A Good Neighborhood

by Therese Anne Fowler

  “According to Uncle Brooks, it’s already way too late for you.” She smiled and reached for his hand, gave it a sympathetic squeeze.

  Tom attempted a smile in return, then closed his eyes again.

  You can probably see where this is going. However, Tom did not die on the flight. He did not die at home later, or in the emergency room. He got a walk-in appointment to see his doctor midmorning the next day; the doctor confirmed a concussion, advised painkillers and rest, and sent him home. At home, though, his headache refused to respond to the meds, and in fact grew so severe that Tom didn’t put up a fuss when Valerie insisted he go to the hospital. Not only that: he told her to call 911.

  In the short time between when the paramedics took Tom by ambulance and when Valerie, having first arranged for Ellen to come stay with Xavier, joined him at the hospital, he lost consciousness.

  Tests, scans, emergency surgery to relieve the uncommon-but-not-unheard-of-in-these-kinds-of-situations epidural hematoma—a brain bleed—and, as the sun was coming up over the trees that rimmed the hospital’s parking lot and shining through its chapel’s stained glass, “That’s all we can do for now, Mrs. Holt. You should go home and get some rest.”

  A long day, then, of waiting for updates, of talking to relatives, of paying a short visit to this good man, this wonderful father, this excellent partner who now lay in a bed with tubes and monitors and remained in some netherworld where Valerie couldn’t reach him. “When will he come around?” she asked his doctors. She asked the nurses, too—they often know as much or more about the ground game. In this case, everyone said the same thing: “Brain injuries are unpredictable. We have to just wait and see.”

  At 11:45 P.M., while Valerie paced the house and Xavier was in his crib lost in the bliss of innocent sleep, the phone rang.

  Tom was gone.

  Gone. Stupidly, perversely gone. Permanently gone.

  24

  We had to assume that the bulk of Julia’s DNA had been inherited from her father, who’d run off with Lottie’s cousin when Julia was fourteen. Because her mother, Lottie Corbett, was just about as unattractive—no, we’ll cop to our real opinion: ugly—as a human, male or female, could be. Those of us who’d seen the Lord of the Rings movies compared her to Gollum. She was short; she was essentially bald; she had protruding eyes and ears; and what teeth she had were yellowed. She did at least clothe herself completely, so there was that.

  Just as Julia’s good looks were not fully to her own credit, Lottie’s ugliness was not her fault. It was bad luck, bad genes. And yes, a lifetime of bad situations that also were not necessarily her fault, like never having sunscreen when she was working in the tobacco fields as a kid, so her skin was now leathery and spotted. Like being too poor to eat right or have time to exercise, so her body was now an uneven composition of squishy lumps.

  What was her fault, or at least what had probably been avoidable, was her lung disease. She’d been a two-pack-a-day gal since she was fourteen or fifteen—around the time she’d started tending bar at the hole-in-the-wall her future father-in-law owned. Smoking made her look older, she thought. It made her feel older for sure. Everybody did it; tobacco was grown and dried right across the road, for crying out loud.

  This ugly, ill woman was now installed in the Whitmans’ guest suite with her oxygen tank and line and cannula, her caftans, and her cigarettes. “What point is there in quitting now?” she’d said, but promised to adhere to Julia’s absolute no-smoking-indoors-or-under-any-covered-surface policy.

  Cigarette in one hand, “co-cola” in the other, Lottie sat in the sunshine beside the Whitmans’ pool watching Lily and Juniper race each other end to end. Juniper, being so much bigger and a more expert swimmer, handicapped herself by being a dolphin—that is, she kept her arms pinned to her sides as she swam while also giving Lily a head start.

  At the conclusion of one such race, Juniper got out and dried herself off while Lily went to the pool’s edge near where Lottie lounged. “Grandma, can you swim? Do you want to race me?”

  “Used to be I could,” Lottie said. “Not with this, though.” She gestured to the cannula where it lay on a side table, temporarily; Julia had insisted that she not use the oxygen at the same time she smoked—a not-unreasonable request, given that she’d burned down her trailer doing just that.

