A Good Neighborhood

by Therese Anne Fowler

  “I want to quit piano.”

  “Me, too,” said Lily. “What day does Grandma get here?”

  “We’ll pick her up from Miss Mabel’s on Thursday,” Julia said. “You’re not quitting piano.”

  “Is Juniper?”

  “Juniper is old enough to decide for herself.”

  Brad was rubbing his chin. “Okay,” he said. “Sure. Sure, I’ll buy you a car—no paying me back—and you go ahead and take that grocery store job, as long as you can give me four hours three days a week. Deal?”

  Juniper lit up. She said, “Deal.” Brad held his hand out and she shook it.

  “You get a car?” said Lily.

  Juniper looked both relieved and surprised. “I guess so.”

  Brad said, “We’ll go car shopping tomorrow after school.”

  “She runs tomorrow,” Julia said, feeling as though the whole situation had gotten away from her.

  “I don’t have to,” Juniper said. “Tomorrow’s great.”

  Lily said, “Me, too? Can I shop for Juniper’s car?”

  “Dance lessons,” said Julia.

  Brad told Lily, “You and me, we’ll have a date of our own the next day, how’s that?”

  “That’ll do, I guess,” Lily said. She returned to her pie.

  Juniper went to Brad and hugged him. “This is so awesome, thanks.”

  He kissed her forehead. “You bet, honey. Don’t let anyone ever say that Brad Whitman doesn’t take the best care of all of his girls.”

  * * *

  Later, when Lily was in bed and Juniper was in the bonus room talking on the phone to one of her friends—presumably about this automotive windfall that was about to come her way—Julia joined Brad on the patio by the pool. The night was not as hot as nights would get when full summer took hold. That’s when she’d appreciate the pool most—when she could slip in after dark, the pool lighted and inviting like something at the resorts she used to see in the movies or on TV, like the pools owned by millionaires in Miami and L.A. and Hawaii. She and Brad were millionaires now—or Brad was, which made her one by extension. They didn’t live at the level of the truly rich, with mansions and apartments all over the world, say, and yachts and private jets and all of that. Nor did Julia want that kind of lifestyle. She wanted exactly what she had right this minute: a perfect home, perfect safety and security, and a perfect husband (or close enough) whose stated goal was to provide to her and her daughters this perfect life.

  She sat down in a chair to Brad’s right. “I was surprised to hear you wanted to hire Juniper.”

  “I meant to tell you,” he said. “Sorry about that.”

  “And, a car? That’s awfully generous.”

  He was looking at the pool. Its light threw pale ripples onto his face and shirt and across the rear of the house. On the table at his elbow was a bottle of a locally brewed beer, provided to him for free in the hope that he’d give it a public endorsement. He did that sometimes, in his commercials. Always casually—Brad was not a salesman. And that’s why his product placements had become a matter of popular interest and speculation, if only in the region. A sport, almost. What would he be eating or drinking or wearing or holding in his next ad? For vendors who wanted to curry favor, it was now a competition. Brad enjoyed this—a lot of free local products came his way. Julia enjoyed it as well, and she liked how Brad had grown so popular. He was always gracious when people recognized him and wanted to stop him for a minute to talk. If you’re on television, you are de facto famous, even if what you do every day is run a heating and cooling company. Big fish, small pond: it suited Brad, and it suited Julia.

  He said, “It’s time for her to have wheels, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe, but I don’t have to like it. One more thing to worry about.”

  “We’ll install a tracker on the car, how’s that? There’s all kinds of technology now that’ll let us see how she’s driving and where she goes. Makes kids more conscientious and therefore safer. That’s the pitch, anyway.”

  Julia said, “All right, good,” because as a mother she was all for it, though teenaged Julia would have been appalled if her mother had been able to track where she went.

  She continued, “I’m surprised by Juniper, too; running dispatch doesn’t seem like the kind of work she’d like.”

