Myra didn’t know how to balance a checkbook.

The wind whipped the rain-soaked leaves onto her windshield as the window wipers tried in vain to clear her view. She realized then that she also didn’t know how to purchase new windshield wipers.

The car drove slowly down the street; the same street that she had lived mostly-happily with her husband and daughter. She strained to see around the red and orange leaves dragging behind her wipers.  She gripped the wheel a little tighter.  Now would not be a good time to have an accident. In fact, it’s the last thing she needed.

She glanced at the passenger seat. The stack of forgotten mail was beginning to slide onto the floor – and that didn’t include the at-least weeks’ worth of mail that was waiting for her in the sure to be crammed full mailbox. And don’t even ask what mail was sitting on her desk at home.   She supposed she could avoid the box for another day…but feared a run-in with the mailman…wait – what was she supposed to call them now? Mail people? Delivery men? No, it had something to do with carrying…carriers. Mail carriers.  She’d never been one to adjust well to changes and didn’t understand the fuss people made of continually changing their job titles, races, genders, etc. as if it were a fashion. It seemed silly to her. 

Her tummy grumbled, an audible reminder that she hadn’t eaten. What was in the fridge that sounded good? Well, nothing really sounded good anymore but what could she eat that would give her enough energy to make it through another day? Her friends had given casseroles and Mexican food; her neighbors 2 streets over – the ones who had welcomed her to the neighborhood with a plate of snicker-doodles over 30 years ago – had delivered bagels, cold cuts and fruit. All of it customary when someone dies and you don’t know what else to do. She knew how it went, she’d made enough casseroles of her own. She was grateful, though, and had a whole new appreciation for this custom because if she hadn’t had the food readily available she most likely would have starved to death.  Well, not to death…but definitely to a highly weakened state.

The car rounded the last corner and approached her home. She’d been bone-cold since the nice gentlemen in black suits had arrived at her home and skillfully and silently wrapped her husband on their bed. After his ravaged body was zipped into the vinyl bag she shuddered as she watched them whisk her husband away into a non-descript black van. She was kind of surprised it wasn’t a hearse and has since repeatedly caught herself looking at black vans wondering if somebody else’s loved one might also be rolling around in the back of it. 

She hadn’t looked forward to much as late, but tonight she hoped she might finally warm the chill in her bones. She planned on taking a long, hot bath. A really hot soak – so hot that her skin would likely beg to be taken out of the scalding water. She planned to sit in that tub until the water turned tepid then maybe drain it a bit to start the process all over again.  Her toes wiggled in her shoes searching for warmth. Yes, a bath would be nice.  She may not know how to balance a checkbook, she thought, but she could draw one hell of a bath.

Her car made its way into the driveway with a familiar bump as her undercarriage hit the curb. The noise alerted her next-door neighbor to her homecoming.

It was raining, windy and just plain miserable outside. Most people were keeping dry and warm on this Saturday except for the most devoted of soccer moms who sat under their umbrellas cheering on their child while sipping their brandy-laced Starbuck’s. Dwayne Barnes was not most people.

His pointed face turned to her as she pulled into the drive. He’d been standing at the hedge that divided their property, meticulously clipping errant branches and placing them efficiently into his garden apron’s front pocket. His face had a ruddy and shiny glow, as if it had been scrubbed clean just moments before, which she suspected by his fastidious yard, it had.  His dark blue denim Lee jeans had been ironed so precisely and repeatedly that there were white lines running down the fronts of his legs.  He reached down and grabbed his ever-familiar coffee mug and took a long swig. That man drank more coffee than any person she’d ever met. Morning, noon or night time he was carrying around that stainless steel mug. It was no wonder he was high strung.

Myra was not pleased to see him outside as Mr. Barnes was the antithesis of the word neighbor as there was nothing neighborly about him. It was rare that a truly kind word passed his lips, unless it was directed towards his constant companion (in a long line of other similar constant companions), a Pomeranian named Precious who was anything but. She suffered from exceptionally bulging eyes and a comical under-bite. The dog held Myra in the same esteem as her owner. If Barnes wasn’t barking at her, Annie was.  She kind of hated them both.

She and Michael had seriously considered moving out of their family home and moving anywhere that wasn’t next to Mr. Barnes after a particularly bad run-in with him and their daughter, Katie.  Mr. Barnes, long crowned the Warden of the cul-de-sac, kept a keen eye on all of the no-good teenagers. He lay in wait, confident that sooner rather than later they would take the bait. The bait being Mr. Barnes himself, as he was so hated that he garnered his own urban legend. Teens causing some sort of havoc at his home became like Halloween; something he could expect on the same day every year.

