The Neighbors (4 page)

The day Andrew’s dad didn’t come home was the day Julianne Morrison stopped being his mom.

Julie was born and raised in Creekside, and while most people ran from the little Kansas town dead-center in the middle of the state, she had always loved it like a kid loved Disneyland—unconditionally; the happiest place on earth. She had grown up in the same house Andrew was raised in: a two-story ranch-style home with a charming wraparound porch and a bench swing that hung just beyond the back door. His grandfather, PopPop, had painted that porch a pretty pastel blue—Gamma’s favorite color—and had built the swing out of bits of scrap wood when Julie was a little girl. He and Gamma would sit on it for hours during the summer, watching the sun dip beneath an ocean of farmland, lighting up the wheat like reeds of gold.

After both Gamma and PopPop passed, six-year-old Drew moved into that beautiful house with his parents. He hadn’t wanted to at first, convinced it would be haunted. But they were happy there. The three of them would have movie nights every weekend; one Fourth of July, they played hide-and-seek in the wheat behind the house. Andrew had squatted between the tall reeds, waiting to be found. When he heard his parents getting close, he peeked between the flag-like leaves. He caught them kissing beneath a starry sky, the pop of distant fireworks echoing across the landscape.

But then things started to change. Rather than watching Saturday-morning cartoons with him the way they used to, his mom and dad drifted through rooms of the house like ghosts. They avoided one another, and when they did run into each other—usually around dinnertime—Drew would listen to them gnaw at each other while he silently ate his food. He wasn’t sure what had happened,
still
didn’t know how it had all fallen apart, but before he knew it, his mom would plop him on the couch with a bowl of popcorn, flip on the TV, and Andrew would spend movie nights alone.

Most mornings started out like all the rest, with his mom whipping up a batch of her specialty: apple pancakes with whipped sour cream. His dad had a job at a potato processing plant just a few miles shy of town. Every morning, after Rick finished his pancakes and downed his OJ, he’d ruffle Drew’s hair as he passed the couch, and he’d leave for work without so much as a good-bye. Every morning, as soon as Drew heard his boots on the front steps, he would spring from the sofa and rush to the window to watch his dad pull the old Chevy out of the driveway. Back then, he wanted to be just like his pop—to work at a big factory and drive a cool truck. From his six-year-old kid perspective, those were the only two things you needed to be a man.

But the morning Andrew’s father left for good, things were different. It was summertime, so he was still in his Transformer
pajamas, watching cartoons on basic cable. There were no pancakes, no conversation between his mom and pop. When Drew asked his father about the old gym bag tossed over his shoulder, Rick had pulled him into a tight hug, ruffled his hair just like every other morning, and told him, “See you later, champ.” But rather than climbing into the Chevy, his dad climbed into someone else’s truck instead. He was gone before Drew’s mom stepped out of the kitchen to check on him.

“Get away from the window; turn on the TV,” she told him. “
Scooby-Doo
is on.”

“OK, Mom,” Drew replied, squeaky-voiced, but he lingered at the window for longer than usual. Julie crossed the room, pulling the curtain closed on the still-parked Chevy just beyond the glass.

“How about we fill up your pool today?” she suggested, and that mysterious truck melted from Andrew’s mind. Visions of sitting in his blue plastic pool blinded him with youthful bliss, and he raced up the stairs to his room to fish out his miniature Speedos and inflatable shark.

It was only when Drew found himself standing stark naked in his bedroom, trying to get a scrawny leg through the hole in his swim trunks, that he wondered whether he should have told her about the strange truck his dad had climbed into. But if he told her about the truck, he’d have to tell her about the lady driving it, and that would ruin his day in the pool as quick as a tornado could ruin a Kansas town.

After that, the house decayed into a shadow of its former self. The whitewashed clapboards faded and peeled. The roof was ravaged by decades of wind, and the missing shingles never got replaced, because, his increasingly listless mother reasoned, the next storm would blow them right back off.

All that was left of Drew’s father was Rick’s pickup and his mother’s sense of betrayal—betrayal that had festered into something that Andrew could no longer handle. She wouldn’t set foot
outside her home: not to go to the grocery store, not to check the mail a few steps from the front porch stairs. Years before, she sometimes forced herself to walk along the wraparound porch and sit in her daddy’s swing, but she could no longer even manage that. A few steps outside sent her into a panic, sure that the doors would lock and she’d never be able to get inside again. Andrew had been nine the first time he went to the grocery store alone, a shopping list stuffed into one pocket, a fistful of dollars stuffed into the other. He rode his bike more than three miles in a single direction in the blazing August sun, only to realize, far too late, that he had no way of getting those groceries back home. With plastic shopping bags heavy on his handlebars, he walked his bike all the way back to Cedar Street. When he finally arrived, the half gallon of milk had gone warm.

By the time Drew turned twelve, he found himself paying bills out of a dwindling bank account, forging his mother’s name on checks so the city wouldn’t turn off their water, electricity, gas. Julie had never worked—they had lived off Rick’s salary. When his dad disappeared, the government checks started coming in. Drew would deposit them into an ATM before school each week, and would stop by the same machine after school to pull cash out. He had made the mistake of walking into the bank only once; the girl behind the counter had smirked at the kid trying to cash his mother’s welfare check. The teller nearly refused to give it back to him, insisting that what he was doing was illegal, finally relenting when Andrew burst into a fit of panicked tears.

