Five

The subject of Garland was still in the back of my mind. The mystery and the intrigue. The trail went hot again one day when Polly was at work and I had just gotten off the school bus and was checking the mail. I still had my schoolbag slung over one shoulder. I shuffled the mail in my hand: an electric bill, an AARP bulletin that was sure to annoy Polly, and then . . . an envelope addressed to me, in unfamiliar handwriting. There was no return address.

I tore the envelope open and read the letter.

GARLAND MONROE

1334 OLD FARM ROAD

TAYLOR LAKE, LOUISIANA 85466

In prison for MURDER from 1953–1961! No other details found. Be careful Little Squirrel! You are precious cargo!

Your friend

Phoenix Calhoun

Murder. The word filled me with a tantalizing dread. Polly had been in love with a murderer. But who had been murdered, and why? And what was Polly’s role in the whole thing? I went into the house, threw down my schoolbag, and read the note again.

I decided not to consult Dalton, who would have counseled against any correspondence.

Instead I got out the stationery that Aunt Rhea had sent for my last birthday and immediately rewrote the same letter I’d written two years before—the one that said that I was Willow Havens, daughter of Polly, and I wanted to say hello. I felt brave and defiant and very attuned to the romantic undercurrent of the universe, moving beyond the years, beyond misunderstanding, beyond crimes like murder. Still in the early stages of infatuation, I believed myself to be the agent of Fate who would finally reunite my mother and her true love, now that she had beaten the Bear and was ready for companionship. It was not that I dismissed my father, the Captain, or didn’t want to understand and celebrate my father’s role in Polly’s life. I just wanted her to be happy, and if this mysterious person had once meant so much to her, maybe he could cure her loneliness. I’d read about the butterfly effect in school, how something as simple as the beating of wings in one part of the world could lead to great cataclysms centuries later, and I wanted my wings to be the ones that led to Polly and Garland’s epic reunion.

I hiked down the street and mailed the letter from an unfamiliar mailbox, lest Polly discover it and rain her wrath down upon me. And I waited.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Dalton said when I finally told him. “You should have left well enough alone.”

“I don’t like well enough,” I replied. “It doesn’t do you much good when you’re seventy-two.”

“What if he comes to your house and murders you both? Then what?”

“He’s old now. Old men don’t murder people. They look at birds.”

I waited for weeks with no response. Then one day, a lovely Saturday early in the spring, came a knock on the door. There stood a deliveryman, holding a vase containing a dozen roses.

“Delivery for Pauline,” he announced.

My heart jumped. I took the vase and carried it into the kitchen, where Polly was working on a crossword puzzle.

“Oh, my,” she said. “What beautiful roses!”

“They’re for you,” I said. I put the vase on the table and watched her face as she opened and read the card. Her expression was guarded, careful.

“Who are they from?” I asked cautiously.

“An old friend. No one you need to know about.” She quickly put the card away and went back to her crossword puzzle. But later that day I saw her adding aspirin to the water that held the rose stems—her favorite trick for preserving the blooms. Surely she would not nurture something that wasn’t important to her. And yet, she said nothing.

Spring arrived early, and with it the planting of tomatoes, green beans, and squash, the tilling of the soil, urging the garden back into fertility, beating back the new spring varmints. I enjoyed keeping the secret of Dalton away from my mother, the thrill of holding his hand covertly as we watched television, the love notes and the ever-changing nicknames for each other. If Polly kept her secrets from me, I could keep mine from her. Tit for tat. In my mind, I made a worthy and crafty adversary.

Until the day I was helping Polly pull weeds in the garden and she remarked, “Lots of work to do around the house and the yard. Gutters need cleaning and poor old Mr. Chant threw his back out. Seems to me your boyfriend should be making himself useful.”

I dropped a handful of pulled weeds. “My boyfriend?” I asked, incredulous.

“That Dalton boy,” she said simply.

“Mom!” I gasped. “How did you know?”

She cackled derisively. “You think I was born yesterday, Willow? The way you two snicker and bat your eyes at each other, the way you smile like the cat that ate the canary when you say his name? The way he stares at you, his ears moving like a choo-choo train? Also, he’s combing his hair and tucking in his shirt.”

