Neighborly by Ellie Monago
AUGUST 20
Welcome back to GoodNeighbors.net!
You have 8 new messages from your neighbors!
Looking for a reliable landscaper. Any recommendations?
Server at the microbrewery that just opened on Main didn’t wash her hands after using the restroom.
Free aquarium.
Thanks for all the nanny referrals! You AVers rock!
You don’t want to miss one of the last block parties of the summer.
My three-year-old lost her favorite stuffed bunny (rip in his right ear, answers to the name Carrots). Last seen at Shoreline Park. Reward for its return—Chardonnay at our house!
Lemonade stand now open at 1340 Griffith Street.
AVers, I have some horrifying news. Last night, one of our own was shot. Details are still emerging, but it looks like the perpetrator was another resident of the AV. At a time like this, we need to lean on each other more than ever . . .
CHAPTER 1
WELCOME TO THE AV!
Two Months Earlier
Doug and I grin at each other in surprise and delight. Even Sadie’s in on the act: I feel her feet hyperextending joyously as she’s suspended against me in the BabyBj?rn.
I couldn’t have imagined anything like this—who gets welcomed to their new neighborhood with a block party and a ten-foot-tall balloon arch?—and yet, it’s exactly why we spent everything we had to live in Aurora Village (AV to the locals). They say it takes a village, and Sadie deserves one.
Our block is a carefully maintained mishmash of architecture that includes Colonials, Mediterraneans, Tudors, Georgians, Victorians, and California Craftsmen. Some are original, meaning they’re more than a hundred years old. Our Craftsman is by far the smallest, a bungalow really, but our neighbors don’t seem to mind, so I won’t, either.
While the houses might appear to be a random assortment, the trees reveal the AV’s covert design. Beech, Japanese maple, jacaranda, birch, cherry, and oak all come together to create an ever-changing seasonal kaleidoscope. The tree canopy above dances like a mobile. There’s a flowering pear tree in front of our house, and its fluffy white blossoms take on a silver cast as dusk falls. It’s stunning, and I mean that literally. We moved in last week, and I’m still stunned that we get to live here.
Good thing I took care of all that move-in trash yesterday. Sure, my methods were unorthodox, but it had to be done. This place is immaculate. It’s like that movie Pleasantville, only it’s already in Technicolor. The sun is high in the sky, radiant yellow against cloudless blue; it’s a child’s drawing of a day. The air carries the smoke and tang of barbecue.
The neighbors must have been waiting for us. Before we’ve even descended our front steps, there’s a round of applause, whoops, and whistles.
The children below are bubble blowing and Hula-Hooping and playing tag, dogs at their heels. I spy a pogo stick. There’s not a handheld device or smartphone in evidence—no video games, no scrolling. It’s like we’ve stepped back in time, except for all the late-model luxury cars, including, in one driveway, matching Porsche Cayenne SUVs. Since it is the San Francisco Bay Area, the landscape is dotted with Priuses. There are some solidly middle-class cars like ours, a Subaru Outback that we bought used before Sadie’s arrival and that I now wish we’d thought to wash.
Card tables span the block, piled high with homemade appetizers, salads, innumerable bun options (several of them gluten-free; one made from a blend of ground-up seeds), and desserts. I feel guilty that Doug and I don’t have some sort of contribution, though I was explicitly told that we were meant to be empty-handed as the guests of honor. While there are plenty of cut-up vegetables and six kinds of hummus, the buffet could have used some pretzels, popcorn, or chips. Everything seems so well organized, nearly military in its precision, that I imagine the absence of snack food is not an oversight. In the AV, I bet there are no oversights, only a consensual choreography.
“Do you think there’s a block-wide ban on chips?” I whisper to Doug.
“Maybe someone once choked on a fat-free, low-carb quinoa crisp,” he whispers back. We giggle, loopy with excitement, irrepressibly thrilled to be the newest residents of the 1800 block of Bayberry Lane. Sadie—who, at four months old, is reveling in her new superpower of controlling her head instead of it lolling around on her neck—strains upward, letting out a giggle of her own.
Four high-end grills are lined up, laden with every variety of organic, grass-fed, free-range meat and, of course, meat substitute product imaginable. A man with appropriately fire-colored hair is moving back and forth among them, alternating between tongs and brushes, a study in male dominance and efficiency. It’s a martial arts display. The thought that our neighbors have gone to this much trouble for us is nearly dizzying.
Everything we did to get here was 100 percent worth it. It wasn’t exactly a devil’s bargain, but it was close.
So many people would kill to be in our shoes. Hundreds showed up at the open house for what is now our home, so many that prospective buyers had to enter in shifts, waiting outside like it was an exclusive club, the selling agent acting as bouncer. Now we’re on the other side of the velvet ropes. That balloon arch is directly in front of the walkway to our house. The welcome banner is for us.
All morning, I could hear the setup happening outside: “Let’s move this table!” and “How about over here?” and “What do you think of this?” accompanied by laughter. A lot of laughter. I just kept thinking, Our neighbors like each other; please let them like us. Please let them like me.