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Department of First Stories

Neighborly
by Peter Lance Graves

“George,” Alice says, peering through the horizontal blinds, “I tell you, there’s something going on over there.”

They are in the darkened living room in the front of the house. Alice Grimsley is hunched in an occasional chair by the window, staring intently out between the gap in the blinds that she fingered open with scissorlike precision. Her other hand is splayed across her breastbone. Her cane is leaning against the chair. She is looking across the street at the home of her neighbor, Joan Walters. She listens as the February wind howls down their street and stares through the blowing snow at the eerie stillness of her neighbor’s home.

“Like maybe a Netflix binge or another Ken Burns marathon on PBS?” George huffs, looking down at his drink. George Grimsley would much rather be stationed in his La-Z-Boy in the cozy family room, nursing a Rob Roy in front of the evening network news as the anchor breathlessly spins the day’s web of intrigue—Wildfires in the West! Migrants on the move!—all soothingly distant. Instead, he is sitting in the dark with elbows on knees in the least comfortable chair in the house, peering into the drink held awkwardly in both hands. “It’s fifteen degrees outside, the snow is blowing sideways, and there’s six inches on the ground already,” George says. He takes a sip. “They’re doing exactly what they should be doing, which is nothing.”

“That’s just it,” Alice says. She takes her cane and leans forward on it as she shifts her weight in the chair. She winces, mostly for George’s benefit. Alice is less than a week removed from a knee replacement. She turns to George. “It snowed yesterday afternoon. Look at her driveway—the snow has not been shoveled, and no footprints out to the mailbox.” She cocks her head toward the window. “And he’s been there for going on three days.”

“Oh, God, here we go,” George says. He knows what’s coming—a dismissive diatribe about Justin Walters, Joan’s thirty-two-year-old son, who showed up unexpectedly (according to Alice). George gulps his drink and swallows with gritted teeth—steeling himself for the pending rant.

They live on a quiet cul-de-sac in a quiet neighborhood of a quiet Kansas town. There are just three houses on the cul-de-sac: the Grimsleys on one side, Joan Walters on the other, and the Prescotts at the end of the short, circular street. Their homes were the original developer’s three models. The trapezoid-shaped lots are unusually large, nearly an acre, with shallow front lawns and vast, pie-shaped backyards. Alice liked to say the three families were “cul-de-sac close.” They raised their kids together and settled into the familiar rhythm of empty-nesting. Took turns hosting each other for Christmas Eve cocktails. Looked after each other’s houses when they were away. The Prescotts are away now, “defrosting” down in Cabo San Lucas, due back in a week. It made sense that their house was dark and dormant. But not Joan’s house across the way.

“He’s just looking for money,” Alice says. She leans in towards the window and adds emphatically, “Again!”

George has heard it all before. When Joan’s husband Jack passed away a few years back, Alice’s suppressed animosity toward Justin bloomed like a malevolent flower. Her occasional whispered comments about Joan’s disappointment with her son accelerated to a frequent litany of transgressions, catalogued by Alice and recited to George—just as he was settling in with a drink and the remote control.

When they’d BS while out in their yards raking leaves or stringing Christmas lights, Jack and George would trade brief updates about their kids. George and Alice had two adult daughters who had fled to the coasts—one in New York and one in Seattle. “Career gals,” George would say, “too busy to find a boyfriend, let alone visit their parents.” Joan and Jack Walters had just the one son, Justin the Underachiever, who, with gap years, had managed to stretch college and grad school into a second decade. “The Perpetual Student,” Jack would say, before changing the subject to the Chiefs quarterback or demon Democrats. After Jack’s funeral, the neighbors hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Justin for over a year. Then, his visits became more frequent.

“You’d think he could at least shovel out a path to the mailbox,” Alice sniffs. “Joan is always right out there after the mailman comes. You know, she gets all those catalogues. . . .”

George, his evening ritual of cocktail / TV news / dinner now hopelessly disrupted, studies his drink and tunes her out. It’s true—Jack had made excuses for his son, and kept signing the checks. Joan, for her part, put up with it for the sake of family harmony, and to prevent igniting Jack’s legendary temper. When they’d all get together, the Walters spoke of Justin’s research grants, fellowships, and advanced degrees like he was on a mythic quest to unlock the mysteries of life. Alice and Liz Prescott, on their phone chats, judged the Walters as enablers of their son’s slow ride on the gravy train. Alice and George were proud of their big-city daughters and the Prescotts’ two sons were in finance. As Herb Prescott liked to say, “They’re knocking it down. Plus, they know better than to ask us for money.” To which Liz Prescott would add, “Not that they’d need to.”

“. . . and now the spring clothes are coming out,” an agitated Alice goes on, “so I don’t understand why Joan doesn’t tell him to get his skinny ass out there and shovel the drive so she can get her catalogs!”