I was so astonished I couldn’t speak.

“I don’t mind him, actually. Even though his daddy cares nothing about maintaining a decent house or yard, it’s hardly the fault of the son. Besides, I believe it’s always best to start out with someone who’s already afraid of me. I’m getting too old to have to put the fear of God into some new boy every few months, so hold on to him. And call him and tell him to get down here and help me clean our rain gutters.”

“She knows?” Dalton asked.

“And she thinks you’re a good choice,” I said, struggling against my own disappointment. I had wanted my first love to double as my first act of defiance, so her approval ruined everything. “She needs help with the rain gutters,” I added.

“Rain gutters?”

“All clogged up with pine straw. We’ll hold the ladder for you.”

“Is this a test?”

“I think so.”

“Oh, my God, what if I fail?”

“You’ll do fine. Nothing to throw up a Snickers bar over.”

His voice sounded cross. “That was three years ago.”

Dalton hiked over the following afternoon after Polly got back from Walgreens. We spent the next hour holding the ladder while he raked the pine straw away from the gutters and into the grass. When he got down from the ladder he was scratching himself viciously. Small red dots had appeared all over his arms and face.

“Ah,” said Polly, “you must be allergic to no-see-ums. Terrible little varmints. I’ll fetch the witch hazel.”

But the witch hazel didn’t help. Dalton’s dots puffed up and his dad, Pete, had to come and pick him up before dinner and take him to an after-hours clinic for an antihistamine shot.

“Never happened before,” Pete told Polly, calm about the matter. “Then again, I never made him clean our rain gutters.”

“I bet you didn’t,” Polly said.

But that next weekend she told me I could ask Dalton to the movies, and that she would go along as our chaperone. Dalton was dressed in a button-down shirt and a pair of nice jeans. His shoes squeaked on the way into the theater. He sat in the middle between Polly and me, with his arm next to mine.

A few minutes into the movie, Polly whispered to me, “Who picked this movie? Is it supposed to be a comedy?”

Halfway through the movie she fell asleep, her head nodding forward, and Dalton leaned toward me, closer, closer, his skin pale in the movie light and his lips coming in for a long, sweet kiss, bought and paid for by the cleaning of the rain gutters and the tendency of the body’s epidermal layer to swell in response to attack.

“I’m awake,” Polly announced as Dalton jerked away from me. “Watch the damn movie.”

Polly wasn’t finished with Dalton. She needed him to help her wheelbarrow a pile of mulch she’d ordered from the local nursery into the backyard to spread on her flower beds. Fortunately for him, our rotting fence was beyond repair and falling down on all sides, and she needed to order a new one rather than put him to work on it. The lowest price she could find was twelve hundred dollars.

“Highway robbery!” she exclaimed. We shared a common fence with all three of our neighbors, and Polly expected them to contribute. The Simmonses, a bland family who lived directly behind her, quickly capitulated when Polly asked them if they would share the cost of replacing the back fence. “They’re good, boring people,” Polly said in praise, but my theory was that they were simply afraid of her.

Next up were her enemies on the left and right, the Burrells and the Tornellos.

“They’re never going to pony up for that fence,” I said.

“Why shouldn’t they? The fence on the left side rotted because the Burrells kept their firewood piled against it. And that old obese cat riding the fence for ten years on the other side didn’t do it any good, either. I shouldn’t have to pay for it all while they get a brand new fence.”

One day, Polly announced: “I have a plan.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“The Kill Them with Kindness Plan.”

“Well, that sounds okay.”

“Jesus says in the Bible to make friends with your enemies and turn the other cheek and really try the nice way first to get them to go in on a fence.”

“I don’t remember that particular verse,” I said.

“Well, maybe you should stop daydreaming about that Dalton boy in church, sassy brat.”

Polly quickly warmed to her own idea, thumbing through her old Rolodex of recipes. “Not much to offer vegetable-wise this early in the spring,” she said. “But I make a helluva crawfish étouffée. Let’s see . . . I have some squash with bell peppers I canned. And a few green onions have already come up . . . some strawberries, too . . . I’ll make my special strawberry pie to keep those Montosaurus brats happy. . . .”

