Backyard Grills

I'm standing at my grill on a Saturday in June, fifty-two years old, spatula in one hand, beer in the other, watching a moving truck eat my cul-de-sac.

Damian Pratt, by the way. Firefighter, twenty-six years in, husband to Keisha for going on twenty-four. We married when I was twenty-eight and she was twenty-five, a few years after we both got out of college. And we've lived on Willow Ridge Lane since before some of these kids down the street were born.

The truck is parked in front of the Henderson house, the one that's been empty since the Hendersons moved to Arizona. And there's my wife, Keisha, forty-nine, graphic designer, walker of three miles every morning, waving at a man I have never met in my life.

"Yo," I call across the driveway. "Burgers are two minutes out."

She waves at me too, that big easy wave she does, and keeps talking to the guy. He's tall. I hate him already. That's a joke. Mostly.

Keisha comes back over and steals a fry off the platter I set on the patio table. "That's Cedric. He and his wife just closed on the Henderson place. Chrissy and Cedric Hobart. They've got a golden retriever named Pickles."

"How do you know all that in ninety seconds?"

"Because I talk to people, Damian. It's called being friendly."

"I'm friendly."

"You're grilling." She steals another fry. "Which is also friendly, I'll give you that."

I do not say this out loud, because I am not crazy. The name Cedric. I know that name. Keisha mentioned him exactly once, back when we were dating, some group project her junior year, and I have carried that name around in my back pocket for twenty-five years like a loose rock in my shoe. Because there was more to it than a project. I've always known there was more to it. She told me when we'd been married about ten years, one wine-soaked anniversary night, that she and this Cedric had a little fling for about a month. Nothing serious, she said. Just curiosity, she said.

And now Cedric lives across the street.

"Those look done," Keisha says, nodding at the grill.

"You're changing the subject."

"I'm eating fries. What subject?"

"Cedric."

She looks at me over her sunglasses. "Oh. Him. Yeah, small world, right?" And she says it so casually, so nothing-at-all casually, that my stomach does a thing I don't appreciate. "Come meet them. I invited them over for burgers."

"You what?"

"I invited them over for burgers. They've been living on takeout containers all week. Don't be weird."

"I'm never weird."

"You're currently doing the grill-stare. Be nice. Chrissy's apparently very sweet and Cedric does taxes for a living, so how scary can he be?"

An accountant. Wonderful.

---

The Hobarts come over at six. Chrissy is forty-six, dark-haired, laughs easily, compliments my burgers twice, which buys her permanent goodwill in my book. Cedric is forty-eight and exactly as tall as I feared.

"Pratt, right?" he says, shaking my hand with a firm grip. "Cedric Hobart. Keisha tells me you're on the job."

"Twenty-six years. Truck company."

"That's great. Man, I could never do that. I get nervous over spreadsheets."

"Everybody's got their battlefield," I say, and everybody laughs, and I hate how easy this guy is.

Keisha and Chrissy hit it off like they grew up next door. Within twenty minutes Chrissy is telling us about the HOA welcome packet, which apparently has eleven pages. Eleven pages. There's a section on approved mailbox colors.

"Your mailbox is technically a violation," Chrissy tells Keisha, delighted. "It's supposed to be black or bronze."

"This mailbox has been this color for twenty years," Keisha says.

"So has my husband's grill, and it's also a violation, so we're in good company," I say.

Then it happens. Cedric says something about a group project, some marketing class, and Keisha lights up with sudden brightness.

"Oh my god, the coffee campaign! The one where the professor fell asleep during our presentation?"

"He did not fall asleep," Cedric says, laughing. "He closed his eyes to focus."

"Cedric, he snored. You recorded it."

"I kept that recording for years. Proof of concept."

And they're both laughing, really laughing, this easy old-laugh thing that people who shared something once get to have, and I'm standing there with a spatula and a beer and a face I'm holding very still.

Chrissy looks over at me. "You okay over there, grill master?"

"Yep. Just guarding the burgers."

"You do that very seriously," she says.

"It's a serious job."

