Being Neighborly, Part 6

The moving men came on the 19^th of June, the morning after my last day at Orton. They spent two days creating a growing and then gradually shrinking whirlwind of chaos as they hauled boxes that Mom had barely finished packing, disassembled beds and chests of drawers, and packed the interior of our home like a Jenga tower in the back of their van. Mom strode through the midst of it all, labeling boxes and reminding the movers that things were marked fragile for a reason, while Elle scampered behind her asking questions. Dad was already out in Chautauqua opening up the new place. I knew he was excited about it. Mom had been the one to convince when I started my campaign to move us out of the city. She had laughed it off when I first suggested it, but I knew that all the reasons I could marshal — how much she hated her job, the cost of living in the city, the way we never got to see family anymore — were arguments she could have made herself. In fact, I heard her make them to Dad, after she began to entertain the idea of relocating the family. I knew she would never admit that I originated the plan, but I also knew that it wouldn’t ever have gotten very far with our parents if they hadn’t been ready to hear my points.

There was one point I couldn’t tell them, the reason that I wouldn’t — couldn’t — give up, through months of arguing. I had wracked my brains for weeks after I stumbled out of Cassandra’s apartment that last time, searching through my fear for some solution, some way of averting the shadow that hung over my little sister. Despite all logic, I never doubted what she told me. Maybe I was just too afraid to dismiss the possibility. Maybe it’s because she was so beautiful, even in her bitter pain. Maybe it’s because I trusted in an act of neighborly confidence worthy of Harper Lee. Whatever it was, I believed. I looked continuously, searching the Internet until all hours of the night, for any suggested causes of cancer, contagions in Elle’s life that could be obliterated or avoided. Mostly, I just became inundated with information. Everything seemed to be carcinogenic. The only conclusion I could come to was that the risks — from car exhaust, pollution, synthetic foods, what-have-you — were at much higher incidence in this city of billions than they would be in the rural area where my parents met and grew up.

I didn’t know if convincing my parents and sister to change our entire life together and reform it in a new place was the change Elle needed, the vital factor that would shift her future from one fate to another, but it was my best hope, and so the only thing I could do. There was one way to find out for sure if I was right, but I was afraid of the answer.

I waffled over the decision all through our last afternoon, as Mom forced us to make a final sweep of the apartment. I hadn’t tried to contact Cassandra Jones since she told me her secret, and Elle, who had shyly suggested we knock on her door a few weeks into the New Year, had been quelled by my adamant opposition and had not mentioned her name in months. She went on to other books, and other nicknames and I wasn’t sure if she even thought much about our enigmatic neighbor and the evening chocolate sessions of the fall.

After Mom had locked our place for the last time, though, pushing the key under the door for the super, Elle looked over at the anonymous door next to ours and then turned to me, frowning. “Do you think we should say ‘Good-bye’?” she asked.

I looked at the door a long time, feeling secrets pressing against the back of my teeth, until Mom began to move down the hall, saying over her shoulder, “I know it’s hard, kids, but it’s time to go….” Elle took a few steps after her, looking questioningly at me.

            “I’m not sure if she’s still there, Elle.” My voice, which had finally started to adjust to its lower register, squeaked at the end the way it hadn’t in ages. Elle giggled at me, and, as if her voice was a spring-release, I stepped over to Cassandra’s door, and banged on it, hard.

            There was no response. I knocked again, and waited, listening for any movement within, with my ear almost pressed against the door, until Elle tugged on my arm and Mom yelled — she was at the elevator by now — asking what was going on, and why weren’t we coming? Finally, I gave up, and let Elle pull me away, as she called out a garbled and inquiry-provoking explanation to Mom.

            I don’t know if Cassandra had really gone, or if she just let me knock in vain so that I would think I had succeeded. If so, it was kind of her — but I prefer to believe that it was the other possibility, and that the room behind the locked door was as empty as if she had never existed.