Good Neighbors Page 2

  Pretty soon, everybody was laughing from that first beer or wine, and clapping, and retelling some story from work, or what cute and mischievous thing their kids had done in their kindergarten class that had left the teacher flabbergasted. The Gradys, Mullers, Pulleyns, and Gluskins were planning a trip to Montauk. Margie and Sally Walsh were explaining how Subarus aren’t really lesbian cars; they’re just practical. The Ponti men compared biceps size. They were in ripping spirits, having come straight from the town baseball league’s end-of-year keg party.

  Food and second rounds began. The heat stayed thick. At last, Gertie summoned her courage. She found Rhea Schroeder by her famous German potato salad. The secret ingredient came by way of her mother-in-law from Munich: Miracle Whip.

  “Hi,” Gertie said. “I saw you before but I don’t think you saw me. So, hi again!”

  Rhea frowned. She’d been doing that a lot lately. Probably, she was stressed out. Between the four kids and the full-time job, who wouldn’t be?

  “Has it really been since the spring? I miss our talks.” Gertie willed her eyes to meet Rhea’s. “Want to come over next week? Arlo’ll make his pesto chicken. I know how you like that.”

  Rhea seemed to consider, but then: “I’m so busy at work. They can’t spare me. I’m practically holding up the entire English Department. Plus, I’ve been planning things like this. Barbeques. I really don’t have a second.”

  Gertie stepped closer, which wasn’t her nature—she liked a wide swath of personal space. But for the sake of this new life she and Arlo were trying so hard to make work, for the sake of her friendship with this smart, funny woman, she pushed past her comfort zone. Her voice quivered. “Did I do something? I know you plan these things. I’m sure it was an accident, that you didn’t invite us?”

  Rhea affected surprise. “Accident? No accident at all!” Then she walked, white linen swishing over heels just high enough to keep the grass from staining.

  With rod-straight posture and a cement smile, Gertie watched her disappear into the crowd. The party continued. And it was stupid. Pregnancy hormones. But she had to trace her index fingers along her under-eyes to keep the mascara from running.

  That’s when it happened.

  The music cut to static. The earth rocked. Linda’s red-checked picnic table with all those burgers started to shake. Gertie felt the vibrations from her feet to her teeth.

  Early fireworks?… Earthquake?… Shooter?

  There wasn’t time to find out. Gertie did a quick take of the park; met Arlo’s eyes. They fast-walked to the kids from opposite directions. Like magnets, the four snapped together.

  “Street?” Gertie asked.

  “Home!” Arlo shouted.

  They hoofed it, running along the thick clovers and dandelions, past the trampoline and hem of pudding stone that bordered the park. With her pregnancy and bad feet, Gertie brought up the rear.

  She didn’t see the sinkhole as it opened. Only watched later, from the footage people captured with their phones. What she noticed most was how hungry it seemed. The picnic table and all those burgers fell inside. The barbeque followed. Ralph the German shepherd got away from Fred and Bethany, banking the sinkhole’s lips as they swelled.

  A surprised yelp, and Ralph was gone.

  By the time Gertie looked back, the hole had reached an uneasy peace with Maple Street. It had stopped growing, leaving just the people. Some had run, some had stayed frozen. Some had even hastened toward that widening gyre, their instincts all messed up.

  And then there was Rhea Schroeder. In the stillness, she didn’t turn to her family, whom she’d deftly rescued and corralled to the far side of the sinkhole. She didn’t pet their hair or check in with her spouse like so many others did. She didn’t cry or gawk or take out her phone. No.

  She looked straight at Gertie, and bared her teeth.

  Between them, a gritty smoke rose up. It carried with it the chemical scent of something unearthed.

