Neighbors

by Thomas Berger

  Elaine stopped just inside the kitchen door. "Ramona? Greavy? Who are they? Two more of your newly acquired enemies?"

  "That was a slip of the tongue," Keese hastened to say. "They are of no matter at this time of the night."

  "I never expected to come home and find you embattled," Elaine said, accusingly. "I always have counted on this place to be a tranquil refuge."

  "Yeah, yeah," said Keese, motioning for the women to go ahead while he switched off the light.

  "Are you shooing us out?" asked his daughter.

  "Sorry," he said curtly. He pointed: "Don't forget your case."

  Enid stopped in the docrway and asked Elaine: "You don't mind, do you, dear?" She held the lapel of the powder-blue robe that belonged to her daughter.

  "Oh, that's mine," said Elaine. "Gee."

  They finally left the kitchen and Keese extinguished the ceiling light. On an afterthought in the darkness he found the back door and turned the key in it. The women had gone ahead through the dining room, which was dimly illuminated by the light from the front hallway. They were on the stairs when he emerged.

  Keese himself was about to ascend when he remembered the front door. He had probably not locked it after admitting Elaine. He tried the knob. Yes, the door swung open. Ramona was sitting on the step outside. He quickly slammed the door and locked it with the key and then with the twist-knob above, a device never used since the Keeses had moved in. Indeed it was almost sealed with verdigris, and a less desperate man of normal strength could probably not have sent the bolt home.

  He stole upstairs, going almost on tiptoe. It never failed: every time he believed he had got things in hand at last, another threat appeared. His confidence was shattered. He may have settled with Harry, but Ramona had consistently trounced him at every encounter. She could not be disposed of by a punch in the eye, and even at the times he had expelled her from his house (he could remember two occasions) Harry had been included and, being larger, bore the loss. In a very real sense Ramona was undefeated.

  And there she sat, on his front step, at two o'clock in the morning.

  He climbed the stairs and wandered to the end of the second-floor hallway, at the extremest remove from the master bedroom and around the corner from Elaine's, in the toe of a short-footed L, as it were. Some former owner had added a room there, poking out a dormer from the roof, perhaps to accommodate some new addition to his family. This room had been where the Keeses put their guests before it became a repository for the surplus furniture. Keese thought now of going into the room and burrowing deep amidst the stored furniture, sandwiching himself in thick upholstery.

  Goddamnit, he couldn't let Ramona sit out there in the middle of the night! What if someone drove a car to the end of the road to turn around? He came back along the hall, passing the closed doors of both bathrooms, behind which in each case was the sound of falling water. There are people who must shower before retiring, however late.

  He came downstairs. He crept to the front door, bent to apply his ear to the keyhole, and listened. Did he hear sobbing? It could be the wind. Why would Ramona be weeping out there? Her dog had run away or been killed? Harry had brutalized her? It occurred to Keese that she might be grieving because of some misfortune that had happened to Harry, but in that case she would hardly be sitting there almost silently.

  Could she be expressing her unhappiness with the debacle that had resulted from her efforts to make friends in the new neighborhood? Well, whose fault was that?

  He grew angry, and he put his mouth to the keyhole and said: "You can't blame me! I tried to do the right thing. I'm not in the habit of attacking guests, but you and Harry went too far."

  He spoke softly, so as not to be heard upstairs if his women had finished their baths: perhaps too softly, for there was no response from outside. Was she still there? He listened again at the keyhole and heard nothing. It was of course too dark to see through the aperture.

  He stood up and deliberated on the wisdom of opening the door, discreetly, to see whether she still sat there. He decided against the measure; he had after all made a decent overture. If she rejected it, well, so be it. If she had gone altogether, that was the best that could be hoped for.

  But even as he turned to leave and go upstairs and (finally) retire, he heard an aspirate sound at the keyhole, and he returned to it, bending.

  It was Ramona's voice. "Earl?" she whispered.

  "Yes," he whispered back.

  "Earl, let me in," said she.

  "Now, we've had enough of that for one night."

  "What?"

  He whispered at a higher volume: "It's too late for that."

  "I'll give you a kiss."

  "Don't be absurd." He had been thrilled, on her first entrance, when she had raked him with her breasts, but he now found repulsive the thought of removing the door that kept them separate.

  "You're hurting my feelings!" Ramona wailed through her whisper.

  "What do I care?"

  "Don't joke in that callous way, Earl," said Ramona. "It makes a bad impression."

  "Ramona," asked Keese through the keyhole, "what do you want of me?"

  "Let me in and you'll see," she said seductively.

  "Forget about that—drop the idea completely," Keese answered. "I am thoroughly aware that you can have no amorous interest in me, so don't insult me with these preposterous insinuations. If you'd stop once and for all trying to make a fool of me, then perhaps I could help you. You do seem to have a problem if you sit sobbing on my doorstep at two o'clock in the morning. If you'd act right for once, then maybe I could perform as a decent neighbor. My intent is good—in fact it has been since the first—but you and Harry have always succeeded in alienating me, I don't know why."

