Being Neighborly, Part 3

The next afternoon when I got home, Elle was waiting to make sure that I wouldn’t renege on my promise. I barely had time to thunk my backpack down on the floor before she hurried me back out the door and headed us towards the Park. We didn’t get back to our building until past sunset, and the elevator light was crawling across the panel as people arrived home from work. “Let’s take the stairs!” Elle suggested.

            I looked at her suspiciously. “That’s a high energy proposal for someone who just demanded we take a taxi because she was too tired to walk home.”

            She did her best to look innocent. “Well, we could take a little stop on every floor, that way we wouldn’t get tired.”

            “And knock on people’s doors, I suppose, to ask them if they ever stabbed their father with a pair of scissors? Nice try. I don’t think so.”

            “Aww, come on, Noe. There must be someone in the building who’s hiding.”

            I tried to explain to her that anyone trying to hide themselves away from the world would be unlikely to welcome a visit from a teenage boy and his kid sister (I had to continue over her protests at that point). I was finally forced to compromise, though, and we started upstairs with the agreement that we would try to figure out what we could about people from their front doors, but wouldn’t hammer on any.

            I didn’t have high hopes for Elle’s experiment. New York apartment buildings are anonymous places at the best of times, and most complexes don’t reveal more of their inhabitants than a hall of identical and closed doors on every floor.

By the time we reached our floor, Elle was beginning to lag. Rather than running up to examine the name pasted over each doorbell, she trotted more and more slowly behind me as we went down the hall. I turned back to hurry her along when I reached our front door, which is how I happened to be facing the elevator full on when it opened to let out another passenger.

            I had never seen the woman who appeared from behind the sliding door before, although she stepped out briskly, without any sign that she was unfamiliar with where she was going. Superficially, she also looked very much like most of the other residents we had passed: she was wearing a dark, conservatively-cut pantsuit like any profession. She had a hard, closed expression as she marched towards and past us, stopping at the door just beyond ours. I realized, as she brushed by (and I yanked Elle’s arm to pull her out of the way), that her avoidance of eye contact must be particularly pointed, since I was staring like an automaton.

This was because, taut expression or no, she was stunning. She had long, bronze hair (not the color that comes from inside a salon bottle, but that burnished shade that is somewhere between blonde and red) that fell in silky panels on either side of her finely-boned face. She was tall (taller than me, at any rate), and the demure cut of her suit jacket could not prevent me from noticing, with a kind of internal lurch, that she was well-built in a way that most of my female peers were certainly not yet. I knew that my palms (still curled around the doorknob and Elle’s shoulder) were probably sweaty by now, and I was overcome with simultaneous fears that I would say something mortifying, and that I would never remember to speak. How could I have missed the fact that we live next door to a stone fox?

            Elle saved me from embarrassing myself by taking over the job on her own. She twisted out of my grip and planted herself by the woman’s elbow.

            “Hello, are you a recluse?” she demanded.

            I was distracted from my initial reaction (mentally cursing the day I was ever born into this world of pain) by the look that the woman flashed in Elle’s direction. When she glanced down at my sister, she looked suddenly pained — burdened in the removed, helpless manner of a witness to a car crash or a viewer of a documentary about genocide. That expression vanished so quickly that I was not sure I had seen it, and was followed by a glare at me. I would have cringed, sure that she suspected my heated thoughts, but that look disappeared as well, and she looked back at Elle.

            “A recluse?” she asked. Her voice was soft, and surprisingly deep. “Don’t recluses never leave their houses?”

            Elle squirmed a bit. “Well yes, usually. But I’ve never seen you before, and I live just here. You might not ever have come out ‘til now, since you were in high school. Maybe there was someone you had to save?”

            The woman — girl, maybe; she seemed younger than I had at first thought — closed her eyes briefly at that, as if Elle’s silly question was too much for her. I was about to grab Elle and make a break for it, where I could melt down and commit sororicide in private, when Elle gave one more try.

            “It is funny that we’ve never met, you know. Neighbors are supposed to share things, aren’t they?” She reached up and touched the stranger on the elbow.

            The girl looked directly at Elle’s hand, and the tension seemed to go out of her, almost as if she had to remind herself to breathe. “Yes, usually they are,” she said to Elle, “although I don’t think that happens very much in this city.

            “And if I was like Boo Radley, wouldn’t I be sneaking out, rather than sneaking in?”

            Elle’s face lit up. “How did you know about Boo? Are you reading To Kill a Mockingbird, too?”

            “No, not at the moment, but I’ve read it before. I recognize the symptoms. I guess you like it?”

            “It’s great!” Elle agreed, although she added quickly, “even though it’s really sad, too. Noe says that’s because it’s ‘a picture of an unjust world.’” She jerked her head at me.

