Three times a week, a local paper-called, appropriately, The Suburban-would land at our doorstep, free of charge. It was nearly as heavy as the sport utility vehicle that shared its name, thick like a weekend paper. But there was no magazine, no book section, no Week in Review. The Suburban rarely got above twenty pages, but it was stuffed with enough flyers to wrap an entire English village’s fish-and-chips orders for a month. The news stories most likely to get in were also those most likely to attract ads, so the opening of a new restaurant or hardware store always rated a few inches of copy. The Suburban’s editorials were of the “on the one hand this, on the other hand that” variety, and went to great pains to offend no one.
The only thing consistently worth reading was the letters page. There’d be someone ranting about high taxes, maybe a letter from a local politician defending himself against a taxpayer rant in the last issue, someone else complaining that the whole world was going to hell and someone ought to do something about it.
So, having decided against an early morning walk in the dark, I grabbed some unread Suburbans that had been stashed on the lower shelf of the coffee table, and leafed through them. I spotted a familiar name on the letters page. There was a submission from one Samuel Spender, who identified himself as president of the Willow Creek Preservation Society.
When will this council, and in particular the members of the Land Use Committee, recognize the importance of the Willow Creek Marshlands, and prevent the destabilization of this environmentally sensitive ecosystem? Development has already been allowed to encroach too closely upon this area, but there is still a chance for the council to do the right thing and stop the approval of the final phase of the Valley Forest Estates development. This phase, if allowed to proceed, will put another hundred homes within a pop can’s throw of the marshlands, threatening the homes, and the very survival, of a wide variety of species, both land-based and aquatic.
Standing at the banks of Willow Creek, surrounded by some of the only trees within a five-mile radius, I had worked out several characters’ motivations over the last few months. (Does the alien slime monster eat the Earthling’s brain out of hunger, or did a troubled upbringing make him do it?) When you stood next to Willow Creek, held your breath, and listened to the sounds of the shallow waters flowing by, you could almost imagine that you weren’t a few hundred yards from a soulless subdivision. I could remember, when we went in to sign the deal to buy our house, seeing this area on an oversized map on the wall behind Greenway. I had to agree with Spender’s letter, that it would be a shame to see the land near the creek developed, but felt like a hypocrite at the same time. What had this entire area looked like before the developers took over? What had the land where our house now stood been before the surveyors marked out where the streets would go, and the bulldozers came in and leveled everything? Had it been woodlands? Had it been farmland? Did corn used to come out of the ground where we now parked the cars? How many birds and groundhogs and squirrels had to relocate once the builders broke ground on Valley Forest Estates?
But at least our house didn’t back up onto a marshland. It’s not like we were tossing our trash into the creek. I’ve never been what you’d call a rabble-rouser, a guy who stands up at meetings and demands change. I’m not the type of taxpayer who gets on the phone to his representative and demands a stop sign at the corner. I’ve always been content to let others be activists, and maybe that comes from a background of reporting. You felt you were doing enough just by keeping a record of what the champions for change were up to. I gave you a voice, I got your story into the paper, but don’t ask me to get involved personally. I’ve got articles to write.
I didn’t know that the developers of Valley Forest Estates were a bunch of environmental rapists, but I did know that they were unable to properly caulk a window or keep a leaking shower from staining the kitchen ceiling below. Maybe they should be stopped from building more homes anywhere, not just on the banks of Willow Creek.
When I was finished reading the Suburbans and some sections of the Metropolitans from the previous weekend, the sun was up. I heard Sarah go into the kitchen, and she said nothing when I wandered in.
The remainder of the day before had not gone well. I expected to make amends with Sarah shortly after I returned with her car. But she took the car out again as soon as I was back with it. She went, it turned out, to the drugstore, and bought a tube of ointment for my burned hand. She pulled into the driveway half an hour after she’d left and found me sitting at the kitchen table, where I had been wondering whether Sarah had left me for good and what that meant in terms of how many burgers I should throw onto the barbecue. She pulled the tube out of her purse and threw it at me, nailing me right in the eye.
She didn’t speak to me for the rest of the evening. We started out in the same bed, but there was a gulf between us under the covers. I reached over tentatively once, to touch her back lightly, a lame gesture at trying to open communications, but Sarah shifted away, and matted the covers down around her as a defense against any more entreaties. So I slipped out from under the covers, tucked a pillow under my arm and grabbed a blanket from the closet, and went downstairs.
Paul and Angie, taking their mother’s side, had given me the cold shoulder the rest of the day. Paul had filled Angie in, when she got home, on my car-hiding stunt. I tried to explain to them, while their mother was upstairs, that it hadn’t been my intention to be mean. What I’d done was for their mother’s own good. Sure, she was angry with me now, but did anyone think she’d ever leave her key in the lock again? Huh? Did they?
They walked out of the room on me. And the next morning, at breakfast, they said nothing as they poured themselves juice and spooned down some strawberry yogurt. Actually, Paul used a spoon only to finish off the residue of yogurt he was unable to consume by tipping the small plastic container up to his mouth and hurtling it down like an extremely thick milkshake. And then they left together, walking a half block to the corner to meet the high school bus.
I offered to make Sarah some tea and toast, but she indicated she was fine, she’d take care of it, although what she actually said was “Move.”
I went to reach for the kettle to fill it from the tap, but she nudged me out of the way and grabbed it herself.
“I’m really sorry,” I said.
Sarah said nothing.
“And thanks for the stuff, that ointment. I was surprised you still went out and got it for me. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you hadn’t. I put it on my hand and it was right back to normal this morning. It stung a bit in the night, you know, but then it went away, so, thanks.”
Sarah got out a teabag and a slice of bread for the toaster. When couples aren’t speaking to each other, all the other sounds in a room become heightened. The ticking of the electric kettle warming up, the scraping of the butter knife across hot toast, the clinking of a spoon against the inside of a china cup. As much to break the silence as to find out what was going on in the world, Sarah turned on the small under-the-cupboard TV. In addition to reading a couple of papers every morning, she watches a lot of CNN and local news so that she has a good handle on what’s happening before she gets to the paper.
“-the third house in the region police have raided this year,” said the morning man with the very nice hair. “Police are alarmed by the growing number of people who have turned their homes into massive marijuana-growing operations. Not only is it against the law, but it’s a major fire hazard, considering that these illicit growers bypass the electric meters, sometimes inexpertly, and all that extra power can overheat circuits with disastrous results.