  “I guess we’ll see. She might take to it. She’s not going to like stocking grocery shelves, I’ll guarantee you that. Once I have her in the shop and she gets the lay of the land, I’m betting she’ll develop an appreciation for the whole works—I told her I’d train her up and bring her on in upper management later, if that’s what she wants.”

  “Management? She says she wants to go to college.”

  “I don’t see any point in that, do you?”

  Julia said, “If she’s going to have a career—”

  “I’m offering her one.”

  “And it’s really generous of you,” Julia said carefully. “But maybe she’ll have other interests.”

  Brad turned to look at her. “You’re singing a very different song lately than the one you sang three years ago when you signed us up for the Promise program.”

  “What, because I’m being supportive of alternatives to marriage and motherhood? I’m being realistic. The Purity Promise has been exactly what she needed—but do we really expect her to honor the vows once she’s over eighteen? Do you think she really intends that?”

  “I want to be clear on what you intend.”

  “Me?”

  “You send her mixed messages. ‘Save yourself for marriage—but don’t get married too soon. Go to college first and have a career. But please don’t go to college if college is far away. Or at all—just marry well and let your husband take care of you.’ It’s no wonder she’s confused and moody. Me, I’m giving her a real, concrete, unambiguous option for her future.”

  Irked by his accusation, Julia said, “Have you also told her she doesn’t have to stick to the pledge?”

  “No, I’ve reminded her she should take herself seriously, that chastity is a young woman’s superpower.”

  A superpower that Julia hadn’t possessed—couldn’t, it had seemed to her back then, since she’d already been ruined. Raped. The word was hard but accurate. She wouldn’t have kept herself chaste anyway; she lacked the wisdom, the strength, the support—all the things that, through New Hope’s program and through the ways she and Brad parented, she was ensuring her daughters got.

  Brad said, “You do realize that if she decides Whitman HVAC suits her, you’ll have a lot more time with her at home, or at least close by.”

  “That’d be all right with me.”

  “I knew it would. You see? I’m always looking out for my girls, all of ’em.”

  Julia had a swig of his beer and thought about whether her messages to Juniper were so mixed. To start: Yes, she did encourage Juniper to take seriously everything that was part of the Purity Promise. She wanted her daughter to value herself more than she, Julia, had done as a teen, wanted her to see chastity as the thing that made her the boss of her fate.

  Also, Julia believed wholeheartedly that even with its drawbacks, marriage combined with full-time motherhood was a far better existence than having to juggle work and child care along with marriage to a man who was never going to see parenting and housework as equally his job. She’d told Juniper she honestly did not know one working woman (or any woman) whose husband was a true partner in that area.

  At the same time, Juniper was bright and inquisitive and might love having some kind of career, at least for a while; Julia hadn’t wanted to discourage that—so long as Juniper didn’t go away for school.

  Guilty as charged.

  She said, “You’re right about all you say. I’m wishy-washy, but only because I love her so much. I want her to be happy. If running the business with you is what she decides she wants, then great, I’m all for it. Especially since then she likely won’t marry someone who’d try to move her out
of state.”

  “No, indeed,” Brad said.

  Julia watched the rippling light on the water’s surface. Even now, sitting here, she felt everything was always in motion. She was harried all the time, ever working to maintain or improve her life, their lives … If she wasn’t driving carpool or volunteering at Blakely, she was exercising to keep her pudge from returning, or she was planning their meals or managing the cleaning service or working with the decorator or running endless errands or handling her mother’s troubles—hours on the telephone with doctors and home health services and Lottie herself. Where was the ease she’d imagined would come with this marriage? She’d missed most of Juniper’s first nine years, and although she was much more available now to both the girls than she’d ever been for Juniper alone, she often still felt as if she was the proverbial hitched horse chasing the carrot—and that she’d hung the carrot herself. Her girls, meantime, were growing up, getting further away from her with each passing day.

  She said, “I wish I could stop time. Am I ridiculous for wanting to hold on to her, to both of them, for as long as I can?”

  “After how you grew up? Not a bit.”

  “I don’t want to seem like some desperate mom who won’t let her kids have lives of their own.”

