'Well, I didn't say it tohim,' my father said.
'It's the same thing. You talk shit to my son and I'll talk shit to yours.'
'Oh, come on,' my father said. 'There's no need for that kind of language.'
They started talking at the same time, and when my father raised his voice Lance accused him of shouting. 'You can't yell at me,' he said. 'Plantation days are over. I'm not your slave.' This was played to the balcony, his arms cast toward the neighboring windows.
'Who are youtalking to?' my father asked.
'You think I'm just some nigger you can shout at? Is that what you're saying, that I'm a nigger? Are you calling me a nigger?'
I had never heard my father use this word, so it was doubly unfair for Lance to put it into his mouth. People would talk, and in time it would seem that my fatherhad called Lance a nigger. This is the nature of storytelling, and nothing can be done about it.
'You're out of your mind,' my father said.
'Oh, so now I'm a crazy nigger. Is that it?'
'I didn't say that.'
'No, but you'rethinking it.'
My father abandoned his good manners. 'You're full of crap,' he said.
'Oh, so I'm a liar?'
They were inches apart now, the toes of their shoes almost touching. In the distance, I could see Belinda standing at her window, and Chester standing at his. Regina Potts, Donald Pullman: all of them had the same eager expression. Were someone threatening my landlord, I'd have been thrilled, too, but this was my father we were talking about, and so I hated them for looking so thoroughly entertained.
I don't remember what prompted my father and Lance to cool down, but it happened, gradually, like a kettle taken off the burner. Balled fists slackened to hands, the distance between them grew wider, and little by little their voices lowered to a normal register. My immediate sensation was relief. I didn't have to do anything. I had been spared the indignity, the responsibility, of watching my father engage in a fight. The thought of him throwing a punch was bad enough, but the thought of him losing — my father pressed to the ground, my father calling out in pain or surprise — was unbearable.
My new worry was that this was not over. We'd gotten through today, but what would happen the next time Lance and my father ran into each other? A person who wore cowboy boots and cut down trees in order to displace birds was likely capable of anything: a surprise attack, loosened lug nuts, a firebomb. They were reasonable fears, but if any of them occurred to my father, he did not show it. When Lance walked away, he simply put on his gloves and went back to work, as if this had been just any ordinary interruption — Chester wanting him to check a leaky faucet, the Barrett sisters asking if we could come and clean out their gutters. It may have been different for Lance, but my father didn't live like this. There were no shoving matches at IBM or the Raleigh Country Club, and while he was aggressive in smaller ways — ramming people's carts at the grocery store, yelling at other drivers to get a Seeing Eye dog — I think it had been a long time since he had seriously considered a fight. All he said was 'Can you beat that?' and then he shook his head and revved up the chain saw.
The sun was setting as we piled the logs into the bed of the truck. My father fished the keys from his pocket, and we sat in the cab for a few minutes before heading home. Over at Minnie Edwards's, a child opened the door to a live-in boyfriend who was not supposed to be there. This sort of thing was of interest to the welfare department, especially when the boyfriend held a job and contributed to the running of the household. Every so often, a caseworker would come around, looking for men's clothing or evidence of wild spending, and it was assumed that my family shared this interest. The man entered Minnie's apartment, and a moment later she stepped outside and gestured to my father to roll down his window. 'He's my brother,' she said. 'Home from the army.' All this hiding. All this exhausting explanation.
'So what do you think?' my father said. He wasn't talking about Lance or Minnie Edwards's boyfriend, but all of it. Everything before us was technically ours — the lawns, the houses, the graveled driveways. This was what ingenuity had bought: a corner of the world that could, in time, expand, growing lot by lot until you could drive for some distance and never lose your feelings of guilt and uncertainty.
Lance and his family would eventually leave the apartment, but not before what had seemed to be a perfectly fine bathroom ceiling fell with no provocation upon his wife's head. She would limp into court, ridiculous and so predictable with her bandages and neck brace, but the jury would fall for it and award her a settlement. We'd later hear that the two of them had broken up. That he had taken off with someone else. That she was changing beds in a hotel. Chester, too, would eventually break up with his wife and leave with not just the appliances but the storm windows as well.
Troubles moved on only to be replaced by new ones, and looking out the windshield, my father seemed to see them all: the woman whose son would set fire to his bedroom, the man who'd throw a car battery through his neighbor's window, a frenetic blur of hostile tenants, dismantling his empire brick by brick.
'I was going to help you out if Lance, you know, hit you or anything,' I said.
'Of course you were,' my father said, and for a moment he even allowed himself to believe it. 'The guy didn't know what he was up against, did he?'
'No, he didn't.'
'The two of us together, man oh man, what a sight that would have been!' We laughed then, Vespasian and Titus in the cab of a Toyota pickup. My father patted my knee and then pulled the truck away from the curb. 'I'll give you a check when we get home,' he said. 'But don't think I'm going to pay you for standing there with your mouth open. It doesn't work that way. Not with me it doesn't.'
The Girl Next Door
WELL, THAT LITTLE EXPERIMENT IS OVER,' my mother said. 'You tried it, it didn't work out, so what do you say we just move on.' She was dressed in her roll-up-the-shirtsleeves outfit: the faded turquoise skirt, a cotton head scarf, and one of the sporty blouses my father had bought in the hope she might take up golf. 'We'll start with the kitchen,' she said. 'That's always the best way, isn't it.'
I was moving again. This time because of the neighbors.
'Oh, no,' my mother said. 'They're not to blame. Let's be honest now.' She liked to take my problems back to the source, which was usually me. Like, for instance, when I got food poisoning it wasn't the chef's fault. 'You'rethe one who wanted to go Oriental.You 'rethe one who ordered the lomain.'
'Lo mein. It's two words.'
'Oh, he speaks Chinese now! Tell me, Charlie Chan, what's the word for six straight hours of vomiting and diarrhea?'
What she meant was that I'd tried to save money. The cheap Chinese restaurant, the seventy-five-dollar-a- month apartment: 'Cut corners and it'll always come back to bite you in the ass.' That was one of her sayings. But if you didn'thave money how could younot cut corners?
'And whose fault is it that you don't have any money? I'm not the one who turned up his nose at a full-time job. I'm not the one who spends his entire paycheck down at the hobby shop.'
'I understand that.'
'Well, good,' she said, and then we began to wrap the breakables.
In my version of the story, the problem began with the child next door, a third-grader who, according to my mother, was bad news right from the start. 'Put it together,' she'd said when I first called to tell her about it. 'Take a step back. Think.'
But what was there to think about? She was a nine-year-old girl.
'Oh, they're the worst,' my mother said. 'What's her name? Brandi? Well, that's cheap, isn't it.'
'I'm sorry,' I said, 'but aren't I talking to someone who named her daughterTiffany?'
'My hands were tied!' she shouted. 'The damned Greeks had me against the wall and you know it.'
