Neighborly: A Novel Read online

  “Special delivery!” A voluptuous woman in a halter dress walks up, holding the hand of a lovely child, dark-haired and dark-skinned and dark-eyed, Sadie’s precise opposite. I’d guess Zoe is between one and two years old, walking semisteadily on plump legs.

  “Yolanda!” Brandon plants a kiss on the woman’s cheek. “You’re a lifesaver. Where was she?”

  “In a flower bed.”

  “Always with the flower beds.” He lifts Zoe high in the air as she giggles. Yolanda recedes before I can officially meet her, but I have a feeling I will eventually. “It’s all fun and games until somebody loses their tulips!”

  Sadie stretches her arms as if to say to Brandon, “Pick me up, too!” I do some knee bends to give her a ride of her own. I fear her fussiness. We’re trying to make an impression here.

  Brandon says, “The thing I love about these parties is the freedom. Everyone watches everyone else’s kids. You can just take off and be an adult for a while.”

  I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to just take off. I can’t picture not knowing that Sadie’s in a flower bed. But I love that I’m entering a world where people look after one another and each other’s children. It’s an enclave of trust and safety. I’ve never had that before, not even as a kid. Definitely not as a kid.

  “There you are!” Tennyson, the sexy face painter, comes up to join us. “Leave it to Branstone to monopolize the guest of honor.” Brandon gives her a side hug. She has a beer bottle sweating in her hand, and I eye it enviously. It’s not the only thing I envy, since her body is incredible. She’s tan and fit, in a short black catsuit that is at once completely ridiculous and entirely flattering on her. Her face isn’t traditionally pretty (her eyes are close together and her lips are thin), but she just oozes good health and self-confidence. “I’m Tennyson.”

  “I’m Kat.”

  “Love that.” She swigs from her bottle and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. A few stray brown strands escape her carelessly perfect bun. I have the sense that she’s at least forty or even forty-five—her sort of confidence feels like it’s grown into—but her smooth skin belies this. “How are you settling in?”

  “Pretty well.”

  It’s not exactly true. I’ve done as much unpacking as I can, but there’s still so much building and assembly for which I have to rely on Doug. Handiness is not my forte.

  Tennyson lowers her head so she’s level with Sadie. She strokes Sadie’s hair, then closes her eyes rapturously. “I miss this age.”

  Sadie reaches out and grabs one of Tennyson’s complicated dangling earrings. “No,” I admonish, trying to sound just the right amount of firm. It has no effect. I work to remove the earring from Sadie’s grasp, and she starts crying. “Sorry.” I know I shouldn’t feel embarrassed; she’s just a baby.

  Tennyson is laughing. “No worries. I remember this age. She’s putting everything in her mouth, right? Dropping things twelve times in a row so you’ll pick them up?”

  “The world’s just one big experiment in cause and effect,” I say.

  “That’s a cool way to put it.”

  Sadie’s stopped crying, thankfully, and is just studying the throng around us in fascination. She hasn’t been in a crowd for a long time, not since I fled the moms group.

  “You look at that baby girl,” Brandon says, “and you know you need another.”

  “I’m definitely not saying that,” Tennyson responds. “My IUD is staying right where it is, thank you.”

  “You know who I’ve heard is trying for another?” Brandon looks around and hooks a thumb in the direction of a tall redhead I haven’t yet met. “After that labor of hers? Color me shocked.”

  “You’re such a gossip.” Tennyson laughs.

  “I don’t repeat any true secrets. I mean, you were going to find that out sooner or later anyway.” Brandon makes a convex motion with his hands to indicate a pregnant belly.

  “When it comes to your children,” I say, “you forget the pain so fast.” They both give me curious looks. “I mean the pain of labor.” I have the sense of being out of sync, that they were speaking lightly and I went heavy. I try to paper over it by asking Tennyson, “Which kids are yours?”

