Four years before Poppy’s erev fifth-grade sleepover, moving from Madison to Seattle had been like moving from Madison to the moon. They swapped the tumbled brown middle of the country for the soaring blue edge; muggy, comforting summer days for long, clear, sun-kissed ones; the much-promised rain not yet in evidence. The pink turret house had been built the same year as the farmhouse—1906—but the similarities ended there. Where the farmhouse was wide and white and open, the pink turret house was tall and formal with dark, newly polished floors and dark, newly installed countertops, with granite and burnished metal instead of worn wood and wainscoting. Where the farmhouse had been a car ride away from even the bus stop, the pink turret house was a mere driveway from the sidewalk, short feet from the street. You could see downtown skyscrapers from the front window. The dining room was barely large enough to fit the homeworking table, itself a worn and whitewashed relic of their other home, another life. The floors were perfectly smooth but still, the boys had been frustrated to learn, poor for roller-skating, being constantly interrupted by too many walls. The house had been edited over the years by a century’s worth of owners with what were clearly widely varied visions, financial constraints, and priorities. The result was a bit hodgepodge. Orion’s room was tucked into the second-floor eaves and too short to stand up in except in the middle. Rigel’s was accessible the regular way but also through a trapdoor in the back of the linen closet. The steps to Poppy’s turret led up from the master bedroom. Roo and Ben shared the basement, one sprawling room Ben turned into six by repurposing the moving boxes to make a labyrinth of bedrooms, workrooms, corners, and hideouts. The house was polished and functional, just a little odd on the inside when you looked close enough. “Like me,” Poppy said.
Madison’s wide, amber flat was replaced with Seattle’s verdant verticality, the green hinting perhaps at the nowhere-in-evidence-yet rain but the latter a complete surprise. The pink turret house was on a hill so steep Penn thought they might need to hire Sherpas. Their main-floor living-room window looked out over their next-door neighbor’s roof. And it was this that was truly the biggest change of all: someone next door. For the first time in their lives, the kids had neighbors.
Alone on their farm, Rosie and Penn had forgotten all about the way your neighbors’ desire to live next to a mown lawn and weeded parking strip somehow trumped yours to not care and go to yoga instead of gardening on Saturday mornings, the way their kids lay out on towels in the backyard and played bad music loudly so there was nothing you could do to stop it entering your open windows and then your open ears, the way your own horde of children holding a science experiment to determine how loud you had to yell to shatter a wineglass meant you had to worry about more than the wineglass. And the way neighbors knocked on your door within hours of your arrival, never mind your house was a mess, your hair was a mess, your kids were a disastrous mess, and you were not in the mood to be sociable. Never mind it turned out that after all the ruminating and decision making over what to move versus what to buy new, what to keep versus what to give away, what you had but wouldn’t need (sleds) versus what you needed but didn’t have (something to entertain a troupe of children in the winter that wasn’t a sled), what you really required didn’t occur to you until it was too late.
When she heard the doorbell the first time, Rosie ignored it. The kids had never had a doorbell and spent most of the morning trying this one out until she was completely inured to its chimes. When it rang again an hour later, she was in the turret unpacking Poppy’s room and assumed someone else would get it. No one did. When Rosie finally went downstairs to investigate the third ring, she found she had the house to herself, an occasion rare enough she was irritated to have it interrupted.
She pulled open the door to a perfectly pleasant-looking couple about her age. “We don’t want any.” Her father’s joke when friends came to visit, though these two were strangers and she wasn’t actually kidding.
“Oh. Uh,” the female half fumbled, looked at the male half who smiled gamely, first at his wife, then at Rosie, then back again, “we wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood.”
“Ah.” Rosie squinted at them. Mystery solved. “Thanks.”
“We brought cookies.” The male half raised and wiggled a plastic-wrap-covered plate to prove it. “But full disclosure: they do contain peanut butter. Oh, and raisins.” Rosie thought peanut-butter-raisin cookies were an odd combination. Rosie thought it unfair that even moving across the country wasn’t far enough to escape people’s obsession with peanut allergies. Then the man added, “And wine.” She thought he meant in the cookies until he produced a bottle from behind his back like a magic trick, but in the beat it took Rosie to reach for it, he put it back again. “Although if you’re allergic to raisins, you’re probably allergic to wine too, right? Not that it’s raisin wine, of course. Is that even a thing? Raisin wine? Or maybe you don’t drink? We don’t mean to presume. Maybe you aren’t drinkers. Or cookie eaters. Not that we drink that much, but it is nice to have a glass of wine with dinner. If you drink. If it’s good wine. Not that this is really good wine. A colleague brought it over for dinner the other night, and we never quite got there. Not that it’s crappy either. Just, you know, leftover.” Then he was quiet, which was probably for the best. They both looked at Rosie. It was her turn now apparently.
“I’m not allergic to raisins,” she said.
“That’s a relief.” The man nodded approvingly.
“I’m Rosie,” she added, and they lit up with relieved joy because it had never occurred to them to actually introduce themselves.
“Oh, we’re Marginny and Frank Granderson,” the woman gushed, like the fact that they all three of them had names was too big a coincidence to be believed.
“Marjorie?” Rosie must have misheard.
“Marginny.” Marginny shrugged smugly, like this was a reasonable name, something to be proud of even, as if she’d had anything to do with it. (Which, who knew, she might have.) “My dad really loved gin. And my mom.”
“Not that we’re big drinkers,” Frank reminded her.
“We’re so pleased to meet you finally.” Had they been waiting?
“Likewise,” Rosie said, and when no one had anything to add, sighed with relief, “Thanks for the welcome and the treats,” and started to close the door.