The Good Neighbor Read online

  “I’m not forty yet. You want me to lie?” I said it before I could stop myself.

  “Oh, that’s just details! We need you to keep writing about your dates. You know, like the guy who picked his nose?”

  Of course he was real.

  I’d forgotten Jade and her team were the blogging CIA. I thought of the screen names and avatars of my readers. Would they follow me to Pop Philly or would they feel abandoned? Hadn’t I abandoned them already by disappearing for days without explanation? I knew that blogs ran cold, disappeared without notice, and that bloggers dissolved back into their real lives without any thought of their RSS feeds. But I also knew that for some people, these personal gigs came with online social responsibility and a little bit of blogger guilt. I wasn’t sure where I fit in. I had just wanted to share stories, commiserate with others—not be the Pied Piper of the over-forty crowd, leading them out of the dregs of singlehood. If I could do it for others, I’d have done it for myself.

  “You’ve got the chance to be a big voice for men and women who are terrified about having to date again. You can help people move past their exes. Or just move forward. I was going to offer you this gig before you needed it. It’s kismet, honey. Blogging beshert! Totally meant to be! You can make some money—so you don’t have to blast Bruce just yet, and you’ll help me build my business.”

  “Why can’t I blog about books or kids or parenting? I’m a counselor, I could really be a resource for your readers.”

  “Ho-hum, hon.” Holden patted my hand. “Sorry. We’re Pop Philly. Not Snooze Philly.”

  “We want the sincerity of Dear Abby with a splash of Kardashian.” Jade flicked all her fingers in the air as if releasing confetti.

  “We like a little glitz with our morning coffee, right?” Darby looked at Drew. “Don’t worry, I’ll help you get on the right track. Anything for the greater good.”

  “Thanks, Darb. I knew this would work!” Jade put her arm around my shoulders again. I shifted under its weight. “You’ll give all the advice that’s fit to print, so to speak. And you don’t have to reveal your identity until you’re ready. Guys, I’m going to talk to Izzy about the details. Drew? We’ll talk later?”

  He nodded.

  “I recognize him.” I whispered into Jade’s ear. “Who is he?”

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  Then with a gentle tug, Jade led me away from the table to a crowded corner of the bar, which seemed to open like the Red Sea when Jade appeared. It was now or never. There was no Mac. The words stuck in my throat. I’m not even over Bruce. Well, not completely. The notions dizzied me. Courting lies and denial was a breeze compared to ramping up to tell the truth.

  “You need a little more ‘this’ in your life.” Jade pretended she was Vanna White and showcased the Chihuly-esque lighting, the tables full of animated people, and the whimsical food not meant for children. “I know you love being a guidance counselor. I know you have your own social life. But you need something that’s just for you and just about you. And I can do that for you, Pea, if you do this for us. For me. I really need your help. I need to boost traffic. Please.” Jade cocked her head the way she had done in the days when she wanted me to type her term papers. Then she scribbled onto a cocktail napkin, channeled her inner used-car salesman, and slid the napkin across the bar to me.

  “This will be your monthly pay. Enough to pay for day care, right? Plus a little extra? Not only that, but doing this will take up enough space in your head to push out other things.”

  Jade was right. The amount was enough to cover Noah’s before-and-after-school care, and maybe some of his speech-therapy sessions not covered by insurance. The rationalizations poured through me: I could blog about dating until Bruce got his act together. I’d still be anonymous, so no one would know it was written by me. Except Jade. And Rachel and Holden and Darby and Drew and the others at the table who remained nibbling, sipping blurs. But I could give advice and help people. It’s what I did. I was a helper. It’s not as if I didn’t have common sense, even if I didn’t always use it. I liked the idea of a little glitz with my coffee, and I needed to know I could do it. All of it.

  I stared at the napkin and folded it into an origami disaster. Mrs. Feldman would not have been impressed.

  “I can be anonymous, right?”

  “You be whoever you want to be. Anyone with an understanding of reverse analytics and who has a half hour to kill could uncover any anonymous blogger, but they’d have to be looking. Really looking. Just use the Pop Philly interface and you’ll be fine.”

  All I understood was “you’ll be fine.”