  A woman must have overheard because she joins our conversation, with a laugh like music. She’s short, her brown hair in a low-maintenance pageboy, wearing a plain tank top and jeans and holding a thumb-sucking toddler in her arms. “Which kids aren’t hers?” The phrase could seem barbed, yet her delivery is pure honey. She’s instantly endearing, with a round, childlike face and simple wire-framed glasses. She even smells innocent, like some sort of throwback soap. Do they still make Ivory? Tennyson has a scent that’s a little bit musky and a little bit spicy. Cardamom, maybe? It doesn’t even seem like a perfume, more like an emanation.

  Tennyson points to the massive Colonial that’s directly across the street from my house. I’ve seen bands of teenagers trooping in and out of there since we arrived but hadn’t yet met the parents. “Yeah, we’re the Brady Bunch. Vic had four from his marriage, I had three from mine, and we had one together in a bout of total irresponsibility.”

  “You’re the Brady Bunch, and she’s the Gerber baby,” the other woman says, her soft voice going even softer as she regards Sadie. Then she smiles at me. “I’m Raquel. And this is my little one, Meadow. We live in 1805. We’re the ones who need to take better care of our lawn.” It’s a good shorthand: ironically, Meadow lives in the only house with a patch of cappuccino-colored grass on the entire street.

  “Why don’t you just spray-paint it? That’s what they do at some of the condo developments,” Brandon says. He and Tennyson laugh with a clear note of superiority. I realize that Stone has slipped away, and a few minutes later, Brandon does, too.

  But their absence is quickly replaced by another woman who joins us, and another, and another, and another. Throughout the conversation, they take turns fawning over Sadie, and she’s in heaven, surrounded by all those admiring eyes. It’s like she already relishes the impact her beauty has on people. Cause and effect indeed.

  I instantly forget everyone’s names. In response to their questions, I tell them that I’m an assistant provost at a state college, on an extended maternity leave. They’re all stay-at-home moms, except for one who works part-time as some sort of consultant, and Tennyson, who owns a boutique on the AV’s main drag. I do a lot of smiling and nodding. Until a topic comes up that legitimately piques my interest.

  “Nils and Ilsa weren’t really here that long,” Raquel drops. She gestures toward my house. “I was so surprised when they decided to leave. Their son was only seven. I don’t even think they left the Bay Area, did they?” She seems genuinely confused that they’d want to raise their son anywhere else.

  “I think they just wanted to cash in,” Tennyson says quickly, as if eager to end the speculation. “They bought, what, three years ago? And they probably turned a massive profit.”

  I’m surprised that they’re so casually discussing Nils and Ilsa’s finances and, by extension, mine. I feel my face reddening.

  “But if they really wanted to cash in, why didn’t they take the highest offer?” A woman with hair shaped like a mushroom cap—Regina, I think?—turns to me like I should have the answers. They must have known Nils and Ilsa better than I did. As far as I was concerned, the former owners were just names on the paperwork, the people to whom my realtor submitted our offer along with a beseeching letter. The unknown masters of our fate and now, the purveyors of our good fortune.

  “You weren’t the highest offer?” Tennyson gives me an admiring look.

  “No,” I say, a little bit proud, and then a little bit embarrassed at my pride.

  The whole conversation feels askew somehow, but I think that’s just because we’re culturally conditioned not to talk about money. In some company, it seems more taboo than sex, more intimate.

  As I tip my head back to underscore my confidence in spite of my mild discomfort,
my eye catches on a man who is standing apart from everyone, motionless, his face and body tense. He’s sinewy, with a receding hairline and ruddy skin. He’s staring at our group, his eyes slightly narrowed. I feel my own body tense, a response as involuntary as a bouncing knee reflex from a rubber mallet.

  “That’s my husband, Bart,” Raquel says, like his behavior is nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe he’s just an intense guy. Or maybe he is entirely normal, and my subconscious is just sending up flares. She jiggles Meadow in her arms. “You’ll meet him at some point.”

  I’m kind of hoping not.

  “So how did you beat out higher offers?” Tennyson brings my attention back with her surprise, as if I’ve climbed Everest or cracked the double helix.

  I force my eyes away from Raquel’s husband, though he seems like someone I don’t want to turn my back on.

