The Neighbors

Lacey knelt between her rows of tulips, pulling out any growth that might be encroaching on her precious bulbs. Lacey’s fingertips were still nimble despite the oversized gloves and the seventy-five years she had aged. She was keen to pick out any sprout of crabgrass or dandelion that kept cropping up on this side of the yard. The west side of her yard ran parallel to the fence that thankfully held in the mess that was the neighbor’s lawn. That lawn was filled with blotches of color and plants from places she could hardly pronounce. There were tinkling fountains and awful garden gnomes that littered the yard like a garage sale.

“Pathetic,” murmured Lacey. She pulled a stubborn weed up by the roots, scattering dirt on her perfectly white gardening pants.

Lacey brushed the dirt from her lap and surveyed the lawn she had so meticulously weeded. Hedges lined the back wall of the house to exactly three feet tall. Not a twig stood out of line. A bright green lawn sprawled the largest portion of the yard. It had held riveting games of croquet and summer barbecues that were the talk of Dewberry. The sound of children’s laughter and hotdogs sizzling on the grill thundered in Lacey’s ears. She could almost see the shadow of friends and their families sitting down for a picnic. Lacey always loved hosting family for big events. Generations of people shuffled through this yard.

Those days are long gone.

A thought.

A pesky reminder to Lacey of how much time has passed. Lacey cleared her throat, ignoring the tears that had gathered in her eyes. She looked over at the mountain of weeds she had pulled from her yard and considered her job finished for the day. Lacey used the neighbor’s fence to raise herself from her knees; it was getting harder to do that these days.

Lacey picked up the pile of weeds and quickly, as if on impulse, threw the pile over the fence into the neighbor’s lawn.

That’s what she gets for having such a horrendous garden, thought Lacey.

“Oh!” a voice replied.

Lacey looked at the fence in horror.

“Lacey?” a ladder clanked against the wood and a woman, a few years older than Lacey, popped her head from her side of the fence. “Lacey, thank you so much for these. They’ll go good in my compost bin. I don’t get too many weeds in my garden, so I tend to rely on you to have them.”

           Words can be such a slap in the face.

“Oh please, Moonshine. You just grow a bunch of glorified weeds in that gravel patch you call a garden,” Lacey snapped.

           Moonshine looked down at her neighbor with a look that would sap the life out of a desert cactus. “Lacey,” she replied scathingly, “that parrot of yours, does it always have to screech at the crack of dawn every day, or was today the day that he finally died from your morning breath?”

           Lacey drew herself up to her full height—a towering five foot three—and said, “he wouldn’t wake you up if you got up at a reasonable hour.”

           “Five o’clock in the morning?”

           “Before noon, you old hag!” Lacey snapped. She inadvertently gasped at her own bravado.

           Moonshine snickered in reply. Dirt fell off her in a fine mist that settled onto Lacey’s cloths. She held up both her fingertips in mock fancy. “Did the proper lady lose her temper so quickly? Surely, she knows how to treat another woman with the demure attitude that is becoming of her wasp-y social stature.”

           Lacey opened her mouth to reply but was silenced by the distant rumble of thunder. “Well,” she huffed, “I must be going. I, unlike present company, prefer not to wallow in the mud like some common pig.”

           Moonshine began to oink loudly as Lacey walked away.

           “The pigs don’t want a stuffy old hen anyway!”

           Lacey’s patio door shut behind her with a snap of indignance. Moonshine was left laughing to herself. She slowly climbed down from the top of the ladder and picked up the weeds that had been scattered on her sunflower patch. Nearby stood a large wooden box her son had called “the coffin” when he was a young boy. Moonshine lifted the lid and was hit with the pleasant earthy smell of decomposing bits of plant and earth. The surface rippled every so often as an earthworm turned over the dirt in its scavenge for food. Moonshine tipped the weeds into the box before closing and latching the lid tightly against the rain.

           She made her way through the fairy tale forest that took up all walkable space in her yard. Moonshine used a branch of a willow tree as a walking cane, testing out unleveled bits of dirt and rock. The cane had been sanded and polished to perfection, the red and brown knots in the wood gleaming. Moonshine’s fingers curled over waxy and fuzzy leaves as they reached out to her like fans in a crowd. Her fingers knew how to bend a young branch without breaking it, how to inspect a berry on a tree without squashing it, and how to scrape off mites without taking bits of plant with them. Moonshine’s eyes, a little duller than what they used to be, still made out the sloping hearts and ovals of the plants that were as familiar to her as the back of her hand. At one point, she could remember the names of all her green babies. But now…sometimes her mind took a while to think the names up, and sometimes her mind would get lost along the way.

           Moonshine made it into her yellow French doors in the knick of time. Rain began to fall.

           The rain time routine began for Moonshine. The trusty tea kettle she had gotten in the divorce was set on the stove. As the water heated, lavender and hibiscus trickled into her steeping pot.

           A cat came slinking into her kitchen and chuffed to get Moonshine’s attention. She picked up the old cat and the two stood staring out the bay window at the rain and garden. The place had held so many nights of firefly catching and days of expeditions to hunt gnomes and find dragon eggs. She could hear her late Charlie’s voice:

           “Momma! I caught a fairy!”

