ࡱ> WYV ,bjbjWW .<55$,,@@@@@IKKKKKK$hfoo@@:@@II@0a^YQU.50:xoo : WHAT THE NEIGHBORS THINK By Faith Shearin West Virginia Fiction Competition, 3rd-Place Winner Our neighborhood stretches along the sound side of our island, where the water is shallow and dark. We live one life on land, in our houses and on our lawns, under the short, crooked trees, and another life in the water where we are liquid reflections: alive by day, erased at night. If my sister, Beth, and I ride out in our canoe, we glimpse our other life, just under the surface, where we are made of memory and glass and everything is slow. Our closest neighbor is an old woman named Louisa who lives alone in a house with a wide porch that resembles a nest. She cannot get enough oxygen from the air, so she wears it on her back, like a diver: two clear tubes reaching into her nose. We know her well because someone from our house carries her newspaper up to her in the mornings before school; she watches for us, behind her huge luminous windows, which also reflect the nervous fluttering of her trees. All day, she wears a bathrobe, and listens to classical music, and feeds the animals on her porch, and reads novels delivered by a man from the library. In the afternoons, our father, Henry, sometimes carries a bag of groceries to her, up the narrow stairs. She opens the door, and her classical music pours out into the street. She is drinking a glass of red wine. Louisa feeds the animals so she can watch them through the sliding glass doors of her living room: squirrels, birds, raccoons, possums, and a terrible, haggard looking nutria that crawls up out of the dark, briny water of the sound, his whiskers dripping. Next door to Louisa is a woman named Mary who cut down all the trees on her lot and planted an unnatural stubble of grass. Louisa loves trees, and she weeps each time Mary cuts one down; she says the absence of trees on that lot causes the flooding when the northeast wind blows; she says each lost tree reduces her own oxygen and she can feel it, collapsing inside herself. Mary thinks it is dangerous and disgusting for Louisa to feed the animals; she has complained to various authorities who arrive in Louisa's driveway, from time to time, and return to their cars humming and smelling of wine. On the other side of Mary, in a tall Victorian house, up a steep hill, live the Joneses: Jean and Sam. They are Christian Scientists with five children, and they do not believe in birth control, or doctors, which Mary and Louisa and my mother, Ruth, do not understand. The children are younger than Beth and me; all of them under the age of eight, and one, a boy, has a club foot that he drags behind him. My mother says he needs an operation to have a normal life. She says: "How will he hold a job or wear a suit or get a wife like that?" One of the girls carries a baby's bottle, though she must be five or six, and my mother says this will ruin her teeth. Beth and I watch the children playing on the beach behind their house, when we go swimming in the channel, and we wave in a friendly way, then we talk about them in whispers, our heads bobbing. If it is early evening, Beth and I chase ghost crabs into their holes: their tiny, black eyes on stalks, their bodies the color of sand. Beside the Joneses is another widow, a woman named Carol Ann, who wears purple dresses and hats. She throws a huge Kentucky Derby party every May, flinging roses onto her lawn, plays tennis and swims, and belongs to a country club. Her hair is tended every week by a hairdresser, and her nails are sharp and painted. She has a tan year-round and smells like perfume and extravagance. She thinks everyone in our neighborhood is frumpy and unfashionable. She hosts a Bridge game once a month that goes on late into the night; the women who play with her arrive in tiny cars shaped like lipsticks, and stay until midnight, when you can hear their high heels clicking into the street. Beyond Carol Ann, in the largest house, with a swimming pool, surrounded by ivy and tall fences, live a couple of retired movie stars. They aren't particularly famous, but they appear as minor characters in grainy movies from the 60s and 70s; their names are Richard and Betty Sullivan and they have intensely white teeth and a kind of gauzy, expensive clothing, with many scarves, and three tiny dogs with bulging eyes. They host a Christmas Party where they show a movie about surfing called The Blue Room, which is the movie where they first met each other, in their bathing suits: their hair bleached, their faces tanned. Richard and Betty wish we would all pay more