Neighborly
My neighbor only talks to me on punishingly hot days, days when the asphalt steams, the milk sweats, and a mere ten minutes walking the dog will wilt you like a green onion. On scorchers like these, the mailman wears Airpods to ward off chat. Smart. Meanwhile, the ferns bear their depression nakedly, knowing that as soon as the humidity lifts, I will replace them with mums. Tough luck. I am nine months pregnant, hauling a trash bag twice my size to the dumpster as fast as I can. The chipper hello hits me as a bead of sweat Niles down my lip.
“How’s it going?” asks my neighbor.
“Good,” I say.
“It won’t be long now.”
“Almost there,” I agree.
I don’t remember what we talked about before I got pregnant. Surely, she can see my sweat, the trash bag. My feet, once reasonably sized, are now large as proofing loaves. They rise, yeasty, through the cracks in my sandals. This is not the right dew point at which one should make conversation.
“Where’s Bridget?” she asks.
“At camp,” I tell her. “It’s sort of a reunion. A mother-daughter weekend.”
A hundred miles away, my sweet wife is teaching my niece how to fish, how to make a s’more, and which elderly pony is the most forgiving of novices. She left yesterday. Took her pillow. For the umpteenth time, I congratulate myself on marrying the type of person who not only acknowledges, but adores, the ponytailed tots of my family. This niece will probably wear Bridget’s wedding dress one day. Not mine, but hers. If not for our neighbor, I could be having these tender thoughts indoors.
“So, you’re going to let your daughter go to camp?” she asks.
“I think so,” I say hesitantly. “We both had good experiences.”
I sense that this is the wrong answer, that I have unwittingly assembled her soap box. Jesus, I’m molten. Can’t she see that I’m molten?
“I didn’t trust anybody with my son,” she begins. “No, ma’am. I’ve always been protective of him.”
Thus begins the Homer-ific tale of every place she does not trust: daycares of all stripes, the local high school—she lists each gang by name—camps not run by the Seventh Day Adventist Church, and the state as a whole, where, did you know, human trafficking rates are shockingly high. Softening, she admits she eventually allowed her son to go to the local high school. He had a nice time. Though he did notice the gangs. Having met the son, I find myself thinking he’s far too shy to be invited to a gang. I tend to imagine the members as bold and street-smart. Wily. Meanwhile, this boy offers me a soft wave if we leave the house at the same time. Like the mailman, he does not chat.
I wonder if the neighbor can smell my trash, which, in the heat, has begun to stink, and then I wonder if I can ask for her help getting it to the dumpster. I’m not supposed to lift anything heavy. Or eat sushi. The first commandment is harder to abide by, especially with Bridget out of town. The neighbor keeps talking, and I feel guilty for my impatience. She’s always been perfectly nice to us, the type of person who will tell you if you’ve left your car lights running or if she’s seen a coyote lurking or when the power’s supposed to come back on. She knows what we’re naming our daughter, remembers. As she brings the conversation to a close, I take a chance.
“Would you mind helping me with this?” I point to the trash bag. “I’m not really supposed to lift anything.”
“Sure,” she says.
We agree that I’ll get the front and she’ll get the back. I apologize for needing her help. As we waddle to the dumpster, I can see the bag is probably too heavy for her too. She’s in jeans—how?—and has the dainty hands of a saint. I hope the bag hasn’t split, spilling its unholy juices onto her, and that she’s not feeling used, and that I won’t go into labor as we push the colossus through the green metal door.
“Thank you,” I say once, twice, three times, amen.
Stepping inside, she gives me a hearty wave. We have tuckered each other out.
Summer tumbles on. I sleep and eat and whine about heartburn. Waddling up to the neighborhood pool in my royal blue, stretched-to-the-limit swimsuit, I wonder who is looking out their window. Can they tell I’m exhausted? Do they think I’m ready? I tell my friends I’m not worried about the birthing part—there’s no way out of it—but secretly I wonder if I’ll be so tired afterwards that I’ll tear up my marriage like a great white shark. Hopefully not. Probably not. You do not leave a person who travels a hundred miles to paddle a canoe with your niece. And so I towel off and put the fears to bed. Day after day, swim after swim. Part of me looks out for my neighbor when I leash up the dog, but another part can’t help but think we’re strangely connected. Me at the front end of motherhood, her at the back. She has kept her son out of a gang; I am just now pulling a crib sheet taut across the bed. And while the walls of our condos are too thick to hear the details of each other’s lives—the fights, the movie nights, the stowing of forks and spoons—sometimes, in the upstairs bathroom, I can just make out the sound of the faucet. Huh, I think. We must be running a bath at the very same time. One wall away, a Monday night baptism, while the people we love sleep soundly and the air conditioner flows merrily on.
Mary Liza Hartong (@marylizahartong) lives and writes in her hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. Her work has been published in Country Living, The Saturday Evening Post, The Nashville Scene, Writer’s Digest, and many more outlets. Her first novel (Love and Hot Chicken) is out now from HarperCollins. When she’s not writing, she can be found chilling with her sweet wife and goofy baby.