Banana Bread for the Neighbors
(any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks all!)
Banana Bread for the Neighbors
The night they moved in was a cold one, Ada remembered, because she’d had to get up at ten o’clock to close her window. Usually she liked keeping her window open, even in the late fall when the leaves fell and people began to wear their coats; but that late summer night she’d felt chilly gusts of wind and all of a sudden feared that the wind would turn into a person and place its hand over her mouth and hold it there while she struggled and flailed her arms until her last breath of Dear life escaped her. So she’d gotten up, slowly, and folded off the light blue comforter that reminded her of the sea—would she ever see the sea again? she wondered. She then felt on the ground with her foot to make sure she wasn’t going to go ahead and do something like step on her slippers and break an ankle, and then she walked to the window to close it. That’s when she saw them in the brown, beat-up van, hauling out bags and bins and whatever else boys in their twenties need in their houses.
She remembered thinking it was strange to be doing this at night. How could someone even see in front of them in this pitch darkness? It’s practically pitch dark! But then again, people do things in the pitch dark that she didn’t know about. Things that nobody know, nor should know, about.
She watched the boys unload for a few minutes, and then she closed the window. She ended up sleeping in the extra room that night. She couldn’t stop thinking about the wind.
She’d seen the boys visiting the place about a week prior. The “For Rent” sign had been up for about a month. A month, yes, because the dirty family moved out the third week of July after living there for three months. Two very long months. Thank God they left, Ada thought. She used to smell the dirtiness when she was cooking her dinner in the evening, as well as fixing her meals at breakfast and lunch, since the window above the sink faced their house. What luck! She even switched to taking baths at night instead of the morning ones she’d grown accustomed to, because she could feel all that dirt and scum from their house just soaking into her skin. Just seeing those kids rolling around in all that dirt, dirt where grass was supposed to be growing only it wasn’t. She just had to take a shower after seeing that.
These new boys at least looked a little more decent. Of course, she couldn’t tell for sure. If they’re anything like those boys that lived across the street a few years back, then boy. How many occasions I called the police on them because of the racket they were making, Ada thought. Let’s only hope it’s not going to be that again.
She didn’t want to jump to any conclusion about these new boys, though; she knew there were scores of gentlemen out there. Why, the boy that mowed her lawn was the nicest boy a lady could ask for. And just about every clerk and stocker at Jimmy’s Grocery was helpful and cheery and rosy in the cheeks. So maybe these new boys work at a grocery store and mow lawns for elderly ladies, too. Heck, maybe they’ve even rung me up before tonight, she thought.
Yes, hopefully they’ve rung me up before tonight.
∙ ∙ ∙
The next morning she had noticed the brown van was gone. Later when she went to meet the mailman, it was still gone.
I wonder where it is, she thought, and she greeted the mailman with a smile. He called her Ada instead of Ms. Francis like she’d requested: can’t stand any Ms. this, Ms. that, she’d said. They met this way six days a week.
The mailman looked up at the sky and said it was looking to be a humid one, unfortunately.
“Yes, yes. It’s unfortunate.” She looked at the shrubs that separated her lawn from the new boys’ lawn, and she thought she noticed some sort of candy wrapper. “New neighbors, did you see that? They moved in last night, I saw ‘em. Queer thing to be moving in the night like that, isn’t it? I think I’m going to go ahead and bake them some banana bread today, like a sort of welcome-to-the-neighborhood thing. You’ve tried my banana bread.”
The mailman smiled and motioned with his hand. “Your banana bread. Never had any better.”
Ada told him to shush, then said if making her nice young mailman a loaf wouldn’t be a good idea, too. “It’s just such a shame that he doesn’t have,” she started, “a nice young lady to enjoy it with . . .”
After he left she went to the shrubs to pick up that trash she’d seen. Once a week, sometimes every two weeks, she paid twenty dollars to a nice boy in exchange for him trimming the shrubs and cutting the grass, and she didn’t want something like a wrapper to spoil his nice job.
She walked over, and when she was a few feet away she realized it wasn’t any type of wrapper it all. She crouched down and reached for it, missing the first time, missing the second time, and then she stretched her shoulder in a way that was sure to leave it sore the next few days, and she grabbed it.
It was an old Polaroid picture, curled like a pop can. She made sure not to look at it yet. I’m sure it wasn’t there yesterday, she thought, I wouldn’t have missed it. She walked into the privacy of her home, thinking it must be the boys’ from last night, must have dropped it last night.
