Tell Me One Thing (24 page)

Now she has no avenue but action to displace her anger, and so she finds herself, petition in hand, ringing her neighbors’ doorbells. The fact that she knows none of them, not a one, despite her thirty-plus years on the block doesn’t seem unusual to Trudy. She’s never been the sort of woman who stands and chitchats at the curb or makes small talk when out walking the dog. They’ve never owned a dog. In truth, Trudy didn’t feel the need to know her neighbors while Brian was alive. He was the one who would say hello as he gardened out front. He knew them by sight. He waved as they drove by. That was sufficient.

So now Trudy has to introduce herself to her neighbors. At the first house, the woman who answers the door of the small Craftsman, way down at the end of the block, quickly signs the petition. She’s young, maybe thirty, and has the distracted look of a mother of too many young children. Trudy can see at least three running around the living room, carrying on, as the woman, Susannah, as Trudy can see from her signature, tells Trudy how important the park is to them.

“Well, I can’t imagine not having the park.”

Trudy nods. She feels the same way. Good, a supporter.

“Where would the kids play?” and then she shrugs self-consciously and turns her shoulder to indicate the activity behind her. “And how much of
that
in the house could any one person take?”

As she hands the petition back to Trudy, she says, “You’re so good to do this,” and a fair-haired little girl of maybe four slips in beside her mother, holding on to one of her legs.

“You’re the Story Lady,” the child says, a thumb going into her mouth.

“You’re right. Good remembering. And I remember you from when I read
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
.…”

The child nods, pleased, and the mother takes the opportunity to say, “We’re so sorry about your husband” and what has been
a fine interaction, a moment that feels almost normal, suddenly stabs Trudy in the heart. She doesn’t want to, she can’t, share her grief with strangers, however well meaning.
That’s the only trouble with living in Sierra Villa
, Trudy thinks as she says good-bye and moves on to the next house,
everyone knows your business
.

To her relief, the rest of the block goes smoothly and everyone on her side of the street signs. Trudy is fierce in her advocacy and people quickly agree that they must keep the park, that condos on that land would be horrible. To Trudy’s great relief, no one else mentions Brian. And then, there’s only one house left—the Yeller’s, at the corner. Trudy could skip his house and head to the opposite side of the street. She’s tempted to, but she won’t allow herself this weakness. She knocks on what she will always consider Vivianna’s door and a little boy of maybe six opens it for her. He’s blond and solemn, the sort of child whose features seem to have migrated to the middle of his face, leaving lots of cheek and forehead.

“Is your mother home?” Trudy asks him. Far better to speak with the mother than the rodent father. Not that she’s ever exchanged a word with the woman, but she seems more reasonable than the screamer. Trudy hears her speak nicely to the two boys.

But the child shakes his head no to her question; his mother isn’t at home. And then she hears the voice from somewhere inside the house, that ugly voice which disrupts the daily quiet of her house. “Never open the door! WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?!” And Trudy sees the little boy flinch and then his father is there. “Get away from here,” he tells his son, who flees back into the house. And it is only Trudy and this man, this Kevin person, facing each other across the threshold. It’s the first time she’s ever been face-to-face with him and she’s surprised at how tall he is. Tall and white skinned and just as menacing as his words.

Trudy chooses to ignore the interaction she just witnessed—the ugliness of it, the evident fear the child has of his father’s anger—and presents the petition. “The city council is contemplating selling the library park to developers,” she begins. He says nothing. “If we get enough signatures on this petition, we may be able to save the park.”

She holds the clipboard with the petition out to him, but he doesn’t take it. Instead he says, “I don’t sign anything. You never know where your signature ends up.”

Trudy can feel anger rising in her like a flush, but she attempts civility. “I can guarantee you it will end up at the city council meeting on the first Tuesday of next month.”

“And then where? Can you guarantee me that it won’t go any further?”

Trudy is nonplussed. She has no idea what he means. But it’s immediately clear to her that he lives as if under siege. “Do you want to save the park or not? You have kids, don’t you want them to have a place to play?”

“My kids play in the backyard.”

“So you don’t care what happens to the park?”