  Lily said, “Are you dying?”

  “More or less.”

  “Which one?”

  “What?”

  “Is it more, or less?”

  “Everybody’s dying,” Lottie told her. “It just takes some longer than others, is all.”

  “Do you know how long for you?”

  “Whenever God makes up his mind,” Lottie said.

  Lily asked her, “Is my grandpa already in heaven? I wanted to meet him.”

  “I doubt they’d let him in,” said Lottie. Then she called to Juniper, who sat at the far end of the pool with a notebook and pen in hand, “What are you up to over there? School’s out.”

  “Nothing,” Juniper said.

  Lily climbed out of the pool and went to sit on the end of Lottie’s chaise. “Are you going to live with us until you more or less die?”

  Lottie snorted with laughter, which then made her cough and cough. Lily waited, picking at a now-soggy scab on her knee.

  Finally Lottie said, “Your daddy offered to get me a new trailer, and your mama finally decided to let him. If she’da just let him do it right after he got all that money, I expect I wouldn’t be sitting here today.”

  “You’d already be dead?”

  “No, I’d be in my trailer, because it wouldn’ta caught fire, because it’d have all the new fire-resistant whatevers they use now. Lucky I didn’t blow myself up—which woulda been your mama’s fault if I did, and don’t think I haven’t told her that to her face. The way she acts so stingy and bossy, you’d think she made all that money herself.”

  Juniper had gotten up while Lottie ranted, and was going inside. “Hey there,” Lottie called. “Where you off to? Bring old Lottie another co-cola, won’t you?”

  “Ask Lily,” Juniper said. “I’m going to the park for a run.”

  Lily said to Juniper, “But Mommy’s not home.”

  “I get to drive myself now,” Juniper replied, and went into the house.

  “Well?” said Lottie, looking at the child.

  “Can I have one? Mommy never lets me.”

  “All the better,” said Lottie. “Bring two.”

  25

  About to go to his weekly guitar lesson, Xavier was in his car, ignition on, seat belt buckled, Sanel Redžić starting on his car stereo, when he noticed a piece of paper tucked underneath the windshield wiper on the driver’s side.

  He unbuckled his seat belt, opened the door, retrieved it. It read:

  Today I’m in the mood for blueberry cornbread. You? Meet in our corner at 9:30 P.M. I’ll share, or BYO poutine.

  “Finally,” Xavier said. He’d heard nothing from Juniper and the radio silence was killing him. “But damn, I hate cornbread.” He was smiling.

  * * *

  At nine-thirty, she was there waiting when he arrived. The sky had darkened to deep violet. Crickets chirped and tree frogs sang from his yard behind the fence. The scent of gardenias from his yard sweetened the night air.

  Xavier hadn’t brought food; he was too nervous to eat. Juniper had been at the front of his thoughts full time since their un-date at JJ’s. He’d scoured the internet for photos of her, needing some part of her, no matter how small, with which to ground his feelings while he waited. He found almost nothing. One photo of her in a news article from two years earlier, where she was in a group of several New Hope kids serving food at a shelter after a hurricane. It was her, though, and now here in front of him was the real her, the current her, shorts, T-shirt, ponytail, and a smile that reflected both welcome and relief.

  “You got my note,” she said, standing up.

  “Low-tech communication. I lik
e it.” His hands were clenched. He felt hyper. Happy. Scared. “My guitar teacher is big on low tech. He won’t even pick up an electric guitar. I don’t like them much, either. There’s something great about scaling back, you know? It’s, like, good for the soul.”

  She had a quizzical expression. “Scaling back?”

  “Nothing. Never mind,” he said, feeling stupid for going on that way, for being nervous when he should be calm. Girls didn’t want hyper guys. Guys were supposed to be chill and in control.

  Juniper said, “No, tell me.” She looked up at him, and there was a moment—a cue?—that made him think maybe he should kiss her. He wanted to. His heart thumped hard. Crazy. He’d never had this kind of response to a girl before, this kind of anxiety, this hesitation. Why was it harder now than it had been that first night?

  He continued to look at her, unsure, and then said, “You want to sit down?”

