Neighbors
Neighbors
E d and Ebby are waving at Ed’s parents as they walk toward his car.
“Should we stop by Mr. and Mrs. P’s on the way down?” Ebby says.
They’re already due to drive up to see Bob and Adelaide Pitts in a few weeks’ time. Bob Pitts has a big birthday coming up. Eighty-five. His wife, Adelaide, is planning a surprise party. But Ed misses the Pittses. When they still lived on adjoining properties, Bob would walk with Ed down to the beach, sometimes, the kids running out ahead of them.
Now that the Pittses live up here, they often stop by when they’re headed back from Massachusetts. Ebby always goes first to Adelaide. She lowers her head into the crook of Adelaide’s neck and gives her a long hug and says, Mrs. P.
Ed thinks back, now, to the day of the shooting. Bob had called him to hurry home. He told him that it was serious, that Baz had been hurt. Ed and Soh couldn’t get up their own driveway, it being blocked by two police cars. He recalls how he and Soh jumped out of their car and ran across their front yard as Ebby walked toward them, clinging to Adelaide, unseeing. She pulled away only when her mother dropped to her knees in front of her, arms out.
When Ed and Soh first moved in across the backyard from Bob and Adelaide, the Pittses came over right away to introduce themselves.
“And who is this young man?” Bob asked.
“I’m Baz,” Ed’s son said, looking down at his feet.
“It’s short for Basil,” Soh said.
“Well, that’s a fine name,” said Bob. “Not like my name.” He frowned.
Baz looked up, curious.
“You can call me Mr. P,” Bob said. “Because my name is the pits!” Baz grinned and Ed breathed in a lungful of relief.
“Like olive pits,” Bob said, and Baz giggled and squirmed.
“Like peach pits!” Baz shouted.
“Shhh,” Soh said. “Keep your voice down.”
“Like tar pits!” Bob said, his voice a low growl.
“Like an orchestra pit!”
“Oh, that’s a good one, isn’t it?” Bob said, nodding at Ed and Soh. “How old are you?”
Baz held up five fingers.
“Five? You’re only five and you already know what an orchestra pitis?”
“We took him to a musical.”
“And a ballet, remember, Mom?”
“He saw the orchestra down in their space.”
“He’s already playing the recorder.”
“Wow,” said Bob. “Do you like that? Playing an instrument?”
Baz nodded. “Mhmmm.”
When Ebby was a toddler, the Pittses started bringing their grandbaby over to play. And that’s how Ebby and Ashleigh got started. In the early days, the two couples would push the girls’ strollers all the way down to the surf club together, then onto the sand. Ed quickly grew to love that neighborhood. Though he had to work to keep his cool when his young family drew stares in the town center. Or when a new member at the beach club, who did not recognize him from the article in Forbes magazine, or from the dais at a benefit dinner, mistook him for a waiter. Or when people at parties were clearly trying to get to the bottom of how he could afford to live where he did and he had to trot out his elevator speech about his inventions.
Living next to Mr. and Mrs. P had made things easier. Had helped to make their beautiful house on Windward feel like their forever home.
Back then, Ed could never have imagined that one day he’d wake up in the morning feeling like he was falling into a deep well.
Falling, falling, falling, into a pit.
Like a bottomless pit, Mr. P.
Ashleigh is supposed to be at the birthday party. The last time they saw the Pittses’ granddaughter was when she came in from the West Coast for Ebby’s wedding.
Ebby’s non-wedding .
After Henry failed to show up for the ceremony, Ashleigh and a couple of Ebby’s cousins stayed with Ebby all that afternoon and evening, then drifted back to their own lives, though Ed gathered that Ashleigh still talked to Ebby regularly from California. Ed isn’t sure exactly what Ashleigh’s job in entertainment entails, only that she’s not an actor like her parents. She’s into something more focused on people management.
When Ed and Soh sold that first house in Connecticut and moved farther, to where they live now, they found themselves in a town where several of the other children were growing up in the public eye because they had been born to parents who worked in fields like entertainment or high-profile finance. One girl’s mother has since evolved into a social media beauty influencer, now that such roles exist. But no one else had been thrust into the media spotlight at only ten years of age for the same reason as their daughter.
“Are there at least some black folks in your new neighborhood?” was all his mother wanted to know when Ed told his parents where he and Soh were purchasing their next home. “Is there even one black person living there?”
“Well, there will be at least three of them, now,” his father had said with a chuckle.
Ed shakes his head, now, at the memory. His mother is never going to like him living where he does. But he still likes it. Before climbing into the driver’s seat, he turns to Ebby.
“Sure, why don’t you give Mrs. P a call and see if we can stop by?” Then he gets out of the car again and calls to his daughter. “I’ll telephone your mom. See if she wants to drive up to meet us.” His daughter walks over and kisses him on the cheek. Ed waves her away with a laugh. But the pressure on his chest feels lighter.