  “This is not a pity job, Pea, this is a job-job. You’re helping both of us. Remember that.” How did she always read my mind except when I needed her to? “This is what bloggers dream about—recognition and money. I’m offering both, and I’m not asking you to give up your privacy. You deserve everything that’s about to happen.”

  That’s what I was afraid of.

  Chapter 5

  Baby in the Air

  A WEEK AFTER JADE offered me the Pop Philly job, and four days after Bruce left for California for his nonjob, I became a pirate.

  “Walk the plank,” Noah said, pointing at me as he bounded down the steps and walked bowlegged, hands on his hips, into the living room.

  Noah had declared a moratorium on web slinging by shoving all his blue and red paraphernalia under his bed. I knew it was because Spider-Man made Noah think of his dad. One day, in grown-up, paid-for-by-his-own-health-insurance sessions, his therapist will tell him he wished it were Bruce he was shoving under the bed, or how removing the visual cues to his last time with Bruce made him store away those memories. I ached with Noah’s underlying sadness. Bruce’s departure was an addendum to our divorce, another way he left and didn’t come back. At the moment, he was two for two.

  Amateur psychoanalysis aside, it was much easier to be a pirate than Spider-Man. For starters, the costuming offered a little more leeway. I embraced it with a bandanna and a plastic eye patch held on, as Noah’s was, with a giant rubber band. I duct-taped a Disney bird to the shoulder of Noah’s sweatshirt. He giggled when he looked in the mirror and saw Zazu perched and secure. Then he darted into the kitchen, returning with two paper-towel tubes from the recycle bin. He handed one to me.

  “Ha-yah!” Noah leapt into a fight stance, wielding his cardboard sword with contagious delight.

  “Ha-yah!” The doorbell rang. “Avast, matey. Let me see who shot off that cannon.”

  It was Dreadlocks = Holden, with a backpack, a duffel bag, and Darby.

  “Ahoy, matey,” he said.

  Darby smirked and closed one eye tight. My eye patch!

  “These are friends of Auntie Jade’s, Noah. We have some work to do, so you can watch TV.” He looked at me wide-eyed, as if I never allowed him to watch TV.

  Noah tore the parrot from his shoulder and galloped into the living room. He never walked. He ran or hopped, skipped or even ambled on all fours, but he never just walked. No matter where Noah was headed, he anticipated joy upon arrival.

  Holden glided through the foyer and into the dining room, plopping his backpack on the table without a sound. I swiveled around to thank Darby for coming, but she had followed Noah into the living room.

  “You’ll be up and running in no time,” Holden said.

  “Huh? Oh, right.” I watched Darby. She sat on the floor by Noah’s feet. Her legs crossed at her ankles, her back against the sofa, she tipped back her head and talked. I couldn’t hear a word, but she was interesting enough for Noah to move his eyes from the TV to the top of her head, or maybe to her eyes, or her nose ring. I couldn’t tell. What did he think of the jewelry in Darby’s nose? Pirates wore earrings. Noah would probably ask for one later.

  “You’re going to need to pay attention.” Holden tapped my arm twice. “They’re fine. Darby is okay.”

  “Oh, I know.” Did I? “Sorry, I guess I don’t understand why sh
e’s here if she’s not working with us.”

  “She just wanted to come along, I hope that’s all right.” Holden emptied his backpack of a silver laptop, a jumble of wires, and a few small, black boxes. It looked to me as if he were going to build a robot. “Darbs said she’d never been to this neighborhood. Plus, we knew the little guy would be here. His dad left, right?”

  I shuddered. Why was Holden asking such a personal question? That was out of line, none of his business, and frankly, embarrassing.

  “Excuse me?”

  “California. You said the little guy’s dad went to California.”

  “I did?”

  “You’d had a lot to drink.”

  What else had I said? “Yeah, he is in California. On business. He’ll be back as soon as he can be, of course.”

  There I was again. Defending Bruce.

  “Anyway, Darbs just thought that maybe he’d like some company while you were busy. That’s all.” Holden tapped on his laptop, then mine, looking at one while he typed away on the other. “Where did you meet him, anyway?”

  “Who?”