  “I wrote a letter to Nils and Ilsa,” I say, “and I included a picture of Sadie with a homemade onesie that said ‘AV or bust.’” I regret it the second it leaves my mouth. Using Sadie like that just seems so . . . cheap.

  Yet the smiling faces before me register complete comprehension. You do what you have to do to get into the AV. We’re on our own little island, jutting out into the Bay, just minutes from Oakland and San Francisco. Low crime, every school a ten, and you can smell the brine in the air. What wouldn’t you give to raise your kids here?

  Regina wrinkles her nose slightly. “Was it really just a letter and a picture? Ilsa and Nils weren’t exactly sentimental people.”

  “They were a little cold,” Raquel allows, with the air of someone who doesn’t like to speak ill of others.

  No, it wasn’t just a letter and a picture. It was also an offer $450,000 over asking. The kind of offer we could never have made without Doug’s parents; a debt we’ll be paying off for the rest of our lives in more ways than one.

  “Well, on that note, I guess we have to do it.” Tennyson releases a dramatic sigh. “It’s the inevitable conversation.”

  “Real estate.” Regina fills in the blank. “The way this place has exploded. New money and old money. The people who’ve been here forever, the newcomers, the ones who inherited like Wyatt and Yolanda, and everyone in between.”

  “It’s pretty strange,” Raquel says, “to suddenly be sitting on a gold mine. It used to just be a house.”

  “A house on the best block of the best neighborhood,” Regina says passionately. “I mean, there’s no other place like it. Some people have more money, some people have less, but there’s no tension. No conflict. No artifice. No airs. Only community. Where else can you find that?” She pauses to position her soapbox. “The AV isn’t quite city, and it’s not quite suburban. You can walk to great stores and restaurants and to the beach. You can bike along miles of trails. Yet you can always find parking on your street. It’s the best of everything. It’s trans-urban.” She says it like the term just occurred to her, but then a man passing by (her husband, presumably) outs her:

  “Going on again about the whole trans-urban thing?”

  She laughs and swats at him.

  While I’d never state anything as forcefully as Regina, she’s right: the AV is rare. Neighborhoods tend to be homogenous—everyone has great wealth, or no one does. But here you have houses of vastly different sizes on the same block, used Subaru Outbacks beside Porsches, hedge-fund managers next to normal people like Doug and me (he’s a senior market analyst, so his field is about as lucrative as mine, which is to say, not terribly).

  It’s everything I never had growing up. Good schools, a community full of warmth and kindness, and, above all else, safety. I’m going to make sure nothing happens to this little dangling bundle of mine.

  But I have to admit, the AV is not diverse in all ways. I’m looking at a sea of white faces, an alabaster undertow.

  Meadow says, “Potty, now!” and Raquel excuses herself, heading toward her brown-lawned Georgian. I notice that her husband is following, and I feel a tightness in my stomach, like we shouldn’t leave them alone together. Which is crazy, because they’re married. They’re behind closed doors all the time.

  “It’s not quite the best of everything,” Tennyson says, her face suddenly somber. We all look at her expectantly. I’m the most worried of all. A part of me has been waiting for the catch ever since we went into escrow. “You can’t park just anywhere on the street.” She indicates the open spot in front of a rambling Victorian with peeling green paint, the closest this block has to an eyesore.

  I laugh the loudest, the most relieved. “I met her!” I say. “Well, I didn’t exactly meet her. She came out to yell at Doug and me about not parking in front of her house, when we’d actually just parked on the opposite side of the street, in front of our house.”

  “You’re Gladys’s worst nightmare. A Craftsman couple with two cars and no garage. You’re a threat,” Tennyson informs me with a grin.

  Doug and I had laughed about Gladys (not that we knew her name). We called her “the old crone” and “the local color,” the eccentric everyone has to put up with, who’s probably lived here forever and who’ll undoubtedly die here. The one bad apple, the exception that proves the rule. Gladys keeps this place from being too good to be true.

  “She doesn’t even own a car,” Tennyson says, “but she wants the space available in case someone visits her.” She rolls her eyes.

  “Which is practically never,” Gina says. “It’s kind of sad, really.”

