“Good evening, Mrs. Singh, your dog is looking particularly nice today,” Isaac called out.
Mrs. Singh and her dog were walking by our houses. Isaac and I were sitting on our separate chairs on our separate driveways. Watching the world go by.
“Thank you, Isaac. I was the one who gave him his new haircut.”
“You did a great job,” I added. “Do you think you can loan Isaac’s mother your shears so she can do his hair?”
Mrs. Singh laughed. “He is looking a little bit shaggy. But aren’t we all?” She put her hands up to her center part. “Look at how my roots are showing!”
“I think that stripe looks cool,” said Isaac. “Have a great walk.”
“Say hello to your parents for me. Good evening.”
Mrs. Singh was part of the regular parade that walked past our house each night. After dinner lots of people went out for a stroll—little family groups—or sat on their porches or in their driveways, talking to the people passing by. Everyone seemed extra friendly. Isaac and I met every night on our driveways at seven fifteen. We sat out for as long as we felt like. Sometimes it was until after dark.
Isaac had taken his chalk and decorated the entire sidewalk and road in front of his house. He’d marked out hopscotch courts, drawn flowers and even written jokes. Most of them were bad, sort of an Isaac version of dad jokes, but people often stopped, looked and laughed. They must have been really bored.
After Mrs. Singh, a couple and their two kids passed by. The woman was carrying the baby in a carrier, and the little girl was riding circles around her parents on a small bike with training wheels. When they got to the part of the road in front of Isaac’s house, the girl got off her bike and grabbed her dad’s hand. She made him hop along the hopscotch court with her. By the end they were both laughing, and I couldn’t help but smile. Finished, the girl got back on her bike.
“You are sooo good on your bike,” Isaac called out. The little girl beamed.
“Thank you for doing all of this,” the father said. “This is one of Claire’s highlights every night.”
“You’re welcome,” Isaac said. “And your family passing by is one of my highlights.”
The whole family waved goodbye and continued on their way.
“I don’t know how you do it,” I said.
“Do what?”
“You just seem so positive all the time.”
Isaac shrugged. “Maybe it’s because I’m not smart enough to be as worried as I should be. Now you, Quinny, are a different thing.”
“I’m not—”
“Stop it. Do I have remind you how well I know you? I know you get scared and anxious about things, but I also know you don’t let that stop you from doing what needs to be done. So on a scale of one to ten, how worried are you?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know…a seven? Mostly about my father.”
“You should be. Wait, that sounded wrong. What I mean is, I understand why you’re worried. Your dad is on the front lines. It’s only natural that you’d be worried. How bad are things getting?”
“I don’t see him much. Our conversations are either on the phone or with me on the landing and him at the bottom of the stairs.”
“I heard the cases are going up day by day. Really going up.”
“I’ve been watching the news, and I know the numbers are increasing, but I can’t watch too much of it…well, I just can’t.”
The numbers were going up—of new cases, of people going to hospital and, worse, of people dying. Every day there were more.
“But they’re just numbers. Your father sees people. That makes it different. I’ve heard about shortages. Are they running out of equipment and PPE at the hospital?” Isaac asked.
“No. I don’t think so. Who did you hear that from?”
“You’re not the only one who watches the news. Has your father mentioned anything about that?”
“No, he hasn’t.” Not that he would. I didn’t want to talk about this anymore.
Isaac must have picked up on that. He got up from his chair. “Do you want to go for a walk? Keeping our distance, of course.”
“Where to?”
“Just around. I need to move my legs.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
I walked on the sidewalk and Isaac stayed on the road, a few feet away from me. When we came to other people, we nodded or said hello and then moved far enough aside to let them pass.
We went for a ways along the same path we had taken to see Reese’s grandmother, then turned toward our local shopping strip. That’s where the grocery store was, along with McCormick’s Bakery and the ice-cream shop we went to after soccer games.
“I’d kill for a rocky road triple scoop right now,” Isaac said. “How can ice cream not be considered an essential service?”
“You know, everything seems so normal. Well, except for the lineup.” I motioned to the people queued up outside the grocery store.
“See how they’re spaced out?” Isaac asked. “That’s the way they’re supposed to be doing it. My mother says that sometimes people aren’t doing the right things. The police got called for the toilet-paper wars.”
“I heard about that on the news, but I didn’t know it had happened here.”
“Three squad cars. It was so crazy they almost had to make arrests because people were fighting over toilet paper. My mother said it only proved what she’s always believed, that some people are full of crap.”
We made a turn into the park and passed the empty playground. Swings were now tied together with cords so they wouldn’t work, and yellow caution tape surrounded the whole thing. Farther along were the tennis and basketball courts. The nets and rims had been removed. Beyond that were the soccer fields. Where once there would have been multiple games going on, there was only a father and daughter, kicking a ball back and forth.
“Do you think it’ll ever go back to the way it was?” I asked.
“It changed so fast. I can’t see why it can’t change back fast too.”
“I heard we have to wait until they find a vaccine.”
“I’m sure there are lots of smart people working on it,” Isaac said. “Sometimes you just have to have faith.”