attention to them, and ask for their autographs. Sometimes they disappear for months to California and New York where they audition for parts and their house becomes a silent, untended thing. Sometimes we see them on TV, advertising orange juice or insurance. Betty and Carol Ann discuss beauty creams and tooth whiteners and manicurists, but Carol Ann disapproves of Betty's dogs, who sometimes relieve themselves on her favorite flower beds and Magnolia trees. We are the Hawthornes: Henry, Ruth, Beth, and Hazel, and I am not sure what the neighbors think of us. My mother says Mary wishes we would go to church, like she does, and the Joneses wish this as well. We see them dressed up, every Sunday, when they drive to some distant town to meet other people who pray when they get sick, instead of visiting a doctor. Mary and Carol Ann wish we would plant grass, as they Have. I hear the hiss of their lawn sprinklers in the afternoons, when I come home from school and sit on the front porch with Beth, eating crackers. Carol Ann thinks Beth and I should wear hats and lipstick, and that we should learn to play Bridge. We spent one Saturday at a table on her front lawn, learning to count and bid. The Jones children wish Beth and I would give them a ride in our canoe; they watch us float past their shore, our paddles dipping into the liquid night. One weekend last spring, Betty and Richard's dogs got loose while they were floating in their pool. The dogs stopped first on Carol Ann's lawn, their tails conducting an orchestra of happiness. Then they wandered up the Jones' driveway, their noses tracing the places where children play. One lifted a short, hind leg over a decorative stone. They came to our house, though Beth and I were at school. We found their paw prints later, a confusion of delight. Then they sniffed their way up to Louisa's porch, where she fed the animals. The birds and squirrels scattered when the dogs arrived, but the nutria was not a fast creature, and he was bent over his lunch. Louisa said he was offended by the abrupt entrance of the dogs; he stood on his hind legs and, when one of the dogs stepped forward, he bit its flank. Louisa saw it all happen from behind the glass door of her living room. By the time she stood up, the dogs had already begun their squeaking retreat to Betty and Richard's house. Louisa called the Sullivans, her breath heavy, and left a message on their answering machine: she offered to pay the vet bill, though what Richard and Betty wanted, according to Betty, who climbed the stairs late in the day with her injured dog in her arms, was for the nutria to be killed. "I've called animal control," she said. Louisa stood in her doorway, trembling. She wept for days, told my father how she loved watching the nutria come out of the water, and climb the stairs to her cottage, looked forward to seeing him more than the other animals because he was wet and slow and alone; she could not live with herself if her feeding him had led to his death. Louisa cried and cried, her handkerchief pale with grief, and one day, while taking her paper up the stairs, my father found that she had a fever and had fallen over on her couch, her diving apparatus detached from her back. He called an ambulance, and we all saw its red lights bleeding under Louisa's trees. While Louisa was away, my mother allowed me to leave food for the nutria on Louisa's porch, which swayed in the wind. Our mother said the nutria might be on death row, that these might be his last meals, so we left him scraps from our dinner: soft vegetables, casseroles, pieces of cheese. On our street, people disagreed. Maybe the problem was that Louisa fed the animals, or maybe the trouble was that the Sullivans weren't paying attention to their dogs, having fallen asleep by their pool in the sun. Mary said she always knew that feeding the wild animals was dangerous and unsanitary and not even good for the animals. "They don't let you do it in the national parks, Hazel," she said, when I went out to check the mail. But Beth and I knew that when Louisa fed the wild animals, she was really feeding her own wildness, which came to her out of dark waters. Later that week, while Louisa was recovering from pneumonia in a hospital room, where she could not drink wine or even feed a bird, Beth and I floated out in our canoe. We saw our neighborhood reflected in the water. Betty and Richard's mansion was a series of rippling rooms, full of fish, and Carol Ann was a ghost with a hat moving across a black lawn. Our father was grilling tuna, and he stood on our melting porch, lit with fire, growing thin and tall in the rippling water. Beth and I touched our own faces reflected in the liquid. 