  “Okay.”

  He didn’t kiss her. Should he have kissed her?

  They sat so that they faced each other. She said, “By the way, I already ate the cornbread. I’m sorry.”

  “By the way, I don’t even like it, so…”

  “Oh! Perfect, then.”

  “Good thing it wasn’t—”

  “Poutine,” she finished, and they laughed. His pulse slowed a little.

  She said, “So I really want to know: What do you mean by scaling back?”

  “Less … mental noise. Everything is high tech, right? Laptops, gaming, streaming. We all go around with our screens and headphones like they’re umbilical cords to Life. But with a classical guitar, which is pretty much just wood and strings, you can produce music that’ll rip people’s hearts out or make them feel happy or calm them down … Like, a guitar can tell a story. Its tech is so basic, but its effect can be profound. And you never have to charge it.” He smiled.

  Juniper said, “Same as books. Paper and ink’s all a book is, but when I was little, books made me feel hopeful. Like I had friends. Like maybe there were good things to look forward to someday.”

  Xavier pointed toward the pool and house. “Pretty good result, I’d say.”

  “Who cares about that? I like this,” she said, pointing at the two of them.

  “I do, too.”

  She watched him, bottom lip between her teeth. Then she said, “Do you … Do you want to kiss me?”

  He moved closer, put his hands on her shoulders. She put hers on his waist. They looked at each other, their faces shadowed. She smelled like flowers. Her hands were hot through his T-shirt. He glanced at her lips, closed his eyes, pressed his mouth to hers. His heart sped again. Other parts responded, too.

  After a minute, she said, “Am I doing this right? I haven’t really—”

  “You’re great,” he told her.

  “You’re great,” she said.

  “You smell good.”

  “So do you.”

  They were turning this into a game. He said, “I like the sound of your voice.”

  “Yeah? Well, I like yours, too. Plus, your earrings.”

  He touched the two small hoops on his right earlobe. “Joseph thinks I should wear diamonds. As if, right?”

  “Well, diamonds are low tech,” Juniper said, and then she kissed him there, on his ear. “Though not as low tech as metal hoops,” she said, and kissed his jaw. “And this…” she added, kissing him lightly on his mouth, “is even lower tech.”

  “Like I said, scaling back is great.”

  Basic.

  Profound.

  The simplest of pleasures. These two, kissing in the dark under the stars.

  26

  One of the still-true-but-for-how-long? facts about North Carolina’s coast is that it’s relatively undeveloped. Vacationing there—whether it be on the Outer Banks or a little farther down the coastline at Topsail Beach or Wrightsville Beach or on the soigné, car-free Bald Head Island—means you’ve got few hotels to choose from. But there are campgrounds and lots of rental homes and long swaths of beach. Or you might be able to do as Brad Whitman did and buy a place of your own.

  A great deal of wildlife can still be found along the Atlantic and the Intracostal: oystercatchers and terns and herons and sharks and dolphins—even wild horses on the Shackleford Banks. Sand dollars. Sea turtles. Whales, during migration. Brad was not what we’d call an outdoorsman, but he enjoyed using the outdoors—and the beach especially—the way most of us do: in small doses, with plenty of sunscreen and insect repellent on hand.

  Brad being an up-by-the-bootstraps self-made man, as soon as he came into money, he’d bought a cedar-sided, metal-roofed oceanfront house that was three stories tall and had a widow’s walk at the top. Five bedrooms, four baths, and an elevator. Decks on every level. An outdoor shower and fish-cleaning station. A six-person hot tub. Weatherproof stereo speakers on the main deck that worked wirelessly with the state-of-the-art audio system he’d had installed inside. A gas grill, naturally. Weatherproof furniture, including a dining table that could seat eight. It was as good as anything you could get for under three million and he’d gotten it for a song—the previous owner had gone underwater with it, no pun intended, and filed for bankruptcy, letting the bank foreclose. A savvy guy could and, Brad believed, should see another man’s misfortune as his great luck; after all, someone was going to get the deal, so why not him? Such was the circle of life.