            Almond-colored eyes turned in my direction and I swallowed. “Are you Noe?” the girl asked.

            “Ah — yes.” Thank God my voice didn’t squeak. “I’m Noe Rolfe and this is my sister—”

            “Scout!” Elle interjected.

            “—Elle,” I finished lamely.

            The girl smiled and offered her hand to Elle. “Please call me Cass. I chose what I go by, too.”

            Elle, looking charmed that she had been offered a proper grown-up introduction, shook the hand enthusiastically.

            “Have you always lived here?” she asked. “You must not come in and out very often, even if you’re not a recluse, because I usually see our neighbors at least sometimes — even if most of them don’t take much time to talk to me.” She looked momentarily downcast, but then brightened with another comparison to Harper Lee’s world. “At least none of them are scary!”

            “No, I’ve been here only a few months, now, but I’m not surprised that we haven’t met.”

            “Elle! Scout,” I finally made my plunge into the conversation, “don’t ask so many direct questions! It’s not…” I groped for a reproof worthy of Atticus Finch, “civil.”

            Cass laughed a bit, this time. “I don’t mind.” She turned back to Elle. “You can ask all the questions you want.

            “So you keep yourself — and your brother — busy trying to see how much life is like books? I hope you’re not too disappointed. What else have you been reading?”

            “Be careful what you ask,” I had to warn her, “You could be in for a long list.”

            Now it was Elle’s turn to glare at me, but, “Oh, I don’t mind,” Cass assured her. “In fact, why don’t we make this less like New York and more like neighbors would be in Maycomb?” She took a deep breath. “Would you like to come in for some tea?” The question was addressed to Elle but she looked at me as well.

I knew there was a reasonable answer I could give, based on any number of practical maxims, but I looked from Elle’s enthusiastic face, to the mysterious beauty of this new neighbor, and I found myself saying, “Sure. That’s really nice of you to offer.”

Cass pushed open her door the rest of the way and Elle darted through. I hesitated. “I really don’t want her to impose on you. She’s kind of rambunctious…”

Cass’s face closed. “I wouldn’t have asked if I hadn’t meant it. She’s just a little girl.”

“I — I’m sorry!” I felt as if I had put my foot in it. “I just didn’t want her to be an annoyance is all.”

Cass shook her head, as if catching herself, but her expression remained the same. “No; I didn’t mean to be rude.”

I swallowed again (sure that I had just cemented my image as gormless adolescent in her eyes) and stepped over her threshold.

I found myself in a small living room, clean, but sparsely furnished — proof that had she spent little time making herself at home here. The only distinguishing feature was the far wall, which was covered with a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf, crammed with volumes. Elle was currently on her knees in front of it, running her hands over the spines and muttering to herself.

I glanced at Cass, who shrugged. “I like the places books can take me. It looks like your sister does, too.” She started towards the kitchenette alcove. “What kind of tea can I offer you? Or would you prefer Swiss Miss?” She made a gesture as if she would like to touch Elle on the head as she went by, but her fingers curled back at the last minute, self-protectively.

“Swiss Miss, please!” Elle had pulled a book out and was cradling it in her lap, but she was not too distracted to ignore the possibility of dinner spoilers.

“You?” Cass looked back at me, the diluted light from the window catching the highlights in her amazing hair.

Mom would no doubt take all this out on me later. “Sure, I’ll have hot chocolate as well, if that’s okay.”

Cass nodded, and started fiddling with her range.

“Cass!” Elle called, looking up wide-eyed from her book. “What’s this story like, The Five Children and It?”

“It’s about things not working out the way you’d expect. It’s for kids.” Elle started to look suspicious — she had gotten to the phase where she only pursued books in the grown-up section of the library — but Cass seemed to anticipate her. “I still enjoy it, though. Would you like to borrow it?”

“Yeah!” Elle grinned up at her.

“Alright, then.” Cass rummaged in a cupboard. “I think I have some marshmallows around here somewhere. Could you help me move these cups to the living room, Scout?”

We ended up staying at Cassandra Jones’s, sitting around her lightweight table until the afterimage of the autumn twilight faded. I put off saying anything about going home. I was happy to nurse my hot chocolate and watch Cassandra quiz Elle, who chattered on about books. Eventually, though, Elle had drained her chocolate to the dregs and was licking the remains off her upper lip like a cat.

The fear that Mom had gotten home began to prey on my mind. “I don’t want Mom to go ballistic thinking we’ve been kidnapped.”

Elle grimaced, but Cassandra came to my rescue. “You’re brother’s right, Scout. You can’t visit me forever.” Another shadow, of the kind that seemed to visit her so frequently, passed over her face as she looked at my sister, but she shook it off. “If you like, though, you can come back next Friday. You can even borrow another book!”