Katie, being a free-spirited sixteen year old, was way too easily convinced by the other neighbor kids that performing the ding dong ditch with a bag of feces engulfed in flames was an ideal Halloween prank for Mr. Barnes. It wasn’t. That bag wasn’t lit for more than 15 seconds when he had her arm in his grasp, his cordless phone set to speed-dial 911. That was a long night at the police station. Seeing an opportunity to use Katie as a lesson to the other no-good teenagers he pleaded his case to the officers to throw the proverbial book at her.

Criminal mischief, disorderly conduct, and arson with a case of trespassing thrown in for good measure would equate to a good chunk of time, if convicted, that little Katie would spend in juvenile detention. The severity of her punishment, in Mr. Barnes’s plan, would guarantee a Halloween free of burning feces for decades. He sat proudly, his thin chest puffed out like a rooster, awaiting the pinnacle moment when they would handcuff her and take her away.

However, the police chief, a father to one of the teenagers who contributed to Katie being in this particular fiasco, understood both the impulses of children and the temptation of punching this very difficult man in the face. After convincing Mr. Barnes that a trial could last years and that there was another option available which would give him immediate retribution, a deal was reached where Katie would spend 20 hours, at Mr. Barnes’s discretion, executing his landscaping and other household requests.  The deal was almost blown when Mr. Barnes suggested that Katie wear a t-shirt during her garden incarceration which proclaimed her guilt. Finally, after Michael angrily slammed his hand down on the table while loudly voicing his disagreement, Mr. Barnes acquiesced. The next day Katie went next door and ding-donged without ditching the home of her plaintiff to start her tenure on the Barnes Train Gang.

In retrospect, she wondered if Katie would have preferred going to Juvie, as Mr. Barnes treated every minute of those 20 hours as an opportunity to lecture her on the gross immaturity and inevitable destruction of the planet by her and her impertinent generation.  Katie’s hands were blistered and her body ached when she left that first day, but curiously her jaw hurt most of all. She discovered the source of her jaw pain the next day when she noticed that each time Mr. Barnes spoke to her, Katie would clench her jaw tighter and tighter until a headache began to emerge. She began stretching her mouth widely and repeatedly in an effort to relax her muscles. Mr. Barnes, taking her facial exercise as a sign of disrespect, began the cycle of lecturing anew. When her sentence was up Katie made herself a promise; she would neither make eye contact nor speak a word to Dwayne Barnes ever again.  It was 3 ½ years later and thus far she had kept her word.

Myra put her car in park and grabbed the new prescription that would help her sleep at night.  A few more letters slid off the seat and landed on the floor. She looked up to the sky. “You know, Michael, I really could have used you around the house for a few more years. Did you even consider my needs?” She smiled at the Heavens. She joked with him more now, dead, than she had since the pain of his diagnosis robbed him of his humor. She missed their banter and their playfulness. But she would still give it all up to simply have him again by her side. The realization of his vacancy made her gasp again, fresh in grief. She hoped the sleep aide would temper her sadness or at least soften its edges. 

She pulled herself out of her car and into the rain. The wet on her face was chilled by the wind and now her bones were even colder. Perhaps she’ll combine the sleep aid with the hot bath and end up being warm and numb – an intoxicating prospect. 

“Mrs. Spencer.  Mrs. Spencer!” The formality of his tone was just one of the many reasons they had not progressed to a first name basis. Just yards from her front door, she was trapped by his attention.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Barnes.” she replied, always succinct, always polite. Precious heard her voice and started barking. She hoped one of her other neighbors in the cul-de-sac would come outside to distract him but those hopes were dashed when she remembered that the Guptas were visiting family back in India and Mike Jones had started working nights and thereby slept during the day.    

“Yes, I know, Precious, I know…” he said, picking up to cradle his little yapper.

She casually hid the prescription bag beneath her coat so as to avoid any sort of medical conversation. She wasn’t up for a debate on the pharmaceutical industry and the evils of big corporations.  Not today, not really any day.

His eyes narrowed as he caught a flash of the bag as it disappeared under her coat. The corners of his mouth turned down in judgment.  “Mrs. Spencer…” he said, as he continued working on the hedge. He beckoned her closer, “…we need to address your apple trees.” The comment triggered a dread deep within her. This was her husband’s territory; dealing with the insufferable neighbor. She had made an art of waving Mr. Barnes’s requests off with a smile and a quick, “Oh, that’s Michael’s territory!” as she rushed back into the safety of her home. Michael, habituated by his own insufferable clients, would dutifully trod over to the hedge with a smile and an outstretched hand and quietly address whichever perceived wrongdoing was currently at the top of Mr. Barnes’s list.

Mentally she punched Michael in the ethereal arm. ‘Thanks a lot, Michael!’ she thought as she reluctantly walked closer. “Is there something wrong with them?” she asked, smiling sweetly. She raised her arm over her head to shield herself from the rain but also to indicate to Mr. Barnes that it was, in fact, raining and possibly it would be more polite to the grieving widow to let her go into her freaking house instead of standing out in the elements.