  "Have you got gonorrhea or something?" Ramona asked.

  "Now, there's an example of what I have been talking about: for no reason that I can fathom you refuse to speak constructively here and instead ask me an irrelevant question that could also be taken as highly offensive." But Keese found himself giving her the benefit of the doubt: how much of this colloquy was getting from one side to the other could not be said. Sibilants especially were likely to be corrupted in trying to penetrate the door, while other sounds might be taken for them.

  "But maybe I didn't hear you correctly," he said, "so skip my criticism. I really would like to begin with a clean slate. Please tell me why you were crying out there."

  "I wasn't," Ramona whispered. "I've got an allergy to some weeds around here, I guess. My eyes and nose are running."

  "Well," said Keese with a certain strain, "I'm sorry to hear that. There are various antihistamines that can be bought without a prescription in the village drugstore, but it won't be open till eight A.M. tomorrow. In the longer view it might be worth your while to look into the matter of taking allergy shots."

  "Come on, Earl," Ramona whispered back, "stop resisting me. Let me in, you horny bastard." She began to breathe loudly through the keyhole. After a moment he realized that she was taking in and letting out air in a rhythm that suggested the breather was engaged in a sexual act, indeed approaching a climax. How obnoxious! He hastily straightened up: his spine had gone stiff, and pain, as if on a spring, leaped into the small of his back.

  "Earl?" It was Enid, at the top of the stairs. "Why are you down there?" She was still wearing Elaine's robe.

  "Just checking to see whether the door is locked." Which actually was the truth.

  "I thought you were going to bed now and intended not to think of that subject again until you had had a good night's sleep."

  He walked to the foot of the stair. "I couldn't have slept without knowing whether this house was secure."

  "You have checked the door?"

  "Yes."

  "Then come to bed." Enid shrugged. "It's as simple as that."

  "I suppose so. You go on. I'll be there in a minute."

  "Earl?" Enid asked.

  "Yes?"

  "I want you t
o promise you won't provoke the neighbors again tonight."

  Keese stared up at her for a long moment. Then he said deliberately: "How dare you make a statement like that to me?"

  "I'll tell you how," said Enid. "I think you are planning to slip out when the rest of the house have retired."

  "For what purpose?"

  "Probably to harass Harry and Ramona in some fashion."

  He marched up three steps. "It apparently never occurs to you that I might be the one who is harassed."

  But Enid would not give him the satisfaction of arguing. She moued, then said, "Have it your own way," and returned to their bedroom.

  He muttered truculently to himself, returning to the ground floor: "My own way. That's a laugh."

  He went to the door, bent, and listened at the keyhole. It was silent out there, but when he whispered, "Ramona," she answered immediately.

  "Hi."

  He refrained from comment on the episode of heavy breathing. "You'd better go home now. We'll all feel better in the morning."

  "I want you to know that I really like you, Earl," she said in a very clear whisper. "I don't care about your age and weight. And don't worry about your false teeth: I tell you, I don't care!"

  "False teeth!" cried Keese, forgetting to whisper. "I don't have false teeth!"

  Now it was Elaine who had come to the head of the stair. "Daddy," she said, "are you all right?"

  He straightened up again too quickly and was stabbed in the small of the back. With that pain added to Ramona's latest comment, he was not genial.

  He roared: "Why can't you let me alone?"

  After a delay for disbelief, Elaine burst into tears, buried her face in her hands, and ran back down the hall.

  What had he done? He had turned into a monster before his own eyes.

  Emboldened by his shout, Ramona put aside her whisper and spoke in a full voice behind the door. "All right, I don't need a building to fall on me."

  "No, no," said Keese, unlocking the door. She was already going down the path. "Wait, I didn't mean that." Too late he realized that he had got the girls confused: his intention had been to go after Elaine and apologize to her. She and Ramona were hardly interchangeable! He owed no apology to this one. But to slam the door in her face now that he had called her back was impossible.

  Ramona was grinning slyly. "Well, I don't know, Earl, whether I should forgive you or not."

  "O.K.," Keese said impatiently. "I've done what I can, anyway. I'll wish you a good night, Ramona."

  "When we're just getting to know each other?"

  "Look, I don't want to be rude—"

  "But you're going to be anyway, right?" Ramona shrugged. "I can always tell what's coming when someone says he doesn't want to do a certain thing."

  "All right, I'll come right out with it. What do you want of me?" He winced. "I mean, not only just now, but starting back at the beginning of the evening. I'll include Harry in that question. What? Why?"

  Obviously she had no clear sense of what he was asking. Why was he asking her anyway? She was probably demented.

