down the hill. If you stand outside on an overcast day you can hear the groan of the interstate at the bottom of the hill; but otherwise, up here, it feels like you are far from the rest of the city.
My neighbors grow pot in their gardens; they collect broken pottery; they write poetry and political manifestos and decorate their fences with bits of sea glass. No one worries about maintaining their lawns up here; no one even has lawns to trim. What people value instead: space and privacy and a lack of judgment. I’d lived here for a year before I learned Lisa’s name, and then only because her copy of The Herb Quarterly ended up in my mailbox by mistake.
On Lisa’s next trip through, I wave her over, and pick my way across my own neglected clutter of succulents to the collapsing fence that separates our properties. “Hey there, I have something for you.”
She pushes a wild lock of graying hair out of her face with a gardening glove, and walks to meet me. When she’s close enough, I reach over the fence and tuck a folded check into the pocket of her jeans. “For the kids,” I say.
She wipes her gloves on the back of her jeans, leaving brown crescents of dirt across her rear. “Again?”
“Work has been going well.”
She nods, and gives me a crooked smile. “Well. Good for you. Good for us, too.” Perhaps she finds it suspicious that her neighbor, the “antiques dealer,” regularly gives her four-figure checks, but she has never said a thing. Even if she knew, though, I think she might not judge me anyway. Lisa runs a nonprofit that advocates for children in court, children who are there because of abuse and neglect: I’m sure it would secretly delight her, as it does me, to know that some of the money that I take from the most spoiled children in the world goes to children who have the least.
(And yes, I’m aware that the check is an attempt to assuage my own conscience—like the robber barons who write checks to charities and call themselves “philanthropists”—but really, it’s a win-win for everyone, right?)
Lisa peers over my shoulder at the bungalow. “I saw your mom head off in a taxi at the crack of dawn.”
“She went in for a CT scan.”
A pucker of concern. “Everything OK?”
“Yes—it’s just a routine follow-up. Her doctor’s optimistic—her last few scans were promising. So it’s likely that…” I leave the thought dangling there, too superstitious to articulate the word that I most want to say: remission.
“That must be a relief.” She rocks back and forth on the heels of her work boots. “So, what then? You going to stick around if she’s clear?”
That word—clear—triggers a little spasm inside me. Clear connotes clarity, but also blue skies, freedom, an open path to the future. Lately, I’ve been letting myself imagine, just a little. I’ve found myself in bed at night, listening to Lachlan’s shallow breath beside me, and turning over the possibilities in my head. What might be next. Despite the adrenaline kick that I get from what I do—the self-righteous thrill of it all, not to mention the financial upside—I never intended to do this forever.
“I’m not sure,” I say. “I’m feeling a little restless here. I’ve been thinking about going back to New York.” Which is true, although when I mentioned this to my mother a few months ago—Maybe when you’re really and truly healthy again I’ll head back to the East Coast—the look of horror on her face was enough to stop the rest of that sentence right in my throat.
“Might be good for you to start fresh,” Lisa says mildly. She pushes her hair from her eyes and settles them on me. I blush.
A car turns in to the road and slowly bumps along the rutted asphalt. It’s Lachlan’s vintage BMW, its engine clicking and whirring from the effort of ascending the hill.
Lisa raises an eyebrow, tucks the check deeper into her pocket with a pinkie, and shoulders her bag of fertilizer. “Come by one of these days for some matcha,” she says as Lachlan