Usually when it snowed, after plowing his own driveway, George would pull the snowblower across the cul-de-sac and clear off Joan’s driveway for her. Of course, Alice ordered him to do no such thing when it started to snow the day before. “Don’t you dare plow her driveway,” Alice said, extending her leg at the kitchen table, trying out the new knee. “Let Professor Justin break a sweat for once.” George dutifully dragged the Toro into his own garage when he was done and pushed the button to lower his garage door—looking out across the street at the smooth sea of white that blanketed Joan’s driveway. He saw Justin whip into that drive just days before and pull his ten-year-old Camry into Joan’s garage. Her garage door promptly came down, and since then . . . not a peep. A bit odd, George had to admit.

In their darkened front room, Alice has gone quiet—squinting as she peeks between the blinds again. George watches her purse her lips and set her jaw. He knows what is coming. Seeking to head it off at the pass, he drains the last of his drink and stands up. “Don’t make another drink,” Alice says sharply, before he can even turn to the kitchen. “I am telling you, something is wrong.”

Alice called Joan earlier that afternoon, after “giving her ample Justin time . . . not that she wants it!” There was no answer, and eventually Joan’s cheerful voicemail greeting chimed in. “Probably in the shower,” George said, standing behind Alice in the kitchen, blowing into his coffee cup.

“She showers in the morning.”

“Probably having lunch and doesn’t want to be bothered.”

“She always picks up.”

And so it went, on and on, as the afternoon of doubt darkened into the evening of suspicion. Then, under the cover of night, they camped out in the front room—Alice at the window, watching, George at her elbow.

“Get me my phone,” Alice says. “I’m going to call her again.”

George goes to the kitchen and sets his glass on the counter with a thwack. The pleasant glow from the Rob Roy is quickly evaporating. “I’m not going over there,” he announces, returning with her phone. “I’m not tromping through the snow and ringing their doorbell only to find them in the middle of a pot roast.” In over thirty years of marriage, George had never quite managed to put his foot down and keep it there. He watches as Alice, ignoring him, thumb-scrolls for Joan’s number.

“I’m doing what any good friend would do,” Alice says. She puts the phone to her ear. “And I’m just being . . . neighborly.” Three rings. She turns to the window, checking for any sign of a change across the street. A light going on in one of Joan’s front rooms. Anything. Five rings.

Answer the damn phone, George says to himself. Then to Alice, “I’m not going over there.”

*   *   *

From the time he was a child, familiar songs would dart into Justin Walters’s mind and replay like a jukebox that was stuck and needed to be kicked. As he got older, dopey musical nursery rhymes like “The Itsy Bitsy Spidergave way to popular songs that came out of nowhere to haunt him for days on end. George Harrison jumped in there on a pogo stick and declared “Got My Mind Set on You.” When Justin was a teenager, it was Linkin Park’s “Numb” that slithered into his subconscious and set up shop, the melody playing in a maddening continuous loop. He hated most of the songs but was powerless against them.

Justin Walters stands at the window in the front sitting room of his mother’s house and pulls a long drag on a cigaret. The tip of the cigaret glows red in the dark room; he can hear his mother’s phone buzzing in the kitchen. He exhales and watches the plume of smoke curl toward the window. He knows who it is. Alice Grimsley—that nosy neighbor from across the street—calling again.

He stands motionless and looks around the dark sitting room. It strikes him as funny because he had never known anyone to actually sit in his mother’s sitting room. Not on the ornate divan that sat in the corner like a mysterious museum piece. Not on the imposing antique chairs that warned “look, don’t touch.”

He twitches with each persistent ring tone of the phone. His mother is in the family room where the cable news marathon rages on. She certainly isn’t going to answer it. Justin drifts into the kitchen and stabs his cigaret into the damp sink. He sees Alice” on his mother’s phone screen just as it is surrendering to voicemail.

Justin arrived just three days before, but it feels like three weeks. It started off amicably enough. The first night, he stationed himself with her in the family room and sat through hours of cartoonish partisan news and cop dramas on TV. He even feigned interest about the neighborhood doings. Alice Grimsley, he learned, had just come back from the hospital with a new knee. The Prescotts were off in Mexico; his mother was picking up their mail and had been tasked by Liz Prescott with feeding their reclusive cat. Justin couldn’t care less about the Grimsleys or the phony Prescotts. During his summer visits, he’d see the neighbors puttering around in their front yards with garden tools that might as well have been nunchucks, looking over at him with furtive “Are you still here?” stares. He knew they considered his visits an intrusion on their precious neighborhood snow globe.

Read the exciting conclusion in this month’s issue on sale now!

Copyright © 2024 Neighborly by Peter Lance Graves

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