  SLIP ’N SLIDE

  July 5–9

  Map of Maple Street as of July 5, 2027

  *116 Wilde Family

  *118 Schroeder Family

  INDEX OF MAPLE STREET’S PERMANENT RESIDENTS AS OF JULY 5, 2027

  100 The Gradys—Lenora (47), Mike (45), Kipp (11), Larry (10)

  102 VACANT

  104 The Singhs-Kaurs—Sai (47), Nikita (36), Pranav (16), Michelle (14), Sam (13), Sarah (9), John (7)

  106 The Pulleyns—Brenda (38), Dan (37), Wallace (8), Roger (6)

  108 VACANT

  110 The Hestias—Rich (51), Cat (48), Helen (17), Lainee (14)

  112 VACANT

  114 The Walshes—Sally (49), Margie (46), Charlie (13)

  116 The Wildes—Arlo (39), Gertie (31), Julia (12), Larry (8)

  118 The Schroeders—Fritz (62), Rhea (53), FJ (19), Shelly (13), Ella (9)

  120 The Benchleys—Robert (78), Kate (74), Peter (39)

  122 The Cheons—Christina (44), Michael (42), Madison (10)

  124 The Harrisons—Timothy (46), Jane (45), Adam (16), Dave (14)

  126 The Pontis—Steven (52), Jill (48), Marco (20), Richard (16)

  128 The Ottomanellis—Dominick (44), Linda (44), Mark (12), Michael (12)

  130 The Atlases—Bethany (37), Fred (30)

  132 The Simpsons—Daniel (33), Ellis (33), Kaylee (2), Michelle (2), Lauren (2)

  134 The Caliers—Louis (49), Eva (42), Hugo (24), Anais (22)

  TOTAL: 60 PEOPLE

  From Newsday, July 5, 2027, page 1

  MAPLE STREET SINKHOLE

  LONG ISLAND’S DEEPEST spontaneous sinkhole appeared yesterday, this time in Garden City’s Sterling Park during holiday festivities. A German shepherd plummeted inside the 180-foot-deep fissure and has not yet been recovered. No other injuries were reported.

  This is the third sinkhole event on Long Island in as many years. Experts warn that more are expected. According to Hofstra University geology professor Tom Brymer, “The causes for sinkholes include the continued use of old water mains, excessive depletion of the lowest water table, and increasing periods of flooding and extreme heat.” (See diagram, page 31.)

  In conjunction with the New York Department of Agriculture (NYDOA), the New York Environmental Protection Agency (NYEPA) announced yesterday that Long Island’s aquifers have not been affected. Residents may continue to drink tap water.

  The NYDOA has closed Sterling Park and its adjoining streets to nonresidential traffic during an excavation and fill, which will begin July 7 and is slated to run through July 18. The nearby Garden City Pool will also be closed. For more on the sinkhole, see pages 2–11.

  From “The Lost Children of Maple Street,” by Mark Realmuto, The New Yorker, October 19, 2037

  It’s difficult to imagine that Gertie Wilde and Rhea Schroeder were ever friends. It’s even more ludicrous to think that the friendship would turn so bitter as to result in homicide.

  Connolly and Schiff posited in their seminal work on mob mentality, The Human Tide, that Rhea took pity on the Wilde family. She wanted to help them fit in. But a closer look belies that theory. When the Cheon, Simpson, and Atlas families moved to Maple Street during the five years prior, Rhea did not attempt the same kinds of friendships. Though she welcomed the families with baskets of chocolate and perfume, by their own accounts, she was cold. “I think she was intimidated,” Christina Cheon admitted. “I’m a doctor. She didn’t like the competition for most accomplished woman on the block.” Ellis Simpson added, “Everybody from around here had family to help them out. That’s why you moved to the suburbs. Free babysitting. I mean, it definitely wasn’t for the culture. But the Wildes were alone. I think that’s why Rhea plugged into Gertie. Bullies seek the vulnerable. You know what else bullies do? They trick people who don’t know any better into believing they’re important.”

  It’s entirely possible, then, that Rhea had it out for Gertie from the start.

  118 Maple Street

  Friday, July 9


  “It’s a hairbrush night,” Rhea Schroeder called up the stairs to her daughter Shelly. “Don’t forget to use extra conditioner. I hate that look on your face when I hit a knot.”

  She waited at the landing. Heard rustling up there. She had four kids. Three still lived at home. She had a husband, too, only she rarely saw him. It’s unnatural, being the sole grown-up in a house for twenty-plus years. You talk to yourself. You spin.

  “You hear me?”

  “Yup!” Shelly bellowed back down. “I HEAR you!”

