The Good Neighbor Read online

  “What does Seth think of this?”

  “He doesn’t care.”

  “He doesn’t care or he doesn’t know?”

  “He doesn’t know but he wouldn’t care.”

  “Rachel, you wouldn’t have shown me this unless there was something you wanted me to know. You’re not random or casual. You’re very deliberate. You think everything through.”

  Rachel scurried to the kitchen and I followed at her heels. Without talking, we gathered cold elbow noodles out of the fridge and a box of chicken nuggets from the freezer. I sliced green apples. Rachel ran cold water into the noodles in a colander and juggled plastic plates, juice boxes, and colorful silverware. She multitasked as if an octopus.

  “He’s married, Iz.”

  “You’re married, too.”

  “Oh, thanks for the reminder.” She slid nuggets into the convection oven, poked straws through juice pouches, and dealt plates, napkins, and colorful kid silverware onto the kids’ table. Every action seemed to punctuate her statement with sarcasm. “Because making dinner for six people every night, four of whom complain about it, and driving a van that seats eight and can turn into Disneyland with the touch of a button isn’t enough of a reminder.”

  “All you ever wanted was a minivan full of kids. It’s all we ever wanted.” I stepped back, away from her, almost sitting on the kitchen table.

  “No, it’s what you wanted. A picnic table with boys on one side and girls on the other, all dressed in OshKosh overalls with you sitting at the foot of the table and your imaginary husband sitting at the head of it. How’s that working out for you?”

  I stopped moving, and not just at the mention of my “imaginary husband.” I stopped because she had slammed the truth over my head.

  “I’m sorry, that was mean.”

  That it was. But it was also true. “You’re right. That was mean. I’m a daydreamer. I want things I don’t have. I want people I don’t have. I don’t even mean Bruce. I mean the life, the kids, the plans.” The words had a bitter aftertaste. I had never before said them aloud. Now I knew why. They tasted rancid.

  “I’m sorry. I’m just stressed. And it’s an escape, that’s all. Planning something that is just for me and has nothing to do with Seth or the kids. It’s been a long time. I don’t get time off from parenting, or a new, exciting relationship, like you do.”

  “Noah hasn’t seen Bruce in weeks! Do you know what that’s like? And there’s never really time off when you’re a mom, no matter who you are. You know that. And as for a new, exciting anything…”

  She stopped fussing with the food and turned to me, eyes wide.

  “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. So I’m pretty sure you don’t want it.”

  Rachel put her arm around my waist. “I’m sorry.”

  I kissed the top of her head. I could never stay mad at her.

  “I have another one of those stupid hospital black-tie things next weekend,” Rachel returned to her job of fixing lunch. “Maybe you and Mac could come. Seth could get extra tickets.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not? You could leave Noah here with my kids and the sitter. He’d have a blast.”

  “I’m just not ready to go public with Mac.”

  “You’re not ready to go public? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?”

  I shrugged. Fake Mac had a little social anxiety. “Next time, maybe?”

  “Deal, but I’m going to hold you to it. There’s something in June…”

  “If I’m still with Mac, I’ll put it on my calendar.”

  Rachel turned back to the oven. “I know you don’t want to hear me complain about getting dressed up and going out, but it’s not fun like going out on dates with a new guy, when everything is exciting. This is an obligation. And if you haven’t noticed, I don’t have my pre-baby body back yet.” She looked down, from one hip to the other.

  What Rachel didn’t say was that she had never had the quintessential pre-baby body and that Arielle, her youngest, was three years old.

  “Those are new.” I pointed with my chin to a small collection of plants nestled close together on the windowsill. In the middle of winter. “Are those herbs?”

  “They are.”

  The oven dinged and I grabbed the ketchup and honey mustard from the fridge and wiped the insides of the lids even though they were clean. Sometimes I imagined Rachel with a stockroom full of new bottles purchased just for me. It was more likely that we’d both inherited the Lane aversion to condiment crust.

  “Lunchtime!”

