a chat with betty

betty doesn't want me to know that she's dating ted the barber, who lives down the street. both recent widows, it appears ted's been coming over to help out around the house, join her on the porch for a coffee, or even, more scandalously, invite her out to mcdonald's at 7:30 p.m. for a coke. "and we talked until twenty minutes after 10!" she exclaims, chiding in seconds later, in a muted voice, that it's not serious, seen as it's only been twenty months now since Roy died. Both Betty and Roy had a keen sense of the neighborhood. Roy, blind as long as I'd known him, would call out my name if I was walking down the street, even without having heard my voice. He could discern different footsteps, and could recognize the neighbor kids simply from hearing their shoes scratch across the cement. But he's gone, now, and now Betty's sneaking around with the corner barber, and happy in between the memorial tears. She hasn't been in a department store in eight years, and has never been in a Wal-Mart [she says this with a sadness that I've never experienced in thinking about the place]. She giggles uproariously when she tells me the story of going into a ShopKo and flying around the store in one of their special motorized shopping carts. She spent $100, on a new spatula, stainless steel measuring cups (with the size written clearly on the handle--an addition she finds infinitely charming), and a Mister Coffee Maker, half price. Happiness does wonders, apparently, for capitalism.

While this neighborhood trist takes place under everyone's noses (and i love how they are the only ones that find it naughty), I think about how the neighborhood has remained relatively intact over the years. Only two houses on the street are unsettled, welcoming tragic family after tragic family, vomiting them all onto the lawn every few months or so. I had forgotten how quiet it is, though, and how simple. Though not protected from crime by any means, one still has the sense that the doors can remain flung wide open throughout the night (as my wild father does), that keys can be left under the car rug, that Betty or Dave or Coleen are gonna look out for you, and probably dig you out of the snow when you (read: me) don't know how to drive in the drifts.

Slightly restless upon my return to the U.S. and A., I'm making the rounds--house to house on the old familiar lane--in order to reintegrate myself. And with gossip like Betty's, it pays to live in a sweet little neck of the woods.