  Rhea sat back down at her dining room table. She tried to focus her attention on the Remedial English Composition papers she was supposed to grade. The one on top argued that the release of volcanic ash was the cheapest and smartest solution to global warming. Plus, you’d get all those gorgeous sunsets! Because she taught college, a lot of Maple Street thought she had a glamorous job. These people were wrong. She did not correct them, but they were absolutely, 100 percent wrong.

  Rhea pushed the papers away. Sipped from the first glass of Malbec she’d poured for the night, got up, and scanned the mess out her window.

  She couldn’t see the sinkhole. It was in the middle of the park, less than a half mile away. But she could see the traffic cones surrounding it, and the trucks full of fill sand, ready to dump. Though work crews had laid down plywood to cover the six-foot-square gape, a viscous slurry had surfaced, caking its edges. The slurry was a fossil fuel called bitumen, found in deep pockets all over Long Island. It threaded outward in slender seams and was mostly contained within the park, but in places had reached under the sidewalks, bubbling up on neighbors’ lawns. There was a scientific explanation, something about polarity and metal content. Global warming and cooked earth. She couldn’t remember exactly, but the factors that made the sinkhole had also galvanized Long Island’s bitumen to coalesce in this one spot.

  All that to say, Sterling Park looked like an oozing wound.

  They never did find the German shepherd. Their theory was that a strong current in the freshwater aquifer down there had carried him away. They’d likened it to falling through ice in a frozen pond, and trying to swim your way back to the opening.

  He could be anywhere. Even below her feet. Funny to think.

  This evening, the crescent was especially quiet. Several families had left town for vacations or to get away from the candy apple fumes. Those who remained, if they were home at all, stayed inside.

  Just then, pretty Gertie Wilde emerged from 116’s garage. She carried a haphazardly coiled garden hose, its extra slack spilling down like herniated intestines. Gertie’s big hair was coiffed, her metallic silver eye shadow so glistening that Rhea could see it from a hundred feet away. She stopped when she got to the front yard, hose in hand.

  Rhea’s pulse jogged.

  Gertie peered inside Rhea’s house, right where Rhea was standing. She seemed frightened and small out there, like a kid holding a broken toy, and suddenly, Rhea understood—Gertie had no outdoor spigot to which to attach her hose. She needed to borrow. But because of the way Rhea had acted at the Fourth of July barbeque, she was afraid to ask.

  A thrill rose in Rhea’s chest.

  Margie Walsh screwed it up. She came out from the house on the other side of Gertie’s and walked fast to meet her. Waves and smiles. Rhea didn’t hear the small talk, but she saw their laughter. Polite at first, and then relaxed. They hooked the hose, then unrolled a plastic yellow bundle, running it the length of the Walsh and Wilde lawns. Water gushed and sprayed. A Slip ’N Slide. With the temperature lingering at 108 degrees, its water emerged like an oasis in a desert.

  Pretty soon, Margie’s and Gertie’s kids came out. Fearless Julia Wilde gave herself ten feet of running buildup, then threw herself against the plastic and slid all the way down until she landed on grass. Charlie Walsh followed. Each took a few turns before they could convince rigid Larry. At last, he did it, too. But Larry, uncoordinated and holding Robot Boy, didn’t build enough momentum. Only slid halfway.

  The lawn got torn up. The kids got covered in mud and then hosed themselves off and started over. Tar from the sinkhole stuck to their clothes and skin like Dalmatian motley.

  Now that the seal was broken, all of Maple Street opened up and shook loose. The rest of the Rat Pack and some of their parents streamed out. Laughter turned to screams of delight as even the grown-ups joined in.

  Rhea watched through her window. The laughter and screams were loud enough that muffled versions of them permeated the glass.

  Gertie didn’t know any better. With her central air-conditioning broken, she’d probably gotten used to that slightly sweet chemical scent. The rest of them were stir-crazy. Figured, if a pregnant woman was willing to take the risk, the rest of them were pansies not to go out, too.

