The Best American Short Stories 2014 by Jennifer Egan

his hand was very warm, not unpleasantly warm, not moist, just warm and surprisingly soft. He was a big man. I suppose I was a bit unnerved by the pleasantness of his touch, for instead of saying something kind and welcoming, I said, “What kind of a name is Djukanovic?” Now, I meant this in a very nice way, not at all like it was a suspicious or bad or foreign name, but I know that’s how it sounded because Mr. Djukanovic looked at me oddly and said, “Well, what kind of name is Evarts?” And I said, “I think it’s just a plain old American name, but your name is so interesting and I wonder what it means.” “Means?” asked Mr. Djukanovic. “It’s a name, it doesn’t mean anything.” I realized by his hostile tone that my question had offended him, even though I had meant it in the friendliest possible way, so I tried to think of how to restore the balm of fellowship to our conversation. “Is it European?” I asked him, because no one can be insulted for being taken for a European, but this seemed to only annoy Mr. Djukanovic further, for he said, “No, it’s not European,” and he turned away and walked over to the doughnut table and grabbed a fistful of Pop’ems. And that was the extent of my relationship with any of the Djukanovics, and now they were coming to live in my house.
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    I was born and raised in this town. I always thought I would move away at some point, there are so many things that can take a person somewhere else, but none of those things ever happened to me, so here I am. It’s not that I want to live somewhere else; this is a very nice town and I can’t imagine a nicer place to live except perhaps someplace where it doesn’t snow so much, but I suppose every place has its good things and bad things. Robert also comes from here, and we live now in the house he grew up in (which we have renovated twice). My sister lives in the house I grew up in, but I have nothing to do with her for reasons that don’t really pertain at all to the matter at hand, which is the Djukanovics. I suppose in a way that everything is connected in some fashion, but I’d rather just leave Valerie (my sister) out of this. She’ll only spoil the story, like she spoils everything. I don’t know why I said that about her living in the house we grew up in, so just forget it.
    This is not very nice, but I am going to tell it anyway. When I was a little girl in this town, we called all the folk who lived down along the spillway “river rats,” on account of the fact that their houses were always being flooded and if, after a flood, you’d drive along the River Road, you’d see them huddled beneath tarpaulins, shivering and surrounded by the waterlogged furniture they’d managed to drag out of their bungalows. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized how insensitive this was; in fact I thought “river rat” was a term of endearment because my father’s pet name for me was Minnie Mouse, and there’s not much difference between a mouse and a rat. And besides, we weren’t insensitive because we’d always bring old blankets and canned vegetables and powdered milk and things like that to the fire station where the people who were flooded out could just come and take what they wanted for free, no questions asked.
    But nevertheless, even though we meant no harm and actually did some good, I have come to feel guilty about our attitude toward those folk who lived in the flood zone, and I suppose one of the reasons I didn’t resist the arrival of the Djukanovics was that I thought it might serve as an expiation of any sins of pride or selfishness I had (unwittingly) committed in my youth. So I put fresh linens on the beds in the guest room (once Robert had cleared all his junk off them) and then I went into Alice’s room to do the same. I don’t often go into Alice’s