That night, in bed, Keisha rolls over and puts her cold feet on my leg, which is marriage for I love you.

"You were quiet at dinner," she says.

"I was grilling."

"You were grilling at dinner. You were quiet during dinner."

I stare at the ceiling for a while. "You recorded a professor snoring with Cedric Hobart."

She's quiet a second. Then she snorts. "Damian. That was twenty-eight years ago. I was twenty-one. He had a girlfriend, I had that awful boyfriend with the motorcycle, and we did one project together."

"And the fling?"

She sits up on her elbow. "Okay. So we're doing this tonight."

"We don't have to."

"Look at you, all jaw-set. Baby. It was one month in college before I ever met you. Curiosity, we called it. It went nowhere. He married Chrissy two years later and I married the annoying guy from the fire academy two years after that." She pokes my chest. "The guy I picked."

"I know."

"You know, but your jaw is set."

"My jaw does what it wants."

She laughs and settles back down against my shoulder. "Chrissy invited us to the HOA meet-and-greet this Saturday. Their backyard. Everyone on the circle comes. You'll be nice."

"I'm always nice."

"You're nice with a spatula in your hand. Be nice without one."

---

The week is fine. Genuinely fine. I work two shifts, Keisha redesigns a logo for a bakery downtown, we watch our show on Wednesday like always. I only think about Cedric Hobart maybe nine times a day, which for me is restraint.

The meet-and-greet is today, Saturday. The Hobarts' backyard has folding tables, a drink cooler, and about fourteen neighbors I mostly know, plus the two new ones working the line like it's a receiving reception.

I'm doing fine. I'm holding a lemonade, because I'm on shift at seven tomorrow, and I'm talking to Darrell from the corner lot about his gutters, which is a conversation with no bottom to it.

Then I drift toward the drink table and there's Keisha and Cedric, mid-story, and I catch the shape of it before I catch the words.

"...and she just walks up and takes the parking spot," Cedric is saying. "Doesn't even signal."

"She never signaled her whole life," Keisha says. "I used to tell her, Dee, one day someone's going to hit your Camaro."

"And then someone did!"

"In the parking lot of the library! We were right there."

They're laughing again. That laugh. And what gets me isn't even the story, it's the shorthand. The way she says Dee like he knows exactly who Dee is. The way he knows about the Camaro. Twenty-four years of my marriage and there's a whole shelf of her life I never got to browse, and this guy read the whole thing in one semester.

I take a long drink of lemonade that has gone warm and disappointing.

"There you are," Keisha says, spotting me, waving me over like nothing's wrong, because nothing is wrong, probably, almost certainly nothing is wrong. "Cedric was just telling me his firm does the pension audits for the city."

"Fire department pension too?" I ask.

"Everything municipal," Cedric says. "Small world."

"Small world," I agree.

Chrissy appears at my elbow with a plate. "Damian, tell me you brought dessert, Keisha said you make a peach cobbler that should be illegal."

"Illegal per which HOA clause?" I ask, and she laughs so hard she has to put the plate down, and see, this is the problem, I'm funny, I'm a catch, I make the new neighbor laugh till she wheezes, and my wife is over here swapping college stories with her old almost-something like they're the last two members of a club.

Keisha catches my eye across the table. She knows. Of course she knows, she's known me for twenty-five years, she can read my jaw from fifty feet.

"Rogers are thinking of a fall BBQ," someone announces. "Labor Day weekend."

"We'll bring the cobbler," Keisha says easily, hand finding my back, rubbing a slow circle between my shoulder blades. "Speaking of which, honey, we should head over. I promised Mrs. Alvarez we'd look at her gutter damage."

That's not true. We have no gutter appointment. This is my wife extracting me from a party, which she has done maybe four times in our marriage, and every time it's because she saw the exact same thing on my face that I'm trying to hide.

We walk home across the circle in the early dark. The solar lights come on along the path, one after another.

"You're going to have to actually say it eventually," she says.

"Say what?"

"Whatever the spatula face is about."

"I don't have a spatula."

"Noted. Whatever the no-spatula face is about."

