“Thanks. Can I offer a coffee in kind?” Bette did not really want to spend any more time with her neighbor, a single man (she had clocked his lack of a wedding band), who, by living right next door, was the only unanticipated and undesired reality of her new life on Greene Street. Still, she had to be polite.
“Nice of you,” he said, remaining on the porch, on the other side of the plane that was the open door. “But on moving day you must have a million chores on the punch list.”
Bette appreciated the decline. She did have a million things to do. She nodded toward the pack of kids out on Greene Street. “Any of those yours?”
“Mine live with their mother. You’ll see them come the right weekend.”
“Got it. Thanks for this.” She nodded at the ham in the bag in her hand. “Maybe some ham-bone soup, come Friday.”
“Enjoy,” Paul said, beginning his retreat from the porch. “Greene Street will be good to you. Has been for me. Oh…” He turned back, stepping once again into the doorway. “Are you doing anything tonight?”
Are you doing anything tonight?
Bette had heard those very words too many times in the last few years. Are you doing anything tonight? From men divorced, single, unattached, and lonely—guys who had kids who lived with ex-wives, who lived in apartments, who searched Internet dating sites for any kind of intellectual or romantic or sexual hookup. Guys who took one look at her and thought, I wonder if she is doing anything tonight.
Pop!
The vision: Paul is keeping an eye out his window, looking to see when Bette Monk, divorced, attractive (still) pulls into the driveway right next door. When she does he saunters over with an excuse to take up some of her time—a piece of her mail that accidentally came to his box, word of a lost dog in the neighborhood, concern for Eddie’s sprained ankle. He’ll linger too long, chat too idly with a look on his face hinting of neediness.
Bette’s mind processed the vision, the very first blemish in the fabric of her new life on Greene Street—the guy next door looking for a woman.
“I’m busy with the house,” she said. “Lots to do.” She drank some of her coffee.
“Nine or so I’m setting my telescope up,” Paul said. “There’s a partial lunar eclipse tonight that will max around a quarter after. Nice red shadow of the earth will cover about half the moon. It won’t last long, but you could have a look.”
“Ah,” Bette said, leaving it at that.
Paul flip-flopped off the porch and across the lawn, just as Sharri came bounding up with something small in her hand, a little pebble of pure white.
“Mom! Look!” Sharri squealed. There was some blood on her fingers. “My tooth!”
In the dying light of that first afternoon, the street quieted down as everyone broke for various family suppertimes. Bette fed the kids ham slices and a salad of lettuce and tomatoes that had made the move from the condo. Earlier, Darlene Pitts, the mother of Keyshawn and Trennelle, had brought a basket of flowers picked from her own garden along with a card asking Won’t you be my neighbor? As they were chatting on the porch, her husband, Harlan, showed up with two big bottles of Sprite and Diet Sprite. Together they gave Bette the rundown on some of the neighbors.
“The Patels have first names that hurt my tongue,” Harlan joked. “I call them Mr. and Mrs. Patel.”
“Irrfan and Priyanka.” Darlene shot a look at her husband. “And would it hurt you to learn their kids’ names?”
“Actually, yes it would.”
These were Bette’s kind of folks.
Darlene rattled off the names. “Ananya, Pranav, Prisha, Anushka, and the youngest boy is Om.”
“Om, I got,” Harlan said.
The Smiths over there gave away apricots from their tree by the bushel. The Ornonas over there had the ski boat that never left their driveway. The Bakas family in the big blue and white house had huge parties every Greek Easter and if you didn’t show up the family would bring up your absence for the rest of the year. Vincent Crowell operated a ham radio at all hours. His was the house with a huge antenna on the roof.
“And Paul Legaris teaches science at Burham. The college. Has two older kids.” Harlan reported. “Heard his son is joining the Navy.”
“A teacher,” said Bette. “Thus the footware.”
“Come again?” Darlene asked.
“He gave us a ham in flip-flops. On his feet, not on the ham. I thought a man wearing flip-flops in the middle of a weekday was, you know…”
“Comfortable?” said Harlan.
“Unemployed.”
“No classes in session in August.” Harlan sighed. “I envy a man in flip-flops on a day like today.”
Pop! Bette saw Paul on campus, between classes, sitting on a bench on the quad, surrounded by coeds, pretty girls who had Legaris for Introduction to Biology, and he was always so free with his time. One of those coeds was sure to have a thing for older men in positions of authority, or so Paul Legaris hoped.
The warm summer evening beckoned the kids back out onto Greene Street as Bette cleaned the dishes, then headed upstairs to find linens and make the beds. From the window of the bedroom shared by Dale and Sharri, Bette saw Paul wheeling a large tube out of his garage—his aforementioned telescope—on a hand-made dolly, aided by some kids. By the time darkness fell completely, Bette had plugged in her Bluetooth speaker and paired it with her phone so Adele could provide a mournful score for the evening’s chore of lining closet shelves and untangling hangers. Bette was still organizing dresser drawers when she heard one of the kids slam the front door and stomp up the stairs.
“Mom?” Eddie yelled, coming into what was going to be his room. “Can I make a telescope?”
“I admire your spunk.”
“Professor Legaris made his own telescope and it’s amazing to look through.”
“Professor Legaris, huh?”
“Yeah. The man who lives right next door. His garage is full of amazing stuff. He keeps a bunch of wires and tools in a big wooden thing called a chifforobe. He has three old TVs with knobs on the side of them and a sewing machine you have to pedal.” Eddie jumped onto his bed. “He let me look into the Cosmos, whatever that is, through his telescope. I saw the moon and, like, a shadow of the sun was covering part of it.”
“I’m no professor, but I think it’s the shadow of the Earth.”
“It was funny. With just my eye, the moon looked like it was being sliced out of the sky, but through the telescope, you could still see the cut-up part, but it was red. Craters and everything. He made the telescope himself by hand.”
“How do you make a telescope?”
“You get a round piece of glass and grind on it for a long time, then make that part shiny, then put it on one end of a tube, like for carpets. Then you buy eyehole things.”
“Lenses?”
“Opticons, I think he called them. He teaches a class on how to make your own telescope. Can I?”
“If we can find a tube, like for carpets.”
The kids went to bed late that first night on Greene Street, but having spent so much energy running around they all conked out, pronto. Before she could forget, Bette put three dollars under Sharri’s pillow in exchange for that tooth, the fairy being rather flush with cash.
The day finally over, Bette opened a bottle of red, red wine and called Maggie, telling her about all the neighborhood kids, the Pittses and the Coke connection, and yes, her vision of Paul Legaris.
“What is with your luck with men?” Maggie asked.
“It’s not my luck,” Bette said. “It’s the men. They are all so sad. So obvious. So desperate for a woman to define them.”