Love, Suburban Style

  To his surprise, he catches Meg shooting a backward glance over her shoulder.

  At him.

  Or maybe just at the field, to see if…

  What?

  Come on, you’ve been around long enough to know she wasn’t looking at the field.

  She was looking at you.

  And you were looking at her.

  So what are you going to do about it?

  Ignore it, he decides, turning away and reaching for a mesh bag filled with soccer balls.

  Because if he doesn’t ignore it, he’ll have to do something about it. Which is out of the question for more reasons than he can count.

  “Come on, Ben,” he says, slinging the bag over his shoulder. “Let’s go pick up Katie.”

  As they walk off the field, he can’t help but ask his son, “What did you think of the new girl?”

  “Collette?”

  “Cosette.”

  “Oh. Right. She was okay.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I guess.”

  “She doesn’t know anyone. I was thinking maybe you can—”

  “I don’t think so, Dad.”

  “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

  “I bet I do. You want me to introduce her around.”

  “Right. Why don’t you want to do it?”

  Ben shrugs uncomfortably. “She’s just different.”

  Ah. Different. The ultimate adolescent curse.

  “Different is good, Ben,” Sam points out, adapting his bordering-on-reproachful schoolteacher tone. “You need to respect people’s differences.”

  “I know. I do.”

  “Cookie cutters are boring,” Sam persists. “Some of my best students are the ones who refuse to conform.”

  “Yeah, but are they happy? Do they have a lot of friends?”

  Sam opens his mouth to answer—how, he has no idea.

  Ben does it for him. “Trust me. They’re miserable.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “I do.”

  Sam shrugs and shakes his head.

  “Come on, Dad… you’re saying that if you were me, you’d take that girl under your wing and try to make her a part of things?”

  “Yes, I absolutely would.” Sam ignores a pinprick of conscience. “And I’d hope you’d have the character to do it, too. Otherwise, you might miss out on getting to know a terrific person.”

  There’s a long pause.

  Then Ben asks, “Can we talk about something else?”

  “Sure.”

  Sam pushes the unsettling thoughts of “different” Cosette and her “different” mother—whom he failed to notice in high school, despite her reportedly throwing herself into his path—out of his head.

  For now, anyway.

  At dusk, Meg carries yet another full garbage bag out the back door, careful not to trip on the uneven tread as she walks down the steps.

  There’s yet another thing that needs to be fixed around here, before somebody gets hurt. It seems that every time she makes a move, she stumbles across yet another hazard or eyesore that requires attention.

  She’ll have to find room in her household budget to hire someone to start making repairs around here right away, before the whole place falls down around her.

  Okay, it’s not that bad, she tells herself, realizing she’s just on the verge of exhaustion. Things will look much brighter in the morning.

  At least, that’s what she just promised Cosette before she left her upstairs grumbling that there aren’t enough outlets in her room to plug in any of her stuff.

  Outside, Meg instantly feels lulled by the silver-black sky, chirping crickets, and sweet green aroma of freshly mown grass.

  It’s going to be fine, she reminds herself as she lugs her heavy black plastic bag to the lattice-bordered nook beside the angled horizontal doors perpendicular to the foundation. They lead to the basement, which she hasn’t even begun to tackle yet. She poked her head down there this morning, saw the cobwebs and smelled the earthy, musty scent of forgotten junk, and closed the doors.

  There’s just way too much to worry about in the house.

  And outside the house: Both trash cans there are well beyond full, with the overflow bags leaning against the house.

  One of these next few days, she’ll have to lug it all out to the curb… but which day? She should have thought to ask Sam when garbage pickup is.

  You can always call him, she tells herself, glancing toward his house beyond the border of shrubs and trees. It looks like he might be at home; lamplight spills from several windows on the first and second floor.

  But she didn’t get his phone number—and he probably isn’t listed. High school teachers rarely are. Too many prank phone calls.

  Okay, then you can knock on his door and ask him.

  After all, it’s a legitimate reason to go over there.

  Right. And you’ve just spent the entire day trying to come up with one.

  Which is precisely why she has to stay away from Sam.

  She’s in danger of becoming obsessed with him all over again. And that’s even riskier for a single mom with a lot to lose—including a fragile heart—than it is for a quirky, insecure high school girl. Heartbreak is pretty much guaranteed.

  You don’t know that for sure, she reminds herself.

  Oh, come on. Yes, you do. Because you sure as heck aren’t going to marry Sam Rooney and live happily ever after here in Glenhaven Park.

  This is her life, not a movie. Romantic happy endings like that don’t happen in the real world.

  Maybe that’s why she tried to escape the real world… as if her hometown weren’t a part of it.

  But it is.

  Slowly, she’s realizing that in some ways—too many ways—things are no different here than they are in the city, or anywhere else.

  There are still complications and snobs. She still doesn’t have enough money or time; there’s still more than enough traffic and pressure.

  Well, what did you expect to find here?

  Meg stares absently into the shadowy thicket between her yard and Sam’s, shaking her head at her folly.

  She expected to relive her childhood—or at least, to duplicate it for Cosette.

  How could she not have fathomed that it’s impossible?