The Hobarts' porch light is on behind us. Pickles barks once, twice from inside, for no reason dogs ever need.

"His name comes up and I turn into a cartoon," I admit. "I know that. I can see myself doing it."

"Okay," Keisha says. "Then keep seeing it. And when you're ready to say the real thing under the cartoon, I'll be in the kitchen, probably eating fries."

We go inside. She gets the bag of fries out of the freezer, which is somehow the most married thing she's done all week, and I stand in the doorway of the kitchen and watch her, fifty-two years old, jealous of a man who does taxes, and mad mostly at myself for it.

"So are we going to talk about it or are you going to stand in that doorway all night?"

Keisha says it without turning around. She's got the fries in the oven, timer set, and she still doesn't turn around, which means she's been holding this in for the whole walk home and the walk home was her being patient.

"Talk about what," I say.

"Damian."

"What? I'm fine. I had a nice time. Chrissy likes my cobbler. Darrell told me about gutters for forty minutes."

She turns around now. She's got the oven mitt still on one hand, and she points it at me like a weapon.

"You did that thing with your jaw."

"What thing?"

"The jaw thing. The thing you've done every time Cedric opens his mouth since they moved in. You clamp it and your eyebrow goes up and you look like you're chewing a wasp."

"I do not look like I'm chewing a wasp."

"You absolutely look like you're chewing a wasp." She pulls the mitt off and drops it on the counter. "Honey. It was a story about Dee's Camaro. It's a funny story. You'd laugh if you heard the whole thing."

"I heard the whole thing. It was about a parking spot."

"It was about my friend Dee, who you have met, at my birthday, two years ago, and who you liked fine." She sits down at the kitchen table and looks at me. "Okay. Say it. Whatever it is, say it out loud so we can deal with it, because I cannot do another week of the jaw thing."

And here's the stupid part. I've had the sentence in my chest for a week and I still can't say it right.

"You two have a lot of history," is what comes out.

"That's it? That's the sentence?"

"He knows about Dee. He knows about the Camaro. He knows stuff about you I don't know, and you hand it to him across a folding table like it's nothing, and I'm standing there holding a lemonade."

Keisha doesn't say anything for a second. Then she does the thing where she presses her fingertips into her eyes like she's trying to hold her whole face still.

"Damian. Baby. Damian." She takes a breath. "I was twenty-one. Twenty-one. The fling lasted a month, he had a girlfriend, I had a boyfriend with a motorcycle, and it ended the way those things end, which is everybody went home for summer and nobody called. That was twenty-eight years ago. I married you twenty-four years ago. Twenty-four. We have lived on this street for over twenty years. You have carried me over a hospital threshold twice and held my hand through my mother's funeral and you think a guy I knew when the professor fell asleep during our presentation is a threat to that?"

"I know it's dumb."

"It's not dumb, it's human, but it's also twenty-eight years old. He's not twenty-one anymore either. He's a forty-eight year old accountant who got excited about a pension audit today. That's the man you're jealous of."

"I can't help what it does to me, seeing you two have a language I'm not in."

"You could be in it," she says, softer now. "You could ask me about Dee. I'd tell you anything you want to know. You never ask. You just glower and count how many times I laugh."

The timer goes off. She gets the fries out, shakes the pan, splits them onto two plates. We eat standing up at the counter like we always do, and halfway through she bumps my shoulder with hers.

"I love you, you idiot," she says. "That is the whole answer. I love you."

"I love you too."

"Then work on the jaw."

---

I work on the jaw. I do okay for a few days. Then Tuesday there's a note in our mailbox, actual paper, HOA font, and it's Chrissy's handwriting on the envelope part.

"Backyard grill at the Hobarts' this Saturday," Keisha reads from the front step. "Couples welcome, bring a side dish, Pickles will be in attendance as guest of honor."

"Guest of honor," I say.

"She loves that dog."

"Everybody loves that dog. Fine. We'll go. I'll be normal."

"You're going to be so normal," Keisha says, and kisses my cheek, and I want to write down that I believed it.

I am not normal. Let me tell you how it goes: Chrissy has string lights and a new grill and she has put