The Neighbor Read Free Page A

responded to the chimes, and I rang again.
    After I’d rung the bell a third time, when it seemed obvious that no one was home, Amalia said, “So maybe it
was
a burglar last night. In spite of all the lights. I mean, a burglar wouldn’t care about leaving the door open after himself.”
    Through the four-inch gap between door and jamb, I could see the shallow, shadowy foyer and the darker living room beyond. “Then why would a burglar bother to turn off the lights? Maybe something’s wrong, someone needs help.”
    “We can’t just barge in, Malcolm.”
    “Then what’re we gonna do?”
    Leaning close to the door, she called out, “Hello? Anyone home?”
    The answering silence was worthy of our father when he stood on our back porch eating his breakfast sandwich.
    Amalia called out again, and when no one responded, she pushed the door inward, so that we had a better view of the cramped foyer and the living room, where everything appeared to be furnished as it had been when Mr. Clockenwall had been alive. In the month since his passing, no one had come to dispose of his belongings.
    After my sister called out again, louder than before, I said, “Maybe we should go home and call the police and report a burglary.”
    “But if there hasn’t been a burglary, can you imagine the hell they’ll put us through for making that call?”
    By “they,” she didn’t mean the police. Our mother liked nothing more than having a legitimate reason to criticize us. She’d peck and peck and peck at you for the littlest mistake, until you thought she was going to keep at it until you were nothing but bones. And our old man,who couldn’t stand the sound of our mother’s voice when she was in attack mode, would shout at Amalia and me, as if we were the ones making all the noise: “I’m just tryin’ to watch a little TV here and forget what a shitty day I had at work, okay? Is that okay with you two, is it?”
    Repeating her admonition to me, I said, “We can’t barge in.”
    “No, we can’t,” she agreed, as she stepped across the threshold with the plate of cookies. “But remember how Mr. Clockenwall wasn’t found for a whole day after he died. Someone might need help.”
    I followed her, of course. I would have followed my saintly sister through the gates of Hell; by comparison, the house next door wasn’t particularly forbidding.
    Although the sheers hanging over the windows allowed a little daylight to enter, the living room remained cloaked in shadows, a silent solemn chamber in which you might have expected to find a cadaver casketed for viewing.
    Amalia flipped a wall switch that turned on a lamp beside an armchair.
    A film of dust sheathed the table on which the lamp stood. A pair of reading glasses lay beside a paperback that Mr. Clockenwall might have meant to read before his day turned as bad as any day could be. There were no signs of vandalism.
    “We live next door,” Amalia called out. “We came to say hello.” She waited, listening. Then: “Hello? Is everything all right?”
    In the kitchen, the refrigerator hummed. Breakfast dishes were on the table, a smear of egg yolk having turned hard and dark on the plate. Toast crumbs littered the Formica surface. The heart attack had felled Mr. Clockenwall here, perhaps as he’d risen from his meal, and no one had cleaned up after the coroner’s van took the body away.
    “It’s terrible to live alone,” Amalia said.
    The sadness in her voice seemed genuine, though Clockenwall had not been a man who reached out to his neighbors or sought in any way to alleviate his loneliness, if in fact he was lonely. He had been polite; and if he happened to be in his yard when you were in yours, he would spend a few minutes in agreeable conversation over the fence. No one considered him aloof or cold, only shy and on occasion melancholy. Some felt that perhaps in his past lay a tragedy with which he had never been able to make his peace, that the only companion with