Her home was a one-story white house with a basement, the most noticeable thing about it the green turf front steps, typical of the fifties. There was a side door on the right side of the house which she often used, especially when it rained, since she didn’t like walking up the turf steps then, afraid she was going to slip and do something like break a hip.
She dialed her friend Valerie to explain what she’d found.
There’s a boy and girl—oh, nineteen, twenty— on an old white, tattered couch, she’d say. The coach is against the wall, in the corner, at about eleven o’clock from the camera? Except as far out as its width, the wall turns right again and there’s the door about two o’clock from the camera. Oh I wish you could just see this, it’s awful hard to explain! There is a kind of glint in both of their eyes and they’re both smiling. They both look happy. They’re smiling. The boy’s wearing a grey sweater with some type-write on the front . . . brown hair in bangs flattened down, like he’s been wearing a cap . . .short black beard . . . young. Wait. Come to think of it . . . he looks kind of like Jack. Like Jack, Jack! No, no not him. Did I never tell you about Jack? I courted him after high school. Reason I didn’t recognize the semblance right away is because this guy’s got this beard. No, no, but I see it. I see it. Oh yes, the girl—er—looks just like some regular normal girl. No, nothing like me. Well—yeah, maybe it does look a little like me. But Valerie, this looks exactly like Jack, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. He was such a charmer. What? Yes I’m sure it’s not my picture! I think this is those boys that moved in yesterday’s picture. Yes, did I tell you that they moved in yesterday, in the dark—
Only Valerie never answered.
She mused over what to do. I’ll take it over there this afternoon after I bake the banana bread, she thought. Course, if that big brown van of theirs isn’t there, maybe they’re not even home. I’ll try though, I’ll try.
She thought about the picture more, thought maybe one of those neighbor boys was in a nice relationship with a nice girl. And this picture must be his, must be awful special. And he’s without it! Boy, I’d better get it to him, Ada thought. I know he’s missing this picture.
She set the picture on the counter and made herself some tea and turned on the television to her soap opera that was right about to begin, in maybe an hour or so. And then she looked at the picture again and saw the face of the man she courted after high school.
Ada got her coat and hat out from the closet to walk over to the boys, because when she’d gotten up from her nap earlier she’d breathed in a lung full of dry ice vapor, it seemed. She half expected it to rain too, she could feel the extra-freshness the wind brought in, that smell that comes before it rains. And right as she was halfway to the sidewalk, she felt some sprinkles and looked up at the sky, and then sprinkles fell into her face. She almost fell over looking up at the sky. She turned back and went to the side door—the front door was already getting too slippery.
It rained in brushstrokes for nearly two hours after that. She turned on the television to watch the weather report, and brought out the sweater she was knitting for nobody in particular. The rain eased up, but that handsome rosy-faced weatherman was saying storms were on their way.
I’ll just go tomorrow, she thought. The banana bread’ll keep.
She stared out the window from her davenport, where she could see the cranberry tree across the street, with all of the cranberries on the ground. She watched until she thought she saw one fall, and then she looked at her murmuring television and wondered what Jack was doing these days, if he still had those rosy cheeks. I should try and get in touch with him, she thought. I should really see if my friend Wanda knows what he’s up to, she knows everybody anyways. Maybe she has his address. I’ll do that.
∙ ∙ ∙
She was determined the next day to bring the picture to the boys. She met the mailman the same as before.
“I could have told you it was going to rain yesterday,” he said.
“I’m sure you could have,” she said. “Say, do you think it is going to rain today?”
“Well.” He sniffed and he licked his finger and raised it in the air. “Well, I just don’t see it happening.”
“I tell you that’s fine enough for me,” Ada said.
The mailman left and she walked over to her steps with the mail and leaned to put it on the first step. She managed to throw it on the second. The picture was in her one hand, the banana bread in another, and she turned to walk to the boys’ house. The brown van wasn’t there, but she didn’t think this was such a big deal because it hadn’t returned until about nine the night before, and there were lights on well before then.
Standing there, she noticed how dirty the doormat was. It was grey and it was like she was looking through a jungle in order to read the word “Welcome.” She wondered if it wasn’t a relic left over by that dirty family. Must be. I wouldn’t expect much else from that dirty family. She knocked on the door twice, then someone opened it. A scraggly young face emerged. Ada smiled.
“So you’re the new neighbor! Why, it’s so nice to meet you, I’m Mrs. Francis, I live right next door, but please do call me Ada. I don’t like anything Ms. this or Ms. that—just Ada, it’s simple enough.”
