divorced from a husband none of us had ever met, she bought the house kitty-corner to ours that had been empty for six months, whose previous owners hadn’t bothered keeping things up. We all wondered if it would ever sell looking the way it did, with peeling paint and a yard gone to weeds. According to Helen, who knew the real estate agent, Linda Sue had looked it over once, smoked a cigarette on the porch, and nodded when the agent apologized for the dandelions. “It’s fine,” Linda Sue said, grinding out her cigarette. “I like it the way it is.”
We hardly noticed the day she moved in because no truck was necessary to carry in what little furniture she had: a few canvas folding chairs and a lumpy futon. Within a week, everyone had their own story to tell of meeting our new neighbor.
“Where do you come from?” Marianne had asked her, holding a rhubarb cake, the same kind she’d made to welcome us five years earlier.
“Nowhere,” Linda Sue had said, eyeing the cake. “Seriously. Nowhere.”
With me, she was a little more forthcoming. When I told her I worked as a librarian, she asked if people ever returned books with personal items left inside. “As a matter of fact, yes!” I said. Only a few months earlier, I’d placed a cardboard box beneath the front desk to preserve the “bookmarks” we’d found: the snapshots, the personal letters. Once, I found a five-dollar bill folded in such a way I had to assume someone had done it intentionally. I was interested in our “finds” and wondered if we might collect enough to make a temporary display called “Place Holders” in the glass case of our lobby. Viola called the idea a little “out there,” but said I could go ahead with it when I’d collected enough. I started to tell Linda Sue but stopped when I saw she wasn’t listening. She had another question she wanted to ask: “Do you have that problem where crazy people come in and masturbate on your books?”
We never knew where she was from, though Helen Baker-Harrison thought she’d heard of the town, somewhere in upstate Connecticut. Helen waved her hand in a way that we interpreted as west of the river, the side that was both more Bohemian and richer. For a while we wondered if Linda Sue was an artist, based not on anything she said but on the clothes she wore: diaphanous skirts washed to a pale flesh color; men’s undershirts and vests decoupaged with what looked like the contents of a drawer bottom—loose buttons, chipped mirror pieces, and china plate bits.
“Did you make your vest?” I heard Marianne once ask her nervously, eyeing the dried glue.
“Yeah, I took a class,” Linda Sue said, running a hand over its bumpy terrain. “It was kind of a joke.”
Eventually we learned that Linda Sue had lots of opinions and that it didn’t take much prodding to elicit them. She hated public swimming pools and the Baker-Harrisons’ dog, who barked at clouds. When she hadn’t made any move to mow her overgrown yard a month after she moved in, and a couple of husbands had offered to stop by with their mowers, we learned that she liked it the way it was. “It just grows back, right?” she said, as if she were not completely sure. “I guess I don’t see the point. You just end up mowing—what? Every weekend?”
The men were dumbstruck. “Right.”
“So you’d just have to come back. No, thanks.”
Once I saw her in the grocery store, staring at an onion in her hand as if she were trying to remember what it was. I pushed my cart over toward her, thinking, I shouldn’t walk away just because she’s odd. “Hello, Linda Sue!” I called. “Have you got a recipe?”
We all pretended to be avid cooks in those days. We had cookie exchanges at Christmas and potlucks we came to with recipes written out on index cards. In truth, none of us was very good. Linda Sue threw the onion back in the bin. “Oh, God no,” she said. “I never cook. I didn’t even bring my pots and pans with
We hardly noticed the day she moved in because no truck was necessary to carry in what little furniture she had: a few canvas folding chairs and a lumpy futon. Within a week, everyone had their own story to tell of meeting our new neighbor.
“Where do you come from?” Marianne had asked her, holding a rhubarb cake, the same kind she’d made to welcome us five years earlier.
“Nowhere,” Linda Sue had said, eyeing the cake. “Seriously. Nowhere.”
With me, she was a little more forthcoming. When I told her I worked as a librarian, she asked if people ever returned books with personal items left inside. “As a matter of fact, yes!” I said. Only a few months earlier, I’d placed a cardboard box beneath the front desk to preserve the “bookmarks” we’d found: the snapshots, the personal letters. Once, I found a five-dollar bill folded in such a way I had to assume someone had done it intentionally. I was interested in our “finds” and wondered if we might collect enough to make a temporary display called “Place Holders” in the glass case of our lobby. Viola called the idea a little “out there,” but said I could go ahead with it when I’d collected enough. I started to tell Linda Sue but stopped when I saw she wasn’t listening. She had another question she wanted to ask: “Do you have that problem where crazy people come in and masturbate on your books?”
We never knew where she was from, though Helen Baker-Harrison thought she’d heard of the town, somewhere in upstate Connecticut. Helen waved her hand in a way that we interpreted as west of the river, the side that was both more Bohemian and richer. For a while we wondered if Linda Sue was an artist, based not on anything she said but on the clothes she wore: diaphanous skirts washed to a pale flesh color; men’s undershirts and vests decoupaged with what looked like the contents of a drawer bottom—loose buttons, chipped mirror pieces, and china plate bits.
“Did you make your vest?” I heard Marianne once ask her nervously, eyeing the dried glue.
“Yeah, I took a class,” Linda Sue said, running a hand over its bumpy terrain. “It was kind of a joke.”
Eventually we learned that Linda Sue had lots of opinions and that it didn’t take much prodding to elicit them. She hated public swimming pools and the Baker-Harrisons’ dog, who barked at clouds. When she hadn’t made any move to mow her overgrown yard a month after she moved in, and a couple of husbands had offered to stop by with their mowers, we learned that she liked it the way it was. “It just grows back, right?” she said, as if she were not completely sure. “I guess I don’t see the point. You just end up mowing—what? Every weekend?”
The men were dumbstruck. “Right.”
“So you’d just have to come back. No, thanks.”
Once I saw her in the grocery store, staring at an onion in her hand as if she were trying to remember what it was. I pushed my cart over toward her, thinking, I shouldn’t walk away just because she’s odd. “Hello, Linda Sue!” I called. “Have you got a recipe?”
We all pretended to be avid cooks in those days. We had cookie exchanges at Christmas and potlucks we came to with recipes written out on index cards. In truth, none of us was very good. Linda Sue threw the onion back in the bin. “Oh, God no,” she said. “I never cook. I didn’t even bring my pots and pans with
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