Sheila Baxter
NEIGHBORS
by
Sheila Baxter (copyright 1997 All Rights Reserved)
Cleo felt her hair lift off the
pillow and drift around her like sea wrack, stirred by the ceiling fan, as though she had
been drawn to the bottom of the sea. Then the night-blooming jasmine burst into flower,
filling her room with
fragrance as it had last April, before Antony left She could hear the fishing fleet start
out from the fish market, telling her it was four o'clock in the morning, in her house on
Siesta Key. She'd invited three women from her creative writing course to lunch, promising
to read the manuscript she'd never brought to class.
Gaylord, her Springer Spaniel,
barked, and through the jasmine webbing her window, she could see him bounding along the
crumbling sea wall, greeting the fishing boats chugging down Hanson bayou on the way to
the Gulf of Mexico, flares at the prows, spitting filaments of light into the darkness,
stern tackle ready to spin out the seining nets. The fishermen, facing into a pale light
rising in the eastern sky, calling Gaylord softly by name as he ran along the sea wall
keeping pace with them.
The jasmine poured out its
sweetness with memories of Antony she had been trying to forget, even joining the writing
workshop to write him out of her life, banish him into a world of fiction. The shadows
shifted and ripples of light reflected from the water began to wash across the ceiling.
Sleep seemed out of the question so she put some coffee on and turned to the typwriter.
"Antony," she typed,
"swimming that night far from land," searching for something he couldn't
name...his powerful shoulders painted with pearl from the moon, his thick hair haloed in
night clouds.
She'd watched him return, swimming
seal-like against the current in Big Pass. The ocean seemed to cling to him as he pulled
himself out and ran up the beach. His shadow touched her with an illusionary chill as he
passed without seeing her, his lips twisting in silent words, perhaps to another self.
"There is no warmth in him to
comfort me," she thought,"his element is wild water like a Triton, and only an
Undine would risk drowning in his kisses full of the sea that leaves a bitter
thirst."
She turned off the typewriter for
it seemed to her in the chill before dawn that though she transposed her story to other
landscapes with other voices, the events were too thinly disguised, and if someone
deciphered it, Antony would never forgive her. She picked up Antony's letter on the desk,
steeling herself to open it, then put it back again.
She stared out across Big Pass at
the lights on Lido Bridge, the banks of high rises along the bay front shining brighter
now than the receding stars, tipping the world upside down. Casper Gillespie was bringing
in his Catalina on automatic, furling the sails, running lights dimmed, riding heavily in
the water, and it came to her to wonder how it had sailed so lightly out on the tide the
day before, but now she had her guests to plan for so she searched anxiously through her
cook books for a recipe for the fresh lobster she'd found at the fish market. Antony had
grown critical of her cooking,destroying her confidence. But what if Casper Gillespie was
bringing in drugs, as a neighbor had suggested?
A thrush twittered in a sweet gum
tree and fell silent, but a raven nesting in a cupola by the Widows Walk began a harsh
sustained cackling, and two black-racers entwined themselves lovingly in a potted palm.
"Eliot is right," she
sighed meeting her shadowed eyes in the mirror, "April is the cruelest month...mixing
memory with desire, stirring dull roots."
Gaylord gave a high yip, his eyes
filling with hopeful green light, heralding the slap of the Herald-Tribune against the
back gate, for she often took him for a walk before picking up the paper. Attorney Poldean
gave her a reluctant, "Good morning", pulling his dressing gown around him as he
picked up his newspaper and hurried back into his house, which had been built by Mayor
Higel almost a hundred years ago. The Poldeans were restoring it, bringing its pecky
cypress back to a natural sheen, researching textures and furniture of the period, giving
smart parties to which, since Antony left, they hesitated to invite her. Sometimes she
felt she lived in a goldfish bowl with Harry Higel's upper windows overlooking everything
that went on in and around her house. The realtor neighbors were waiting for a sign she
was giving up, ready to put her house on the market.
Mrs. Rosy Parker at ninety-two,
came down the street wearing frilly baby-doll pajamas leading her poodle on a leash,
peering into yards as she passed hoping to find violations of a city ordinance. She would
call the fire department of a cookout, report late lawn sprinkling to the police, and pets
who strayed from their yards to Animal Control. Cleo grasped Gaylord's
collar before he went prancing off after the poodle and dragged him inside ignoring his
reproaches.
She brought a cup of coffee and the
newspaper to the table by a window overlooking the Mangrove Cove and the Driver's concrete
block house dwarfed by Australian pines on the farther bank. A cough amplified by the
water drew her attention to Mr. Driver, who had stopped to stare at the sail boats moored
to her dock as he picked up his paper.
He had never forgiven her for
refusing to sell him part of the Mangrove Cove to build a dock for his racing sloop and
she was sure he was the one who had complained to the city she was running a Marina
bringing the zoning inspector to her door, a small spare man on the verge of retirement.
"I'm sorry Mrs. Marle, but we
have to follow through on complaints you know," he said handing her a decree to
dispose of the boats within 30 days.
"But everyone up and down the
bayous is renting dock space," she protested.
"The difference is there has
been a complaint about YOUR boats... neighbors aren't what they used to be," he
sighed, wondering why a woman whose eyes shone amber in daylight and turned obseiden in
the shadowy living room lived alone in this rambling old house hard to heat in the winter
or cool in the summer, that had been a speak easy called The Blue Lantern during
prohibition, the haunt of rumrunners, sought out by sailors for its deep natural harbor
and a way out to the Gulf without passing under a bridge.
"I'm sorry," he repeated
"but the boats must go..."
Cleo reached for a term familiar at
City Hall, "That would be SELECTIVE ENFORCEMENT."
As he turned to leave she thought
she heard him say, "I wish we could see each other outside this situation."
Mr. Driver brought her back to the
present by slamming his door so hard it echoed across the channel and off the sea wall,
startling a Great Blue Heron venturing from the mangroves to fish.
Something flickered on the
periphery of her vision, a displacement of air, rifted light, a shadow cast between the
moon dissolving in its misty cowl and the passageway behind the kitchen door. The sound of
a footfall or perhaps a breeze passing...
A lizard scurried across the stone
mantle among the Staffordshire dogs and flights of porcelain angels, and she let out her
breath, telling herself she should be used to the sounds of the house by now, the creak of
pecky cypress, rain water backing up in forgotten drains, beetles scuttling, chirping
crickets, garden snakes slithering after bugs and geckos.
But she felt oppressed, no longer
eager to welcome her guests, to read them her story. The manuscript lay on the desk beside
her typewriter, diminished in her eyes. She was placing the first tray of hors d'oeuvres
in the oven when something struck her between the shoulder blades so deeply and
dexterously she felt only mild surprise. She was unaware of the shadow over her as she
sank among the defrosting hors d'oeuvres, her hair spread around her in the drifting
twilight stirred by the ceiling fan, wondering again if she'd been drawn to the bottom of
the sea. Soon all concerns drained away from her in a warm comfortable sea of blood.
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