  “Your boyfriend. Mac. The guy you’re writing about. How’d you meet?”

  Mac! “How did we meet?” Think, Izzy, think. Was it on JDate? “Uh, it’s a long story.”

  “I’m updating the software on your laptop.” He tapped my keyboard and looked at his watch, oversize and expensive looking. Probably from a street vendor, as were my Rolex, Coach, and Gucci everythings. “We have time.”

  “You know, now that I think of it, maybe it’s better if I don’t write about Mac, or dating at all.”

  Holden tapped and held a combination of keys. It looked as if he were playing the piano. He pushed the monitor toward me. “We’ve already designed the logo, see?”

  Philly over Forty. I saw.

  “And if you click on the bio…” A photo flanked by Internet gibberish jumped onto the screen. “The text goes in later. It’ll be set up by tonight and ready to go for tomorrow.”

  “Who’s that?” Red Phillies cap tipped down over a face, fingers clamped on the brim, partial jawline visible. Neck and shoulders visible, too. “Wait, is that supposed to be me?”

  “It is you. And it’s going up tonight with your bio.”

  “It’s me?” I turned Holden’s laptop toward me. I wanted to lift the cap and see the face. Instead, I just moved my face closer to the screen as if I could peek under it. “Are you sure?”

  But I knew. Jade had snapped that picture at the Bank. Citizens Bank Park. Bruce’s boss had given him Diamond Club seats, and we took Jade and Lyle, her summer love that year, to the Phillies game. I was eight months pregnant, with blotchy skin, my long hair tucked in and through the half-moon above the adjustable strap. The sky was wake-up blue—bright enough to be a crayon in my box of sixty-four. For me, the color, the sky, meant the day was to be perfect, but I’d ended up dehydrated, with swollen ankles, and the designated driver. And the Phillies had lost.

  “You don’t want to show your face. No face. You’re completely incognito.”

  I agreed, in theory. Unless you knew me, or what the side of my hand looked like, or had a personal memory of that day with me, you wouldn’t recognize me. But I knew. I knew what was under the brim without looking at my face. It wasn’t just the sky that was devoid of clouds that day. My life was also clear and bright. Bruce and I had discovered our newlywed mojo: we were expecting a baby, we’d bought our 1930s semidetached in Chestnut Hill, and we’d planted perennials. Nothing said forever like peonies and a DIY kitchen renovation.

  “So, have you talked to Jade about the concept change? What is the new concept, anyway? I’m not sure I have time for a redesign before tomorrow.” Holden scratched his head. “You know, they’re really sure this is going to be the answer.”

  Who was they? And the answer to what?

  I squinted, watching Holden as if I could memorize his actions, absorb his knowledge. His constant tapping ate into my brain. How. Am. I. Goingtodothis. What. The. HellwasIthinking.

  Holden pushed my laptop toward me as if he thought I couldn’t see it was right there in front of me. But then I finally saw what he was showing me. A skillfully designed page with mock headlines and columns for text and advertising, all color-coordinated with the rest of Pop Philly. I was entranced, thinking of my Bizzy Blog with its free polka-dot template. Philly over Forty was sophisticated. Not too old. Not too young. Just right. Words and pictures rearranged every time he clicked to another page and then back to my own. Blank as a new canvas, where I’d be painting unicorns. My pulse quickened. This was big. Too big. This was Broadway, not dinner theater.

  “I don’t think I can do this.”

  “Sure you can. Or Jade wouldn’t have asked you.”

  “Why is this so important to her?”

  “It’s the direction she wants to go with Pop Philly. And Drew’s all for it. So that definitely helps. We need something unique—something special—to help us bring in more advertisers.”

  “I thought the Web site was doing really well.”

  “There’s a lot of competition. We always need more traffic to attract more big advertisers. People like Drew.”

  There was Coat Guy again.

  “Jade can explain. She’s the brain and the face behind the site. But I don’t have to tell you about Jade.”

  Maybe he did.

  “I’m setting you up with our software, and hooking you into our network.”

  Forty minutes and seven pages of shorthand notes later, I was logged in behind the scenes.

  “I’m not sure I can do this.”

  “Of course you can.”

  Holden was very wrong.

