Three Birthdays

 

Debbie is our neighbour, or at least she's the ex-wife of our neighbour. Our neighbour is a lovely guy, tall and dark with the haunted expression of an amiable ghost. He talks and moves real slow, as we say in Texas, but he never says anything when there's nothing to be said so my wife and I like him a lot. We're not entirely sure how Debbie managed to move back into his house, but assume he never intended it to be any sort of permanent arrangement given that their relationship seems to be only vaguely platonic, bonded by nothing more than previous association.

Debbie is small with raven dark hair suggesting some distant familial relation to Johnny Cash, which I state with authority as my wife's stepmother was the daughter of Johnny's cousin. Many of her family members have that same raven hair and hawk-like appearance, and Debbie is originally from Tennessee, so who knows?

I tend to think of Debbie as rootin' tootin', which shouldn't be taken as an insult so much as an indication of her being a certain type - white, working class and not averse to country music, although she recently revealed a love of techno, which was confusing. She's chatty and chirpy with a disconcerting habit of delivering terrible news with a big smile.

'You two going out somewhere nice?' she chirps. 'You're such a cute couple. It makes me happy just to see the two of you. The doctor told my pappy he has cancer and now he has to have his arms and legs amputated. Y'all have a blessed day now, you hear.'

At other times we'll hear all about her plans. She has a job interview. She's going to have money and she'll be able to afford an apartment and everything's going to be just fine once she's moved out, away from that man; and always the interview falls through, or they take against her for no reason, or she realises she ain't gonna be able to get there if she takes the job, but the good news is she just bought her some boots at that fancy place. They were seventy dollars. Those boots usually cost more than a hun'erd.

The job interviews come along, often two or three a week, and there's always a reason why she can't take the job. We get the impression that she's just telling herself she wants to get some money and move out, but it's not really our business.

It's Debbie's birthday and she says she wants to take us out to dinner to celebrate. Bess pays because she knows Debbie is on welfare and can't really afford it so it would feel awkward. We go to Las Palapas, which is actually pretty great, much better than I remember. Debbie picks at her food because she doesn't eat much, drinks margaritas, and tells us about her life and her family. She's interesting and a lot of fun, and as with her ex-husband, the impression is formed that it would be difficult to dislike her.

Weeks pass and it's our birthday. Bess and I were born on the same day of different years. Debbie again proposes to take us out for dinner, to return the favour; but Bess insists on paying because it doesn't seem fair otherwise, that elusive first paycheck still having failed to appear for some reason. We go to Charlie Brown's because it's a bar which serves good food and we expect Debbie will like it and feel at home, which she does. We feel we owe it to her. Every other week she's at the door with brisket or cookies or carne asada or the best jalapeno poppers I've ever eaten, because she made too much and figured we might like some, that being the neighbourly thing and all. We sort of wish she wouldn't. It's not that the food isn't appreciated, but we're both on diets - nothing absurdly stringent except that neither of us eat during the day, usually fasting until the early evening; and the one surefire way of knowing when a person is on any kind of diet is to take a look at the line of friends and relatives stretching all along the block and around the corner, all waiting their turn to offload an extra cake they made or a tray of deviled eggs for which there was no room in their own fridges.

We drive to Charlie Brown's and Debbie pipes up about illegal immigrants and how sleepy Joe Biden just ain't doing nothing, which isn't a good start. I don't mind people having political beliefs which differ from my own providing they're not simply downloaded verbatim from Fox News. I have friends who voted for the orange billionaire, and for the most part they've had reasons I've understood even if I don't agree with them, so it makes me uncomfortable when someone threatens to unveil contentious opinions or biases.

We eat and we drink, and somehow the evening lasts much longer than either Bess or myself intended. Debbie nurses a margarita for the best part of an hour, both of us watching the glass like it's a steel mill clock on Friday afternoon. She orders another and the evening extends.

'This is fun,' she chirps. 'I'm having a real blast here. We need to do this more often. Are y'alls having fun?'

'Yes,' we tell her each time she asks the question.

'I got you a cake,' she tells us as we drive home.

'You shouldn't have,' we say, both smiling the smile that hurts.

It takes ten minutes to get the candles to stand up straight, then lit, and the cake is huge and sweet, so sweet it makes our teeth itch. We keep smiling.

Once she finally goes home, the rest of the cake is shared with the raccoons in our yard.

We're not doing that ever again, we tell ourselves, and the sense of guilt feels nevertheless kind of good, even liberating.