could have died,” she was saying. “He’s still in the hospital, you know. He still might.”
Ruth Lingle was on the other end. She was a friend from Forbis and Dick Funeral Home. She worked there, in the business office. Evelyn knew her only from going there so often.
“This is going to sound silly,” Ruth said. “But are you sure it was a seizure?”
“That’s what the, um.”
“EMT?”
“Yes. What the EMT said.”
“And you found him. Can you believe? Of all people.”
“I don’t think of myself as a hero, really,” Evelyn said. She thudded the mallet into the meat and a piece of something shot up, into her left eye. She squeezed her eyes shut and set the mallet down, then just stood there with her eyes closed and her head thrown back.
“Did you really just say that?” Ruth said.
“What? Yes. He’s still in the hospital, you know. Hasn’t been home yet. What a day.”
“Don’t think of yourself as a hero. I cannot believe you said that. What—”
The phone line went dead. Evelyn opened her eyes and walked to the wall. She hung the receiver on its mount. It was to the left of the refrigerator, which was covered in photographs. Photographs of her family. Photographs of her dead husband, Peter, who had been a realtor for RE/MAX. It had been a heart attack. Not unexpected. There was a picture of him whale watching. He just stood above the water in a yellow parka, a railing behind him, his face round and splotchy. He was giving a double thumbs-up. There were photos of her children at all ages, from birth till now, the two daughters thirty-six and thirty-nine and living in Charlotte. She was surrounded by these shiny, smiling faces. And her eyes were welling up, just a little. It was from the piece of meat in her eye, though. It was just meat in the eye.
Though the electricity and the phone lines were still out, it was becoming clear that the storm was veering further west than originally forecast. Evelyn’s battery-operated radio was on and the weatherman was listing windspeeds and rainfall totals when a champagne Grand Marquis with a spiral antenna on the back pulled up to the curb. Welborne Ray stepped out in a trench coat. Evelyn saw him from the living room. She got up and walked to the door, grabbing an umbrella before stepping onto her stoop. When the umbrella opened, only one side billowed up, the other limp and dangling like a broken wing.
“Welborne!” she said, walking towards him. The umbrella wasn’t keeping her very dry, the broken part whipping around in the wind.
“Hello,” Welborne said. He was just standing in the rain at the curb, looking at Van Lipsitz’s house.
“Do you know how he is?” Evelyn said. Welborne
had gone with Van in the ambulance.
“Not well. Not well at all,” he said. His eyes scanned the house. “It was a stroke.”
“Oh my God,” Evelyn said. “I didn’t know you could have a seizure with a stroke.”
“I don’t know. I guess you can,” Welborne said. He was spinning a huge gold ring around his index finger. “Ben asked me to come over and see if the house is alright. Make sure there isn’t a tree through the roof or anything.”
Evelyn thought of Ben, Van’s sister, round and short and dumpy in her sweat suits. She was named after their father. She’d named her daughter the same, and most of Lystra had forgotten long ago that this was strange or even funny. People were used to it. If there was a family name that hadn’t been used, sometimes it didn’t matter what sex the child was.
They looked at the house together, rain overflowing the clogged gutters. It was a nice house, in the nicest neighborhood in Lystra, really, and Evelyn was struck by how similar Van’s was to hers. It had been a long time since she’d looked at the two in this way. Of course, they were similar in construction, built by the same builder at the same time. They both had rhododendrons along the brick walkway, and throughout the two yards, the same plants were blooming, the same ones wilting.
“All looks well from here,” Welborne said. He stepped forward. “I’m going to check the back.”
Evelyn stepped along with him. She wanted to see the back of the house, too. She had never been on the other side of the wall.
The gate was permanently open, the wooden door removed long ago, and they walked along the shadowed side of the wall. It blocked the rain that was blowing in at an angle.
The dog that Van had originally built the wall for had been a golden retriever named Molly. She had died only one year after construction was complete. Until the wall was built, Molly had always stayed inside. Evelyn would see her only when Van walked her after work. But once the wall came up, Evelyn saw Molly all the time, through the sections of chain link. It had taken a while for her to warm up to that dog, but eventually, Evelyn began giving scraps to her through the chain link, but only when Van was at work. Molly would bark and rub against the fence, little tufts of fur pulling out when they got caught in the crossed wire. This had been close to nine years ago, so it was a surprise when Evelyn and Welborne stepped into the backyard and clearly heard a dog bark.
It was a skinny white pit bull smelling around the dryer vent. It looked up at them and barked again.
“Easy, boy,” Welborne said.
The dog looked sick and mean. Evelyn grabbed Welborne’s arm.
“Calm down, Evelyn,” Welborne said.
The dog stepped towards them, growling. They backed into the shadowy space between the house and the wall, a narrow suburban alley. The dog stopped and watched them retreat. Evelyn dropped her wounded umbrella. She wished the gate had still been there to close.
Back in the front yard, Evelyn said, “Is that Van’s dog?”
“He hasn’t had a dog since Molly,” Welborne said. “It must have just wandered over from somewhere.”
He held his umbrella high above the two of them now, but Evelyn’s back was still getting soaked.
“Here,” he said, and gave her his arm. She took it in her hand, for the second time in moments. These two connections with Welborne’s body felt like the first she’d had with a man in years. She knew that it wasn’t true, that she had touched men. She’d shaken hands, she’d patted shoulders. She’d given countless hugs at funerals, to people she didn’t even know. She’d even picked a piece of lint off the mailman’s face once. But Welborne’s giving his forearm to her, it felt different. It felt like Peter, her husband.
