The Good Neighbor (16 page)

But Mrs. Feldman was subtle, serene, and embedded in Good Street like a bottle cap in wet cement. She was a fixture here for longer than I'd been alive, like the streetlamps and blistering sidewalk and cracks in the cement. She was as sturdy as the iron railings that led to our front doors, a character in the life story of everyone who had lived here. But maybe not anymore.

“It doesn't matter where, Elizabeth. It could be the Palace of Versailles. I don't want to go.”

She looked at me with her blue eyes that back in the day must have made her a looker. I'd seen black-and-white photos of a young Mrs. Feldman, but none of her before she married.

I heard a knock at the door. I put my hand on Mrs. Feldman's shoulder. No matter how she and I were connected through strings of secrets that weaved through walls and across decades, we were not connected by blood or by law.

“Do you want me to talk to them?”

“No. It wouldn't do any good. They worry about me here, living alone, and I understand. I don't want to be any trouble. So if it eases their minds for me to be somewhere else, it's the least I can do.”

“But you want to stay, right?”

“I need to stay.”

 

Chapter 16

London Bridge

O
UT OF THE CAR
and into the bright sun and cold of a winter Saturday, I held Noah's mittened hand. I assured him that if had been twenty-two degrees at sea, pirates would have worn mittens, too.

“Remember what I told you?”

“I'm having a sleepover with Cousin Maya.”

Noah had not yet questioned why Maya had no mommy, or why there weren't books full of photos of Maya as a baby, as there were for him. All he cared about was that Uncle Ethan and Maya were fun. That they loved him. That they were his family.

Noah and I swung our clasped hands back and forth. As we walked up Walnut Street and past Rittenhouse Square, I slowed our arms to quiet the memories. We arrived at Ethan's blue-painted front door, and the aroma of a wood-burning fire hung in the air like a canopy. The window boxes to our left were mounded with untouched snow. After the frost, they would overflow with impatiens, coleus, and ivy, meant to flourish in the shade of the honey locust, whose name I knew because of Ethan's neighborhood's effort to map its trees. I had a hard enough time mapping one day.

It was as if my brother had staged his front step for our benefit. More likely, for Maya's. Any other day I've have used my key, knocked, and walked in with a whistle or a childlike holler. But even now I wanted to respect this as Maya's house and assure her that her place didn't need to be earned, it needed to be assumed. Ethan had told me she sometimes had nightmares that she was alone. If Ethan and I had anything to do with it, Maya would never be alone.

Before Noah knocked, the door opened. There stood Maya, slight, yet sturdy in her stance. She was wearing jeans with lavender stitching that matched her lavender, long-sleeved T-shirt and the bow clipped above her ear. She looked as if she were dressed for school pictures.

“Hi, Maya! Noah's here for your sleepover!”

She smiled as she stepped back, making room for us to pass.

Ethan watched from the great room, his hands behind his back. He'd restored his eighteenth-century row house on the outside, but renovated on the inside, leaving original wood floors and an exposed brick wall as a nod to the past from his modern and minimalist lifestyle. Everything meshed. It always had. How was it that this little girl looked as if she belonged when she'd only just arrived?

“C'mon in, everybody,” Ethan said. “And make sure the door is shut or the heat will escape.”

Even with the chill, I warmed with Ethan's dad-words.

“Want to see my room?” Maya reached for Noah's hand. “It's purple now.”

Noah looked at me, and I nodded. They held hands, Noah gripping the iron railing with the other as they stomped step by step up the steep flight and out of sight.

I turned to Ethan. “Oh. My. God. I want to eat her up.”

He threw back his head and laughed. “You sound like Mom.” In this case, it was a compliment.

I walked around the glass coffee table and noticed the fingerprints. I threw our coats at him and he tossed them over the back of a chaise that was already covered with a chenille blanket and about a dozen kid's books and the exact Barbie dolls Ethan swore he'd never buy for his daughter. I laughed.

“So, her room is purple now, huh?”

“Purple is the new pink.”

We laughed.