  But anybody who watches decent science fiction knows that the EPA isn’t perfect. The stuff her neighbors were rolling around in tonight might glue their lungs with emphysema twenty years from now. Even her husband, Fritz, who never had an opinion about anything domestic, had announced that if the hole didn’t get filled like it was supposed to, they ought to pack the family into a short-term rental. He’d crinkled his nose that very first night it happened, grudging fear in his eyes, and said, “When it smells like this in the lab, we turn on the ventilation hoods and leave the room.”

  Rhea ought to warn these people. She was obliged, for their safety. But if she did that, they’d think she was a killjoy. They’d think it had to do with Gertie.

  She played the conversation out in her head. She’d go out to 116, trespassing on Gertie’s property, and urge them to go home. To take hot showers with strong soap. They’d put down their beers, nod in earnest agreement, wait for her to go away, and then start having fun again. Probably, they wouldn’t say anything mean about her once she was gone. Not openly. But she knew the people of Maple Street. They’d chuckle.

  She backed away from her window.

  Returned to her papers. Sipped a little more Malbec as she reviewed the next assignment in the pile, which was written in 7-point, Old English font. It was about how the last stolen election had proven that democracy didn’t work. We needed to move into Fascism, only without the Nazis, the student argued. She took out her red pen. Wrote, What???? Nazis = Fascism; they’re like chocolate and peanut butter!

  Between the papers, the people outside, her husband at work, and even her children upstairs, Rhea felt very alone right then. Misunderstood and too smart for this world. All the while, Slip ’N Slide laughter surrounded the house. It pushed against the stone and wood and glass. She wished she could let it in.

  * * *

  Like so many people who find themselves on the far side of middle age, Rhea Schroeder had not expected her life to turn out this way. She’d grown up only a few miles away in Suffolk County, the daughter of a court officer. Her mom died young, of breast cancer, and her dad had been the strong, silent type. He’d loved her enough for two parents. They’d shared an obsession with science fiction, and what she remembered most about him was the hours they’d spent on the couch together, watching everything from The Day of the Triffids to the poor man’s 2001—The Black Hole.

  As a kid, friends hadn’t come easily for Rhea, but school had. She’d been the first in her family to graduate college—SUNY Old Westbury. Her first job out had been retail at the mall, like everyone else. Through connections, her dad got her into the officer’s academy. Too many personalities. Too much phys ed. She didn’t want to be a cop. She dropped out, floundered for a while, then stopped her dad one night before he headed down to tinker in his workroom. Told him about this PhD program in Seattle. People expressed themselves through imperceptible signs, she’d explained. She wanted to translate them. She wanted to solve the puzzle of what made people tick. Her dad was understanding. Hugged her and said he’d been selfish, suggesting detective work on Long Island because it was close. He hadn’t wanted to lose her.

  She’d been sad to leave him on his lonesome. But
excited, too. Her life became her own. Five years later, the University of Washington awarded her a PhD in literature, with a focus in semiotics. Then they hired her, tenure track. The work was great. The students were great. The teachers were great. It was the happiest she’d ever been.

  But then she got a phone call. Her dad died suddenly, of a disease she’d never imagined. Would never have suspected. In the shock of it, her work downslid. Her sadness felt impossibly heavy, a physical accumulation that she couldn’t expunge. A knotty weight inside her that she came to think of as the murk.

  Before her dad died, she’d never felt the need for other people. Never understood the phoniness of passing notes with fellow third-grade girls, or the high school version of it: trading clothes. Who were they kidding with all that desperate posturing? Those friendships weren’t real. In adulthood, the women her own age had seemed so alien, with their bad jobs and insecurity. She’d stayed away from them, afraid low self-esteem was contagious.

  But after her dad, she’d had nobody to call on Sundays and remote-watch Solaris with. Nobody to visit over holidays, or shoot clay pigeons with at the Calverton Shooting Range. They’d had something easy and perfect between them. A stillness, into which no words had ever been necessary.

  Seeking relief from her empty apartment, the blank page that was meant to be a book based on her dissertation, she started taking her students out for coffees and beers after class. Their cheerful passion distracted her. Made time pass a little easier.

  By the next semester, she was starting to feel like herself again. Waking up wasn’t as scary, because the memory of his passage didn’t suddenly grab her like undertow at an ocean. She was starting to actually become friends with her students and the faculty, too. The murk lifted.