MOTAsterry

“Name’s John Egan,” the guy introduces himself a week later when they’ve finished hauling everything in and they can finally settle enough to meet the neighbors properly, “but everybody calls me Bucky, and I like it better that way.”

“Gale Cleven, my wife Marjorie.”

“Just Marge though,” she smiles, sweet balance to Gale’s newly stern, unsmiling affect. “I like it better that way.”

John smiles at her then, so much more real than whatever he’d done last time, and when he shakes her hand his own is big and warm and calloused kind of like Gale’s are, a hand used to hard work.

“Pleasure to meet you properly, Marge. Gale.”

John shakes Gale’s hand too and seems about to say something else but Gale’s already pulling away to take the couple of steps down to the pavement so they can continue on their little meet-and-greet tour around the block. John offers a nod full of understanding to her apologetic little grimace, and he just watches with his hands in his pockets and one shoulder leaned up against the side of the doorframe his shoulders nearly fill as Marge joins Gale down on the sidewalk to tuck her hand into his elbow, and on they go.

—//—

“Oh lord no, I wouldn’t go anywhere near that man if we weren’t neighbors, and even at that I don’t talk to ‘im unless I’ve got Artie with me.”

Marge hides the urge to frown in the motion of crossing one ankle behind the other and taking a careful sip of her too-bitter coffee.

“Sad but true,” another of the ladies sighs, and maybe Marge is being unfair but she thinks the pout that goes with the sentiment looks more than a little put-on. “Just somethin’ off ‘bout him! You know, Cal and I think he’s gotta have someone he’s threatened or something up at the school what got him the job - don’t know how he’d get it otherwise, man’s not right in the head.”

“Ain’t that the truth. What’s he teaching again, Bonnie?”

Mousy little Bonnie Turner, sitting beside Marge, clears her throat and holds a hand in front of her mouth to finish chewing the minuscule bite of a ginger snap she’d just taken. “Woodshop, I think,” she says when her mouth’s clear. “Somethin’ handy, anyway.”

“They gave him sharp tools to brandish around those kids?“ Henrietta Smith scoffs from her throne at the top of the room. “First sign of trouble I’m going to write to principal Perry myself and let him know what’s what. They oughta know what they’re dealin’ with, hiring a man like that to teach. How’s he been to you and your fella so far, Marjorie?”

“Nothin’ but nice,” she says, and it’s the pure truth but it still earns her a couple of scoffs that put her back up. “I mean it! He’s been fine. Maybe a little quiet, but everything seems alright.”

“You’re still new,” Henrietta tuts, and the rest of the ladies she’s holding court with titter as well (except for Bonnie next to her, who just looks like she wishes they’d change the subject). “Just wait ‘til he gets it in his head that someone’s done him wrong, or ‘til he’s got nothing better to do but make trouble for everyone else, like he did this summer. A man always reveals his nature eventually, and Major John Egan’s nature is mean.”

Marge leaves not too long after that, excusing herself with the reason that she needs to get home and start dinner for Gale. She’d hoped for nicer neighbors here than the ones they’d left behind, but it seems folks are the same no matter where you go — nosy busybodies who sit around and do nothing but judge their neighbors and gossip, all mean-spirited and nasty. She shudders and has half a mind to do something silly like take a shower to see if she can scrub off the grimy feeling that little ‘afternoon tea’ left her with down in her soul. She pauses on the sidewalk outside John’s house with half a mind to march right up there and talk to him for a bit just to show those clucking hens what for; it’s quiet though, he must still be up at the school, so Marge goes on into her own home, still only half-unpacked.

Some hours later, dinner’s in the oven and she’s sitting at the table working on unwrapping all their photos from their cushions of newspaper scraps when a car passes by, turns into the driveway next door. She hardly feels better than one of those busybodies as she does it, but she stands up to creep over to the window, staying just out of sight with her stomach pressed to the edge of the sink.

