Читать книгу Blind Shady Bend - Adina Sara - Страница 16

ON THE WAY HOME from Ray’s place I missed the turn-off and headed clear to Lake Wildwood before I figured it out. Then I had a hell of a time finding my way back to Exit 28. It shook me up a bit. I had to pull over and then decided it best to stay away from the super highway. Instead I worked my way along the old route 60, dead-end town after dead-end town, all victims of the interstate—folks walking slowly through the streets as though they had no place in particular to go.

And then there I was back home, turning on to Meadowbrook Lane, and sure enough, the first thing I saw was the floozy across the street, up on her ladder again, trying out a peacock blue this time. She’s been sampling colors for years, it’s what she does. She bought the house the year before Pa died and we hoped it was a sign the neighborhood was going to spruce up. She turned out to be just another crazy who managed to scrape together enough to afford a two-bed one-bath blip in this tired neighborhood. She had hoisted her ladder in front of the house the week she moved in, and ever since she’s been slathering on stripes of blues, grays, golds, even tried a sickening pinkish peach once, then back to blues again (which was a relief) forcing the neighborhood, and me in particular since I’m directly across the street, to bear witness to her endless color whims from one month to the next. I turn my head away whenever she’s out front, don’t want so much as eye contact.

And down the block I spotted the idiots with the beat-up Ford flat bed, always loaded down with an ever-changing burden of car parts, sheet rock leftovers, paint-stained 2×4’s that precluded any possibility of future use. Whenever the wife hurled herself into the driver’s seat and started the monster up, a cloud of exhaust left a trail of fumes in her wake, like a giant fart. Her departures set all the neighborhood dogs to howling and sometimes, in the night, I imagined myself sneaking across the road to slash holes in all of their tires. I still could.

Next door had become a rental after Ruth died, ‘dear old Ruth’ as mother used to call her. She and Mother were pretty good friends in the beginning. Ruth loved to tell us how she bought the place in the forties for just under two thousand, could have bought the whole block but Horace wouldn’t hear of it. Horace was a good bit older than her and by the time Ray was born, Ruth was already widowed.

“Poor Ruth” my mother often sighed, but Ruth didn’t seem so poor to me. Pushed her lawn mower every Saturday morning up and back over an uneven yard and kept her roses blooming way past their season. As a child I remember thinking it wasn’t Ruth who was poor, it was my mother, though I couldn’t have said why.

Here I am talking about my crummy neighbors and look at me. I only planned to move back in with my folks for a few months after Mother got her stroke, back in 1964. Ned had been gone almost a year and the apartment we shared never felt right after he died. Technically he lived with his roommate, Frank something or other, I never really knew the man. Frank kept Ned’s mail and some of his furniture so people wouldn’t think the wrong thing like they did back in those days, if a man and woman lived together out of wedlock. Makes me feel old just thinking about it. But it was our apartment, married or not, and I needed to get away from the memories. I was always listening for his key in the lock. I couldn’t get off to sleep. So when the folks needed my help, I figured moving back in with them would be a good transition until I figured out what I wanted to do next.

Well I figured wrong. Just like that a few months turned into 43 years. Here I am still living in my parents’ house, with both of them long dead and who can say why fate snags you back to where you started?