“You’re going to invite the twins?” I asked, flabbergasted. “You hate the twins.”

She kept flipping through her Rolodex. “To every thing there is a season, and a time for being nice to brats under heaven and what have you. You’re in charge of the invitations.”

“Me? Leave me out of it,” I replied. But of course I had no choice, and was soon hard at work at the kitchen table, gluing brightly colored pieces of paper together and coming up with a short, catchy phrase that did not have the word “fence” in it:

AN EVENING AT POLLY’S

Polly’s dear neighbors on the left and the right are invited to come over for . . .

A home-cooked meal on Saturday March 3, at 7:30 in the evening.

Dress is casual! No need to bring anything!

“That’s perfect,” Polly said after she scanned it briefly. “Not too short, not too long. But inviting. And ‘An Evening at Polly’s’ sounds fancy.”

“But, Mom, why would they come?” I asked. “They . . . hate you.”

“Do you know what an honor it is to get a home-cooked meal from Polly Havens? Why, when the Captain was alive, folks would come from miles around. And, God knows, Darcie Burrell can’t cook worth a damn. You should have tried the eggplant Parmesan she tried to hoist on me at the church bake sale. No wonder her children turned to Satan. He probably showed up as an angel of light and promised them a decent meal.”

I shook my head slowly. “No one’s going to come to your dinner. They think you’re a crazy firebug who almost burned down their houses and they’re not gonna help pay for a new fence. You are just kidding yourself.”

“That’s why I’m putting you in charge of going over there with the invitations. Get them to accept or don’t come home at all.”

“Me? Why me?”

“Because you are more diplomatic than I am. I guess you got that from your father. Also, you’re a liar. Make up a good reason why they should come.”

“But I can’t lie on command!” I argued. “I only lie to get out of trouble or to amuse myself and it’s totally not fair. . . .”

Polly was gravitating toward her purse. She handed me a five-dollar bill. “I can’t believe I’m forced to hand you money to help your poor old mother. You are going to make a great highway robber one day with your cold heart and your love of the almighty dollar. Now get on out of here and get the job done.”

Five dollars wasn’t chicken scratch.

“I need to think about it some,” I said. “Come up with a plan.”

“That’s the spirit, you lying dog,” she said, brightening. “Want a Snickers bar for fuel? Here, take two. I need that fence.”

The boy twin, Jared, answered the door. He was nine years old now, and had gained a little weight.

He looked at me blankly.

“Hi, Jared,” I said. “Is your mom home?”

“Hi, Jared,” he said, in a high girlish voice—what I assumed was an imitation of my own. “Ith your mom home?” He’d added a deliberate lisp. I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck.

“Jared, please, let me talk to your mom. It’s very important,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm and steady.

“Jared, pleath let me—” Mrs. Burrell suddenly came into frame in a whiff of jasmine-scented cologne. She had on a floral dress and a beaded necklace that seemed too tight around her throat.

“Well, hello, Willow,” she said. “What brings you over? Is everything okay at your house?” Okay was apparently the new word for “Is anything on fire at your house?”

“We’re fine,” I said, then darted my eyes to the left and shifted on my feet.

She studied me. “Are you really fine?” she asked, and it was almost possible to like Mrs. Burrell at this moment, but I fought the urge. I had work to do.

“I’m doing well,” I said pointedly. “But I’m not sure about my mother.”

“Really? What’s wrong?”

“Well, she’s just having little spells. She calls them ‘dizzy spells’ but I’m not sure. She kind of gazes off into space and says funny things and then later she doesn’t even remember.”

“Come in,” said Mrs. Burrell. “Tell me all about it.”

I could imagine she was adding Polly to the prayer list at church this very moment. Soon I was sitting on her couch, drinking a glass of her lemonade, which was far too sweet but good enough for me, feeding the lie gently.

“You know my mother is very proud,” I said.

Mrs. Burrell nodded vigorously. “Extremely proud,” she said, in a tone that made me lift my head and give her the evil eye.

“Tell me more about her symptoms,” she prodded.

