start raking up cordgrass.
***
In the wake of the hurricane, things shift ever so slightly between the Foxes and the Lisickys. Maybe we’re more confident now. Bobby, Michael, and I are far more likely to imitate Mrs. Fox’s cleaning rituals, to make gentle fun of her behind her back. Even our mother joins in on the play, and we love her willingness to parody her friend. We’ve grown tired of her impetus to control. When she says of our freshly painted shutters, “Are you keeping them blue?” we’re appalled. And there’s something mildly distressing about her jibes at the community, the latest of which includes putting a sign on the Sendrows’ front yard, beneath the heavy limbs of the mimosas: FOR SALE, CHEAP.
But we’ve truly always known what Mrs. Fox was made of. Recently she’s professed to touring the model homes at Rossmoor Corporation’s New World, a subdivision on the outskirts of Cherry Hill, and she claims to have loved the faux Mission-style ranchers, the fake Tudors, the “luxury modern French Provincials.” We’re perplexed. Everyone in my school knows that New World is bad taste, as embarrassing as the replica of the 1964 World’s Fair Unisphere that marks its entrance. We wonder if she’s secretly making fun of us. As summer draws to a close, I write a short song about her: Grunting and groaning, gasping and whining—that’s Mrs. Fox. Sort of a cross between Moms Mabley and Wally Cox.
Our relationship with Mrs. Fox reaches its nadir just before Thanksgiving. Bobby and I are helping our father transport panels of unused sheetrock to Cherry Hill from Anchorage Point. We’re on the Black Horse Pike, halfway through the Pine Barrens, when guess who we see pulling into the passing lane? Bobby and I hide our faces with our hands. We sit in the back of the open station wagon, weighing down the panels to which my father has tied strips of red rags. To make matters worse, the muffler is broken, roaring. Oh, Tobacco Road. We’re traveling twenty miles under the speed limit, and because the water’s been shut off for the season, we haven’t showered in two days. Still, we wave and cry, “Hey, Mr. Fox. Hey, Mrs. Fox.” Their eyes look determinedly forward, deliberately obliterating us.
We talk about their dismissal endlessly for weeks. We enumerate the times they’ve behaved poorly, though we can’t help but be mildly entertained by the flamboyance of their bad behavior. Over the next several months I contemplate enacting a similar form of disacknowledgment, until something else happens. Early June, the night before trash day. In bed, lying awake, I listen to the causeway traffic, the distant boat engines, and … what? The melodic clinking of glass. I peer over my windowsill. Mrs. Fox carries what must be a trash bag full of beer bottles. She walks out beyond the edge of the yard to place it alongside the Garbers’ trash, then tiptoes back to her own yard, her shoulders sagging.
***
Sometime during the school year, while we’re back in Cherry Hill, the Foxes’ house is sold to Don and Anne Naughton, a retired couple from Millville, New Jersey. We’re not entirely surprised. The Foxes have owned another house in Florida for the past two years, and they’ve grown dissatisfied with their New Jersey neighbors—so many falling outs with former friends. The completeness of the transition doesn’t hit us right away, and though we’re a little sad, I’m still young enough to see change as essentially a good thing.
The Naughtons clearly don’t share the Foxes’ aesthetic commitments. They do everything possible to decimate the place, as they’re hell-bent on making the house maintenance-free. Vinyl soffits, vinyl siding, vinyl doors: how quickly beauty festers and fades. “They want a fishing shack,” my mother says sadly. The cupola is chopped up for firewood; the stepping stones are pulled out of the ground, stacked like concrete dinner plates beside the back door. Each week
***
In the wake of the hurricane, things shift ever so slightly between the Foxes and the Lisickys. Maybe we’re more confident now. Bobby, Michael, and I are far more likely to imitate Mrs. Fox’s cleaning rituals, to make gentle fun of her behind her back. Even our mother joins in on the play, and we love her willingness to parody her friend. We’ve grown tired of her impetus to control. When she says of our freshly painted shutters, “Are you keeping them blue?” we’re appalled. And there’s something mildly distressing about her jibes at the community, the latest of which includes putting a sign on the Sendrows’ front yard, beneath the heavy limbs of the mimosas: FOR SALE, CHEAP.
But we’ve truly always known what Mrs. Fox was made of. Recently she’s professed to touring the model homes at Rossmoor Corporation’s New World, a subdivision on the outskirts of Cherry Hill, and she claims to have loved the faux Mission-style ranchers, the fake Tudors, the “luxury modern French Provincials.” We’re perplexed. Everyone in my school knows that New World is bad taste, as embarrassing as the replica of the 1964 World’s Fair Unisphere that marks its entrance. We wonder if she’s secretly making fun of us. As summer draws to a close, I write a short song about her: Grunting and groaning, gasping and whining—that’s Mrs. Fox. Sort of a cross between Moms Mabley and Wally Cox.
Our relationship with Mrs. Fox reaches its nadir just before Thanksgiving. Bobby and I are helping our father transport panels of unused sheetrock to Cherry Hill from Anchorage Point. We’re on the Black Horse Pike, halfway through the Pine Barrens, when guess who we see pulling into the passing lane? Bobby and I hide our faces with our hands. We sit in the back of the open station wagon, weighing down the panels to which my father has tied strips of red rags. To make matters worse, the muffler is broken, roaring. Oh, Tobacco Road. We’re traveling twenty miles under the speed limit, and because the water’s been shut off for the season, we haven’t showered in two days. Still, we wave and cry, “Hey, Mr. Fox. Hey, Mrs. Fox.” Their eyes look determinedly forward, deliberately obliterating us.
We talk about their dismissal endlessly for weeks. We enumerate the times they’ve behaved poorly, though we can’t help but be mildly entertained by the flamboyance of their bad behavior. Over the next several months I contemplate enacting a similar form of disacknowledgment, until something else happens. Early June, the night before trash day. In bed, lying awake, I listen to the causeway traffic, the distant boat engines, and … what? The melodic clinking of glass. I peer over my windowsill. Mrs. Fox carries what must be a trash bag full of beer bottles. She walks out beyond the edge of the yard to place it alongside the Garbers’ trash, then tiptoes back to her own yard, her shoulders sagging.
***
Sometime during the school year, while we’re back in Cherry Hill, the Foxes’ house is sold to Don and Anne Naughton, a retired couple from Millville, New Jersey. We’re not entirely surprised. The Foxes have owned another house in Florida for the past two years, and they’ve grown dissatisfied with their New Jersey neighbors—so many falling outs with former friends. The completeness of the transition doesn’t hit us right away, and though we’re a little sad, I’m still young enough to see change as essentially a good thing.
The Naughtons clearly don’t share the Foxes’ aesthetic commitments. They do everything possible to decimate the place, as they’re hell-bent on making the house maintenance-free. Vinyl soffits, vinyl siding, vinyl doors: how quickly beauty festers and fades. “They want a fishing shack,” my mother says sadly. The cupola is chopped up for firewood; the stepping stones are pulled out of the ground, stacked like concrete dinner plates beside the back door. Each week
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