  “What will happen if I don’t?”

  “Nothing.”

  Silence followed. Then Holden smiled. “C’mon, you’ll be fine. This part is like a closet where you hide all your junk before company comes over.”

  If only he knew.

  “You really enjoy this, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. How’d you know?” He didn’t look at me, but he smiled.

  “It’s my job to notice things. I like figuring out people and what they need to do to get what they want.” I’d helped hundreds of students over the past fifteen years. Holden could even have been one of them.

  “What do I need?” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in the chair. He wasn’t challenging me, he was asking me.

  “Right now you need to find a way to convince me not to back out.”

  Holden laughed. “What do you need?”

  It was the question of the day. Month. Year. Lifetime. I shrugged like one of my students.

  “Then how do you know this isn’t it?”

  I didn’t, but doubt crept into my psyche. Plus, trying to say no to Holden was like trying to say no to a two-year-old who handed me a toy phone and said, “Answer it.”

  Holden pulled out his real phone. “I can text the team and tell them to pull the page.”

  “No, don’t. I’ll do it.”

  Just then, Darby walked into the room with Noah.

  “Hey, kiddo,” I said. “Having fun?”

  Noah looked up at Darby and nodded. She rustled his hair and smiled. For that moment, my misgivings subsided.

  “Noah says you haven’t lived here very long,” she said.

  Because five-year-olds are great arbiters of time. “Technically, he’s right. But I grew up in this house.”

  “So now you’ve come home to roost. The neighborhood is so cute.”

  I turned away before I smacked her.

  “So, you’re all set?” Darby didn’t wait for an answer; she just leaned over and tapped on my laptop. “Looks great. I can’t wait to see what you come up with.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I can’t wait to find out more about Mac.”

  Me, too.

  “It’s all a little strange, wouldn’t you say?” Darby added.

  “What do you mean?” She c
ouldn’t mean …

  “Darb, stop,” Holden said.

  “I have a following on Pop Philly, but Jade brings in not only an unknown—but someone who wants to be anonymous.”

  Holden stood. “You know we need ad revenue. And you know Jade was looking for something new and different. Cut it out.”

  “Fine. Just—it must be nice to have your best friend for a boss and a great gig.”

  She didn’t say one you don’t deserve, but I heard it anyway.

  “What’s a gig? Can I have one?” All of a sudden Noah was paying attention to what the grown-ups were saying. Again.

  I opened my eyes wide at Holden.

  “Hey, buddy, I’m thirsty. Would you walk me to the kitchen to get a glass of water?”

  One point for Holden. Okay, ten points. I shifted my attention to Darby, who was racking up the demerits.

  “I don’t discuss my social life, or my blogging, with Noah,” I whispered. “So I’d appreciate it if you didn’t either.”

  Darby zipped her lips and threw away the key.

  Chapter 6

  Freeze Tag

  MRS. FELDMAN SAID MAC was my secret, but I’d never thought of him as that. My stash of chocolate-covered espresso beans behind the oatmeal in my pantry—that was a secret. Being accepted to law school—a secret. Doubling up on Spanx under my Rosh Hashanah suit—a secret.

  Mac wasn’t a secret at all. He was a lie. Secrets belonged to their keepers. Lies belonged to everyone. I’d enlisted innocent bystanders in my ruse, elicited emotions, garnered interaction. Secrets were kept. Lies were shared. When I wrote about my first real date, comments soared. And the date had been awful! Then I wrote about another date. I didn’t know why, but I embellished a bit with descriptions and dialogue, used my imagination, added a little flair. Then I did it again. The worse the date, the higher the hits. I was a living social experiment gone awry. Then I wrote about the sweatshirt twins, and about telling Bruce (“The Ex”) and Amber (“The Girlfriend”) about my having a boyfriend. The next day the comments had surged. I should have known that all single parents dealt with raging feelings of inadequacy—whether they acknowledged them or not. The post had been pinged and linked and forwarded all over the Internet. Comments and e-mails poured in from women who were thinking about divorce, women who were divorced, and even from a few men. I was lauded for my bravery and chided for my cowardice, all with a few taps of the touch pad. It had become too real too fast. And now the lie was on steroids.