Juniper’s botanical name notwithstanding, to Valerie she seemed an ordinary teenager. A tiny bit hostile maybe, nothing unexpected there, given that her parents had moved her to a new house just weeks before the end of school when she probably had papers and projects due. Fortunately, she wouldn’t to have to change schools for her senior year. Private education did have that advantage.
Now Brad was saying to Juniper in a kind tone, “You got something mixed up, honey,” and Valerie decided she had misheard and misjudged him. She did have some prejudice, because of the clear-cutting. Lighten up, she told herself. Give the man a chance.
Brad went on, “I might have said something about some other school. Or maybe you heard it from one of your friends.”
Juniper said, “Maybe. I guess.”
“For the record,” said Valerie, “Franklin is one of the highest- performing public schools in the state.”
“Well, sure,” Brad said. “Just look at Zay here. Classical guitar. I don’t know what that is, exactly, but if you got a scholarship to do it, you must be good. Juniper takes piano—though I don’t believe she’ll win any scholarships with her playing.”
Julia said, “She needs to practice more. But she’s very at good cross-country running. She ran varsity as a freshman.”
“Nice,” Xavier said to Juniper. “Will that be your thing in college?”
“Like a sports major?” Juniper replied. “No, I think I want to study zoology or botany. I’m hoping to get into a program in Washington State.”
“Since when?” said Julia.
“I’ve been thinking about it.”
“We’ll see,” Brad said. “I’m sure your mother’s not crazy about the idea of you going to school so far away.”
“Or at all,” Julia said, shrugging. “What can I say? She’s my first baby; I don’t want her to grow up.”
Valerie was about to empathize with Julia when a half-dozen Latino men in matching bright yellow T-shirts came around the side of the Whitmans’ house to the back property boundary. One man had a spade. Another had a gas-powered posthole digger.
“There they are,” Brad said, rising. “Fence guys. They were supposed to have this done before we closed—got backed up because of last week’s rain, they said. We got the C.O.—certificate of occupancy—anyway; I know a guy in the permits office. He was useful in a lot of ways,” he said with a wink. Then he went to speak with the crew.
“You’re putting in a fence,” Valerie said to Julia. “Of course. I’d forgotten about that regulation. Used to be no one in Oak Knoll could afford a pool.”
Julia said, “A nice wooden fence, don’t worry. Not chain link.”
It wasn’t the fence material that worried Valerie. It was the further disruption of her trees’ root systems that would arise from the digging. And what could she do about it? Nothing. The pool was in. A fence was required.
Brad returned to the porch. “It’ll only take them a couple of days for the install,” he said. “Apologies in advance for the noise. It’ll be nice, though, right? More privacy for everyone.”
“Sure,” said Valerie.
She sincerely wanted the noise to be the worst of the trouble. And root disruption aside, she approved of there being a fence between her yard and theirs. She had no desire to forever be looking out her windows at this pool and patio, which alone must have cost as much as she and Tom had paid for their house. Nor had she been crazy about the prospect of seeing young, beautiful Julia Whitman lying around the pool all summer—in a bikini, probably—showing off her five-day-a-week-workout-fit body when she, Valerie, had ten extra pounds she’d been failing to lose for about as many years.
She said, “You know what Frost says: ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’”
“Frost who?” said Lily.
Juniper said, “Robert Frost. He was a poet.”
Valerie nodded approvingly. Yes, the youth were going to save them all.
And so the Whitmans and the Alston-Holts sat a little longer in the shade of the covered porch and talked of inconsequential matters, parting after another twenty minutes as the fence crew got under way, Brad and Valerie satisfied that they all were as well acquainted as they needed to be. This was as auspicious a beginning to the relationship as any of us could have hoped for. None of us were giving the trees or the kids a second thought.
4
Two days later, Xavier was standing at the kitchen counter making himself a grilled ham-and-cheese sandwich for an early supper when his mother joined him.
“How was school?” she said, coming over and putting her arm around his waist. He was a good ten inches taller than she was, which still felt weird to him. He’d spent most of his life wishing he were bigger, taller, grown—and now he looked down at most adults, not up. Now he could see the top of his mom’s head. Now he was six-three, an inch taller than his dad had been. He wished he had a dollar—no, make it ten—for every time someone assumed he played basketball.
He told Valerie, “Review for exams. Pretty dull.” He lit a burner and set a griddle over the flame.
“Finish line’s in sight.” She gave him a squeeze, then let go. “Hey, so I’ve been thinking of this and I wanted to ask you: What’s your read on our famous new neighbor, Brad Whitman?”
“How do you mean?”
“I found him … opaque. I couldn’t tell if he’s as good as he seems.”
“I thought he was all right,” Xavier said. He’d buttered the outer sides of two sandwiches and was about to put them on the griddle. “Want me to make one for you? Then I have to go to work.”
“Sure, thanks.” She got a tomato, a knife, and a cutting board, and sat down at the kitchen table. “Maybe I’m being too sensitive. I don’t want to think the worst about these people when I don’t even know them. Prejudice is ugly. I don’t like to think I’m capable of it.”
“I hate to break it to you, but you’re human,” Xavier said, assembling a sandwich for her. “Besides, it’s not prejudging if you’re doing it after you meet someone, right?”
“I basically judged them from the second the chainsaws started, and that bothers me. I try to give everyone a chance, or how can I complain when people prejudge me?”
Xavier placed three sandwiches onto the griddle. They sizzled, sending the hot butter’s lipid molecules into the air. Scent was chemistry. Breathing was chemistry. Digestion was chemistry. Plant growth and oxygen production from those plants was chemistry, too. His mom had taught him all about the plant stuff especially, hoping, maybe, that he’d come to share her passion for ecology. He’d gotten deep into it for a couple of months, and then his interest was sated.
That happened a lot. Xavier had learned that while he was interested in many different subjects, there were few he loved. Every time he’d latched onto something new, though, his mom let him indulge himself, encouraging him to take it as far as he wanted to go. She said this was one of the benefits derived from the civil rights battles. That is, he was the child of a white man and a college-educated black woman, being raised in a middle-class household in a country where, she said, “you can pursue anything you want. Anything. And you get to be just a kid, not a black kid. We have to give credit where it’s due, Zay, and not take any of this for granted.”