  She’s not a fiftysomething housewife who’s a wiz in the kitchen and the garden, and she’s not married to the man who fathered her child and keeps a roof over their heads, food on the table, and a smile on his face no matter how hard his day was.

  I was so lucky to grow up the way I did. And I never even realized it.

  On the heels of that thought automatically comes another, more familiar one: Poor Cosette… She gets to grow up without a father in her life, and with a crazy mother who makes impulsive decisions.

  Like giving up a career, an apartment, a life, and moving to a haunted—

  Meg goes utterly still as she spots something moving stealthily in the shrub border.

  Can the yard be as haunted as the house is? she wonders, just before a young girl steps out onto her lawn.

  She certainly looks very much alive… and sheepishly guilty.

  “Hi,” she calls, waving.

  “Hi.” Meg wonders if she can possibly be Sam’s daughter.

  “I’m really sorry I’m in your yard.” The girl comes a little closer, bending her head and rapidly brushing at her hair as if she’s afraid something might be crawling in it.

  “That’s okay. Are you… okay?”

  “I’m fine. I was just over there”—she motions at Sam’s yard—“throwing a Frisbee for my dog to catch and it landed in here somewhere. Now I can’t find it and my brother’s going to kill me because it’s his and he told me not to touch it.”

  “Uh-oh. That’s not good. I’ll help you look.” Meg smiles and walks toward her, heedless of her bare feet. The grass is damp, but it’s too late in the day to worry about stepping on bees.

  She pushes
aside a couple of leafy branches to peer into the dark thatch of pachysandra, saying conversationally, “My name’s Meg.”

  “I’m Katie.”

  “Is Sam your father?”

  “Yup. You met my dad?” She sounds surprised.

  “He’s coaching my daughter’s soccer team.” Meg decides not to mention she also knows Sam because she grew up nursing a ferocious crush on him and, oh yeah, kissed him last night.

  “You have a daughter? My dad didn’t tell me that.”

  “What did he tell you?” She’s afraid to ask.

  “Just that the new people are here and that you probably won’t stick around.”

  Meg’s heart sinks. “Really.”

  “Yeah, ’cause new people never do.” Katie stoops to poke into a clump of weeds. “They always start seeing things and hearing things and get scared and run away. My dad says they’re all crazy.”

  “The people who leave? Why is that?”

  “Because he said there’s no such thing as ghosts.” She pauses, not lifting her head when she adds decidedly, “But there is.”

  “You’ve seen ghosts?”

  “Just one.” Looking up at last, Katie’s face is illuminated in the light of the rising moon.

  She’s wearing a strangely solemn, cryptic expression.

  “Was it here?” Meg indicates her new house.

  “No. It was there.” Katie gestures at her own house. “But please don’t say anything to my dad about it, because he’ll get all upset.”

  “Because you believe in ghosts and he doesn’t?”

  “Yes.”

  But her tone is cagey.

  It’s more than that, Meg realizes. Yet she senses that the subject is best dropped.

  They poke around for a few more minutes, chatting and looking for the Frisbee.

  “How old is your daughter? Fifteen?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “I figured it was either that or fourteen if my dad’s coaching her. Did Ben meet her?”

  “Ben is your brother?”

  “Yeah. He’s really mean.”

  Meg hides a smile. “He did meet Cosette today, yes.”

  “I bet he was nice to her. Ben likes girls, except for me.”

  “That’s how brothers are.”

  “You have a brother?”

  “No. But that’s what people say.”

  “Do you have a sister?”

  “Nope.”

  “How about a mom?”

  “Yup—hey, look, I found it!” Meg interrupts herself triumphantly.

  “Wow, great. Thank you.” Katie accepts it, but she looks less enthusiastic than Meg expected.

  “Well… you should probably go give that back to your brother,” she suggests.

  “Yeah, I should. Thanks for helping me look. You must be really busy getting your stuff moved in.”

  “It’s been a little crazy,” Meg admits.

  “Do you want some help? I’m not really doing anything if you need me. I’ve been kind of bummed all night because my dad said I can’t go with my friend and her family to stay overnight at this resort in the Catskills for two nights to celebrate the last week of summer.”

  “Why not?”

  “My dad said it’s not safe.”

  “Are you going to be climbing the mountains?”

  “Huh?”

  “Skydiving? Bungee jumping?”

  Katie giggles. “Nope.”

  “Well, that’s good.” Meg grins. “But, listen, your dad loves you. He probably thinks that’s too far away for you to go on your own.”

  “I wouldn’t be on my own. I’d be with my friend Erin’s mom and dad. They’re really responsible. They eat healthy stuff and they go to church every single Sunday.”

  Clearly, this is an excerpt from a prerehearsed speech she gave to her dad earlier.

  “They do sound responsible.”

  “Can you tell that to my dad? He and my brother are inside watching the Yankee game, and maybe if you told my dad that I should be allowed to go—”

  “Sorry. Can’t do that.”

  “I figured you wouldn’t. But can I still come help you unpack if my dad says it’s okay?”

  Meg finds it all too easy to picture Sam lounging in front of the television, engrossed in a ball game. Maybe he’s bare-chested…

  She wonders how he’d react if she stuck her head in to ask if his daughter can come over for a little while. Katie’s loneliness is palpable.