“Sometimes she talks to people who aren’t there. She’ll say, ‘What?’ and then turn around and look at me and say, ‘Did you hear that?’”

Mrs. Burrell leaned closer in. “I’ve never told a soul this,” she said, “but do you remember last fall after the big storm, when the limbs were down?”

I nodded.

“Well, early the next morning I saw her standing out in the front yard and talking up the tree. She was saying, ‘Elmer, is that you? Are you okay, honey? Did you survive the storm?’”

I let out a small gasp.

“What?” she asked.

“Elmer is her dead husband. The father I never met.”

“Oh, dear,” she said. “I didn’t know.”

We sat in silence for a few moments, the ice in my lemonade glass swirling around and the twins arguing from a distant room. There was a muffled thump, and the boy screamed, “Mom, she hit me!”

“Not now!” Mrs. Burrell screamed back, and then turned to me. “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way,” she said, her eyebrows knitted with Christian worry, “but your mother has done her share of swearing and being unneighborly in the past. This brain tumor may just be a wake-up call.”

“Brain tumor?” I gasped. “Do you really think that’s what it is?” I handed her the invitation. “Polly wants you to come to dinner. And bring Mr. Burrell and the kids.”

“She wants me to bring the children?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

She let out her breath. “I’m not really sure this is a good idea. Putting so much pressure on your mom, this dinner party.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “It’s exactly what she needs.”

Mr. Tornello was dressed, if you could call it that, in a long shirt, boxer shorts, and a pair of mules. He had a couple of days of whiskers and looked newly awakened, although it was five o’clock in the afternoon.

“Apologize?” he asked, incredulous. “Your mother wants to apologize?”

“Yes,” I said. “She’s had a change of heart about a lot of things ever since the fire. And she did mention that your act of bravery helped save our house.” (After spilling his bucket of water, Mr. Tornello had dragged his garden hose over and soaked down the smoke after the firemen were done.)

“I don’t believe you. Now go on. I’ve got television to watch.”

Mrs. Tornello, wearing a long pink gown, drifted up behind him holding a TV Guide.

“What’s happening?” she asked in her sweet, flimsy voice.

He yanked his head to her. “The old bitch next door wants to have us for dinner.”

“Excuse me,” I said. “I would rather you not call my mother that word.”

“She’s right, Ron,” said Mrs. Tornello, hitting him softly on the arm with the TV Guide with the force of a butterfly’s wing. “That is a terrible word to call someone who is inviting us to dinner.”

“I just don’t believe she’s sorry for anything,” he said. “She’s been a damn terror for the past twelve years.”

“She’s had a change of heart,” I repeated.

“Well,” he said, “I’m glad she at least got that drunk off her driveway.”

His wife rolled her eyes and sighed. “You are terrible,” she said, and drifted away.

I handed Mr. Tornello the invitation. “She’s making crawfish étouffée and strawberry pie.”

He read the invitation, snorting gently through his nose. “I’m gonna have to think about this. But I’ve got to admit, I haven’t had a good meal in years. My wife’s not exactly magic in the kitchen.”

I had my reservations. It wasn’t that my mother wasn’t a master chef, or that I thought my neighbors couldn’t, perhaps, be bribed on matters of shared fences. It was simply that I could not imagine Polly sitting down at the table and dining with the people she’d hated for so long.

“I don’t think this is such a good idea,” I told her.

“How do you think I’ve survived all these years? I adapted. And if grizzlies can grow extra fur in the winter, I can be nice to the neighbors.”

“Just have a couple of margaritas before they come over,” I suggested.

Polly spent all afternoon that Saturday whipping up her specialties. I was in charge of measuring and chopping. Although I did not share in Polly’s belief her scheme would work, I was looking forward to the fireworks that would be sure to follow when Polly combined her favorite recipes with her dreaded enemies. The strawberries were washed and stems removed for the pie, the dough rolled and pinched. She’d bought two pounds of crawfish at the local fish market, and the “fancy” kind of rice at the store. It was good to see Polly at her best, even though her best was prickly with guile. I have to admit I was in a near jolly mood myself as I set the table and we waited for the guests.