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We live     J2 `*0 one life on land, in our houses and on our  2 R0   2 V 0 lawns, under   2 0   _2 80 the short, crooked trees, and another life in the water    ;2 ` 0 where we are liquid reflections:    2 0   2 S0 alive by day, erased at night. If my sister, Beth, and I ride out in our canoe, we      2 `0 glimpse   2 0   h2 >0 our other life, just under the surface, where we are made of m     (2 0 emory and glass and   2 d0   (2 h0 everything is slow.   2 0    t2 )F0 Our closest neighbor is an old woman named Louisa who lives alone in a        2 )>0   /2 )B0 house with a wide porch     _2 B`80 that resembles a nest. She cannot get enough oxygen from    2 B0   Y2 B40 the air, so she wears it on her back, like a diver:    2 [` 0 two clear tu  +2 [0 bes reaching into her  2 [%0   n2 [+B0 nose. We know her well because someone from our house carries her        2 s` 0 newspaper up   2 s0   ,2 s0 to her in the mornings   2 s60   d2 s:;0 before school; she watches for us, behind her huge luminous    2 s0   2 s 0 windows,    j2 `?0 which also reflect the nervous fluttering of her trees. All day   2  0 , she wears a   2 0   @2 #0 bathrobe, and listens to classical   P2 `.0 music, and feeds the animals on her porch, and    2 }0   a2 90 reads novels delivered by a man from the library. In the     82 `0 afternoons, our father, Henry,   2  0   m2 A0 sometimes carries a bag of groceries to her, up the narrow stairs    2 z0 . S 2 0 he o 2 0 pens the  2 0    2 `0 door,  2 0   2 0 and  O2 -0 her classical music pours out into the street  2 0 . S 12 0 he is drinking a glass of  2 60   42 :0 red wine. Louisa feeds the     ^2 `70 animals so she can watch them through the sliding glass     2 0   22 0 doors of her living room:   2 A 0 squirrels  2 o0 ,  2 r0   2 v0 birds  2 0 ,  2 0   2 0 raccoons 2 0 ,   2 `0 possums   2 0 ,  2 0   2 0 and  2 0   2  0 a terrible,  2 0   2 T0 haggard looking nutria that crawls up out of the dark, briny water of the sound, his    2 0    &2 !`0 whiskers dripping.   2 !0    |2 9K0 Next door to Louisa is a woman named Mary who cut down all the trees on her          2 9e0   (2 9i0 lot and planted an   P2 R`.0 unnatural stubble of grass. Louisa loves trees   2 Rj0 ,  2 Rm0   2 Rs 0 and she w  2 R 0 eeps each  2 R0   D2 R&0 time Mary cuts one down; she says the      S2 k`00 absence of trees on that lot causes the flooding  2 k0   2 k0 when   2 k0   V2 k20 the northeast wind blows; she says each lost tree     ,2 `0 reduces her own oxygen   2 0   2 O0 and she can feel it, collapsing inside herself. Mary thinks it is dangerous and   2 0     2 `0 d 2 hS0 isgusting for Louisa to feed the animals; she has complained to various authorities     2 J0   .2 O0 who arrive in Louisa's    g2 `=0 driveway, from time to time, and return to their cars humming       2 0   +2 0 and smelling of wine.    2 E0    2 0 On the   2 0   :2 0 other side of Mary, in a tall V   42 m0 ictorian house, up a steep   2 0 hill, live the  2 G0   .2 L0 Joneses: Jean and Sam.    S2 `00 They are Christian Scientists with five children     2 p0 ,  2 s0   2 y 0 and they do  2 0   S2 00 not believe in birth control, or doctors, which    F2 `'0 Mary and Louisa and my mother, Ruth, do       2 T0   n2 XB0 not understand. The children are younger than Beth and me; all of      2 `0 th #2 k0 em under the age   2 0   2 U0 of eight, and one, a boy, has a club foot that he drags behind him. My mother says he     2 0    2 1`U0 needs an operation to have a normal life. She says: "How will he hold a job or wear a       2 1U0   /2 1Y0 suit or get a wife like    L2 J`+0 that?" One of the girls carries a baby's bo  /2 JU0 ttle, though she must be   2 J0   J2 J*0 five or six, and my mother says this will      O2 b`-0 ruin her teeth. Beth and I watch the children    2 b\0   g2 b`=0 playing on the beach behind their house, when we go swimming       (2 {`0 in the channel, and  2 {0   h2 {>0 we wave in a friendly way, then we talk about them in whispers       .2 {;0 , our heads bobbing. If  2 {0    2 `Z0 it is early evening, Beth and I chase ghost crabs into their holes: their tiny, black eyes   2 M0   /2 R0 on stalks, their bodies   &2 `0 the color of sand.  2 0   "Systemv @'vvi@'--  00//..՜.+,0 hp  ϳԹUniversityB$  Title  !"#$%&'()*+,./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMOPQRSTUXRoot Entry F@d^YQZ1TableWordDocument.<SummaryInformation(-(ADocumentSummaryInformation8NCompObjr  F Microsoft Word 97-2003 Document MSWordDocWord.Document.89q