Trudy chooses to ignore the interaction she just witnessed — the ugliness of it, the evident fear the child has of his father’s anger — and presents the petition. “The city council is contemplating selling the library park to developers,” she begins. He says nothing. “If we get enough signatures on this petition, we may be able to save the park.”
She holds the clipboard with the petition out to him, but he doesn’t take it. Instead he says, “I don’t sign anything. You never know where your signature ends up.”
Trudy can feel anger rising in her like a flush, but she attempts civility. “I can guarantee you it will end up at the city council meeting on the first Tuesday of next month.”
“And then where? Can you guarantee me that it won’t go any further?”
Trudy is nonplussed. She has no idea what he means. But it’s immediately clear to her that he lives as if under siege. “Do you want to save the park or not? You have kids, don’t you want them to have a place to play?”
“My kids play in the backyard.”
“So you don’t care what happens to the park?”
“You got it, lady.”
“How civic-minded of you.” Trudy can’t help it. Her allotment of civility has been used up and he’s not stupid, although she wishes he were, and he immediately gets the sarcasm.
“Get off my property. Do-gooders like you just gum up the system.” And he closes the door in her face. It feels like a slap.
She crosses his driveway to hers — no fence in between, no line of shrubbery. Dammit! They never needed any demarcation when Vivianna was there, and now she regrets the open space with every particle of her being.
In the kitchen she gets herself a glass of water, furious and agitated, shaken really, but she refuses to call it that. That man makes her so angry she could spit! She glares out her kitchen window directly into his, across their two driveways. When Vivianna was alive Trudy never minded the proximity. It was a way to keep tabs on the older woman, making sure she was moving about and everything seemed all right. Now, with the Yeller next door, it feels like the privacy of her kitchen is being violated every single day. Curtains, those frilly things Trudy has always hated, she needs to get curtains! And then she argues with herself, No, I will not give him the satisfaction!
The petition lies on the kitchen table and the first page isn’t even completely filled. Trudy knows she has to go back out there. There’s the whole other side of the street. Seven more doorbells to ring. Oh, how she’d love to just stop. Forget it. But then there’s the park. And the principle of the thing. And the fact that she’s not a quitter. And the fact that she has nothing else to do on this Sunday afternoon.
Sundays were always gardening days when Brian was alive. Not that Trudy gardened. No, that was Brian’s domain, and over the years he made of their spacious backyard an Eden. That’s the way Trudy thinks about it. She couldn’t name more than a few of the shrubs and vines that Brian planted, but that never stopped her from appreciating the way they enclose the backyard in a circle of green, splashed with the vivid colors of their flowers, coral, deep purple, pristine white, and in the summer, the ruby red of the bougainvillea. And years ago, when Brian decided to grow tomatoes, then squash and peppers and eggplant in the summer and lettuce and snap peas and broccoli and cabbage in the winter — they had their own urban farm.
The garden misses Brian, even she can tell. Armando, their gardener, does his best to keep things growing, but he comes just once a week and his job is really only to cut the lawn and tidy up. The extra he does — cutting back leggy shrubbery, watering when she has forgotten to, fertilizing the plants just when they need it — Trudy is grateful for but she truly feels she can’t ask more of him. And so the garden mourns Brian’s absence in its own way.
Enough, Trudy tells herself. Maybe she says it out loud. She’s doesn’t know these days when she speaks her thoughts and when she doesn’t. There’s nobody there to hear her, so she’s not sure.
She takes the petition off the table and heads out the front door. The house on the corner, the opposite side of the street, has a white picket fence. The gate is painted yellow and has a heart-shaped cutout atop it. Too precious, Trudy immediately thinks, where are we, Mayberry RFD? There’s a tiny bench on the small front porch with a matching heart-shaped pillow on it. Trudy almost turns around. These people aren’t going to sign my petition, but they do. A white-haired couple in their seventies is as nice as can be. Neither needs to hear Trudy explain the whole problem. The man simply says to her, “You have honest eyes. Of course I’ll sign.” And then, as Trudy starts to turn away, step down off the little porch, he throws her the curve. “I liked your husband very much.”
Trudy is stopped. “So did I,” she says, “and thirty-two years wasn’t enough.”
“You poor dear” is what the woman says, and Trudy shoots back before she can stop herself, “I’m just fine!”
And then, once the couple has closed their door Trudy has to sit down on the curb, her legs not steady enough to take her to the next house. Those white-haired people, that was supposed to be her future, Brian’s and hers. Growing old together, tottering around in their little house until they were well into their nineties. Trudy would never have admitted it to anyone, but that was her plan for the future. Now all she sees is an empty space where loss is a daily companion. Despite herself, she sighs, then pushes herself to stand and finish the task. She takes a measure of this side of the street. There are six more houses to go.
At the house next to the older couple, a wood-shingled bungalow directly opposite her own, no one is home. She tries the one next to that, a beige, nondescript ranch. And again, no one answers the bell, but there’s a truck in the driveway and Trudy hears muffled music from somewhere inside the house. She tries to remember who lives there but can’t.
She rings the bell again and then knocks smartly on the door. No one appears, but she sees the closed living room drapes move on the large window, as if someone was peeking out. Trudy is sure now that someone is home and it makes her inordinately furious. She’s not some religious proselytizer who will talk endlessly about soul saving. Is that what she looks like?! She isn’t even a Girl Scout with disgusting cookies to sell. She’s a respectable woman, here about a park. Someone should have the decency to answer the door!
She tramps off the porch, elbows the shrubbery aside in order to sidle close to the house, and makes it to the front window. She knocks quickly and loudly and is startled to see a similarly startled male Asian face pop up not three inches from her own. The faces stare at each other through the plate glass until the man disappears and the curtains close and Trudy is further incensed. He is home. He needs to sign the petition.
She marches to the front door and knocks again. In fact, she continues knocking until he finally opens the door and they assess each other. Trudy sees a short man, probably in his late sixties, with steel gray hair neatly combed and parted, wearing a plaid, short-sleeved shirt and well-worn jeans that sag off his skinny frame. His face is impassive as he surveys the chubby little woman with the determined stance who is holding a clipboard. Anger radiates out of her like heat waves. Could she be so angry simply because he didn’t want to open the door? he wonders. But he says nothing. She rang the bell. Let her speak.