           The cat leapt from Moonshine’s arms and onto the counter, breaking the woman from her reverie.

           “Are you hungry?” Moonshine asked the old cat. “I am too. How about we make some curry chicken?”

           Swiftly, like an ice skater in the rink, Moonshine set to work cooking her famous curry chicken, keeping a little on the side for her cat. This recipe was one that her father had brought with him on his move from New Orleans to Dewberry. Not so long ago, the smell of Moonshine’s cooking would call folks from all around to her house. In the span of an hour, the house would be crawling with people waiting hungrily for a fixed plate. Moonshine never knew how they all found out she was cooking. But the company was always welcome. Moonshine lost herself in her cooking. Seasonings and eyeballing a hand-me-down recipe took focus.

           It also took Moonshine quite a while to hear the noise at her front door.

           Lacey had been sitting on her porch watching the rain and looking out on her neighbor’s yards with trained scrutiny. Her prized parrot, grey feathered and aging, had perched on her shoulder, snapping critically at the Johnson’s drooping begonias. Lacey had just decided she would have herself an afternoon nap when that smell came wafting from Moonshine Saunders house. That woman had no sense in the kitchen, and Lacey decided it was time to tell her so. Lacey grabbed a basket of homemade rolls and leftover pot pie. She left her house pulling on her raincoat, Lemmy the parrot whistling and calling out “Damn Saunders'” at her heels.

Lacey pounded on the door with the ferocity of a war general. She was sucking her teeth and tapping her heels impatiently on the pavement. Moonshine opened the door. Her expression went from mild curiosity to aggrieved annoyance.

“Yes, Mrs. Lacey Warwick, your highness and all things ladylike. What has the pig-hag done to have you darken her doorstep?”

“Oh please. I only came over because I thought you had started cremating yourself and I wanted to pay my respects.”

Moonshine smirked. “You’re such a peach. It’s a good thing you’re so sour or the rain would’ve swept you away.”

“Move aside and let me fix you a real lunch,” Lacey said, welcoming herself onto the foyer.

“Gosh you’re such a pest,” Moonshine said as she shuffled back to the kitchen. She returned to mixing the chicken in gravy, ignoring Lacey who was pulling out dishes and containers. Moonshine’s cat munched on her chicken in the corner of the kitchen, paying the visitor no mind.

“I don’t understand the appeal of that food,” Lacey sniffed.

“Folks who think mayo is a seasoning wouldn’t, honey. It’s okay. You just haven’t had proper chicken just yet. But don’t worry, we’ll remedy that easy,” Moonshine quipped.

Lacey pulled on her apron and nudged Moonshine out the way to set the pot pie in the oven to heat.

The two worked in tense silence. Moonshine fussed with her chicken while Lacey busied herself with making lemonade.

“Look at that rain,” Lacey murmured, more to herself than Moonshine.

Moonshine hummed in acknowledgement. “It’s like the summer of fifty-two. Do you remember that year the Main Street flooded all the way from Ripple Avenue to Baker Circle?”

Lacey began to nod. “Wait—that wasn’t fifty-two it was sixty-two. Your mind must be going.”

“No, it was nineteen fifty-two and I remember perfect. Mr. Harry Truman was in office and Mayor Campbell called him to get the national guard to help us. President Truman did it as a personal favor for Mayor Campbell.”

“You must be out of your mind,” Lacey said, “Mayor Campbell never knew Harry Truman. That was Lawrence Truman the cow farmer from the town over.”

“No! Mr. Truman supported the mayor’s campaign for reelection.”

“Larry Truman! Not Harry Truman.”

“Oh, quiet you old screech owl, you’ll startle my cat.”

Lacey picked out stray lemon seeds from the juice. “It was quite a storm regardless. I remember thanking my lucky stars I let Arnold talk me into that dry cellar. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have had food for a month.”

“Arnold was always so paranoid about food shortages.”

“He just thought the cellar was more economical,” Lacey defended.

Moonshine cackled. “Economical like the time he came home with that off-the-floor Chrysler Coup? I swear I never saw you turn red so fast.”

Lacey shook her head at her late husband. “Arnie liked a deal…even if he had to buy into it and outlive Rome to get it.”

Moonshine smiled. She could see the scene unfolding: Arnold hands open in apology, keys rattling in his pocket, excited smile still on his face. Lacey looking a disaster trying to decide whether she needed to make a fuss or act “lady-like” to maintain appearances.

She had undoubtedly made a fuss.

The timer for the pot pie and the rolls went off just as Moonshine was declaring her chicken finished. “Now you can pour your pan of curdled milk in the sink so you can have some real food,” she directed Lacey, pulling out dinner plates.

Lacey scowled as she brought her lemonade to the table. “You’ll forget that soupy nonsense once you try this pot pie. It cures that sadness in your soul from eating such gristly food.”