  As he’d done with the Maserati and the just-built house, he’d leveraged his money here, taking advantage of low mortgage interest rates while investing the bulk of his windfall in funds that paid three, four, twelve, even twenty times (in one case) the rate he was paying out. Every time he was able to do this—that is, buy a big-ticket item for his personal use or for Whitman HVAC—he felt like he’d accomplished something profound. He—a guy who’d started life as nothing, a nobody, a scrawny kid who’d lived for a time in a World War II surplus canvas tent when his dad was between jobs and therefore houses that they could afford to rent, a kid who had gotten beaten up defending his low circumstances, a guy who’d dropped out of college (by choice, he always emphasized)—now had no trouble whatsoever walking into a bank with a request for money and walking out with a Maserati, walking out with a small mansion, walking out with a beach house. Maybe now he’d do as his accountant had suggested and get himself a boat—a yacht, it would have to be. He didn’t want something he could just write a check for; that was something that would have excited the old Brad. The newer Brad saw how large a guy could live using other people’s money and wanted in on that.

  Today, though, he was not thinking about money or leverage. He wasn’t really even thinking about yachts, although being here at the beach meant seeing some pretty ones now and then. Prettier still, to his mind, was the sight before him as he sat in his chair on the wide oceanfront deck: Juniper.

  Juniper in cutoff denim shorts and a bikini top.

  Just looking, he told himself. No way to avoid seeing her or any attractive female who was around. It was the beach, after all.

  Such was Brad’s rationale.

  Juniper was playing Frisbee out on the beach with Pepper, whose given name was Penny. Penny had come to be called Pepper not due to having a spicy personality but rather because, as we’ve seen, she had a great amount of pep. Excessive pep, some might say; they’d been here less than forty-eight hours so far and already Brad was tired of her constant chattiness. The girl talked and talked about everything: school, cross-country training (starting up again in July), her mother’s broken leg, her parents’ business (a French restaurant), her brother who was currently at camp and had contracted lice … Earlier this morning Brad had sent the girls off to the bakeshop for cinnamon rolls and bear claws just so he could sit on the deck and drink his coffee in peace.

  Julia, on the other hand, was a fan of Pepper’s. She said now, “Pepper has such good energy—that’s what Juniper needs.”

  Brad, behind his sunglasses, watched Juniper and admired the lithe shape of her arms a
nd legs, the grace in her motion as she pulled the Frisbee close and then sent it flying. He said, “I think Juniper’s doing fine. I’ve kept my eye on her at work and it’s nothing but good energy there.”

  This wasn’t wholly true. Her approach to the work itself was strong, and she got along great with the rest of the employees, but when it was just the two of them, she seemed cautious, tentative. Like she was worried about saying or doing something wrong. Displeasing him.

  Julia said, “She’ll hardly talk to me.”

  “You need to give her some space, is all.”

  “When did you become the expert on teen girls?”

  “Who says I am? Maybe it’s just easier for me to treat her like a person than like a daughter, a child.”

  “What, because she isn’t yours?”

  He shrugged. “Could be.”

  “Well, then, just wait until Lily’s a teen and you’ll see how hard it is.” Julia got up and went inside, where Lottie was still “pulling herself together” and Lily was playing iPad games.

  Brad thought Julia should try loosening up, not only with Juniper but with him. That’d go a long way toward helping to keep his mind where it ought to be. With Lottie around, though, Julia had not given Brad even the slightest I’m-tired-but-let’s-go signal. So he hadn’t pursued her; he decided to let this play out a while, see how long the dry spell would last if he didn’t make the first move.

  Now Lottie inched her way out onto the deck, tank in tow. She was dressed in a pair of garish patterned culottes and a neon pink T-shirt that, with its off-the-shoulder style, recalled the eighties dance club scene. Julia had said her mother was spending much of the allowance Brad gave her at the online equivalents of Florida dollar stores.

  “Ah, to be young again,” Lottie said, gesturing toward the teens on the beach.

  Brad said, “You ask me, age is a state of mind.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  Brad helped her get settled into a chair. “Comfy? What can I get you?”