He didn’t realize in that first year just how much of a toll the move from Bison to Roc City had taken on Jude. They had both grown up there, on opposite sides of Bison, but he had little family or life left there when he managed to get his first job out of college that paid more than just enough to make rent each month. It was an actual job, a job with a suit. She had to help him tie his tie for the interview, he was so nervous. They celebrated that night when he was offered the position – Assistant Operations Manager of Strategic Resources – it rolled of the tongue with an air of importance. They went out to dinner at a fancy restaurant after Jude got one of her sisters to watch the kids. That was the last time for a long time he saw her as happy as that, if he managed enough time to see her at all. The hours were cruel, and the commute even worse. Too many hours behind the wheel dead tired, having to pull off to the side of the road so he didn’t slip into sleep and veer into oncoming traffic or slide off into a ditch. He stayed at a hotel in Roc City a few times in the first few months. They had to wait until he was able to get some vacation time in order to house hunt. It took them a few weeks to finally find a place – an American Four Square on the southwest side of the city.
The house was so much larger than their apartment back in Bison. Four bedrooms, a front porch, a two car garage. The kids found endless amusement with the laundry shoot and attic room that was just paperboard and no insulation, something he’d end up tearing down when the kids outgrew the need for a private place they were willing to share. On a weekend a few months after they had moved in, Peter built a sandbox for the kids to play in by the fence at the back of the yard. The children loved to play there, and Jude liked that she could see them through the kitchen window if she had to prepare dinner while they were outside playing. And they would play for hours in the cicada buzz of summer evenings, well into the dusk. He and Jude would sit on the back steps and watch them run around, pulling dandelions from the edge of an unkempt garden thick with ivy and patches of grass where they hadn’t the time to plant anything.
An older black couple lived in the house whose driveway ran parallel with the fence. They had raised their kids already, were enjoying a quiet retirement, the wife tending to a well manicured garden, the husband often washing his ’57 Bel Air – a car he had saved all his life to own and enjoy, Peter found out one random summer weekend while they shared a few beers along the fence. Peter was out grilling some hamburgers for the family dinner. He was enjoying a can of Piels and offered one to his backyard neighbor waxing the hood of the Chevy and working up a sweat. They got to talking and found out they had a lot in common, especial an interest in golf. A sport Peter was desperate to improve upon to impress the brass at work, the company often taking clients out to The Oaks Country Club in an effort to woo them into a contract.
The man’s name was Clarence, his wife’s was Bella. They had lived in that neighborhood for over forty years. They bounced around a few houses around Roc City but they always felt like that neighborhood was home. Their family was a quick walk or car ride away. They would have Sunday brunch with extended relatives on a regular basis. He used to work at the factory on the north east side making film, but the company exported the jobs. He managed to work long enough to collect a pension, but for the last ten or so years before he retired, he had to work three low paying jobs to maintain the income level he had before they laid him off. Clarence was a nice man, but Bella was a bit crass.
After so many years working as a cleaner, she was very particular about how things were kept, how clean a room should be, how well kempt a garden should look. Bella would often be around weeding her garden when the kids were playing in the sandbox. One day the kids were as excited and exuberant as ever, running around and throwing a ball around. It managed to get away from them and over the fence into Bella’s garden, damaging a rosebush she prided herself on. Jude was in the kitchen making dinner and didn’t see the woman scolding the children. It was Desiree who came in screaming crying to her mother. Jude heard the whine and sniffles growing as Diz ran the length of the yard through the slap of the back porch screen door into the kitchen to cling on Jude’s leg and bury her face in Jude’s apron. She peeled Desiree away from the sopping wet spot on her jeans and asked what had happened. Peter had just gotten home and had placed his briefcase on the kitchen table when Jude handed the little girl off to him for consoling and stormed out to confront Bella. He watched through the window as the two woman argued over the fence. The twins were wrestling each other over the ownership of the ball.
He didn’t hear the entirety of the conversation. He had to move closer to the screen door of the back porch to catch anything cohesive. What kind of mother lets their kids run wild, I would never let my children terrorize the neighborhood like that, destroying gardens, he heard Bella say. She pointed out the damaged bush to Jude. Look, you crabby old witch, he heard Jude reply. She was on her own there trying to keep an eye on their children and make dinner for him, a husband working twelve hour days. A man she rarely gets to see or able to enjoy his company because of his schedule and the tending to the children. She didn’t know anyone in this city, that all of her family was back in Bison, too far to offer to watch the kids while she cooked dinner every night. And God forbid that someone who has raised children and knows the difficulty might offer her a helping hand in keeping them in line instead of traumatizing them for being children to begin with.
Bella stood there, taken aback. Jude turned around to the twins still fighting each other over the possession of the ball. She called their names and they froze, dropping the ball between them. She told them it was time for dinner and they had to wash up. They ran to the kitchen where Peter was cradling Desiree. His daughter’s arms were around his neck as she sat on his forearm. The twins bolted in, the screen door slapping closed behind them. The little metal latch hook tapped a few times before it stopped. Each of the boys hugged one of his legs on their way to the downstairs half bath to clean the dirt they had collected on their arms wrestling over the ball. Jude was making her way back across the lawn. He could see the tears in her eyes.
That night they talked about how she felt. How she felt alienated, that the neighbors looked at her with furtive derision in sideways glances. She told him how unhappy she was and it would be a long time before she felt better about their new life in Roc City.
He explained this to the circle of people around him. He didn’t tell the group much else. Just that he found it hard living in that big house with only a cat and the occasional visit from his son Rusty, who had been to a few of the sessions with him. Russ was the only child he had that still lived in Roc City. The two would go each month to Mount Hope Cemetery and lay a flower on Jude’s headstone. A man sitting next to him rubbed his shoulder to console him. He was tearing up. He knew now, sitting amongst all these strangers, how alone she must have felt. How terrible it was to find the one you loved absent from your life when you needed them the most.
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