“You got it, lady.”

“How civic-minded of you.” Trudy can’t help it. Her allotment of civility has been used up and he’s not stupid, although she wishes he were, and he immediately gets the sarcasm.

“Get off my property. Do-gooders like you just gum up the system.” And he closes the door in her face. It feels like a slap.

She crosses his driveway to hers—no fence in between, no line of shrubbery.
Dammit!
They never needed any demarcation when Vivianna was there, and now she regrets the open space with every particle of her being.

In the kitchen she gets herself a glass of water, furious and agitated, shaken really, but she refuses to call it that. That man
makes her so angry she could spit! She glares out her kitchen window directly into his, across their two driveways. When Vivianna was alive Trudy never minded the proximity. It was a way to keep tabs on the older woman, making sure she was moving about and everything seemed all right. Now, with the Yeller next door, it feels like the privacy of her kitchen is being violated every single day. Curtains, those frilly things Trudy has always hated, she needs to get curtains! And then she argues with herself,
No, I will not give him the satisfaction!

The petition lies on the kitchen table and the first page isn’t even completely filled. Trudy knows she has to go back out there. There’s the whole other side of the street. Seven more doorbells to ring. Oh, how she’d love to just stop. Forget it. But then there’s the park. And the principle of the thing. And the fact that she’s not a quitter. And the fact that she has nothing else to do on this Sunday afternoon.

Sundays were always gardening days when Brian was alive. Not that Trudy gardened. No, that was Brian’s domain, and over the years he made of their spacious backyard an Eden. That’s the way Trudy thinks about it. She couldn’t name more than a few of the shrubs and vines that Brian planted, but that never stopped her from appreciating the way they enclose the backyard in a circle of green, splashed with the vivid colors of their flowers, coral, deep purple, pristine white, and in the summer, the ruby red of the bougainvillea. And years ago, when Brian decided to grow tomatoes, then squash and peppers and eggplant in the summer and lettuce and snap peas and broccoli and cabbage in the winter—they had their own urban farm.

The garden misses Brian, even she can tell. Armando, their gardener, does his best to keep things growing, but he comes just once a week and his job is really only to cut the lawn and tidy up. The extra he does—cutting back leggy shrubbery, watering when she has forgotten to, fertilizing the plants just when they need it—Trudy
is grateful for but she truly feels she can’t ask more of him. And so the garden mourns Brian’s absence in its own way.

Enough
, Trudy tells herself. Maybe she says it out loud. She’s doesn’t know these days when she speaks her thoughts and when she doesn’t. There’s nobody there to hear her, so she’s not sure.

She takes the petition off the table and heads out the front door. The house on the corner, the opposite side of the street, has a white picket fence. The gate is painted yellow and has a heart-shaped cutout atop it.
Too precious
, Trudy immediately thinks,
where are we, Mayberry RFD?
There’s a tiny bench on the small front porch with a matching heart-shaped pillow on it. Trudy almost turns around.
These people aren’t going to sign my petition
, but they do. A white-haired couple in their seventies is as nice as can be. Neither needs to hear Trudy explain the whole problem. The man simply says to her, “You have honest eyes. Of course I’ll sign.” And then, as Trudy starts to turn away, step down off the little porch, he throws her the curve. “I liked your husband very much.”

Trudy is stopped. “So did I,” she says, “and thirty-two years wasn’t enough.”

“You poor dear” is what the woman says, and Trudy shoots back before she can stop herself, “I’m just fine!”

And then, once the couple has closed their door Trudy has to sit down on the curb, her legs not steady enough to take her to the next house. Those white-haired people, that was supposed to be her future, Brian’s and hers. Growing old together, tottering around in their little house until they were well into their nineties. Trudy would never have admitted it to anyone, but that was her plan for the future. Now all she sees is an empty space where loss is a daily companion. Despite herself, she sighs, then pushes herself to stand and finish the task. She takes a measure of this side of the street. There are six more houses to go.

At the house next to the older couple, a wood-shingled bungalow
directly opposite her own, no one is home. She tries the one next to that, a beige, nondescript ranch. And again, no one answers the bell, but there’s a truck in the driveway and Trudy hears muffled music from somewhere inside the house. She tries to remember who lives there but can’t.