  Rachel held the doorjamb the way her mother had held on to the windowsill and called to us years ago. That moment echoed a time filled with white bread and peanut butter and inappropriate language in front of children. When the grown-ups sputtered in whispered, broken Yiddish, the language of their grandparents, just so we wouldn’t understand, when in reality we didn’t care what they were saying.

  Our own kids gathered on the sunporch, heated for winter, and we sat in the kitchen gobbling leftover Chinese with pull-apart chopsticks. No white bread, no Yiddish.

  I looked through and beyond our five offspring, out at the covered pool and wide-open, bright winter sky. When I looked out the window onto Good Street, I saw row houses. If I looked up, I saw my personal rectangle of sky. I had always wanted a bigger piece of sky, and I’d always had it at Rachel’s. I never begrudged her the breadth of her view, but today it reminded me of what I didn’t have. And it reminded me of what she could lose if she went down an online black hole with Jeremy.

  “Jeremy is still really funny.” Rachel stood and leaned into the basil. She left her nose in the leaves, but shifted to the parsley, as if it would agree.

  A swirl of panic circled my middle. “Exactly how often do you talk to him?”

  “I don’t talk to him. We message. Online. It’s not a big deal. It’s all about the reunion.” Her words were quick, strung together without a breath, yet they sounded rehearsed. Of course Rachel knew what she’d say to me. She was a planner.

  “Why don’t you tell him you don’t need his help?”

  “But I do.”

  “Rache, no.”

  “It’s a reunion, Iz.”

  Deliberate name abbreviations were always a sign of trouble between us.

  “What kind of reunion?”

  “Knock it off.”

  My phone buzzed.

  “Who’s that? Is it Mac? Oh, I wish you would tell me his real name! Answer it. I want to hear his voice! He doesn’t have to know!”

  “No!” I grabbed my phone and walked headfirst into the corner. Head down, I scrolled through the texts and alerts. Jade/Pop Philly/Ethan/Jade again. I was never going to get anything done if they didn’t leave me alone.

  “What is going on with Mac?”

  “Nothing is going on with Mac. I just forgot to shut off my phone. Now, where were we? Right. Jeremy. We were talking about you.”

  “I thought you’d get a kick out of me reconnecting with Jeremy after all this time.”

  Yes, a kick in the gut.

  I knew how time dissolved in the moment it took to share a memory. I hit my cousin with my Are you crazy? stare the way I did the first time she added grape juice into the Manischewitz bottle after we drank it. “This is dangerous, Rache. You can’t have a relationship with your old boyfriend.”

  “Izzy. There is nothing going on.” She twirled on one foot and landed hard. “I love Seth. And, in case this scene has escaped your line of vision, I have four kids and a mortgage and a Disney vacation villa with Seth.”

  “I know you. You wouldn’t have shown me the photo if it weren’t important to you. And you didn’t answer me. How often do you talk to him?”

  “I talk to Seth every day.” She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know how often I talk to him. I don’t count because it’s not important. Does that answer your question?”

  “What do you mean, you don’t count? There’s enough to count? Once
a week? Twice a week? On Wednesdays at six?”

  “A few times a day.”

  “A few times a day?” I shuddered as a chill ran up my arms. “Rachey. You need to stop. These things lead to trouble.”

  “Oh my God, Iz. The Internet is your saving grace now that Bruce is gone, but it’s my danger zone? Why were there different rules for you than for me? Since forever. I’m excited about something, I’m having fun. Why can’t you be happy for me?”

  Rachel was an only child. She looked up to me. She idealized my parents’ owning a store as if we sold kittens and cotton candy instead of nuts and bolts and Con-Tact paper.

  “You’re excited about your class reunion or you’re excited about your reunion with Jeremy Goldfarb?”

  “Both.”

  Finally an honest answer. “Whatever you think you have with Jeremy, Rachel, it isn’t real. The Internet isn’t real. He can be who he wants and tell you anything you want to hear. Trust me.” The words burned in my throat.

  “What kind of person do you think he is?”

  “I don’t know. And neither do you. Maybe he’s not married. Maybe he has a criminal record.”

  “He’s some kind of engineer and he lives in Cherry Hill. He’s one of the good guys. And we’re not doing anything wrong. We’re just talking. What’s your problem?”