  “You are not turning into your mother, I promise you.”

  “Ugh. Lottie. Having her here is going to be a trial. I’m sorry. I wish she could just stay there with Mabel while her new trailer’s on order.”

  Recently, Julia’s mother had created a conflagration that destroyed much of her trailer and landed her in outpatient rehab, due to the smoke; Lottie’s best friend, Mabel, had been happy to have Lottie stay with her, but only until next week, when Mabel was having a knee replaced and would herself need tending. Mabel was going to her son’s house in Pittsboro and Lottie was coming here.

  Brad said, “I reckon we’ll need to find things for her to do. Didn’t you say your pal Valerie there”—he pointed toward Valerie’s house—“is about to dig a little fishpond?”

  “That’s right.”

  “She seems like the sort who wouldn’t turn away a bored, sick old lady with time on her hands who wants to watch the progress, even if—when—that old lady gets to be a nuisance. We don’t have to warn her in advance.”

  Julia smiled. She was fairly sure Brad was joking.

  14

  “Ready to do some ultimate shopping?” Brad asked Juniper, having picked her up from Blakely at the end of the school day as promised.

  “I guess,” she said.

  “You guess,” he said, imitating her tentative tone and making a long face. “Sure, take the wind right out of my sails.”

  She buckled her seat belt. “Sorry. I am ready. But … it’s weird. I mean, a car.”

  “You asked for a car,” he said, pulling away from the curb with a wave to the vice-principal, who was on duty in the pickup line.

  “What if I ask for a giraffe?” Juniper said, making an effort to lighten her mood. She didn’t want him to be sorry he’d made this bargain, rethink it, change his mind.

  He said, “We’d need a bigger yard, too bad. But a car we have room for.”

  “Okay then, just the car. For now.”

  “Oh, ‘for now,’ is it?”

  She smiled and nodded. “Yeah, I saw this website where you can buy basically any kind of tree frog. The red-eyed is my favorite, but I like the clown and tiger-leg, too, so…”

  “Your mom would have opinions on that,” Brad said, laughing.

  “I know. That’s why I haven’t ordered any. Yet.”

  Juniper was enjoying this lighthearted exchange with Brad more than she expected to. It felt like old times, gave her some hope that her anxieties about working for and with him might turn out to be unwarranted, that everything was going to sort itself out properly. She didn’t want to always have Brad on her mind. Better—way better—to think about Xavier.

  Touching Xavier.

  Kissing Xavier.

  She gave herself a mental shake. Car shopping: focus.

  Juniper hadn’t had much occasion to ride in this, Brad’s car, his “toy,” he called it, a sleek and glossy black Maserati GranTurismo convertible, a 4.7-liter V8 with a price tag Juniper knew was $160,000 because Brad had tacked the window sticker to his bulletin board. This car was not the type she’d ask for, even if given carte blanche—if, say, instead of Brad making two million dollars from the gizmo he’d invented, he’d made ten or a hundred. This kind of luxury made Juniper nervous. One tiny wrong move, either inside the car or with the car, and you had a stain or a rip or a scratch or a dent that itself would cost a fortune to fix. Also, it wasn’t at all her style. She was into rugged, earthy stuff. Brad liked to take this car out to the interstate late at night when there wasn’t much traffic and “open it up.” Juniper would rather drive a Jeep or truck up into the mountains, take it off-road at, like, ten miles an hour until she found an idyllic waterfall and campsite. She and Xavier could go together—not now, but someday, maybe. Lie on a blanket and stare up at the stars. And do some other things, too.

  For now there would be no taking the vehicle anywhere except to work and back unless she got special permission, that’s what her parents had said. The other rule was that she would have to pay for gas herself. Also: no boys alone with her in the car (which was supposed to go without saying). No passengers at all without prior approval. She was fine with that; what mattered is that she’d have a car to take her to a job, where she would see her favorite soon-to-be coworker, Xavier. She hadn’t mentioned that part of the scenario to anyone but Pepper, who’d messaged him for her with the news but so far had gotten no reply.