  Then she remembers what Sam said about her moving in here. That she probably won’t stick around.

  Oh, yeah? Watch me.

  Ghosts or no ghosts, she’s going to see this through.

  Yes, and she’ll prove to herself that it wasn’t a rash, impulsive decision to move here.

  She’ll also do her best to steer clear of temptation so she can’t possibly make any decisions that are rash and impulsive—like kissing Sam again.

  “You know what, Katie? It’s late, and I’m finished with the unpacking for tonight. But maybe you can help me another time,” she adds, seeing the disappointed look on the girl’s face.

  “Okay. It was nice meeting you.”

  “You, too.”

  Meg watches her start back to her own yard.

  Then she turns on her heel and marches back to her haunted handyman special.

  Sam is reaching again into the bag of chips Ben holds out from his sprawled perch nearby when Katie bursts into the house with Rover.

  “Dad?”

  “In here.”

  She appears, all breathless and excited. She does this sometimes, being a dramatic adolescent girl. It doesn’t take a lot to get her worked up.

  Sam keeps his eyes on the game—three men on, two outs, bottom of the sixth—until he realizes that the source of Katie’s bubbly enthusiasm is “the new mom next door.”

  Not “the new kid next door.”

  The mom.

  “She was so nice to me,” she chatters, helping herself to chips, loudly rattling the bag and crunching as she talks.

  The batter swings and misses. Strike one.

  Ben shushes his sister.

  Naturally, that encourages her to press on defiantly. “She was really nice to me when she saw me, and she even helped me look for—”

  She breaks off and shoots a guilty look at Ben, who’s glued to the screen and doesn’t notice.

  Uh-oh.

  The batter swings again. Strike two.

  Rover trots into the room and settles in his usual spot on the rug.

  “And she was so beautiful, with the most gorgeous long curly, wavy hair… I would kill to have hair like that.”

  “Your hair is beautiful,” Sam says automatically.

  Katie has Sheryl’s hair, and Sheryl’s eyes, and Sheryl’s lanky build. But she doesn’t have Sheryl’s calm, quiet, reasonable disposition. She’s far more fiery and passionate than either Sheryl, or Sam.

  Meg is like that, too, though.

  Huh?

  Where did that thought come from? How the heck would he know that Meg is fiery and passionate?

  He wouldn’t.

  In fact, he could have sworn that it wasn’t his own mental voice that thought it.

  He could swear that it was Sheryl’s voice, talking to him in his head the way it sometimes does.

  Yes, there are times when he can almost hear her saying things like, “Don’t heat a Styrofoam coffee cup in the microwave,” or “Don’t forget to buy cupcakes for Katie’s class on her birthday, and bring napkins.”

  Stuff like that.

  “All right, come on,” Ben mutters.

  “And she said her daughter’s on your soccer team so maybe I can come to the next practice, Dad, and meet her.”

  “Maybe.”

  Another pitch. Ball one.

  “And she said I can go over there and help her unpack,” Katie is saying. “But not tonight because it’s late. And she said Ben met her daughter, too. What was she like?”

/>   Ben shrugs, eyes on the batter.

  The batter swings again. Strikes out.

  Commercial.

  “Jeez, do you ever shut up?” Ben asks his sister.

  “Dad! Ben just told me to shut up.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you—”

  “No, he didn’t,” Sam says wearily. “He said—”

  “He said to shut up.”

  “I did not. I posed a rhetorical question about you and your big mouth.”

  “Ben.” Sam gives him a warning look.

  “You should tell him he can’t watch the rest of the game for that, Dad.”

  “For what?” Ben demands.

  “For being mean to me. You’re always mean to me. That’s what I told Meg. She said big brothers are like that.”

  Meg.

  Again.

  This isn’t good for anyone.

  Especially not for Katie.

  “I don’t want you over there, bugging… Meg.” Sam is reluctant to even allow her name to settle on his tongue. “She’s busy trying to get settled in. The last thing she needs is an extra kid underfoot.”

  “No, she said that I could come over and help her. She needs me.”

  No, Sam thinks sadly, you need her.

  Pop psychology 101.

  Desperate for a female role model, Katie has latched on to Meg.

  That’s happened before—but usually with other girls.

  Never with an adult woman.

  Why now?

  Why Meg?

  It can’t be that she reminds Katie of Sheryl, because the two women couldn’t be more opposite.

  Sam can’t imagine pragmatic, conservative Sheryl moving into a run-down old house, or wearing cutoffs, or talking too much when she got nervous, the way Meg did when she introduced Sam to her daughter and her friend.

  No, Sheryl was always quieter. More serious. More centered.

  That’s what I need, Sam tells himself firmly.

  And that’s what Katie and Ben need.

  If any of them get attached to the new neighbors in more than the most casual way, it can only lead to trouble.

  It’s one thing for Sam to take risks with his own emotional well-being.

  It’s quite another for him to allow the children to do that.

  Yes, it would be irresponsible of Sam to allow Katie to spend any amount of time with Meg. She’ll only get hurt.

  We’ll all steer clear, he concludes.