They walked slowly across Evelyn’s lawn. The ground was so wet that their feet sunk in at each step.
“I’ll call Animal Control,” Welborne said.
“The phone’s out.”
She could hear their footsteps squishing in the soil.
“Then just stay inside until he’s gone. It won’t be long.”
“Are you going back to the hospital?”
“I’m going to tell them this place hasn’t floated away, and then I’m going to check on my own house. I’ll be back this afternoon.”
“That’s just silly,” Evelyn said. “I can keep an eye on the house.”
Her front steps were mossy brick and became slick in the rain, so Evelyn held on to Welborne tightly as they ascended them.
“Are you sure it won’t be awkward?” Welborne said at the top. “I know how things have been.”
The umbrella caught the wind and pulled his arm up in a small sudden jerk.
“Been? It’s been ten years,” Evelyn said. “And it’s just stupid. I don’t care about the damn wall anymore.”
She hadn’t planned to say this, but as the words came out she felt them to be true.
Welborne cast his gaze downward.
“Well, great,” he said. “Really. That’s good to hear.”
“No, really. Even when he built it. I thought I cared about it, but I didn’t. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Even when I brought it to the neighborhood council, I . . .” Evelyn shook her head. Her back was very wet now. Water was dripping into her jeans. “I haven’t been a good neighbor.”
Welborne shook his head slowly.
“Evelyn, come on now. Come on. Stop that. Stop.”
“No, I . . .”
“What’s important is what you’ve said. You’re over it. That’s great.”
“I told him he had ruined my life. I told him that Christians wouldn’t do this to a neighbor. I . . .”
“Oh, Evelyn.”
“What is wrong with me? I know how you think about me. I heard you at the grocery store.”
Welborne looked into her eyes. He had to look up because she was taller than he was. His glasses were foggy.
“I am so sorry,” he said. “We were just being rude, Evelyn.”
“I have to dry off,” Evelyn said. “I’m soaking.” She nodded towards Van Lipsitz’s house. “I’ll keep an eye on it. Tell Ralph that I’ll call if anything happens. I’m sorry to talk so much.”
“No, no. Really,” Welborne said. The umbrella jerked his arm up again.
That was when Evelyn’s broken umbrella, the one that she’d dropped, came flapping out of Van Lipsitz’s yard and flew across the street. She let go of Welborne’s arm.
Inside, the battery-powered radio was still on. It made her nervous, because the reports were all about how Charlotte was getting the brunt of the storm. She was worried about Alison and Andrea, her two girls there.
From time to time, Evelyn could see the white dog cross by the section of chain link, sniffing at dark corners near the garage and around the hedges.
She went into the kitchen to see if the phone was still out. It was. The steak was soaking in Worcestershire sauce and the smell made her salivate. It was wrapped in tinfoil on the counter. She walked to it and lowered her nose. The smell was so strong that it made her nose burn. It was going to be a wonderful lunch.
She thought about Van Lipsitz. When he came back, she was going to talk to him. It was going to be easy now. It’s always the first contact that is the hardest, she thought, and just being near him today at the Harris Teeter made her feel as if that first hurdle was over with. She’d saved his life!
Outside, the dog quit searching for whatever it was looking for and just lay down under the magnolia tree. It looked tired and resigned.
Evelyn went into the kitchen. The dog could have that steak. She didn’t care. It wasn’t too good for a dog.
She lifted the steak out of the saucepan and Worcestershire sauce dripped across the counter. She shook it over the sink, then walked down the dark hall.
Outside, the dog sat up and barked halfheartedly. Evelyn had forgotten to put a jacket on and her blouse was still soaking. The rain was pelting through the thin fabric, and by now her bra was even visible, but she didn’t care. W
ho was going to see her?
The dog got up and ran towards the chain link, jumping against it. He was breathing heavily, his nose twitching to one side. His little front-foot pads pushed against the chain link, the crooked toenails reaching through the gaps.
Evelyn threw the steak into the air. It didn’t clear the top of the fence, though, and bounced back, landing in the grass on her side. The dog whimpered and raked his nose across the metal.
“OK, OK,” she said.
She leaned down to pick up the steak. It still smelled great.
Her head was less than a foot away from the dog’s and he was whining. His tail was going so fast that it wagged his whole body. Saliva and rain dripped off of his jowls. Some of his white fur was stuck in the chain link, and it made Evelyn think about Molly. How sometimes Molly would do the same thing, how excited she’d be to see Evelyn. How she’d cry for the food. How she’d smell the scraps from across the yard and run.
“I know you want it,” Evelyn said. “I know, boy. I know.”
She threw the steak again and this time it arced over the fence, through the rain, and as it did the dog jumped, following it with his eyes, his nose, even his tongue. It was as if his previous lack of energy had been an act and some reserve had suddenly kicked in. Evelyn kept her arm outstretched as the dog hovered in the air, as that steak flew from her hand and into Van Lipsitz’s yard, over that twelve-foot section of chain-link fence. As it cleared the wall.
The dog caught it in midflight and then started shaking it. Evelyn remembered that her father had explained to her, when she was a girl, that animals did this to kill their prey. Then the dog held the steak down with one paw and pulled off a stringy piece. He didn’t chew it at all before he swallowed, though, and then he stretched his neck out, pointing his snout towards the fence. He opened his mouth wide and started plugging his tongue into the air, a clogged wheezing coming through his nose. He was choking.