“You need to get the rest of the fruit off the tree. The apples are falling into my yard and you know what that means, don’t you?” She resisted the urge to yell, “Free apples!” and instead countered with, “No, I don’t, sorry.”  When faced with an imminent threat she had found her go-to solution was to roll over and show her underbelly.

He straightened himself into a professor pose, poised to school her in the teachings of the Farmer’s Almanac. “You are supposed to pick the fruit before it becomes too ripe. If you let the fruit stay on the tree it will over-ripen and attract wasps and rats. Then, if the apples have still not been picked, they will fall to the ground, where they will rot. The sickly smell of the rot invites an even larger rodent infestation.  Obviously I have no say over what type of trees you have planted, even though I told your husband years ago that those apple trees were planted too close to my property. However, I do have a say in the fruit that is now dropping in my yard. The fruit is rotting and that will attract vermin into my home.”

She never intended to use her husband’s passing as an excuse for anything…but she decided, and believed her husband would concur, that mentioning Michael’s death to get out of this particular conversation was highly justified. “I’m sorry about the trees, Mr. Barnes. I haven’t been able to get much done around the house what with Michael’s death and having to plan the funeral.” He didn’t appear appeased. “But, we had the service yesterday so life should begin returning to normal.”

He took a sharp breath, pacified for the moment, and robotically uttered, “I am sorry for your loss.” The word sorry sounded forced and difficult to pronounce. “I sent a card.”

“Thank you, Mr. Barnes” she said, having no idea if what he said was true and not caring enough to find out.  Her chance at a clean exit would be lost if she didn’t move quickly so with a familiar wave of her hand she said, “Sorry, again, that was Michael’s territory!” and rushed inside.

She closed the door harder than she’d intended and her face flushed by the excitement of her getaway. Leaning against the door she looked into the den toward Michael’s desk with its mountain of unopened mail. ‘Another day’, she thought, and trudged upstairs to the bath.

Age wasn’t creeping up on her anymore, it was now a full-blown assault. Standing at the vanity she leaned against the cabinet so that she could get up close and personal with her magnifying mirror. Though it was true that Michael was the one with the cancer and wasted away before her eyes, she didn’t leave the experience unscathed.  Her hair, once a golden brown was now dull with streaks of grey and her skin, wow, her skin was not the same skin since she’d met the Hell that was cancer.  Even her teeth had yellowed, although she suspected that was a result of the chemical-free, healthy toothpaste that she had found for Michael. She also had the healthy, organic foods; the organic supplements, the creams and lotions and teas and anything else that she could try to make him feel better. 

She added concealer to hide the dark circles under her swollen eyes. She found that she needed to blot the make-up deeply into her wrinkles. If she didn’t then the make-up sat on top of the wrinkle, a completely different shade from her real skin underneath. She added a bit of shadow to her lids, making sure not to use a frosted shadow as she had just read in some ladies magazine at the funeral home that frosted shadows on older women were a big no-no. She’s still not entirely sure why they’re a no-no but after surveying her face she wasn’t going to take any chances. Her mascara sat untouched though she considered applying the lightest coast. Realistically it was going to end up running down her cheeks after any of numerous points throughout the day. Seeing his favorite tie on the dresser = tears. Grabbing a single coffee cup from the cabinet = tears. Remembering his final moments as his heart stopped beating = well, that was actually way past tears; that was more of a “have to clean the entire face, brush hair, wash clothes” sort of reaction. With a few strokes of a blush brush she deemed herself ready to leave the house.

It had been a couple days since she’d seen Katie and she was excited to be able to sit with her, in a college coffee shop and forget about things for a bit. Her goal was to encourage Katie to buckle down and continue with her schooling. She had made it this far on a college scholarship, savings bonds from her grandma and the mutual fund that Michael had set up for her as a baby. As an accountant he had a great understanding of money. As an investor, not so much. The three thousand dollars that he had started with never went higher than forty-eight hundred. He’d expected the Mutual Funds alone to cover her tuition but he’d never expected the market to crash. Michael was a big proponent of leaving college debt-free and looked down upon student loans the high interest rates given to students so Katie had had to scramble to cover her school costs.

The stress of money plus the death of her father had re-prioritized college for her. Her drive waned and her test scores suffered. She went to bed at night wondering what the life of a barista might be like, since doctor, lawyer, teacher, spy all required some sort of education.

Myra knew Katie was stalled and that all she needed was a little jump start from mom. She’d been rehearsing her pep talk all morning. She would be suggestive and encouraging and wouldn’t let the subject drop until Katie understood the importance of having a degree. It was what both she and Michael had envisioned for their daughter and it was non-negotiable. Feeling empowered and with purpose she walked assertively out into the daylight. She unlocked her Volvo station wagon, sat down, started the engine (and thanked God that it started because she didn’t know how to hire a mechanic) and headed toward the school.