Neighborly(11)

The heat seems to have skyrocketed, and I’m feeling a little faint. Maybe I do need to quit while I’m ahead. Doug is wearing Sadie in the Bj?rn, so I could just go inside and let them carry the torch for our family. At parties, Doug likes to outlast everyone. He says you get the best dirt during cleanup.

I’m looking around, trying to decide where to insert myself, when I notice something. Where people were talking in groups earlier, now they’re talking in pairs. Cross-gender pairs, for the most part, and no one is with his or her own spouse. They’re standing closer than seems customary. Coy smiles, flirtatious laughter, the occasional hand on an arm . . . I’ve been around the block, so to speak. I know what chemistry looks like.

What is wrong with me? It’s daylight. Kids are nearby, and everyone is happy. More than happy. There’s no hint of jealousy, no sense that people feel their partners are behaving in an untoward fashion, and indeed, whatever touch is happening is totally PG.

But I think of the note. Is this what it means to be neighborly? If so, maybe I’m not. I don’t want anyone looking up at Doug the way, say, Tennyson is looking at Raquel’s husband, Bart. Or, for that matter, the way Raquel is looking at Tennyson’s husband, Vic.

It’s just conversation among neighbors, among friends, I’m sure.

Yet I’m still feeling slightly off-kilter when a petite woman in well-fitting jeans, a white tank top, and a chunky necklace approaches me. I haven’t seen her before. She’s got thick, straight strawberry-blonde hair that falls a few inches past her shoulders, which are as freckled as her face.

“I hope it’s OK that I’m crashing the party!” She has the best smile I’ve seen all day, and there have been a lot of smiles. “I live over there.” She points to the huge—and I mean huge—corner Tudor on the 1700 block. It looks new, too, like maybe the owners bought up two houses and knocked them down in order to build it. “I’m Andie Praeger.”

“I’m Kat Engells.” I don’t know what makes me do it, but I lean toward her. “I’m sorry. I’m so tired, I feel like I’m going to fall over.”

“It’s overwhelming, meeting all these new people. Especially when they’re so nice.”

Despite the heat, I feel a chill. “Why especially then?”

“Because you can’t just put in an appearance. You have to small talk for hours. And that is the definition of exhausting.” She glances back toward her house a bit furtively. “Listen, I can’t stay long, and I don’t want to hold you up. I just came to invite you over to our place for dinner. What night works for you?”

I can’t say no. Not that I want to, exactly, but it’s hard to know precisely what I want. I feel disoriented by her directness and by her charisma. It’s like I have no choice. “Um, Tuesday?”

“Perfect. My husband, Nolan—he says welcome, too, by the way—works way too many hours, so it’s a treat to be able to tell him he has to be home early on Tuesday. And my son, Fisher, is about Sadie’s age. I think we’ll all get along famously.” Another brilliant smile.

Fisher’s not with her, so she must have a nanny. Of course she does, with a house like that. She probably has a whole staff. A maid to clean, a butler to answer the door and mix martinis, and a nanny for Fisher. How else could the mother of a four-month-old look so fresh?

“Is six o’clock OK?” she asks, and I nod. “Can’t wait for Tuesday!” She sashays back to her house.

Doug comes over, and we’re both transfixed by Andie’s retreat. It’s not like she’s the prettiest at the party—that title would go to Tennyson or Yolanda—but she’s got a way. Your eyes follow her entrances and her exits. You want to know what she knows.

“That’s Andie,” I say. “She wants us to come over for dinner on Tuesday.” We watch her go inside the Tudor.

“I have to agree with you,” he says. I raise an eyebrow questioningly. “About the garbage. Can you imagine a woman like Andie inviting us to dinner with a garbage mountain in front of our house?”

He kisses the top of my head, and I lean into his shoulder. One of the neighbors shouts, “Get a room!” and everyone laughs, myself included. I realize the clusters are back. No more coupling with other people’s spouses. Tennyson, Raquel, and their husbands have become a convivial foursome. It’s like I’d imagined the earlier configurations, the flirting, the scent of sexual possibility. It’s a block party, a perfect summer day, with tipsy neighbors who truly like and trust each other.

The AV is utopia, and so egalitarian that you can even talk about money. No matter what you have, you’re good enough. Andie Praeger just sought me out. It’s a brave new world.

As Doug and I stand together, surveying, the tide starts to turn. It happens that quickly sometimes. One influential family says their goodbyes, and then everyone’s packing up, packing it in, leaving in droves, back to their houses. We’re not in party mode anymore; we’re in get-shit-done mode, the story of a parent’s life. A party is an organism with a natural life span, and this one is expiring quickly.

“Let’s go home,” Doug says into my hair.

“You don’t need to stay till the bloody end?”

He kisses my head again. “Not today.”