The women sat across from each other at a circular table in the next room. It had knicks and repairs from generations of abuse that stood stark against the polished wood. The table glowed under the soft light of dimming bulbs.

“No wonder your eyes are going, Moonshine. Your lights need changing.”

“You need changing,” snapped Moonshine, pushing a plate of curry chicken and rice toward Lacey.

Lacey pushed a serving of pot pie toward Moonshine. She looked down to her plate and right next to it, carved in the surface of the table stood out:

‘CHARLEE is GR8’

Lacey smiled. “You had quite the wild boy on your hands.”

Moonshine grinned at her plate. “That little stinker made sure you knew he was around.”

“He was a good boy,” Lacey noted. She took a quick bite of curry.

Damn, she thought, it’s good.

Moonshine sipped the lemonade thoughtfully. “You remember that boy that kept coming around for him? Tulio was it?”

“Mario,” Lacey corrected, “the grocers son. That boy was smitten with your Charlie. All the girls were so upset when they realized they were competing for the same boy.”

Moonshine grinned to herself. “They were a very fine couple.”

The two ate their meals in silence, quickly finishing off the other’s food first to “get it out of the way,” as Lacey put it. Conversation drifted from one subject to the next. The history of Dewberry slipped through their lips and came to life around them. The yearly holiday plays, the town’s celebration when the first shopping mall opened, the summers spent dozing in the sun or in search of a quiet creek to jump into. But of course, for every fact one of the women stated, the other found a way to contradict or correct her. The history of Dewberry, Mississippi was subjected to the warring of old women.

“Old fool,” Moonshine said.

Lacey began stacking her plates and napkins. “Well. I think it’s time I leave. I don’t want to keep you from your work.”

“My work?” Moonshine asked curiously.

“But of course, darling. I mean, isn’t today cleaning day? Why else would your house be in such a sorry state?” Lacey said with a smirk.

Moonshine pursed her lips. “Old fool!” she repeated trying to get up without popping her hip out of place.

“Don’t get up on my account. Just let the dust settle on you and I’ll see my way out.” Lacey collected her dishware and pulled on her raincoat.

Moonshine finally got to her feet and followed Lacey out of her house. “Don’t ever darken my doorstep again, miserable bag of bones.”

“This was hardly a good way to spend my day if you ask me,” Lacey yelled over her shoulder.

The sun began to peek through the clouds.

It had been two weeks since Moonshine saw Lacey. But Moonshine was thankful for the quiet. She was sitting in her son’s room. His old stuffed rabbit lay in her hands as she looked at the pictures on the walls. There were so many happy faces. Her favorite was an old picture of Moonshine and a very young Charlie kneeling in the garden. There was also a picture of two men hugging in front of a tree. The photo was embossed with the word ‘Prom’ in a fancy cursive.

Moonshine was silently crying. Charlie had a good life, even if it was so short. The whirlwind of life that came to an end so abruptly had left Moonshine and her ex-husband reeling, blaming each other, and ultimately divorcing. Grief was a painful thing. But amidst all the funeral planning, Lacey Warwick came tumbling through the grief as a wrecking ball with a purpose. She argued with the funeral home when they gave an exorbitant price on cremation and called in catering from the fanciest restaurant in town, suggesting that Moonshine’s homemade “affair” wouldn’t feed all the folks that came to see Charlie.

Anniversaries become more depressing as time moves on. Moonshine sniffed as she lit a candle for Charlie. She kept the stuffed bunny in her hand as she sauntered out of the room, eyes heavy with sadness. The calendar at the end of the hall had two dates marked, today’s date for Charlie, and next Tuesday for Arnold Warwick. He had died of old age. But even when it’s expected, death is never easy to deal with. Moonshine looked down at the bunny in her hands, the velvet on its face and paws worn down to the terrycloth. Now that she thought about it, Moonshine hadn’t seen Lacey in her garden or out to get her mail.

The quiet was suddenly deafening.

Moonshine shuffled downstairs and pulled out an old jar. She went outside and filled it with compost from her garden and slipped on her loafers. She made her away across the front lawn to the Warwick house, foreboding building in her chest. She banged on the door with the meat of her fist.

No answer.

She rang the doorbell once, twice, three times.

“Lacey Warwick, get your sorry butt out here!” Moonshine hollered. She put up her fist to start banging on the door again but stopped herself when she heard locks clicking.

The door opened to Lacey, or what was left of her. She was wearing a house robe that was food stained and tattered. The front pocket had a hole that was letting out tumbles of tissues onto the marble floor.

“What is it, Saunders?” she said in a husky voice.

Moonshine quickly hid her surprise. “Lacey Warwick your tulips are looking an absolute mess. I bet that fertilizer you buy is killing them. I thought you might benefit from having some good compost for your garden.”

Lacey looked from the jar in Moonshine’s hands to the tulips drooping in her front lawn.

“They are a mess, aren’t they?” Lacey said, voice wavering.

Moonshine tutted. “Well, let me in already you old hag.”

Lacey gave Moonshine a watery smile and held the door open for her. “You’re such a shrill harpy.”

“And you’re a boney old shrew.”