  “My problem is that people lie. That’s all.” There was my opening. I clamped my lips to close it. This was about Rachel now, not me.

  She waved her hands like shooing a bug. “People post flattering pictures of themselves and happy family snapshots, but people don’t just lie. They don’t say they went to Paris for the weekend when they’re really holed up in King of Prussia Mall. And—I’m not lying about Jeremy. I just told you I was back in touch with him.”

  “Are you lying to Seth?”

  “No.”

  Absolute delusion ran in our family.

  I added ice to a glass and slid it across my forehead. Rachel was lying to Seth. I knew it. And I was lying to her. And everyone else. Why was it easy for me to want to untangle the knot in her life but not my own? And why did I demand honesty but not return it? Why was it sometimes so hard to do what was good and right?

  I could leave Rachel on her disastrous course, or I could help her through this, redirect her attention to something. Or someone. Me. I came to Rachel’s with the intention of a playdate for Noah and a confession for me. If I told her I had a problem, needed her help, her attention, her time, maybe that would help her and me.

  “I promise,” Rachel said. “This is about a class reunion, not a clandestine meeting. It’s just about me having fun. For once, something is just about me.”

  My thoughts became malleable. “Nothing’s just about you anymore, is it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Four kids and a husband and a house…” I breathed deep. “And planning a reunion. That’s a lot.”

  “It is.”

  “But you do a lot. You play mah-jongg and tennis. You’re on committees. Those are for you. And if they’re not, you should stop.”

  “It wouldn’t look right. All of this comes with an image.”

  I’d never thought of Rachel as caring what anyone thought. She seemed to embrace her traditional life, and all its trimmings.

  “And talking to your high school boyfriend is part of that image?”

  Rachel shrugged. “It’s a distraction. Sometimes I want to forget about what I’m making for dinner or what I’m wearing to that stupid black-tie thing or who I’m supposed to meet where and at what time. And since you won’t distract me with more stories about Mac…”

  “Do not blame me!”

  Rachel’s face, which rounded with each smile, grew long and sullen. She handed me a symmetrically arranged bundle of basil, oregano, and cilantro tied together with a stem.

  “See? You love the whole domestic-goddess/doctor’s-wife thing.”

  “No, I don’t. Not always.”

  Now I prayed she was lying.

  Chapter 11

  Whisper Down the Lane

  I AGREED TO MEET Ethan at the Oxford Diner because I thought we’d be having breakfast at the diner of our childhoods. I anticipated the mauve vinyl booths with duct-taped tears and nicked wood-grain laminate tabletops. Instead, the booths had been refurbished with taupe vinyl seats—as if taupe outranked mauve—and beige laminate tabletops with flecks of gold. All much too pristine for my memories. “The Oxford” had been the only restaurant my parents took me to as a child. I learned table manners here. Napkin on lap. Elbows off table. Salad fork, dinner fork, soupspoon, teaspoon. When my brothers were with us, Eddie ate a full-course meat-and-potatoes meal, while Ethan ordered something exotic sounding that no one wanted to taste but me. Because of Ethan I ate moussaka, veal marsala, and eggplant Parmesan before I was ten. Dad always ordered a corned beef “special,” while Mom opted for whitefish on a poppy-seed bagel or a cantaloupe stuffed with cottage cheese. I ate a Texas Tommy because, although my parents didn’t keep a kosher home, pork products did not cross its threshold. Today I’d get sick from a ballpark-style hot dog with melted American cheese and bacon, but as a kid? It was heaven on a plate with a side of fries.

  Mmm. Fries.

  “An order of fries, too, please.”

  The order was almost the same as my late-night orders during high school: bagel and cream cheese, order of fries, and a black-and-white shake.

  I couldn’t. Could I?

  I looked at the waitress’s name tag, pinned to her chest like a badge of honor. “And a black-and-white milk shake.”

  Tanya smiled and removed a pen from her apron pocket. “What kind of bagel? Toasted? Light? Dark? What kind of cream cheese? Plain, chive, veggie, light, lox, honey-walnut? What kind of fries? Regular, seasoned, waffle, or sweet potato?”

