Page 2 of The Legend Next Door
“Luca!” I call louder than I did before. He looks at me and pinches his lips together in thinly veiled irritation. “Come on in, buddy. It’s time for a snack.”
His lips relax and pull back, turning into a wide grin he reserves strictly for news about snacks, hockey, and visits with his cousins. He bids a hasty farewell to his new friend.
The fence is high, at least six feet. I can’t see the neighbor from here to gauge how welcome the interaction was, so I call out a halfhearted, “Hope he’s not bothering you,” and head into the house quickly.
I’ll get around to meeting the neighbors. I will. Just not today. I don’t have small talk and fake smiles in me today.
“So,” I say as Luca climbs onto one of the stools at the counter, “do we know why there are holes in the fence yet?”
It’s been a few days since we moved in, and the holes in the fence have been a mystery to us since the first time Luca did a thorough reconnaissance of the backyard. There are two holes, both approximately three or four inches in diameter and perfectly round. They’re placed almost directly in Luca’s line of sight and it’s clear they were deliberately cut into the wood, but for what reason, I don’t know.
“Aw yeah,” says Luca. The phrase is new. I haven’t heard it from him before, but from the way he scoots his mouth to the side when he says it, I can tell he’s pleased with it. “Jelly lives in a cottage in his aunt’s yard. She has two Great Danes—those are super big dogs, Dad, like really, really big, almost like a horse—and the people who used to live here had dogs too. Jelly’s aunt asked him to cut the holes in the fence so the dogs could talk to each other.”
“Jelly?”
“Yeah, Jelly.”
“That’s the neighbor’s name?Jelly?Are you sure about that?”
He crosses his little arms over his chest and fixes me with a glare that spurs me to slice up his apple and celery at double time. Luca is generally pretty reasonable for a six-year-old, but the notable exception is when he’s hangry.
“Of course I’m sure,” he says as I scoop a large tablespoon of peanut butter onto his plate. “His other name is Jele”—he pauses, curling his tongue carefully as he makes another attempt at the R sound—“Jewemiah.” He clicks his tongue in frustration and wrinkles his nose. He shakes it off quickly and continues, undeterred, “Jelly says it’s a hard name for some people. He says he couldn’t say it either when he was little, so he called himself Jelly. He said I can call him Jelly too, so yeah, I’m sure his name is Jelly.”
“Ah,” I say. “I see.”
Once Luca’s had his snack, he tries to make a run for it back to the holes in the fence. I manage to distract him by asking him to help me unpack a box containing fun things like cookie cutters and measuring cups, but it’s clear I’ll have to go over to meet the new neighbor sooner rather than later. I can’t have my kid befriending him if I haven’t got the measure of him first. And even if I do get a good feeling about him, I need to check if he’s happy to have his ear bent on a regular basis by the most talkative first grader on the planet.
By the time we’ve eaten dinner and Luca’s bathed and in bed, I’m wiped out. I sit on the sofa, flicking through channels, as I try to ignore the unpleasantness making a home in my chest. I’ve been focusing on our bedrooms and the kitchen as those are the rooms we use most, so I haven’t organized the living room yet. The movers rolled out the rug and unwrapped the sofas before they left, but something about their placement feels off. The rug isn’t in the right place and the sofa I’m sitting on feels different.
We have two identical sofas. One Liz and I used to sit on together when we watched TV and another that was generally reserved for guests. The movers got it wrong. They placed the guest sofa facing the TV, and it doesn’t feel right. It hasn’t been worn in. It’s the same as the other one, but different. It’s like everything we own. It felt familiar and right in our old home, and now it feels wrong.
The unpleasantness in my chest burrows deeper.
It’s a feeling I know well. I felt it when I went on sleepovers that lasted for more than one night when I was a kid, and I felt it a lot in the first few years of my career when hotel rooms blurred into one another and I’d wake up in the mornings disoriented and unsure what city I was in. I felt it more when I met Liz, and suddenly, the thought of spending a night away from her was the end of the world. An emotion that only doubled when Luca was born.
Homesickness. That’s what it is. The feeling of emotional distress caused by being away from the person or people you know and love. In this case, it’s not just the people or the person. It’s the place too. Our old home. Our old city. The place where I met Liz. The place where Luca was born. The place where my team lives and practices and plays. The place where my blood, sweat, and tears were carved into ice.
My skin starts to crawl with emotion. I feel it coming. It’s approaching fast, circling me slowly. I pat the hair on the back of my head down repeatedly, pulling at the fistful of strands I’ve knotted my fingers in, hoping the sting will jolt me out of it.
It’s one of those times I can’t tell if I’m dreading or craving it. My breathing quickens and my chest tightens. The back of my throat burns.
And then…nothing.
I sit on the wrong fucking sofa, choked, strangled, throttled by a buildup of pain that has nowhere to go. Pain that’s stuck in my bones, in my blood, in the air in my lungs.
It’s awful. It’s one of the worst ways to feel, confusing and wretched, but at least it’s given me clarity tonight. At least, this time, I know whether I’m dreading it or craving it.
I crave it.
I need it.
I need to let this big, ugly thing inside me out.
I change channels again and try not to feel anything about the fact that I know exactly where they are.My team.I know who they’re playing. Who’s on the bench tonight. Who’s playing well, and who’s having an off week. Who the referees are, and what Coach’s mood has been like.
I slam my eyes shut when the image on my screen changes. The glare of the ice is too bright for a night like tonight. Too white. Too stark. I drop my head in my hands and feel the weight of my skull as I wait for the sound of blades slicing through ice to do their work.
Tonight, that’s not what gets me. It’s not the skates or even the dull thud of the puck connecting with carbon fiber. Tonight, it’s the crowd. It’s the low rumble of happy fans. The sound travels through me, shaking me, flooding me, drowning me in an ocean of salt water that has nowhere to go. It ravages me, beating against me in big tidal waves that wear me down and leave me raw.