  "But we're friends?" She smiled so broadly as to reveal that one of her teeth was missing on the far right. She might not be to some tastes, but Keese found her strangely attractive. Elaine however was beautiful by definition, and he had made her cry.

  "Friends!" Keese cried triumphantly. Now he could close the door, and he did, on a wondering Ramona.

  He went upstairs and along the hall to Elaine's room. The door was open, but the light was out.

  "Elaine?" he said softly.

  She turned on the bedside lamp. She was weeping no longer, and indeed her eyes were not red.

  "What can I say?" asked Keese. "It wasn't you I was raging at. I hope you know that."

  Elaine raised her chin. "Dad, I want you to go to bed right now. Promise me! Don't even go down to turn out the lights, lock up, or anything else. Don't even take a shower."

  "You're thinking of the neighbors, aren't you?"

  "I'm thinking of you," said Elaine. "What do they matter to me?"

  "It's only that you are defending them by implication," Keese said. "As if I am responsible for this conflict, I who was peacefully finishing my glass of wine while your mother prepared dinner."

  "The chronology doesn't matter," Elaine said in exasperation. "Oh, Daddy!"

  "Please try to understand, Elaine," he sadly entreated her. "Your mother is out of sympathy with me, because of envy, but I expected better of you."

  "Envy?"

  "Harry and Ramona haven't badgered her, you see. The three of them are in total harmony."

  "Then," said Elaine, "aren't you the one who's envious?"

  "Certainly not. I don't want to get along with people like that! I abhor the type. It's really bad news for the neighborhood to have people of that sort move in."

  "You're not giving them the benefit of the doubt, I see," said Elaine. "That's not the dad I know."

  Keese sat down at the foot of the bed. He felt protected there, amidst all the blue: walls, bedclothes, rug. Elaine's pajamas were blue, of course.

  "I really shouldn't be bothering you with these things," he said. "Suffice it to say that I have my reasons for acting as I did. Unless you resist early on when someone tries to push you, you might find yourself in a momentum that can't be halted."

  Elaine smiled gently. "If Harry's car could talk, that's about what it would say."

  "You know about that, do you? Mother tell you?"

  "Harry told me. He introduced himself with that news, then he produced my overnight case."

  "He was just trying to be cute," Keese said in disgust. "Anybody could do the same."

  "Anybody whose car had been pushed into a swamp," said Elaine.

  Keese felt that Elaine's belief that he had grown unfair must be corrected. "Harry isn't all bad," he said now. "I think he really wants to be friendly, but somehow can't put his ideas into practice successfully. Actually there was something fetching about the way he fixed the spaghetti himself when we found the restaurant was closed." He gave her an account of that incident.

  Elaine's eyes sparkled. "Gee, I wish I'd have got here earlier. I'd have loved that."

  Keese said jealously: "It wasn't really good. It wasn't anywhere near as good as the kind you used to love as a kid."

  She wrinkled her nose. "You mean that awful canned stuff?"

  "You didn't like it? We always thought—"

  "Please don't be hurt," said Elaine.

  Keese threw up his left hand. "Sure. But my point about Harry is that if he could be content just to be friendly in a modest way, but he can't let it go at that. He has to boast, he has to gloat—"

  Elaine broke in: "You have to get right back to your obsession, don't you? It's as if you feel secure there and there alone."

  Keese bit his lip. "I'm trying to defend myself. You have a low opinion of me, and I'm trying to explain my position. I don't want to be an object of contempt to my own daughter."

  She had an adequate opportunity here to relieve his concern, but she neglected it. "O.K.," she said, "then what's the justification for throwing them out in the cold after Mother invited them to stay overnight?"

  "Mother tell you that?" He was not surprised to hear her attribute it to Harry once more. "Ha, he's a great one for listing his injuries. I'm sure, though, that he failed to mention tricking me into giving him thirty-two dollars, pushing me face down into the swamp, locking me in the basement, and calling Greavy to haul away my car."

  "Really?" asked Elaine, beginning to chuckle. "He did all that?" Her face broke apart and she laughed heartily. Elaine lost her beauty at such a time: her mouth was distorted and her eyes were pinched, which in turn caused a crookedness of nose. "Ha-a-a-ry did tha-a—" But she could not reach the end of the sentence. She was virtually weeping with laughter.

  Keese hurled himself erect. He was too angry and hurt to protest. He left the room, her laughter pursuing him. In twenty-two years he had nev
er seen this stupid side to Elaine, and he was devastated by witnessing it now. That canned spaghetti was abominable went without saying: what galled him was that as a child she had demanded that he eat spoonful after spoonful along with her. He had half a mind to return and confront her with that memory. He was dissuaded by a projection of her argument: if she had to eat it, then misery loved company!

  He entered the master bedroom. Enid was propped up in bed, reading a magazine with large pages.