The New Neighbor: A Novel - Softcover

Leah Stewart is the critically acclaimed author of The History of Us, Husband and Wife, The Myth of You and Me, and Body of a Girl. The recipient of a Sachs Fund Prize and a NEA Literature Fellowship, she teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Cincinnati and lives in Cincinnati with her husband and two children. Visit her online at LeahStewart.com.

The New Neighbor Signs of Life

Where before there was no one, suddenly I, Margaret Riley, have a neighbor. I went out on the back deck this morning like every morning, and there she was. Across the pond, sitting on her own back deck. I was startled. That house has been empty a long time. My first impulse was to go back inside, as if I’d come upon something shameful, or embarrassed myself. As if I were out there naked, which of course I wasn’t, and even if I had been she was too far away to see. But I am braver than that. I put my coffee cup on the table, as usual, and then I went back inside for my book, which is by P. D. James, a remarkable woman, as ancient as I am and still creating mysteries. I have to make two trips because I need one hand for the cane. Sometimes I try to manage cane and book and coffee all at once, and the result is always coffee stains, or burns, or at the very least a wet book and a diminished cup of coffee. Every morning I’m frustrated anew by the need to make two trips. Impatience and age are not compatible.

She was still there when I came back out. I lowered myself into my chair. I felt self-conscious that she might be watching this slow maneuvering, like I am when someone watches me trying to park my car. The position of my chair ensured that if I looked up from my book I looked directly at her. I knew I wouldn’t move my chair—because it would be rude, and because it’s heavy—but I thought about doing so anyway. I drank my coffee slowly, pretending to gaze out over the pond, which is what I do every morning, though usually without the presence of someone who might be watching me.

Strange that she didn’t wave. Wasn’t it? But I hadn’t waved either. I couldn’t make out her face, of course—the pond is an acre across—but I could see the yellowish smudge of her long hair, and so I knew she was young, or at least much younger than I. Was it the job of the younger person to be the first to wave? Certainly it cost her less to move. She was wearing something purple. I think it was a purple bathrobe. I like purple myself, but that poem about the old ladies and the red hats has made it impossible for me to wear it.

The coffee cup was empty. I set it down, careful to push it back from the edge of the table, and reached for my book. Before I opened it I looked right at her. There was no way to know for sure but she seemed to be looking right back at me. I lifted my hand off my lap and extended my arm. What I mean is, I waved. I left my arm suspended a moment. She didn’t move. My arm fell back into my lap, a heavy thing. I was about to look down at my book like nothing had happened, like a cat casually licking its whiskers, pretending it didn’t just smack into the wall. Then she moved. I swear—I know she was far away and even with my glasses I have an old lady’s eyesight—but I swear, she jerked first, like she’d started to wave back and been restrained. Then she raised her arm and returned my greeting.

“Hello,” I said aloud, though she couldn’t hear me of course.

A few minutes went by, both of us sitting there enjoying the morning. A large bird of prey flew high above the pond and I tracked it with my eyes as it headed back into the trees. Probably a turkey vulture, but I liked to pretend it was a hawk. I glanced at my neighbor and saw her head turned up, too, watching until the bird vanished. She looked back at me—of course I couldn’t see her eyes but I know she looked—and I nodded. We had watched the bird together. We had seen it disappear, and maybe felt together a needless longing for its return. We were almost companionable. Then she got up and went inside her house.

I was surprised, when she was gone, by a twinge of loneliness. How silly. I am always alone. Sometimes days go by in which the only other people I see are on TV. This house is in the woods between two small towns—villages, really—on a mountain in Tennessee. I live here by myself. It’s been years since I lived with another person. I don’t ever want to live with another person again. I’m nearly ninety-one now, unimaginable as that sounds, and I will be alone until I die. Before they put me in a nursing home, in forced companionship with the sick and the dying, I will fling myself into the pond. I’ll weight my pockets with rocks, like Virginia Woolf, whose books I did my best to understand. All her words float away when I think of her. I see her crouched at the edge of the water, searching for just the right stones.