She rings the bell again and then knocks smartly on the door. No one appears, but she sees the closed living room drapes move on the large window, as if someone was peeking out. Trudy is sure now that someone is home and it makes her inordinately furious. She’s not some religious proselytizer who will talk endlessly about soul saving. Is that what she looks like?! She isn’t even a Girl Scout with disgusting cookies to sell. She’s a respectable woman, here about a park. Someone should have the decency to answer the door!

She tramps off the porch, elbows the shrubbery aside in order to sidle close to the house, and makes it to the front window. She knocks quickly and loudly and is startled to see a similarly startled male Asian face pop up not three inches from her own. The faces stare at each other through the plate glass until the man disappears and the curtains close and Trudy is further incensed. He is home. He needs to sign the petition.

She marches to the front door and knocks again. In fact, she continues knocking until he finally opens the door and they assess each other. Trudy sees a short man, probably in his late sixties, with steel gray hair neatly combed and parted, wearing a plaid, short-sleeved shirt and well-worn jeans that sag off his skinny frame. His face is impassive as he surveys the chubby little woman with the determined stance who is holding a clipboard. Anger radiates out of her like heat waves. Could she be so angry simply because he didn’t want to open the door? he wonders. But he says nothing. She rang the bell. Let her speak.

And Trudy plunges in. “I have a petition here stating the neighborhood’s
opposition to turning Sierra Villa Park into condo units. Our position is stronger the more signatures we have.” She holds the clipboard out to him. He turns his eyes from her face, which he finds mesmerizing in its intensity, to the petition but makes no move to pick up the pen attached by a string to the clipboard. He does nothing. Doesn’t read it. Doesn’t close the door. Simply looks at the piece of paper as if he were waiting for it to do something interesting. He has learned from years of working for irrational people that the best course of action when facing anger is not to engage.

Trudy is now beyond exasperated. “Do you speak English?” she demands of him. “Is that the problem here?”

“You, I think, are the problem.”

“How rude.”

“Yes, rude,” he says, but he doesn’t close the door.

“I live on this street,” Trudy finds herself saying. She has no idea why.

He nods.

“And I work at the library.” Why is she telling him this? His silence is unnerving, maybe that’s it. “That’s why the park matters to me.”

The man picks up the pen and signs his name, Fred Murakami.

“Thank you.” Trudy has to say it.

“You are welcome.” But he doesn’t close the door, and Trudy can’t quite figure out how to get off his porch gracefully.

“That’s it,” she tells him.

“Yes.”

And finally she turns and makes her way down his front path, turning right at the sidewalk and moving to the next house. She can feel his eyes on her back the whole way.

She gets signatures from three of the last four houses and feels, as she walks home, as if she’s climbed Mount Everest. Later
that evening, as she eats a bowl of cereal for dinner, she reviews her afternoon’s work and sees that he has signed, “Fred Murakami, Handyman,” even though the petition didn’t ask for the signer’s occupation.

TRUDY BRINGS THE PETITION
into the library the next morning and Clemmie looks askance at it.

“I know what you’re going to say and I’m going to ignore it,” Trudy says before Clementine can get her mouth in gear.

“Well then”—and here Clemmie chooses her words carefully—“I was only thinking what would happen if a city official came into the library?”

“You mean like Scott Thurston?”

“Yes, maybe Scott.”

“He’d tell us to put the petition away. He’d say this library is a city service and not a place for a personal agenda.”

“Exactly!” Clemmie feels vindicated.

“And I’d ignore him as soon as he walked out the door.”

They are at an impasse and that is where things are going to stay, Clemmie knows by now. Four years working under Trudy is more than enough time to understand that Trudy doesn’t budge. Truthfully, four months was enough to pick up that predominant character trait—inflexibility.

The fact that she’s young enough to be Trudy’s daughter undermines Clementine’s position even more. And the fact that she looks like Ramona in the
Ramona and Beezus
books. And the fact that there’s an unquenchable optimism about her. All that makes equal footing with Trudy an impossibility.