Mrs. Burrell and the twins were the first to arrive. Mrs. Burrell looked lovely in a blue knit dress, her hair pulled back. The twins rushed past my mother and me to immediately begin banging on the piano as Polly growled softly.

“Jared! Madison! Stop it now!” Mrs. Burrell ordered. She peeled them off the piano and hustled them to the table.

Mr. Tornello arrived next, alone, wearing a white button-down shirt his frail wife had probably almost died ironing, and a pair of decent corduroys. He’d shaved, and slicked back his hair with some kind of pomade that smelled musky.

“Where’s the missus?” Polly asked.

“She had a dizzy spell. She sends her regrets.” He’d never been inside Polly’s house before and looked around, the expression on his face like the ones in thrillers when the detective enters a warehouse. He sighed when he saw the children at the table.

“Hey, kids,” he said without enthusiasm.

They stared at him.

“And hello, Darcie.” She went to kiss his cheek and he waved her away.

I poured the iced tea, Polly served the salad, and the dinner began.

“Aren’t we going to have a prayer?” Mrs. Burrell asked.

Polly stared at her a moment. “We usually pray only on special occasions,” she said, “but of course we can pray tonight, yes, why not?”

“When it comes to Jesus, every meal is a special occasion,” Mrs. Burrell said. She looked at Mr. Tornello. “Would you like to lead us in prayer, Ron?”

“Hell, no,” he said gruffly. “I don’t pray. Don’t believe in it. Now, Delores, she’ll pray ’til the cows come home, but not me, no, sir.”

The others at the table stared at the atheist in their midst.

“You’re going to hell,” Madison declared.

“Now that’s not polite at all,” Mrs. Burrell said.

“You don’t talk back to your elders, little girl,” Mr. Tornello growled. “I raised my children to respect adults and I see that practice has fallen by the wayside.”

The fence in Polly’s eyes began to collapse. She hastened to smooth things over.

“Different strokes for different folks,” she said briskly. “I’ll say a quick prayer and Mr. Tornello doesn’t have to pray with us.”

Mr. Tornello rolled his eyes, Polly bowed her head, and the rest of us followed. At the age of fourteen, I was still quietly agnostic, but I desperately wanted the evening to go well, so I went along with the prayer, clasping my hands together.

“Dear Lord,” she began, “thank you for giving me these wonderful neighbors through the years, and bless us as we, as neighbors, sit down to share the many blessings that . . .”

A low trumpet sound started from the other end of the table and sustained itself for several seconds, cutting Polly’s prayer off in midsentence as her eyes flew open and her head rose. She stared at Jared, who put his hand over his mouth and snickered as his sister laughed out loud.

“He has a weak sphincter,” Mrs. Burrell explained. “Jared, please apologize to Miss Polly.”

“Sorry, Miss Polly,” he said with a smile.

My mother’s brows were twitching furiously. She looked like a cat was licking her face too hard.

“Amen,” she said severely, and we began to eat.

During the salad course, Polly seemed to have calmed somewhat, talking with Mrs. Burrell about the recipe while the twins dueled with their salad knives and Mr. Tornello demonstrated his odd habit of stirring the fork around his plate before taking a bite. He removed the croutons from the salad and then remarked as Polly watched him, “These croutons are stale.”

Polly glanced at me and I shot a glance back that said: The fence the fence the fence.

“It’s going well,” I said encouragingly, as we went to bring in the next course.

“I hate everyone in that room,” she said.

“I know, Mom, and you’re doing a great job of hiding it.”

“Those brats are so impertinent. And that old goat was staring at my salad like it was going to kill him.”

“We’ve only got the dinner and the dessert and then you’re home free.”

She started dishing up the crawfish étouffée. It smelled of bay leaves and conciliation. “Lord, give me strength,” she said.

Polly tried to make nice again during the second course, politely asking the children how their classes were going.

The boy and the girl shrugged in unison, Polly’s least favorite gesture on earth. Mrs. Burrell jumped in eagerly. “Oh, they’re so modest!” she shrieked. “They both got green ribbons for the poem they wrote together! They’re naturals, just like their father.”

The twins looked bored. They had barely eaten their salad and hadn’t touched their crawfish. Mr. Tornello was stirring the rice and sauce around on his plate.