  A handsome man with gelled curls and wolf-blue eyes comes up behind Tennyson, snaking his arm around her waist and whispering in her ear.

  “It’s too early,” Tennyson says. “Wait until after we eat.” She looks at the rest of us. “He can’t wait to get in his clown suit. It’s a shame it’s not something plush. Then at least I’d get a little kink out of it.”

  Vic lets go of Tennyson, a bit reluctantly, it seems, and extends his hand to me. “Good to meet you. Kat, right? I was just talking to your husband. Great guy. We’re really glad you’re both here.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “We’re really glad we’re here, too.”

  He slips back into the crowd. I have a sense the spell has been broken, the inevitable conversation is over, and everyone is considering their next move. If they disperse, where will I go? I look around and see that Doug is headed my way, his plate piled high. He’s always the first at a buffet, with utter unselfconsciousness.

  “For you,” he says. “Do you want to give Sadie to me for a while so you can relax and eat?”

  The other women seem impressed by his solicitousness. There are introductions all around. Doug takes Sadie from me, and a new crowd forms around us, all couples. Some of them have plates, but those who don’t are happy to accept Sadie, saying that Doug should eat, too, since he’s the guest of honor.

  It’s Sadie’s first time crowd surfing, and she clearly loves it. Having all these new people to bewitch by looking into their eyes, touching their faces, and trying to put anything she can into her mouth . . . what more could she ask for? I work to quell the slight anxiety that I feel. After all, this is why we came; this is the Village.

  It is nice to actually focus on eating, to not just scarf but to relish. I do that so rarely, and this food is so worthy. The ribs are succulent, alongside an arugula fennel salad with mandarin oranges, some sort of marinated greens, and homemade corn bread. Doug quickly fills a plate for himself, and then between bites of barbecued chicken, deviled eggs, and potato salad, he fields questions about the new house.

  “Kat has all these amazing decorating ideas,” he says. “Have any of you heard of the tiny house movement?” Heads shake no. “There’s this network we call THN—for Tiny House Network—because every show is about building and decorating your tiny house. And most of them are way smaller than ours, like three hundred square feet. We’ve got nine sixty. We’re huge!” Everyone laughs.

  It’s true, I have been pretty obsessed with THN ever since our bid was accepted. It’s where
I could find a whole spate of shows to validate our decision. On one, an eco-friendly host announces that tiny houses are the next big thing, and I like that. It’s not that Doug and I couldn’t afford a larger house; it’s that we’re part of a movement with a shared ethos to pare down to your own personal essentials. It’s about figuring out what you truly value, about having less and doing more. It’s not about possessions but about living fully. Yet that trash mound in front of our house told a different story. Thankfully, it’s gone.

  “So Kat DVRed, like, every episode of every show on the THN,” Doug continues. “She got really inspired. And she was most excited about stairs. Under the stair storage! Pull-out drawers built right into the staircase! Steps turned in bookshelves! Every day, I’d come home and there would be another idea about a flight of stairs.”

  “I’d never even thought before of how pretty that expression is—a flight of stairs. It’s like a flight of fancy, you know?” I say, because I feel like I should be contributing, that Doug and I should be like Stone and Brandon, a variety show, a vaudeville act. But either my timing is off or my tone. I can see that despite my hopeful “you know?” our audience doesn’t know. I feel my face growing hot, and I stuff it full of corn bread.

  “So you know how it is in this market,” Doug continues, and they turn into bobblehead dolls. That, they know. “It’s like pandemonium, and there are so many people at the open house, and our agent is like, ‘Hurry up, write the offer, bid high, waive your contingencies!’ You barely have time to even look around; you’re just eyeballing all these people, your competition, and you’re in a frenzy. Did you guys see the hordes spilling out onto the sidewalk, frothing at the mouth? It’s like we’d all been let out of the zoo or an asylum.” He pauses for audience appreciation.

  He’s flattering them. Who doesn’t like to think they have what other people want? Sunday open house was probably like game day, watching the masses with a beer and some chips. Well, maybe not chips. They probably had a vibe about who they liked. Maybe they even saw Doug, Sadie, and me. Were they rooting for us? Did they want us on their team?