Interesting to note, here on Manatee — not one of the wealthier lanes in town, though by no means poor, either. Solid middle class — interesting to note was the pride of workmanship apparent in the various domestic fortifications. These were well-planned, sturdy structures, erected by gifted home-improvement enthusiasts willing to lay out for topflight materials. Case in point: Dan Gleason’s ingenious “Rainbow Pillbox” at 23 East Manatee. Gleason, who works, or did until recently, at the local boat basin, spraying fiberglass onto the hulls of recreational vessels, had used this same industrial aerosol technology to apply a white lacquer of composite slipperiness to his house, transforming it into a fantastic humpbacked windowless bunker with a nautical screw hatch for a door. The roof, a low dome, had ganged at its apex a cluster of heavy-duty latex garden hoses, spewing forth. The water cascaded out of the hoses, over the roof, down the hard-shell walls, and into PVC runoff gutters sunk neatly into the flower beds. This spilling sheet of wetness gave the entire house a strategic “banana peel” unscalability, rather like an omnidirectional theme-park water slide. The water also served as an excellent exterior surface coolant for the house, reducing Dan’s air-conditioning bills, one would imagine, by a considerable sum. A sump pump recycled the flow. Sometimes, in early morning and late afternoon, sunlight playing on the translucent building caused rich, shimmering rainbows to appear, as if painted on the walls.
Nobody’d seen Dan or his family for a long time. Presumably they were happily ensconced and doing okay. The lawn looked recently trimmed; water was running as usual over the rooftop; everything seemed fine. I proceeded past the Rainbow Pillbox, past Bob and Linda Hamilton’s amusingly named, two-bedroom “Beaver Dam,” and after that, Ed and Jane Shapiro’s “Fort Ed and Jane” (not such a finished job, Fort Ed and Jane — an eyesore actually, resembling nothing so much as a complex split-level plywood clubhouse hammered together by stoned teenagers), arriving, finally, at 57 Manatee, the home of the Jordans. This was a house that was still, to the naked eye, a house. Which gave me pause. I stood for a moment on the sidewalk, peering at the grass and the small bushes lining the driveway, searching, among the ubiquitous purple flowers, for what if anything might befall me upon setting foot off public, onto private, property. But there was nothing out of the ordinary here, only porch furniture parked up on the porch, and a couple of toy trucks and other children’s play objects littering the walkway. I stepped over one truck. Then another. At the foot of the steps rested a Big Wheel. I breathed out the tension before gripping the Day-Glo plastic trike and rolling it gently from my path. And at the door, rather than thumbing the buzzer, which could be hot-wired for electric shock, I knocked.
“Hello?” The voice of Jenny, calling from deep inside the house. I heard her approaching footsteps, and hollered back, brightly:
“It’s me, Pete! Pete Robinson? From the library the other day?”
“Oh, hi,” opening wide the door, gesturing me into a living room crowded with matching furniture and more kids’ toys, and smelling like a hamper. “You’ll have to excuse me, the house is a mess. I’ve got the kids all day and there’s only so much a person can do.”
She wore that haggard young-mother look. Messy blond hair, bare feet, a wrinkled blue sundress hanging from bony shoulders. Susy, her seven-year-old, peered from around a hallway corner. I waved to her and said, “Hi there, bet you don’t recognize me with a shower and a shave.”
Susy made a face. Her mother asked her, “Pumpkin, did you finish your cereal?”
“No.” Followed by: “Yes.”
“Go finish.”
“Okay,” vanishing, with the refreshing sound of small feet. I complimented Jenny, “Great kid.”
“Isn’t she? We have a lot of fun, me and Susy. Brad’s around here somewhere too. He’s still kind of in the labor-intensive phase.”
“How old is Brad?”
“Going on five. You want to sit down? Watch out for that stuff on the sofa. It’s part of Brad’s Erector Set.”
I picked up the debris in question, a constructivist replica of what appeared to be a mobile missile launcher, complete with retractable blast shield, tractor wheels, the works. “Brad built this?” It seemed incredible. Jenny explained, “With help from his sister.”
“Ah.”
“Do you, Mr. Robinson, have children of your own?” She smoothed her dress in her lap and leaned forward, attentive. Her naked feet, pressed side by side on the floor, were narrow and smooth, and showed strong arch support and excellent toes.
“Meredith and I have decided to wait. We’re both teachers, so, you know, it isn’t like we don’t get to enjoy the company of children.”
“It’s so terrible about the schools.” At that moment there was a great crash in the back of the house. Jenny jumped up, called, “Sweetie?” and jogged down the hall.
Her absence gave me a chance to peruse the bookshelf. The usual assortment of paperback classics, plus a surprising amount of hardcover new fiction. Not many people buy hardcovers these days. I pulled down a few volumes, then put them back as Jenny came in, smiling. “Would you like a cup of tea, Mr. Robinson? Why don’t we go in the kitchen where I can watch the monsters.”
“Call me Pete,” following her into the warm kitchen that smelled of a mixture of foods; smelled also, like everything in this house, of the children, just now visible through the screen door, out back naked and splashing each other in a small blue inflatable pool shaded by a tree bearing round fruit. Brad was blond and fat, Susy dark and thin. Their mother held a kettle beneath the faucet. “Unfortunately, my drain is clogged. You don’t know anything about clogged drains, do you, Pete?”
“Hmn. Did you try chemicals?”
“I poured Drāno down there but that stuff worries me. You’re not supposed to use too much, but how much is too much? Linda Hamilton down the street used Drāno and it ate through the pipes.”
“Their drain’s clogged too?”
“Yup.”
So it was a community problem. How widespread? And what could be causing it? “Do you have a snake?”
“A snake?”
“It’s a thing that bores through the drain, to dislodge whatever’s in there. A long metal thing, but pliable. My drain was clogged, and I used a snake.”
“Your drain was clogged?”
“Yes.”
“Recently?”
“A few days ago.”
“Weird.”
We peered together into her sink drain, I over her shoulder, gazing down. It was the closest I’d ever come, I think, since I’d gotten married, the closest I’d come to pressing myself, front to back, against a woman not Meredith. A smell of soap rose from Jenny’s freckled neck. The small hairs behind her ears were quite appealing. We stood there, breathing. Kids splashed, sink water stood. The kettle whistle blew and I backed off into the middle of the room as Jenny, in a voice hard to read, a little sharp, a bit curt, said, “Don’t worry about it. Dave will take care of it when he gets home.”