Polly simply stared at Mrs. Burrell and I marveled at my mother’s complete refusal to acknowledge social cues. But the fence outside was not getting any younger. It was buckling under the moonlight as we spoke, the bright eyes of varmints peeking through the cracks, bully grass sending over its shooters. . . .

“LET’S HEAR IT!” I said heartily, as my mother nearly jumped. “The poem, I mean.”

“Come on, kids,” Mrs. Burrell urged. “Tell them your sweet poem.”

“No,” the boy said.

“Tell us the poem and you’ll get candy corn for dessert!”

Polly bristled. She had her special strawberry pie sitting in the refrigerator, something no store-bought candy could measure up to, but she held her tongue.

The twins stared at each other, candy in their pupils. And they began.

Old cat, old cat sitting on the fence

You have one eye . . .

“That’s my cat!” Mr. Tornello exclaimed. “That’s Marty!” He seemed oddly thrilled that a poem had been written about his zero-personality cat.

Sometimes you sigh

And you are bald in places

And we make funny faces.

You are going to die.

Mrs. Burrell began clapping. Mystified, Polly and I joined in the applause, which petered out quickly.

“Well,” Mr. Tornello huffed, “that was pretty good until you killed him.”

Polly had an odd glint in her eye, a glint of suddenly found opportunity, and I soon discovered the context.

“Speaking of the fence . . .” She leaned forward, ready to make her pitch. “As you know, our common fence has seen better days. It’s rickety and rotten and there’s that hole on your side, Darcie, that is propped up with that plywood slab for going on two years.”

Mr. Tornello was staring hungrily at the twins’ plates. Madison moved her plate over to him and he ducked his head and began inhaling more crawfish.

“Marty almost fell off in the wind yesterday,” he mumbled. “Fence was moving like a snake.”

“It’s funny you brought up the fence,” Mrs. Burrell said. “My husband and I were looking over our closing papers because we were thinking of refinancing. And we were taking a look at the plat map . . .”

Polly’s eyes darkened.

“. . . and you know something? The fence is wrong.”

“What do you mean, wrong?” Polly snapped.

Mr. Tornello had graduated over to the boy twin’s plate and was burrowing into it as though his frail wife had not cooked him a meal in fifteen years and he’d been subsisting on cat food. His ravenous eating did nothing to break the sudden tension in the air.

“According to the map,” Mrs. Burrell continued, “our property line extends three feet further into what was assumed to be your backyard. So when we get a new fence, we’ll be taking that property back, of course.”

Polly put her fork down. I saw her eyes and tried to nudge her with my foot but found her shin rigid and unresponsive. She was processing this information and I could almost hear the machinery turning inside her. “The plat map is wrong,” Polly said. “I know the county surveyor personally and he assured me when we bought this house decades ago.”

“Plat maps don’t lie,” Mrs. Burrell said sweetly. “Of course, that means your dogwood tree will have to be cut down, but the good thing is that we’ll finally have room for the playhouse the kids have been wanting.”

“Your kids need a jail, not a playhouse! You will not take down my dogwood tree!” Polly shrieked, abandoning all attempts of diplomacy. “It’s been in our family for decades! I cut switches from that tree for my children!”

“She’s right,” I said.

“Well,” Mrs. Burrell said, “I don’t believe in corporal punishment.”

“If you did,” Polly shot back, “maybe your kids wouldn’t be such brats.”

Mr. Tornello looked thoughtful. “Maybe our fence line isn’t right either,” he mentioned.

“You shut up, Tornello!” Polly ordered, then turned on Mrs. Burrell again. “I had to jimmy-rig that plywood over the gap in the fence years ago because your twins were sneaking in and peeing in my garden.”

The kids exchanged looks, their eyes very wide. Mr. Tornello finished his food and now had three empty plates down at his side of the table.

Mrs. Burrell reached for her purse. “Listen, I am terribly sorry to hear of your brain tumor,” she told Polly, “but I will not listen to such insane stories about my children.”

“They peed in my garden and my daughter SHOT THEM IN THE ASS!” Polly trumpeted.

“That was you?” gasped the boy as his sister looked stricken.

