They met one summer day through the high chain-link fence between their back yards. His yard was just plain brown dirt. Hers was full of dusty bags of fertilizer and tools, haphazardly scattered where she’d started planting flowers in the tough soil. The man had seen neighbors come and go over the many years he’d lived there, in the dark corner of the cul-de-sac. “Through seven Presidents,” he told the girl, laughing nervously and swatting his neck as if to catch mosquitoes. He was only sixty but looked far older. Vitiligo had stripped his brittle hair of its color, made his face seem riddled with fat freckles. The girl was pretty, sturdy, in her early thirties. She had been living next door to the man for two months already. He had just been waiting for the proper moment to introduce himself.
“I’m Jeb,” the man said.
“That’s a long time, Jeb,” the girl said to him. “That many Presidents.”
Jeb laughed again and sighed and looked at her through the fence. His shock of white hair gleamed in a single ray of light falling from the girl’s yard into his. His strange, spotted face and bulbous nose made the girl look away. White strands of loose thread hung down from her jean shorts and fluttered around her thighs. Her breasts, Jeb noticed, were untethered—no bra. What color were her eyes? Jeb looked down at them, perplexed to find that they were of different colors, one a strange, violet shade of blue, the other green with flecks of black and honey. Coils of green rubber hose snaked through the mess in the yard behind her. He was glad, he told the girl, to have a new neighbor, and relieved that the property was being cared for after so long. The previous owners of the house had ripped out its walls, banged around all day, left busted garbage bags of broken plaster on the curb, chalking up the blacktop. The bank had taken it over in a terrible state of disrepair, then sold it to the girl for next to nothing.
“How are you and your husband liking the neighborhood?” Jeb asked through the fence. But he already knew that the boy was gone. In the past few weeks, Jeb had watched the boy and the girl through the scrim of brown paper covering their den windows. He’d heard their spats and squabbles. The boy’s motorcycle had been missing from its spot under the garage awning for days.
“Trevor left,” the girl said, crossing her arms. She looked down at the ground, hid her toes behind a tall tuft of crabgrass.
“He’s at work,” Jeb said, nodding, pretending to misinterpret her. “What is his profession, if I may ask?”
“No, I mean he’s gone,” the girl said. “For good this time.”
“He’s left you all alone?” Jeb hooked the fingers of one hand into the chain-link fence and took a step toward her. He placed his other hand over his heart and let his strange, sagging mandible soften into a deep frown. “That’s just awful. Poor dear.” He shook his head.
“Whatever, you know,” the girl said. She made fists of her hands, then spread her fingers out like bombs exploding. “That’s life.”
“I do know,” Jeb said gravely, his thick lips trembling in false sympathy. That was one way he knew to affect women—to seem overcome by his own unruly emotions, and then to apologize for them. “I’m sorry,” he said, gasping and frowning again. Jeb saw that there was no ring on the girl’s finger. She wasn’t a widow or a divorcée; she was only newly single, and not for long, Jeb supposed. “I just know the feeling all too well,” he said.
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“Shit, don’t cry,” the girl said. Despite being pretty and soft of flesh, she had something harsh about her, Jeb thought. Something crude.
In the silence, Jeb felt the girl’s gaze shift across his narrow torso, the crêpey, spotted skin on his thin arms. She was assessing him, he knew. He cleared his throat and brought his hands together, clapped them twice, as though he’d just finished a difficult task. He corrected his slumped posture. “Our houses are mirror images, you know,” he said. He held up his palms side by side in front of him. “La destra. And la sinistra, that’s me. I know a little Italian,” he added. “I took a class once, years and years ago.” Then his voice took on a bright, folksy twang as he said, as if the girl had prompted him to, “Well, come on over sometime if you get lonesome. Have a cup of coffee with your old next-door neighbor. You’re welcome anytime.”
“Are you Southern?” the girl asked, ignoring his invitation. She looked snooty. She looked distrustful.
“I’m an Alabama boy,” Jeb answered. “But I’ve lived here forever. Too long. Seven Presidents, if you can believe that,” he said, laughing at the repeated joke as though to cheer her with his senility. When he smiled he exposed the deep rot of his clawlike teeth. They were nearly black along the gums. “Nice to meet you,” he said. He put out his hand to mime a handshake through the chain link. The girl sniggered.
“We can shake E.T. style,” she said, and extended her index finger through the fence. Jeb met the tip of it with his. He marked the moment in his mind, the feel of her finger—hot, dry, resilient. “Bye,” she said.