  When had everything become so complicated?

  “Are you going to drink that water or be hypnotized by it?” I stopped staring at my ice cubes and looked up at Ethan. He hadn’t shaved, and his polo shirt was a little rumpled, his coat on his arm in a heap. Apparently my brother was enjoying an occasional day off from dapper.

  I leapt from the booth and pummeled him with a hug.

  “I’m happy to see you, too, Iz.”

  We slid into our places on opposite sides. Ethan looked at Tanya. Then at me. Then back at Tanya, who smiled, revealing a sizable gap between her two front teeth.

  “Did she order a black-and-white shake?”

  Tanya nodded.

  “And a bagel and fries?”

  Tanya smiled again at Ethan, then at me, double-lifting her penciled-in eyebrows as if to say, Wow, he knows you.

  “Sesame bagel, toasted, plain cream cheese, regular fries,” I said.

  “I’ll share hers,” Ethan said.

  I harrumphed. Tanya scribbled on her order pad, nodded, and walked away.

  Ethan propped his elbows on the table, sank his chin into his hands. I smiled at his attempt to cheer me without knowing what was wrong. If anything was wrong. I also laughed because somewhere in Margate our mother was having an inexplicable bad-manners twinge.

  Ethan looked around and stared at the brass light fixture hanging over the booth. “What did I miss?”

  “Well, I almost ordered the waffle fries…”

  “Very funny.”

  My phone buzzed and I tucked it under my leg. “I should’ve told you sooner, but Bruce went to California. With a girl. I mean, his girlfriend, Amber.”

  “Damn.”

  Ethan had known that something was going on. I had texted him to meet me when I dropped off Noah for Sunday school, and because I knew that his daughter, Maya, was spending the weekend with our parents. He hadn’t asked where to meet. He just knew.

  Tanya placed everything in the middle of the table, unsure what belonged to whom. I knew, as did Ethan, that we would share everything even-steven.

  Ethan squirted a blob of ketchup along the edge of the french-fry plate. He plucked one fro
m the center and pointed it at me. I took the bottle and opened the lid to wipe it clean, but he closed it and slid the ketchup to the side. A clean-condiment calamity.

  “Why do you care what Bruce does and who he does it with?” Ethan’s voice was like my own; I heard it from the inside out. “You need to move on, too, you know.”

  “He lost his job and now he’s in California with his girlfriend, and he’s not paying child support or doing anything but talking with Noah, which is not like taking him for a night or a weekend.” Pause for breath. “E, I’m not supposed to be doing this alone.”

  Ethan’s eyes widened. He dug in his pocket and pulled out his phone. “I’ll call Eddie. We’ll get Bruce’s sorry ass back here.”

  It comforted me to think of my brothers rushing to my defense. “Don’t.” I reached across the table and put my hand on his, my elbow almost skimming the ketchup. “I told him I’d give him time to figure things out.”

  “You’re not getting back together with Bruce, Iz.”

  “I know that.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I did know. Usually.

  “I hate to ask this, but how can you pay your bills without that support? You’re legally entitled to child support until Noah is eighteen. And, not to be cliché, but I know you don’t use that money to buy bonbons.”

  Ethan did know. He was the one who’d convinced me to move home, helped me plan a budget, and who, with Jade and Rachel, packed up half of a married life.

  “Do you want a loan? I assume you won’t ask Eddie. Or Mom and Dad.”

  “No, I won’t. You know that. And I don’t want a loan.” My heart and voice softened. “But thank you.”

  “Well, how about a gift? I can do that; I’m your big brother. Consider it an early fortieth-birthday present!”

  “I’m fine. Really.” I sat straighter. “I—got a part-time job! I work from home, at night, when Noah is asleep.”

  “Do not tell me you are one of the 1-900 operators.” I knew Ethan was kidding. I hoped Ethan was kidding.

  “You know Jade’s Web site?”

  “I don’t really read it, but everyone has heard of Pop Philly.”

  “I’m the new Philly over Forty blogger.”