I rifled through Ethan's fridge. “Give her real food, okay? An occasional Butterscotch Krimpet won't kill her.” I knew that Ethan wasn't a glutton for healthiness, so to speak. He was my diner buddy, after all. But I also knew he'd want to do everything right. Just because Maya wasn't a newborn didn't mean this wasn't all new. “Tater Tots. I think kids need Tater Tots once a month.” I made that up and fanned myself with the holiday issue of
Healthy Living
magazine. “Not turnip fries, you hear me?”

Ethan's arms were crossed in familiar humor and less frequent deference. “Well, your niece thinks canned green beans are a vegetable.”

“When you're eight, canned green beans
are
a vegetable.” And sometimes when you're thirty-nine.

Ethan walked over to me with open arms and embraced me in a brotherly bear hug. He whispered in my ear, “You're a really great mom, Iz.”

How did he know what I needed to hear? I just shook my head. Ethan took my head in his hands and moved it up and down. “You're doing all the right things.”

“I'm not.” My voice cracked. We collapsed onto the sofa.

“I'll get you a drink.” Ethan walked to the kitchen.

“It's eleven o'clock in the morning!”

Ethan waved a Ghirardelli cocoa canister in the air.

I should have known.

He topped our steaming mugs with square marshmallows that came out of a plastic box with
VEGAN
stamped on it. They were light and sweet, firm but soft, just like Ethan.

I thought of the elementary-school afternoons I spent at Mrs. Feldman's drinking Swiss Miss with tiny dried marshmallow bits.

“You need a plan,” Ethan said.

“A plan for what?”

“For how to get out of this blogging gig and get rid of that Mac. And as far as this Andrew Mann goes, I think he's testing you.”

“I think the universe is testing me.”

“Do not be melodramatic. You did this to yourself.”

“I did not. None of this would be happening if Bruce hadn't gone to California.”

“Izzy. You started your other blog months ago and set the wheels in motion.”

It was much more fun to blame Bruce.

*   *   *

With the kids fed and in front of a movie, Ethan and I banished ourselves to the enclosed porch at the back of the house. It was heated, but also warmed by the sun year-round.

“How about a plan for how you're going to wind—this—down, Madam Blogger.” Ethan twirled his finger in the air, mimicking a funnel cloud from top to bottom.

I felt degrees of separation from my blogging persona. There was an ease to anonymity, freedom from reprisal—from others and myself. I could slough off snide remarks as being directed at
her,
not me. It was much like standing behind the fraying academic curtain at Liberty, where I helped the kids navigate their high school years with a point and a nudge, then launched them into the world, crossing my fingers and moving forward without them. There was counselor me. Now there was blogger me. There was mommy me. There was no-longer-wife me. I was on the rampant lookout for me-me.

“For now I need the money, E.”

“Look, I'm only on call twice a month, but I'll pay you whatever Jade does and you take care of Maya those nights.”

“You want me to be Maya's nanny?”

“No, I want you to be her aunt who pitches in to help your brother.” He forced a smile that was both silly and serious.

“I'm not taking money to help you with Maya. But I work and I have Noah and now I have no Bruce to fall back on.”

“Well, think about it. I cut back my hours since Maya arrived, but I have to get back to a regular schedule. So, I'll have to hire a stranger. To take care of my daughter. Your niece. A stranger! Oh my.” Ethan's drama was accentuated by his rendition of Macaulay Culkin's
Home Alone
face.

“We're not crossing that line. I don't want to be Maya's babysitter, I want to be her aunt. So sometimes, yes, she can sleep over or come over to play or just hang out. Or if you have a date!”

“That's not going to happen for a while.”

I didn't try to argue. I understood that dating wasn't his priority. Maybe someday it would be for both of us. Maybe not.

My phone buzzed and I answered. I didn't care who was calling.

“Hey, Rachel, what's up?”

“Nothing. Why does something have to be up?”

“It doesn't, but I'm at E's. Noah is spending the night.”

“Oh, it's date night! I want to hear everything. Give Ethan my love and I'll talk to you later. Call me before you go out?”