“Hello,” the boy said.
“Well, now that I’ve introduced myself, why don’t you go on and do the same?”
The boy rubbed his hand against his nose, sniffed.
“Well. I’m Ray. And that there is Drew.” He pointed to a tall boy with a beard and long hair, a plaid shirt. It wasn’t the bearded man from the picture, shoot, thought Ada. Nothing like Jack. This boy’s beard is all patchy too, she thought. Nothing like Jack. Then she noticed that the boy’s bare feet were on the coffee table, and on the coffee table were scattered beer cans, crushed as if a brick had fallen on them. She continued looking and she saw an empty bag of chips on the floor. And then she was seeing all sorts of junk. Boxes with their contents thrown all over like the insides of a soldier after being shot. Food remnants. A couple pizza boxes lying right in the middle of the floor. Ada’s eyes began to look worried, like she’d just gone in time and seen the world ending. Without being conscious of it, her hand, the hand with the banana bread, raised.
“And back there we’ve got Tim,” the boy continued. “Hey, is this for us?”
He motioned toward the banana bread, wrapped in tin foil like a bomb, and Ada stammered, “Yes. Yes, I—”
“Hey Tim! Tim! Get your Charley Horse in the living room!” the boy shouted to one of the rooms deep inside the house, like yelling into the stomach of a monster where there are skeletons of humans down there, hundreds, rotting away. “Look what this lady neighbor brought us!”
The boy turned and saw the picture that was in Ada’s other hand, and he asked if that was for us too.
“This? Um, yes, I found—I was wondering if this was yours.”
The boy took a glance and said, “No. It isn’t.”
Another boy appeared, dirty blond hair, looks like he hasn’t washed or combed it in a week, Ada saw, and she winced. No beard, either. And he didn’t look like a clerk in a grocery, she thought. Not at all. And he certainly wasn’t in a relationship with any nice girl. The boy named Ray tossed the banana bread over to him after snatching it out of Ada’s hand.
Ada cleared her throat, but her voice still sounded like a mouse in a room full of hungry cats. “Yes, well, I thought it’d be nice to welcome in the new neighbors,” she said. “So I decided, well, I could make them some banana bread since it’s easy to make and tastes so good—”
The blond boy with the unwashed hair ripped open the toil foil and tore off a morsel, just like an animal, Ada thought, just like an animal.
“Delicioso! Hey, have a slice of this deliciousness,” he said as he tossed it to the bearded boy on the couch, his bare feet still on the coffee table. The boy dropped it, of course, and it landed on the floor, crumbs sliding off onto the carpet, blending in with the color of the rug and all of the potato chip crumbs. Instead of going to the kitchen and scraping what touched the ground into the trash, the boy picked it up and tore off a hunk and set the rest of the loaf onto the coffee table.
“Good Heavens—” Ada muttered to herself, and she stood there gawking at what she was seeing, at the cans, at the pizza boxes, and then she noticed what felt to be dirt on her skin. It was wafting toward her, it was getting stuck on her skin! She’d have to rub it out, she’d have to clean it, take a bath, even if she’d already taken one last night. She’d just have to take her sponge and rub every last speck off of her, she said to herself, as she left the boys’ house, as she walked to the sidewalk and then to her walkway, as she heard the door next door slam but didn’t hear it. As she felt the rain drops start to fall but didn’t feel them. Felt them fall harder and harder, big round drops that could fit dimes in them, but couldn’t feel them. Just have to rub everything out, she said, as she reached for the rail and her foot to the first step of those green-turfed stairs.
She slipped. Her right foot slipped on the first step and flew right in front of her, and she tried to hold onto the rail but the rail was wet too. She slipped and fell right on her tailbone on the pavement.
The picture flew out of her hand in the process. It had been there, in between her thumb and forefinger, ever since the boy took a glance at it and said, “No. It isn’t.” It glided down to earth, like a dead butterfly, and with her head on the pavement, she made it out as it landed near the bushes.
Two figures: a boy and a girl sitting on a couch, looking at her. The face of Jack, and the girl that looks kind of like me, Ada thought, she looks like me how that I think about it.
And then she felt the pain.
But Jack died fifteen years ago. Wanda, Ada’s friend, the one that knew everybody; whenever it was that Ada would get a hold of her she’d say, he died fifteen years ago. Didn’t you know that? Jack died fifteen years ago.
