Being Neighborly, Part 4

The next week, Elle borrowed the sequel to The Five Children and It, and we drank more hot chocolate and had gooey chocolate chip cookies (Cassandra tore open a new package for us). The week after that Elle demanded something more grown up, and went home with The Three Musketeers. By that time Mother knew that we were spending our early Friday evenings at a neighbor’s house, and although she never met Cassandra — we always got home before Mom — she had made the decision, based on Elle’s voluble and my evasive praises, that a literary acquaintance was to be encouraged.

Actually, Cass was far more Elle’s friend than mine. She was always happy to ask Elle about her school day and her opinion of the books she was reading, just as she was happy to call her “Scout” as long as Elle’s determination to embody the desire for social justice, circa 1963, lasted. She had little to say to me, even after I had overcome my initial paralysis in front of her and began to try to draw her out with questions.

She worked, I discovered, for a high-paying actuarial company downtown and used her free time to mingle with the endless crowds of the city. She loved the fictional worlds of books and plays — her conversations with my sister made that apparent — but her own world seemed strangely devoid of people. She spoke vaguely of family upstate, but when I asked her if she spent many of her nights out with friends (thinking, with a jab of anxiety, about boyfriends), she made a bitter face.

“This city promotes isolation, even in crowds,” she said, and took a swig of her cocoa. “Especially in crowds.”

But why do you isolate yourself? I wanted ask her. I was afraid to push too much, but I was puzzled by it, and not just because the pattern of our Friday afternoons — Elle sprawled in front of the bookcase while Cass and I sat awkwardly on either side of her table — was so counter to the other aspects of Cass’s life, but because I still sometimes saw a hint of that sadness and anger that had transformed her face when she first looked at us. Fall turned into winter, and the sky outside Cass’s window began to be dark when we got there. Cass lit thick white beeswax candles to brighten her table, but her apartment remained barren of holiday decorations. When Elle asked one of her impetuous questions about what and when she celebrated, Cass was more than usually vague, but assured us that she would be here all month.

“You aren’t going up to your family’s place?” I asked, trying to be polite.

“No.” Her voice was cold. “It’s better for me not to.”

“That’s so sad!” Elle chimed in. “Mom always says it’s a terrible time to be alone — you should come celebrate with us!”

Cass stood up and began stacking plates and mugs; clattering them together so that I was afraid she would break something. “Sad is what I live with. What your mother says doesn’t mean anything if being with people is the most terrible time of all.” She turned her back to dump the dishes, while Elle and I stared at her. She turned on the faucet and the sound of running water filled up the silence.

I looked over at Elle. She was staring down at the book in her lap, and the top of her forehead had turned bright pink. I knew I should say something, but I was choked by embarrassment that felt like anger and sympathy that felt like curiosity.

After far too long, Cassandra turned back towards us. Her voice was lower than I’d ever heard it, and sounded almost shaky. “I’m sorry. I misspoke. Sometimes, I let things get the better of me. I didn’t mean to say anything hurtful, but I think it would be best if you went home now.”

Elle and I got up, Elle with a scramble, and me slowly enough that — I hoped — Cass wouldn’t notice how close I was to shaking, too. Cass brushed past us and held the front door open, refusing to look at Elle. I caught her gaze as I followed my sister out. I didn’t want to; but even now I couldn’t stop staring at her.

She closed the door behind us, softly but with as much finality as if she had slammed it. I fumbled for my key with one hand and felt Elle grope for the other, as she hadn’t done for years. I didn’t shake her off as her fingers curled around mine, something I hadn’t allowed for even more years before that. I didn’t have the heart, and there were no witnesses to this crime against my dignity. We were quite alone.

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!”

Being Neighborly, Part 2

I ended up working through dinner. Mom came and told me — I must have forgotten — that she was going out to meet Dad for a cocktail party that his boss was holding. “Dad called me to say he’s going to have to go straight from work,” she said, looking harassed.

            “I don’t see why you guys have to spend your evenings this way.”  I twisted away from my desk, popping my neck joints audibly. “You both hate socializing with all those people. When do you get any time to yourselves?”

            Mom winced at the sound, but she reached out and smoothed my hair. “Evening schmoozing comes with the territory, sweetheart. It’s one of the prices of success.” She grimaced. “Would you check in on Elle in an hour or two, and make sure she goes to bed at a decent time? We’ll be back late.”

No surprises there, I wanted to say. But I saw the tired expression on her face, and I just nodded.

After Mom left, I finished my write-up and started plowing through history reading. I didn’t realize how much time had passed until I looked up at the battered alarm clock and realized it was almost ten, which meant Elle had been reading on her own for nearly two hours. Usually, if left alone for that length of time she would come around to bug me at least once. She should have dropped in ask if I wanted ice cream (decoded: “can I have some?”) by now.

I got stiffly up from my desk and padded out to the living room. Elle sat under the glow of a single lamp. Her book was spread open on the arm of the couch and she only looked up when I plopped down next to her.

“Hey, Earth to Scout — do you read me?”

She looked up, frowning. Her eyes were wide and full of story.

“Tom dies. He was innocent, and Atticus did everything right, and they still found him guilty. It’s not fair. I don’t know why this woman even wrote the book.”

Oh Lord. “Hey,” I said, “I thought you weren’t even supposed to read that far tonight.”

She squirmed a bit. “I know, I just got started and then I couldn’t stop. I wanted to see how the trial would end, and then it was so sad I couldn’t bear to stop...”

I looked at her for a while, thinking about what I could say. She was right. Finally I said, “It is sad. It’s unjust. But it’s a picture of an unjust world, and you have to remember that’s what it is. Tom’s not real. He doesn’t die; you just feel that he does. But maybe, when you’re older, you won’t feel it so much—”

Elle interrupted me. “Don’t say, ‘when you’re older;’ that’s so stupid. And, anyway, what difference does it make? It’s already been written, so it can’t change.”

“The way you see it might,” I felt like the old man of the mountain, dispensing pearls of wisdom, and I could see that her brow was still furrowed, and her eyes looked suspiciously shiny. So I changed my tactic. “But the trial isn’t the only thing in the story, right?  What about all that stuff about Scout and her brother and that other boy, what’s his name?”

“Dill.” Elle scrubbed at her face. “They found treasures hidden in the tree in Mr. Radley’s yard, from Boo. I wish I could find stuff hidden outside somebody’s house. I still think they’re going to meet him. I just need to finish.”

            “Uh-cha-cha-cha!” I cut in, “Haven’t you read enough for one night?”

            “But I want to know what happens in the end!”  Elle wailed, “Besides, what else am I supposed to do?  It’s not like you ever do anything with me anymore. Not like Jem and Scout.”

            I exerted my will, and sacrificed myself on the altar of good older sibling-hood. “Tell you what, Elle. Tomorrow’s Friday, so I’ll do something with you after school. We can do some of our own exploring, even if we can’t sneak into our neighbors’ houses.”

            Elle sniffed, “It’s ‘Scout.’”

            “Oh, honestly! Scout,” I poked her.