I wish. “You bet.”

I turned the phone facedown on the coffee table. “Rachel sends her love. You know she can't wait to get Maya with her girls again.”

“I know. So what's up with her and Sir Jeremy?”

“Nothing that I know of.”

“So does that mean you think there is something you don't know of?”

“I don't know. I don't want to think about it.”

“That's always a good plan.” Ethan was the family confronter and never let anything go. “I was thinking that while the kids are busy, maybe we could talk more about you.”

“I'd rather talk about Maya.”

“I know you would, but we have her whole life to talk about her.” He ran his fingers through his hair that had no intention of thinning. “Let's look at this blog of yours together and figure out what's next, okay?” I was a helper. Ethan was a fixer. My fixer.

“Before you try to talk me out of it again, I need to tell you that I like it. I really like it. Is that bad?” I lifted my cell phone and clicked over to Pop Philly.

“Let's look at you on the big screen, okay? My baby sister in Retina Display!”

He pulled his seventeen-inch laptop from the end table. I preferred my vast online world and capped façade to be accessible only via smartphone or netbook monitor. I could handle anything I could shut off and put in my pocket. Or pocketbook.

“Let's see what's going on in the Land of Izzy Lane, shall we?” Mercifully, Ethan clicked right to my Valentine's Day post comments, where my photo was a thumbnail, not a portrait, where the readers were the focus, not me. “I liked the idea of this post. I might not like what you're doing, but you sure are doing it well.”

I tamed a grin. I was doing it well. Readers were responding. And responding. And responding some more.

“People just really open up online. How did you know they would do that?”

“I didn't at first, but it happened with my old blog. People say things they'd never say in real life. Sometimes that's good; sometimes, not so much.”

“Well, I'm serious. These people feel comfortable here, in this space, with you. That's a testament to you, Iz, no matter if they know your name or not. You didn't become a counselor for no reason. You like to help people. And allowing people a safe place to vent is helping them. Why can't you do it as
you
?”

“I don't want anyone to know who I am. I'd be mortified! To have Bruce and, oh my God—Amber—reading personal things about me, no thank you. And everyone at work? Mom and Dad? Eddie wouldn't bother me so much, but Trish and her friends?”

“Jade and Rachel know it's you.”

“Right, and they think I'm dating Mac. Like all of them!” I wiggled my index finger at the monitor's stream of comments.

“I don't want to collude with you here, but really, you don't even have to tell Jade or Andrew Mann anything. Just do it here, online. A few hundred people here have told you their worst and most humiliating Valentine's Days. Tell them yours. Although I have a feeling your worst is about to happen next week.”

“Jeez. Thanks.” But Ethan was right. What would be worse than having to fabricate things that didn't happen with someone who didn't exist?

I believed that the readers would handle the truth better than Jade. Certainly better than Andrew, who thought Mac would be flattered by what I'd written about him. Andrew and Jade and the Pop Philly cheerleading squad wanted a dating blog. They'd already dinged me for pulling back on the Mac stories. I had tried to get them to refocus and reinvent, but this was part of Jade's plan for Pop Philly. I wished she'd let me in on what exactly the plan was, but I guess I had no right to ask for that. If I told her there was no Mac, she'd have to go to Andrew and tell him there was no Mac. And then there would be no ads. Jade would lose money and possibly her business. And I'd lose Jade.

“It's not my birthday yet. That's when I promised.”

Ethan was staring at the monitor, not paying attention to me. His mouth was moving as he read the comments. His eyebrows rose and furrowed, and he pursed his lips, mouthing a few silent
ooh
s.

I read over his shoulder. The forgotten Valentine's Day. The regifted necklace. The chocolate-
flavored
candy. The drugstore flowers. The breakups. The worst stories were the ones where Valentine's Day had just been ignored. My heart tugged at the memory of my first Valentine's Day as a mom, when Bruce gave me a heart-shaped silver locket with Noah's photo inside, then ruined it by saying, “What choice did I have? If I didn't get you something nice, I'd be an asshole.”