The Neighbor

2

Most mornings, our old man preferred a sandwich for breakfast, usually bacon and eggs on heavily buttered toast. In bad weather, he stood at the sink to eat, staring out at the small backyard, silent and remote, as though he must be pondering important philosophical issues — or planning a murder. On the nearby cutting board stood a mug of coffee. He held the sandwich in his right hand, a cigarette in his left, alternating between the two. When witness to this, I always hoped that in error he would take a bite of the cigarette or attempt to smoke the sandwich, but he never became confused.

The morning following the activity at the Clockenwall house, he ate instead on the back porch. When he descended the steps and went to work, I retrieved the empty coffee mug and ashtray that were balanced on the flat cap of the porch railing. While I washed them at the kitchen sink, Amalia served breakfast to our mother in the living room, where on the TV some movie star was being interviewed by a morning-show host, the two of them competing to see who had the phoniest laugh. Our mother had ordered fried potatoes, a cheese omelet, and a cup of canned fruit cocktail. She and the old man rarely ate at the same time and never wanted the same thing.

When Amalia returned to the kitchen, she said, “I think someone moved in next door during the night. My window was open, and a voice woke me, and then there were lights in all the rooms over there.”

Her bedroom was on the same side of our house as mine. I said, “I didn’t hear anybody. Saw the lights, someone moving around over there, just a shadow. But no Realtor has put up a sign yet.”

“Maybe they decided to rent the place instead of selling.”

“Moving in at three in the morning is kinda weird. Was it just one person or a family, or what?”

“I didn’t see anybody.”

“What about the voice?”

“Oh, that must have been a dream. There wasn’t anyone standing under my window. I thought someone called out from under my window, a man, but I must have been dreaming and woke up, because when I got out of bed and went to the window, no one was down there.”

I put place mats and flatware on the dinette table. While I made toast, burning the first two slices, Amalia scrambled eggs and fried slices of ham for our breakfast.

“What did he say — the man under your window?” I asked.

“He called my name. Twice. But I’m sure he was in the dream, not really there.”

“What was the dream about?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Not even a scrap of it?”

“Not even.”

Her eggs, ham, and toast were on the same plate. For me, she served those three items on three small plates, as I preferred. I had trimmed the crusts off my toast, so that I could eat them separately. Even in those days, I had little rituals with which I meant to impose a degree of order on what seemed to me to be a most disordered world.

We had hardly begun to eat when the washing machine in the adjacent laundry alcove buzzed, at the end of its spin cycle.

As I rose, intending to transfer the laundry to the dryer, Amalia said, “It can wait, Malcolm.”

Although I remained at the table, I said, “Before you go away to the university, you’ll have to teach me to iron.”

Her green eyes sparkled, I swear they did, when something moved or amused her. “Sweetie, I’d no sooner put an iron in your hands than I would a chain saw.”

“Well, he’s never going to iron. And she’d do it only if she could sit down and watch game shows at the same time.”

“She ironed when I was too little to do it. She hasn’t forgotten how.”

“But she won’t. You know she won’t. I’ll be a wrinkled mess.” Although I was only twelve, how my clothes looked was important to me, because I myself looked like such a nerd.

“Malcolm, don’t you dare try to iron when I’m away at school.”

“I don’t know. We’ll see.”

She ate in silence for a while, and then she said, “It’s not right what I’m doing, going to school so far away.”

“Huh? Don’t be nuts. That’s where you got the scholarship.”

“I could get one somewhere close. Stay at home instead of in a dormitory.”

“The university has that special writing program. That’s the whole point of going there. You’re going to be a great writer.”

“I’m not going to be a great anything if I leave you here alone with them and spend the rest of my life regretting it.”

She was the best sister ever, funny and smart and pretty, and she was going to be famous one day. I’d whined at her about teaching me how to iron; I felt selfish, because the truth was that I wanted her to go to the university, which was going to be so good for her, but at the same time I wanted her to stay.

“I’m not all thumbs, you know. If I can play the saxophone as well as I do, I can iron clothes without burning down the house.”

“Anyway,” she said, “nobody learns to be a novelist from a writing program. It’s a very personal struggle.”

“If you don’t take that scholarship, I’ll blow my brains out.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, sweetie.”

“I will. Why wouldn’t I? How am I supposed to live with having ruined your life?”

“You could never ruin my life, Malcolm. Why, you’re the most important and wonderful thing in it.”

She never lied. She didn’t manipulate people. If she’d been anyone but who she was, I could have looked her in the eye and insisted that I’d commit hara-kiri, even though I knew that I never would. Instead, I stared at the trimmed-off crusts of my toast and tore them into little pieces as I said, “You’ve got to take the scholarship. You’ve just got to. It’s the best thing ever happened to us.”

I heard her put down her fork. After a silence, she said, “I love you, too, Malcolm,” and then for another reason entirely, I couldn’t meet her eyes. Or speak.

After we cleared the table, after she washed the dishes and I dried them, she said, “Hey, let’s make oatmeal cookies.”

“With chocolate chips and walnuts?”

“For Mom and Dad, we’ll make them with chopped anchovies and lima beans, just to see their expressions when they bite into one. The rest with chocolate chips and walnuts. We’ll take a plate of them to the new neighbors and introduce ourselves.”

She rattled off a list of things she needed: baking sheets, mixing bowls, a spatula, a pair of tablespoons, a measuring cup.… Because I suspected that this might be the first of many tests to determine if I could eventually be entrusted with a steam iron, I remembered every item, collected them in a timely manner, and didn’t drop even one.

The delicious aroma of baking cookies eventually reached the living room, where our mother left the TV long enough to come to the kitchen and say, “Are you making a mess?”

“No, ma’am,” Amalia said.

“It looks like a mess to me.”

“Only while we’re baking. It’ll all be cleaned up after.”

“There’s housework that should come before this kind of thing,” our mother said.

“I’m ahead of schedule on the housework,” Amalia assured her, “now that school is out.”

Mother stood just inside the door to the hall, an apparition in her quilted pink housecoat and morning hair, looking mildly confused, as though the task upon which we were engaged must be as mystifying to her as any complex voodoo ritual. Then she said, “I like mine with almonds, not walnuts.”

“Sure,” Amalia said, “we’re going to make a batch like that.”

“Your father likes the walnuts but not the chocolate chips.”

“We’re going to make a batch like that, too,” Amalia promised.

To me, my mother said, “Have you dropped and broken anything?”

“No, ma’am. I’ve got it together.”

“I like that glass measuring cup. They don’t make them like that anymore.”

“I’ll be careful,” I said.

“Be careful with it,” she said, as if I’d said nothing, and she went back to the TV in the living room.

Amalia and I baked the cookies. We cleaned up. I didn’t break anything. And then we went next door to meet the new neighbors.