Chapter 26
Gloria put her house on the market in October. The sign went up on a Thursday. By the second week of November, there was a sold rider on it.
Nobody on the block talked about it much, at least not where I could hear. But Linda told me the buyer was some young family from across town, and the closing was set for the week before Thanksgiving.
"She's leaving before winter," Linda said. "Can't say I'm surprised."
I wasn't surprised either. Gloria had lived on this street for nineteen years. After the meeting, after the charges, after the whole block watched her get removed from the committee on a night she'd probably replay in her head forever β there wasn't much left for her here.
Moving day was a gray Saturday. I was in the pepper bed, pulling the last of the jalapeΓ±os before the first real frost, when the truck pulled up. Two movers and Gloria, standing on her porch with a clipboard, pointing at furniture like a general directing a retreat.
I tried not to watch. I really did. But it's hard not to watch a moving truck on your street, and it was harder not to watch that one.
She saw me around noon. I was carrying a bucket of peppers toward the house, and she was standing by the truck with a lamp in her hands, and our eyes met across the space between our yards β the same space where, four months earlier, she'd slipped through my side gate at 6:04 in the morning with a hammer.
She walked over. I didn't move. The bucket was heavy and my hands were dirty, and some stupid part of me thought about how my mother would have wanted me to be polite.
"Well," Gloria said. "I hope you're satisfied."
I set the bucket down. "Hello, Gloria."
"Don't," she said. "Don't do the polite thing. You won. You got what you wanted."
"I wanted my air conditioner to work," I said.
She laughed, but there was nothing in it. "You destroyed my life, Scott. Nineteen years on this street, and I'm leaving like a criminal. I hope the house was worth it."
The words landed the way she wanted them to. For about three seconds, I felt the old guilt rise up β the guilt of the kid who'd been raised to be nice to his elders, to not make scenes, to keep the peace.
Then I looked at her hands. They were empty now β she'd set the lamp down β but I could still see them in my head, gray jacket, blue jeans, the hammer coming down on my condenser unit at dawn.
"No," I said. "You don't get to say that."
Her face tightened. "Excuse me?"
"You didn't lose your life. You traded mine for a consulting fee, and you got caught." I picked up the bucket. "You filed nine complaints against me in four months. You broke into my yard with a hammer. You told a developer I'd sell if they made my house unlivable. That's not me destroying your life, Gloria. That's you cashing mine in."
"You don't know what it's like," she said, and her voice cracked a little. "Being alone in that house. The money β"
"I know what it's like being alone in a house," I said. "I've been doing it for three years. The difference is I didn't try to steal somebody else's."
One of the movers called her name. She glanced back, then looked at me again.
"They're going to take everything," she said quietly. "The charges. The civil case. Your lawyer β"
"My cousin," I said. "And she's just doing her job. Like you were doing yours, right?"
Gloria stared at me for a long moment. I thought she might cry. I thought she might yell. Instead she just nodded, once, like something had settled in her.
"I really did like this street," she said.
"I know," I said. And I meant it, which surprised me. "That's what made it worse."
She walked back to the truck. I carried my peppers inside.
Through the kitchen window, I watched them load the last of it β the lamp, a bookshelf, a rolled-up rug. The truck pulled away around two o'clock. Gloria's car followed. She didn't look back.
The house sat empty after that. Gray and quiet, the sold sign still staked in the yard like a flag on a battlefield.
Walter Brooks came over that evening with two beers. We sat on my fixed porch and looked at the empty house across the way.
"Feels strange," he said.
"Yeah."
"You okay?"
I thought about it. "I didn't want her gone. I just wanted her to stop."
"She couldn't do both," Walter said. "That was the whole problem."
We drank our beers. The new AC hummed. The empty house across the street said nothing at all.