Greene Street was isolated, with almost no traffic except the residents, making it safe for street play. On August 1 the kids begged the movers to unload their bikes and Eddie’s Big Wheel before anything else so they could cruise their new turf. The moving crew was a bunch of young Mexican guys who had kids of their own, so they were happy to oblige and to watch the children play, carefree, as they unpacked and carried a household’s worth of stuff.
Bette spent the morning testing her high school Spanish, sending boxes to the right rooms, and having furniture placed according to her intuition—the sofa facing the window, bookshelves bordering the fireplace. Around 11:00 a.m., Dale came running in with a pair of chubby boys, maybe ten years old, probably twins, both with the same bashful look and matching dimples.
“Mom! This is Keyshawn and Trennelle. They live four houses over.”
“Keyshawn. Trennelle,” Bette said. “Howdy do?”
“They said I could have lunch with them.”
Bette eyed the boys. “Is that true?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said either Keyshawn or Trennelle.
“Did you just call me ma’am?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You, Keyshawn, have good manners. Or are you Trennelle?”
The boys pointed to themselves, saying their names. Since they dressed differently, not like twins in some movie, Bette would always know who was who. Plus, Keyshawn had his hair in perfectly tied cornrows while Trennelle’s head was shaved nearly clean.
“What’s on the menu?” Bette asked.
“Today we have franks and beans, ma’am.”
“Who is making this lunch, exactly?”
“Our Gramma Alice,” Trennelle told her. “Our mother works at AmCoFederal Bank. Our father works for Coca-Cola, but we’re not allowed to drink Coca-Cola. Only on Sunday. Our Gramma Diane lives in Memphis. We don’t have granddads. Our mother will come to your house when she comes home and will bring you flowers from our garden to say ‘welcome wagon.’ Our father will come by, too, with some Coca-Cola, if it’s allowed, or Fanta, if you prefer. We didn’t ask Gramma Alice if there is going to be enough food for Eddie and Sharri, so they can’t come.”
“Mom! Yes? No?” Dale was just about to burst.
“Have something green with the franks and beans and I’m thinking yes.”
“Would apples be good with you, ma’am? For something green? We have green apples.”
“Apples would do the trick, Trennelle.”
The three kids lit out of the house, off the porch, down the steps, under the low-hanging limbs of the sycamore, and across the lawn. Bette followed just far enough to watch them rush through a front door four houses away. Then she hollered for Eddie and Sharri to park their bikes on the front lawn and come in for the sandwiches she would make as soon as she found the fixings.
The movers were done and gone by three, leaving Bette to the pleasure of unpacking her kitchen directly from box to drawer or shelf. She no longer had any of Bob’s gimmicky appliances, the one-use inventions he collected for his so-called culinary hobby. Bette never loved cooking, but since the split her no-nonsense meals had developed some frills. Her creamed spinach had actually gotten the kids to ask for spinach. Her ground-turkey burritos were stuffed with beans and cheese, but never fell apart when eaten by hand. The kids celebrated when Bette formalized Tuesdays as Turkeeto Night and looked forward to them every week. When the boxes were empty and the shelves looked like they made sense, Bette fired up the one appliance she truly prized, the espresso maker. Made in Germany, the stainless-steel behemoth had cost a thousand predivorce dollars, took up nearly a square yard of counter space, and sported as many gauges and valves as the submarine in Das Boot. She so loved the apparatus she often greeted it in the morning with “Hey, big boy.”
She sat down, finally, on the living room sofa with a massive mug of espresso and steamed 2 percent milk. The big window looked like a cinema screen showing a movie called I Live Here Now. A cavalcade of kids was entering and exiting the frame, a group that either lived on Greene Street or made the block their Our Gangish HQ. A towheaded girl was inspecting Sharri’s mouth like an advance agent for the tooth fairy giving an estimate of what to expect. A pack of boys set up a T-ball stand, each taking whacks with a plastic bat while others shagged the hits. Dale and another girl were dangling from the low limbs of the sycamore. Keyshawn and Trennelle must have had a sibling, a dimpled girl in braids, who was helping Ed ride her pink two-wheeler, running alongside of him as he coasted up onto the front lawn of the house across the street.
That lawn belonged to the Patel family—was that what the real estate agent said? Patel? An Indian name for sure. The Patels must have had a kid every eleven months, judging from the black hair and brown skin of five kids out there, each a perfect match of the brother or sister, just a head shorter. The older Patel girls had iPhones or Samsungs, which they checked every forty-five seconds. They took a lot of pictures of Eddie on the pink bike.
Bette tried to count all the kids, but like with a school of fish in an oversize aquarium, the roiling action made it impossible. Call it a dozen children out there, teeming, laughing, bolting to and fro in varying shades of flesh.
“I’ve moved into the UN,” she said to no one. That struck her as something to tell Maggie, her oldest friend and the woman who had coached her through every step of the shattering of her marriage—from that first pop to the reality of her desperate unhappiness, the separation-of-no-return, the search for a lawyer, and the three-plus years of Marriage Dissolution mumbo jumbo and nights of red, red wine. Her phone was in her purse, sitting in the middle of the living room floor. She was reaching for it when she saw Paul Legaris coming up her driveway.
He was an older fellow wearing baggy cargo shorts and a faded red T-shirt with a crinkled Detroit Red Wings logo. He wore glasses that were a tad too angular and hip for a man his age, which Bette figured was around eight years her senior. He had flip-flops on his feet; it was summer, after all, but since it was a weekday, Bette took the lack of shoes to mean that here was a guy between jobs. Though maybe he worked nights. Maybe he’d won the Powerball. Who knew?
Paul was carrying a bag containing a HoneyBaked ham—this was not one of Bette’s pops; the brand was advertised on the bag. Though the front door was wide open—it had been all day, what with movers and kids streaming in and out like subway patrons—he rang the doorbell without a follow-up of “Anyone home?”
“Howdy do?” Bette offered, stepping to the threshold.
“Paul Legaris. Your next-door neighbor,” he said.
“Bette Monk.”
“Though I come in no official capacity,” he said, holding out the ham bag, “welcome.”
Bette eyed the HoneyBaked. “You know, with a name like Monk…” She let that trail off. Paul looked confused, like an actor who had dropped a dialogue cue. “I could be a Jewish mother,” Bette said.” “A bag of pork would then be…”
“Treif.” Paul knew his lines after all. “Forbidden.”
“But I’m not.”
“Okay then.” Paul offered the sack and Bette took it. “When I moved in, someone on the block left one on my welcome mat and I lived off the thing for weeks.”