Beer drinkers sit out in the driveway, their conversation carrying in the windless night. Some faces and bodies can be seen in the faint light from the small fire burning at the center of their encircled camp chairs. They aim to get a little drunk and share some conversation, but also to take advantage of an evening with no bugs and temperatures that at only 10 degrees cooler than the afternoon high, still feel somewhat relieving.
Breezes haven’t blown since last Sunday. From the plain states to Michigan, the center of the continent has been hit with warm fronts and the wind has gone too, as if the earth simply forgot to rotate once it reached mid-July. (more…)
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Tags: Neighbors, Suburbia
Drawn, maybe, the way a June bug is to porch light, she’s spent the last three nights under street lamps talking to boys with her head cocked in flirtation. Melissa, the 16 year-old girl who has lived up the street for almost four years, has never spoken a word to us, and so left it to our imagination to decide whether these suitors are her type or just her toys for temporary play.
The gentlemen callers move around in the shadows and occasionally try to entertain her by choosing props from her nearby garage – a skateboard, basketballs to dribble on the driveway while they conversate, and in one instance a wheelchair to sit in. Their outlines are paper-thin on the profile and lanky. Nearly all of them wear baggy jeans and sleeveless shirts – some go shirtless – and they drive 4×4s and cars that sound as though if someone were to climb on the back bumpers and stomp, the shocks would blow away on the wind in one last ear-piercing howl. But, despite the obvious physical and social shortcomings that go with the age, they move with surprising confidence – not necessarily in themselves, but possibly because they know their chances of making a connection are good.
Melissa’s attitude and her sense of style – which again, is all we have to work from – says that she’s done more than entertained the notion of being with them. Crude as the suggestion might be and baseless – for all we know, she might be a do-gooder, involved in her school and a volunteer in a local community organization – we have reasons for our suspicions, chiefly a few necking sessions in parked cars, empty beer cans her friends have spread in our front yard and the drunken, midnight fireworks displays in the absence of her parents.
I am tempted to talk to her. One morning last winter, her car was buried a foot deep in snow. I was out clearing my car and almost stepped through the exhaust clouds to help her dig it out. I got the feeling she wouldn’t appreciate the help or that she might misconstrue my intentions, so I backed out watching her struggle with an under-sized window scraper.
Another time, before the morning in the snow, my wife and I saw her at the nearby sports bar sitting with her mother. It was after 10 on a Friday and there was a circle of empty beer cups on the tabletop. How she was allowed to stay there at such a late hour can probably be blamed on small town ethics and an aversion toward neighbors and the law. But her young face stood out when it ordinarily wouldn’t, not if she were surrounded by her classmates – people her own age whose faces are as fresh and youthful as hers.
We felt sorry for her – that she was glimpsing her full life now. That darkened bars and the hopes of finding someone in the neon signs or in dark driveways would be the bright spots in a forever small town life. Her mother married her high school sweetheart and they are still married to this day. They have Melissa who now seems to belong to no one except these optimistic boys who hopefully remain expectant of a reward that never comes.
But again, I make all these assumptions with no real knowledge, based only on impressions and mere deductions. I have crafted a whole life for this poor girl and it’s a dark one – all because we have never spoken. Next time I find her in the driveway, I am going to introduce myself – save her future, at least in my own mind, which I suspect makes me one of the few males with good intentions in her short life so far. And the strange part is, we distrust each other the most, which is why I shut the porch light out and go to bed while the June bugs return to their places in the flowers.
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Tags: Neighbors, Suburbia