“Damn straight she did!” Polly crowed at Mrs. Burrell. “And she’ll shoot you in the ass if you touch my fence and that goes for you, too, Tornello!”

Mrs. Burrell, purse clutched in hand, seemed suddenly frozen to her seat, her eyes giant and her mouth open as if in a silent scream.

The boy glared at me. “That hurt,” he said. “You little bitch.”

Mr. Tornello stood up. “I will not stand for this fighting and swearing. This has been a terrible dinner party and I’m sorry I came!”

“Sure!” Polly shot back. “Now that you ate all the food like a starving coyote!”

Mr. Tornello shot her a single, glowering stare and lurched out of the kitchen, down the hallway toward the den.

“Wrong way!” I called after him but he paid me no mind.

“You are a sad, sad woman,” Mrs. Burrell told my mother, as Mr. Tornello floundered around the den, confused. “And we are going to put up our fence where it belongs and there is nothing you can do to stop us!”

“Oh, I’ll stop you all right,” Polly said. “With a court order or with buckshot, matters not to me. Like my daughter says, I’ve got a brain tumor the size of a baseball and I might as well die in prison.”

I heard the door into the backyard open. “Wrong door, Mr. Tornello!”

“Oh, he’ll find his way out,” Polly said. She fixed Mrs. Burrell with a withering glare. “You can leave, too.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have even tried to be friends with you. My husband always said to just stay away from you, but no, I tried to do right by the Bible and—”

An unearthly scream came from the backyard.

Polly’s eyes flew open wide. “Ron!” she gasped. She bolted from the room, the rest of us hot on her heels as we rushed through the den and into the backyard, where we found Mr. Tornello next to the pecan tree, laid out on his back.

“Oh, my God,” I breathed. “The squirrel zapper!”

“Ron!” Polly shouted. Mr. Tornello was suddenly without anger, without crankiness. Polly knelt next to her old enemy. She looked up at me, eyes meeting mine.

“Call an ambulance!”

And so there it was. The end of the worst dinner ever, with my mother traumatized, Mrs. Burrell horrified, and unkillable Mr. Tornello dead in the grass under the passive eye of his cat on the fence, who did not move or seem alarmed. There was nothing the paramedics could do. They put down their paddles and threw a sheet over our deceased neighbor and hauled him away. The cops didn’t really know what kind of charges to bring against my mother, if any.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Polly kept saying. “I had noticed my daughter turned the strength on the zapper way down, but the squirrels were climbing the pecan tree to get to the bird feeder and so I turned it way up. But I never, never wished this upon my neighbor. We weren’t the best of friends, but we were friendly. He’d just eaten three plates of my crawfish étouffée.”

The twins were making a scene, dancing and pantomiming electric shock and then falling in the grass, so the policemen ordered the Burrells to go home. One of the cops went over to break the news to Mrs. Tornello.

“Oh, the poor woman!” my mother cried. “Who will take care of her now?”

“You probably should, Mom,” I said.

She glared at me. “Mind your own business, Willow. And make these officers some coffee.”

Mr. Tornello had died of a heart attack, the coroner said. The squirrel zapper hadn’t electrocuted him. It had merely startled him, and that was enough. Suddenly my mother was without her nemesis of so many years. Oddly, I think she missed him. Somehow his absence altered the plane of her existence so that the forces so steady from her left and her right were lopsided, just a cool breeze instead of a steady storm front and the promise of thunder.

“I know this sounds crazy,” she told me in a weak moment, her nicotine level low in her blood, her margarita level high, “but I kind of liked the old bastard.”

Mrs. Burrell never took back her three feet of property and no one helped pay for a new fence and the old fence continued to rot. Polly took down the squirrel zapper and buried it as an act of atonement and also obedience to the police, who had told her to get rid of it for the safety of the neighborhood.

“You won, squirrel varmints,” Polly whispered over the grave of her contraption, putting an invisible cigarette to her lips before she realized she no longer smoked. “Come and get it. The yard is yours.”

And yet the squirrels were largely absent that spring. It was almost as if they’d witnessed the squirrel zapper take down a two-hundred-pound man and decided that the bounties of Polly’s yard were not worth the risk.