Somewhere in the middle of Andrew’s fourteenth year, Julie stopped cooking. Suddenly, with the bills and the groceries and nearly constant takeout, welfare wasn’t enough—and she wasn’t helping the situation any, drinking through whatever was left of weekly checks. Random men would stop by the house each week, toting bags full of bargain-basement alcohol. One week, when there was nothing left in their cash reserve, Andrew couldn’t pay the guy who showed up on their doorstep. Rather than letting
him leave, Julie pulled him inside and led him upstairs. Drew sat on the couch with his hands over his ears, his face hidden against his knees. He started saving for his mother’s booze after that, always careful to have enough cash so it would never happen again.

By the time Andrew graduated high school, he gave up any future plans and got himself a job. But the bills kept coming, kept growing. Julie kept drinking.

Everyone felt bad for poor Julie Morrison, but from where Drew was standing, he was the one who deserved Creekside’s compassion. Between the job and the bills and finding his mom passed out drunk on the couch, he started to wonder just how fair life was.

And then he found out.

T
he next morning, Harlow Ward squinted past coils of steam as the new boy’s pickup rolled down the street. Mickey’s Pontiac was parked in the driveway—the kind of car the devil would drive if he walked the earth and lived in the heartland. She supposed that was appropriate; after all, Mickey Fitch was no saint.

She drained her cup of coffee, ran her thumb along the rim to remove the blotch of red lipstick, and crossed the dining room, her heels silent on the carpet. Dragging her fingers along the tabletop, she paused to admire her reflection in its polished surface, smiling at the woman who gazed back at her from below. Entering the kitchen with the distinctive click of high heels, she placed the still warm mug in the sink and gazed out the window onto a picturesque backyard. The hydrangeas were in full bloom, and the wooden trellis that clung to the side of the house was already heavy with rosebuds.

She leaned into her reflection in the glass, pursed her painted lips, and fluffed the easy curls that framed her face. She had an errand to run.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she announced, straightening her pencil skirt with one hand as she balanced a plate of cookies in the other. She crossed the living room—the carpet so white, it was a wonder anyone had set foot on it at all. “I’m going next door.”

“Should I go with you?” Red asked, but she offered him a knowing smile and approached his recliner in response. She stopped beside him, her fingers tracing a path from his ear to beneath his chin.

“Oh, Red,” she said, “what in heaven’s for? To help me take care of business?” She chuckled, then stepped out of the house.

Andrew never had a taste for thrift stores. They reminded him of just how bad off he and his mom were. But starting a new life meant new stuff, and he had no money for that any other way.

The place he’d found a mile from Mickey’s place was a rundown secondhand junk shop that smelled of mothballs and unwashed clothes. There were two people working there, both sweet elderly women who would snap themselves in half with the least bit of effort. They followed him around like baby ducks, pointing out items that he had zero interest in. But he liked the attention, and they liked fawning over the “nice young man” visiting their store. After forty-five minutes of walking the over-stuffed aisles with them, Drew decided on a mattress, a bed frame with no headboard, a badly refinished chest of drawers, and a slightly cockeyed bookcase—all for sixty bucks.

Asking the women to help haul a mattress across a parking lot would result in two dead bodies in the bed of his truck, and digging a pair of graves for a couple of doting grandmas wasn’t an efficient way to spend his afternoon. So, armed with the store’s only dolly, Andrew struggled with his purchases alone. The mattress was the hardest part. He dragged it through the store and
onto the sidewalk, then hoisted it upright just as the wind picked up, nearly tearing it out of his hands and into the street. The grandmas watched him through the window with their hands pressed to their mouths, waiting to see if he’d be lifted off his feet like a kite. They knocked to get Drew’s attention, offering pantomimed advice. By the time the mattress was on the truck, he was exhausted, but it was only the beginning. The bookcase was next.

After half an hour of struggling in the hot prairie sun, Drew collapsed inside the cab of his truck and blasted the air as high as it would go. With the AC mercifully battering his face, he thought about how he’d have to wrestle all this crap out of the truck and into the house
without
a dolly, unless by some divine fate Casa de Mickey was equipped with such a utilitarian device.

He could breach the perimeter of that white picket fence and ask the neighbors. A house like that was destined to have a fully stocked garage. Maybe they’d invite him inside, if only for a minute. Or maybe he and Mr. Perfect Neighbor would unload his truck while the missus brought freshly squeezed lemonade out to them on a silver tray. Invigorated by the idea, he pulled the seat belt across his chest and pushed the Chevy into first.

A Sonic drive-in sign distracted him. His stomach rumbled. He’d just about kill for a strawberry shake, and nobody could tell him he hadn’t earned it.

Harlow clicked up the cracked walkway of the house next door, grimacing at the dead lawn. It ruined the neighborhood like an ugly girl ruined a group photo. Most of the houses along Magnolia were charming—naturally, none so much as the Wards’—except for this wreck. Then again, it was her mother who had taught her that trick: standing next to the ugly girl in the picture made Harlow even prettier. That patchy lawn made hers look immaculate. Those sagging gutters made 668 Magnolia Lane look like an absolute dream.

She fluffed her hair, pulled a single Kleenex from her bag, balanced the plate of cookies on top of an open palm, and pressed the doorbell through the tissue with a grimace.
Ridiculous
, she thought.
How do UPS men not die of contamination?
She waited, pressed the bell again, and rolled her eyes when there was no reply. Everything was far more complicated on this side of the picket fence.