Jennifer Greene - Yours, Mine & Ours

“Mom!” Molly tugged at her hand. “I don’t want to see that boy again as long as I live! I hate him! And I’m thirsty! And I want to watch TV!”

Amanda almost laughed. For a few seconds there, she’d been worried about a personal connection to her neighbor. But her real life erased that worry lickety-split.

Right now she had all the chaos she could possibly handle-and then some.

“Idon’t get it, Dad. Why she hit me. And did you see? I didn’t hit her back.”

“Yup, I saw, Teddy. You did the right thing. It’s never okay for a boy to hit a girl. Or for someone to hit someone smaller than they are.”

“But I wanted to. I wanted to really, really bad.”

“Of course you did. She wasn’t behaving well. But you just can’t hurt another person. If you feel mad, you have to let it out other ways…like running as fast as you can for a while. Or punching a pillow. Or getting your mind off it by doing something else, something you like, like a puzzle or your trucks or something like that.”

When Teddy stepped from the bathtub onto the white-and-black-checked tile, Mike was waiting with a man-size black bath towel. Teddy might be squeaky-clean, but the bathroom now had more water than a lake. His son thought he was way big enough to take a bath alone. Maybe he was. But Mike wasn’t sure the house could survive the aftermath. Even with him right there, everything in sight and vicinity tended to get soaked.

He covered Teddy’s head, heard him giggle, swooped the damp package in his arms and carted him down the hall into the only room in the house that was decorated-seriously decorated.

The bed was shaped like a car. The wallpaper was a mass of trucks and cars and tractors. Mike had laid down thick, soft brown carpet, both to suck up extraneous noise and because four-year-olds-at least, his four-year-old-tended to accumulate bruises and bumps, so the carpet needed serious cushioning. No curtains. “We men,” as Teddy put it, “don’t need girl stuff like that.”

Half the room was toys. Because Teddy’s favorites tended to be moving vehicles, Mike had set him up with a “garage” for the diggers and tractors and haulers, and a couple of bins for the fifty million cars that reproduced every night. Mike had told him flat out that he didn’t care-at all-about being tidy. But the cars had to be put away before bed, because Teddy could be hurt if he got up in the night to pee and stumbled over them.

Teddy considered that rule to be reasonable, which was a relief. When Teddy didn’t like a rule, he could spend four hours asking “But, why? ” questions to exhaust his father.

“I didn’t say good night to the worms, Dad,” Teddy suddenly worried.

“I’ll say good night for you.” Off went the towel. On went the football pj’s.

“Why didn’t she like me?”

“Who?” Silly question, Mike thought. It had to be the girl next door, from his son’s mournful tone. “Maybe she did. Sometimes girls do strange things when they like a boy.”

“I offered to show her my worms.”

“That was very kind.”

“We’re going to dig in the backyard tomorrow, right, Dad? Make a big hole?”

“That’s going to take some time to set up, sport. We’ll be headed to the hardware store for supplies first. And Grandma and Grandpa want you to come over. But believe me, you and I are going to get into all the dirt and water and messes you could possibly want.”

“I can’t wait.”

“We’ll have fun,” Mike promised him, and started the ritual tucking-in process.

“Dad?”

“What?”

“I bin thinking about why Mom doesn’t want me anymore. Maybe it’s like that girl. Even when you’re nice, some girls just don’t like boys.”

“Anyone who didn’t like you would have to be really, really lame. And your mom loves you.” Mike bent down, bussed his son’s forehead. They weren’t calling it a good-night kiss anymore. They were calling it a Night Connect.

“You’re going to leave the bathroom light on?”

“Hey, it stays on 24/7. You know that.”

Mike finally switched off the bedroom light and aimed for the living room. Teddy had barely said a word until he was three. Ever since then, he made up for it by talking every waking moment. Mike vaguely remembered working fourteen-hour days, poring over law books and briefs, skipping meals and sleep, never too tired to party.

To caretake a four-year-old all day-now that was tiring.

He grabbed a longneck from the fridge, the news paper from the counter, sank into the easy chair by the window and propped up a foot.

He’d made the place as easy to care for as he could. Nothing in the living area but the big stone fireplace, a couch, a chair, the big TV. The open kitchen area had an eating nook, where you could see the TV whether you were eating or cooking. Mike had dibs on the west corner for his desk and computer and work setup. Teddy had dibs on the north corner, where he stashed his downstairs toys. Four-year-olds, Mike discovered, never seemed to have enough toys.

The silence now was more valued than gold. He didn’t even get the paper opened before Slugger and Cat climbed up-Cat by his neck, Slugger taking up all available space on his lap. They promptly went into snooze mode.

The last of daylight blurred into sunset, and then true darkness came on. He never turned on a light. A full moon was just rising. He leaned his head back, taking a lazy moon bath in the open window. He scratched under Cat’s chin, hearing him purr like thunder, and used the other hand to rub Slugger’s belly, who loved that attention to the point of bliss.

He was just plain enjoying the simple evening, until his gaze accidentally glanced next door. Abruptly he stopped relaxing, stopped moving, stopped breathing.

Next door…in a second-story window…there appeared to be a navel. A naked navel.

Separating from the dog and cat, Mike climbed to his feet to take a clearer gander from the front picture window. Yup. There was a definitely a bare body in the window. Of course, he couldn’t see the whole body-just the wedge between rib cage and midhip. Still, he could clearly see in the indentation of waist. The swell of curves over the hip. The belly button. An innie belly button.

Navels had never been his particular fantasy. He’d always tended to be a leg man. And a breast man. And a fanny man. Hell, he’d always been a sex-crazed adolescent who’d turned into a wildly enthusiastic lover as an adult-until he’d recently given up sex, of course. But this was the first time he could recall ever noticing or being attracted to a belly button before.

What on earth was she doing?

Ah. Painting. He figured it out when she bent down-apparently from a ladder, because he could see her hand now holding a dripping brush. She pressed her belly against the window for support again, as she hand-painted the edge around the ceiling. Not that he could see the ceiling. But the dance back-and-forth motion of her arm pretty much told the story.

He told himself, okay, he’d figured it out, time to get away from the window. She might catch him being a navel voyeur. Worse yet, the longer he stared, the more he started worrying that maybe he really was a navel voyeur. Or that he could turn into one.

He was about to turn away except that he suddenly saw a blur of movement. Even with windows open in both places, he heard only a vague sound coming from the second story in her place, but something had obviously happened. She suddenly disappeared from the window. So did the ladder.

He didn’t know she fell.

But there was suddenly no sign of life or movement up there. And a fall from a ladder could be darned serious.