The gardening still had to be done. Polly gathered her strength and threw herself into the spring planting, and I helped her after school. “A garden is God’s way of saying life goes on, so get over it,” Polly told me grimly. “No matter what happens, you’ve got to keep the garden going.”

Meanwhile, the oddest thing was happening next door: Mrs. Tornello was coming alive. She’d sweetly, passively, accepted Polly’s repeated apologies, the flowers and fruit and pies and covered dishes, and the ride to the funeral, where she’d sat between my mother and me in a lavender suit and a hat with a fake flower, hands folded on her lap while the minister went on about how wonderful her dead husband was. But as the weeks passed, she seemed to strengthen. Now I often saw her giant old Buick ease out of the garage and glide off to places unknown. Even more intriguing: A red Cadillac began appearing on her driveway, sometimes overnight.

“I think she has a gentleman caller,” Polly said in awe, gazing out the window. She swiveled her head around. “Willow, I’ll give you five dollars to watch that car all night and see who comes out.”

“But, Mom, I have school tomorrow.”

“Oh, big whoop,” she snorted. “I used to stay up all night helping my dad nurse sick cows and would score a hundred on the spelling test the next day.”

I took her money and made my report in the morning. “It’s an old man,” I said. “Nice-looking, actually. Wears suspenders. Great posture.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Polly said. “Wonder if she always had him on the side, just waiting to move in like a wolf once the husband was out of the picture. Anyway . . .” She took a sip of coffee. “None of my business.”

Early one morning in May, I found Mr. Tornello’s old cat dead in the grass on our side of the fence.

“Ah, hell,” said Polly, when I called her to the scene. “Poor old cat finally keeled over. Surprised it didn’t take that old fence down with him. Well, the least we can do is bury him. Go on over and ask Mrs. Tornello if she wants you to dig the grave in her backyard.”

“Why me?” I demanded.

“What, grave digging’s too good for you? I’ll give you a couple of bucks.”

I wasn’t crazy about the idea of telling poor Mrs. Tornello that our yard was hosting another dead family member, but I slogged over and rang the bell. Mrs. Tornello answered and I stepped back, amazed. Gone was the stooped, frail old lady, vaguely friendly, vaguely sweet. She was decked out in a snow-white dress and wearing silver bangles. Her white hair was in a new fancy sweep, and she wore pink lipstick and a string of pearls. She had a purse on her arm, as though she were going somewhere.

“Hello, dear!” she cried with more animation than I had ever seen. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” I said, “but I’m sorry to tell you your cat is not.”

She blinked. “My cat?”

“You know,” I said. “Marty. He died.” My words came out quickly so I could get it over with. “We found him on our side of the fence. He looked very peaceful.”

“Ah,” she said.

A man in a natty suit came up behind her—the same one I’d spied coming out of her house. He had a pleasant face and a short, neatly trimmed goatee.

“What’s the matter, Delores?” he asked.

She turned to him. “The cat’s dead.”

“My mother wants to know if you want him buried in your yard, or ours,” I said.

“Oh,” she answered, “your yard is fine.”

I cried over Marty’s grave. Polly wanted to know why, but I couldn’t answer her. Still, my tears unsettled her enough that she made me my favorite pecan pie that night, with another favorite for dinner: boiled artichokes and Hamburger Helper. But I could not be consoled.

“Dear God,” Polly said, as tears began to roll down my cheeks even as I nibbled at my pie. “It was just a cat, and had even less personality than most.”

“I’m fine,” I said, “I’m fine,” and went to my room to cry some more. Marty, dead in the grass, reminded me of something I’d repeatedly pushed from my mind: the sight of Marty’s owner, Mr. Tornello, also dead in the grass. His eyes wide open, pupils frozen, eyelashes still. An old man’s skin full of nothing. Three meals somewhere in his belly. All the cantankerousness snatched by something no one could see. All the years, the memories, aches and pains, threats passed over the fence. All gone. An old man and then a shell. A cat and then a shadow. Living things and then something of the same consistency as the contents of my mother’s pile of mulch.

Was death that easy? And when would it take her away from me?