John steps out of his car so he can haul up the door to his garage, gets back into the car, she presumes to drive it inside. He sits there, hands on the wheel and his chin on his chest, for a few long minutes marked only by Marge’s breathing and the clock she’d put above the kitchen door ticking away. She has half a mind to go check on him and make sure he’s alright, but before she can decide one way or the other John suddenly jerks upright and her heart lurches when his car does, a few inches forward in a harsh jerk. He slams the brakes, stalls it, starts it again with too harsh motions like he’s angry with it, but then he gets it into the garage without incident anyway.

He hauls the garage shut again behind himself but he doesn’t go in his house. He’s just standing there outside the garage with his hands on his hips, two fingers curved over his belt and the rest of them curled up entirely, tucked into his palms, breathing deep and looking down at his yard, at the grass getting a little long. When he finally gets moving he still doesn’t go inside, and Marge hurries to take a step or two back as he comes towards her — or, it turns out, just towards his side yard and then up and around to the front of his house for a stop at the mailbox. Marge leans forward again, cranes her neck until her forehead is nearly pressed to the glass to keep her eyes on him as he stands there on the sidewalk between their houses, flicking through a few envelopes. One of them he folds in half and tucks into his shirt pocket, but the other two he keeps hold of — and then he’s definitely walking towards her house.

Alice’s warning rings in Marge’s head the same moment a knock on the door cuts through the ticking silence and Marge tells herself she’s being ridiculous. She might need her husband Arthur around to feel safe, but Marge can hold her own just fine – and John hasn’t given her a reason to be afraid of him anyway! She marches to the door, opens it to find John standing on her stoop with two envelopes held carefully between his big hands. He’s got a light scatter of wood shavings in his hair and a layer of sawdust paling his sleeves, and the stern lines of his face soften ever so slightly when she smiles at him.

“Hi Bucky,” she greets, and he softens even further, gently surprised pleasure. “What can I do for ya?”

“Marge,” he replies and touches the front of his hair like he’s used to having a cap there to tip. Gale does it too sometimes and Marge finds it as charming on one as the other. “Seems the postman was in a rush, left me a couple’a letters that aren’t mine.”

John holds out the envelopes between them and Marge hurries to take them. A glance at the first proves it to be from her mother, and the second something more official-looking from-

“Oh!” she chirps, smiling wide.

“Good news?”

“Hope so! We’ve been having an awful time tryin’ to get my name changed since Gale and I tied the knot,” she explains, already ripping into the second envelope with one red lacquered nail, thin paper giving way easily. “Third time’s the charm though, right?”

The documents slide free and she catches the letter that’s come with them, unfolding it eagerly to skim through the apology it contains and then, yes, there it is:

Marjorie Ruth Cleven.

“Well?” John prompts, and when she looks up she finds him smiling, hands in his pockets and eyebrows raised. “Good news?”

“Good news,” she confirms, nodding.

“Well then congratulations, Mrs Cleven.”

And oh that’s lovely. Marge thanks him, cheeks aching with how wide she’s grinning, and John’s smile widens a little more like he doesn’t even notice it. He nods, takes a couple of steps back out of the shade of the porch and into the sunshine.

“I’d better get,” he says. He nods to the letters in her hands, “I’ll let you know if that happens again, might be some confusion down at the post office since you’ve just moved in.”

“Y’ don’t have to do that, John, it’s alright. You can just put anything that’s ours right in the mailbox, no need to trouble yourself.”

John’s smile fades just a little, creasing at the corners as he digs his hands deeper into his pockets.

“Ah yeah, of course. I’ll do that. Have a good evening, Mrs Cleven.”

He’s turned and gone again quicker than Marge can figure out what else to say, though she doesn’t step back inside until he’s unlocked his own front door and gone in.

Gale gets home around six, and the moment he’s kissed her hello Marge shows him the letter just to see one of his rare smiles creep slow as molasses across his face. It makes his hollow cheeks look a little rounder, puts a bit of his old light back in his eyes, sets her heart to aching in the best way just the same as ever.

“Well,” he drawls, tucking an arm around her waist to reel her in tight so he can kiss her forehead, “how ‘bout that. Mrs Marge Cleven.”