Anyways, that’s why I knew how my dad felt. I sort of related to it. And probably his ka-plotch was even worse than mine—I mean, it had to be, because after all, I wasn’t married to Laura or anything. We hadn’t even talked about marriage, although I will admit that the idea had certainly occurred to me many times.
But with my dad, he’d been married to my mom for, like, seventeen years and they’d had me, for god sakes, so I knew he was having a very hard time, and I will say that I felt pretty sorry for him, although in all honestly he was not too much fun to hang out with—I mean, it had gotten to the point where I could barely stand seeing him just lying around, and all I could think of at that moment was going outside to sort of get away from him.
So I said, “Hey, Dad. I’m going to go take a walk for a while.”
He didn’t even answer me—just sort of made a little groan and maybe waved his hand.
I waved back, and in a few seconds I was out the door and crossing the yard in the dark.
Chapter
Three
The porch light was out in front of our house because my dad had forgotten to turn it on, and as I came across the grass I saw all these hedge clippings lying all over the place, because he’d sort of given up doing the clipping when he was only halfway done and didn’t bag everything up and take it out back like he usually does. I guess he just didn’t have the energy; that whole summer he’d complained about never having much vital energy. For a second I thought I’d bag the clippings, because the lawn did look a little shabby, and in my neighborhood, certain nosy neighbors—especially our next-door neighbor—are very sensitive about things like that. But to tell the truth, I felt sort of tired already because it was pretty late, and I knew there’d be no harm in waiting to bag it all up in the morning.
I left my yard and crossed the street beside my house and went over to where this big red-brick building is, and I crept into the shadows behind some hedges and stood still. You see, in my neighborhood, just like I mentioned with my next-door neighbor, you have to be careful, because people, in a way, are always sort of spying on you.
My next-door neighbor—his name is Mr. Miller, by the way, and he used to be the dean of this girls’ college out in Harford County, but he’s retired now—actually sits on his porch every day—you can see him through the gray screens—and I swear if he’s not watching for the slightest disunity in the houses and yards all around him—and especially in our house, because it’s closest—then I don’t know what he’s doing out there. At least this is what my dad has always said about him, and I have to say I agree.
People in my neighborhood really are a bit nosy—actually more than a bit. I think it’s why they move here, if only to exercise that option. My dad says that too, and he’s lived here all his life, so he ought to know. He says you have to watch out because what the neighbors do is start casting aspersions on you if you aren’t careful to do everything right. They keep up on you. I don’t mean like a Neighborhood Watch to look out for vagrants and outsiders or things getting stolen or kids coming up on porches and wrecking stuff—although there has been plenty of that around where I live, and I even know lots of kids who have done it. I don’t mean that sort of criminal stuff, because about that, naturally, all anybody’d do is call the cops and have the person arrested, and he’d be in trouble and have to pay the penalty, et cetera, et cetera.
It’s a different kind of thing I’m talking about.
A different kind of trouble.
In my neighborhood it’s like you feel you’re in trouble all the time, but you know you haven’t really done anything to deserve it. So you keep trying to do little things to get yourself out of the trouble you feel you don’t even deserve, little things like keeping your yard perfectly straight or your house perfectly painted and your car new or at least perfectly clean. Because if you don’t, you feel you’ll have to pay some sort of awful penalty, although in the absolute truth, nobody ever says what the penalty might be, or even what the rules are that you’re trying to keep up with. It’s really kind of an easy place to sort of look down on yourself all the time, because you get to feel everybody has maybe a sort of snooty attitude toward you and your whole family, and when you come right down to it, they don’t think you really belong. And I don’t mean just little things like bagging up your clippings right away after cutting them, but more important stuff like what people think of the school you go to or what your dad does for a living.
It’s a place where people can sort of act like you don’t even exist, even if they actually know you really well and used to be your friends, which is exactly what happened with Mr. Miller’s niece and nephew, who are twins my age. We used to play together all the time when they came by to spend the day with their uncle. But one day I came out when they were chucking this ball to each other in their yard, and they didn’t come into mine when I asked them. They didn’t even look at me. Then one of them, still without looking at me,
