the day. It’s possible that they were coming over to offer me homemade bread or a hand-drawn map to all the local breweries or perhaps even their friendship, but I will never know, because I’m from Chicago and I don’t believe in answering an unsolicited door knock. I took a couple weeks to get myself situated: I ordered fancy Internet deodorants from Aesop and had a desk shipped to me from CB2, stacked boxes of cozy Madewell cardigans in the front hall and ripped Ladurée macarons from their smoosh-proof packaging, all in an attempt to approximate my old life in a place where you can buy gym shoes at the grocery store. Which is hilarious for a person who had previously done 60 percent of her food shopping at gas stations and corner stores.
Fast forward to the next Halloween. I’m living in Kalamazoo. I’m still not wearing a fucking costume. My wife is corny, and to prove how much the evidence of our visit to an actual pumpkin patch is lined up on our porch. We live in a house, up the street from a school, in a neighborhood filled with children, and there are going to be trick-or-treaters. Since I hadn’t bothered to meet anyone or answer the door I’d hidden behind while someone proffering a welcome casserole knocked on it, I’m going to have to sit on the steps with a bowl of premium miniature candy and assure all the little ghouls and goblins that I am indeed the witch that lives in this haunted cottage. When I was a kid, in 1984, I had this Care Bears book called The Witch Down the Street about a little bitch named Melissa who decides to leave a nasty note on the door of this harmless old cat lady she wrongly assumes is a witch until the Care Bears swoop in and show her the error of her ways, and the only thing running through my head as I emptied comically large bags of little Snickers into our novelty Halloween bowl was “I wonder how many of these kids think that about me?!”
Turns out? All of them. I don’t know if they smelled my desperation and eagerness to please or if they could hear my cauldron bubbling in the backyard, but I spent the afternoon freezing half to death in arctic winds chasing third graders with single-serving bags of Sour Patch Kids as they ran screaming past my house. After several hours of creepily trying to coax kids whose costumes I had no reference for (what is a Minecraft?) to unload ten pounds of Skittles off me, I spotted a familiar pack of white people making their way down our hill and at the head was old Ruth Bader G from that wedding the year before: My Possible Friend Emily! I waved, despite my hesitation to appear enthusiastic in public. She and her family were convincingly dressed as the family from Bob’s Burgers, the littlest one (now walking!) toddling around in a pink bunny hat. I poured mini boxes of Milk Duds into the kids’ outstretched pillowcases and made small talk, trying to come up with a smooth segue into asking Emily if she was in the market for a new best friend.
“Ha-ha, it’s cold out here, huh?” Omg, stop. “You guys look so cute. Do you have a cheeseburger in your pocket?” Holy shit, swallow your own tongue. “Tell me everything that has happened in the year since I last saw you.” Samantha Irby, if you don’t shut the actual fuck up!
A crowd gathered as I put on my best show to convince her telepathically to beg me to hang out sometime, flop sweating and awkwardly laughing way too much as children who had never met one another before swarmed around our knees, loudly chattering and comparing costumes. They were instant friends. HOW WAS THIS SO EASY FOR THEM? “Hey, Hendrix,” I hissed under my breath at a child in a Handmaid’s Tale bonnet hugging some sort of plush human dinosaur, “so did you just, like, ask for Clementine’s phone number or did the moms have to get involved or what?”
Emily’s kids were ready to go; the block was buzzing that the people with the pool in their yard were giving out full-size Twix and inventory was going fast. My palms grew slick from nerves as