  Damn, she was doing it again; it was like every mental pathway wanted to lead her to Xavier. Focus, girl, she thought, smiling inwardly. It was a nice problem to have.

  As she and Brad made their way across town, he asked, “How was school today?”

  “All we’re doing is reviewing for end of grade. It’s so boring.”

  She didn’t say that Meghan had followed her into the girls’ bathroom and taunted her about missing a classmate’s birthday party the previous weekend, a party that was the most fun ever. No parents, plenty of booze, some recreational drugs, dancing “like I’m sure you’re not allowed to do.”

  Juniper had replied, “Jealous I got an A on the English test, are we?” and Meghan frowned. “All of that’s a waste of time.”

  Brad said, “Can’t wait to be out of there, huh?”

  Juniper nodded. “Yep.”

  “I remember that feeling.”

  “And there’s still another whole year to go. I wish I could just test out of senior year and get my diploma early.”

  “Can’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I never heard of anyone doing that.”

  “Well, sweet cakes, here’s adulthood lesson number one: You want something, ask for it. Simple. Now, when I say ask, I don’t mean that you can literally say the words Hey, can I have x? and it’ll be handed to you—today’s little outing being an exception,” he said, smiling over at her. “You did ask, and you did get—or will—pretty directly. But I mean as a general life lesson: Find out how to get whatever it is you want, and then do whatever it takes to get it.”

  Juniper considered his words. This was not the message she’d gotten from Reverend Matthews at New Hope. When her mother had started taking her to Sunday school and church and, later, youth group and the Purity Promise program, all Juniper heard from Reverend Matthews and most of the adults she knew (outside of school) was the Bible’s direction for women—that is, to aspire to be obedient and submissive to her future husband and to see motherhood as the ultimate achievement, eschewing work outside the home. A woman was supposed to be modest and undemanding, unambitious, grateful to her husband and supportive of his ambitions and needs.

  As best Juniper could tell at the time, Julia had happily embraced that model and appeared to still be doing so. A
s the family had gotten out of the habit of regular church attendance, though, Juniper heard less of the dogma—but little contradiction, until recently. Now her mother was acting like college and a career might be an okay choice. And Brad wanted her to work for him and his company. So … had they changed their minds, Juniper wondered, or had they ever held the beliefs to begin with?

  We wondered, too. Possibly Julia’s motivation for following the dutiful-wife model had been purely pragmatic. After all, she’d been pinballing from job to job to job since she’d started babysitting at age eleven, so what was not to like about a belief system that basically required her man (whoever that man might be) to let her stay home and do nothing but raise Juniper and keep house? She’d begun going to New Hope in the first place only at the suggestion of another Whitman HVAC employee, Cindy in accounts receivable. Julia liked the church environment, the caring and support, the concept of renewal and inclusion (through baptism, yes, and why not?). That Brad seemed to approve only motivated her further. We suspect Jesus had little to do with any of it.

  And it was evident to anyone who’d known Brad pre-Julia that he didn’t hold those strict traditional beliefs and possibly never had. Juniper was beginning to see this, too. She didn’t think it was necessarily bad, all things considered, just disconcerting.

  Juniper said, “So then … if I really could graduate from Blakely early like that, you and Mom would be okay with it?”

  “You’ll be eighteen years old in December. It’s your life to do with as you choose.”

  “Okay,” she said, seeing doors opening ahead of her where before she’d seen walls. “Cool. I’ll look into it.”

  “But here’s the thing,” said Brad. “Let’s say you get to skip out on some or all of senior year—which is never everything it’s cracked up to be, and that’s the truth. If you do, I recommend you not rush into any plan for early college, if that’s what you’re thinking. In fact, I’ll be straight with you, Juniper, and say I don’t want you to go to college at all. Big waste of time and money for someone in your shoes. Give me a year, all right, before you make up your mind. We’ll start you in dispatch, but I’ll show you all the ropes and then you decide what you want.”