Tuesday morning. Sun shined through the kitchen window. Leo was standing in front of an open fridge in a white wifebeater and joggers, doing inventory.
Creamer, low. Eggs, two left. Bread, a slice. The box of the cinnamon cereal Manjula ate in the mornings, almost empty.
There were three close grocery store options.
He closed the fridge and stood there for a second with his keys already in his hand.
He grabbed his wallet.
He pulled his coat off the hook.
'It seems like only one of the options is best right now.'
…
Leo pulled into the Kwik‑E‑Mart lot humming something he didn't know the words to.
The bell over the door gave its little chime when he eventually walked in.
Apu was on the stool behind the counter, the framed photo of Manjula and the octuplets turned face‑up on the register next to him. The store was visibly declining in real time. A fly was working the hot dog rollers. The Squishee machine was grinding out a wet metallic sound from somewhere in its plastic soul. In the cooler case by the door, a gallon of milk was three days past its sell‑by date. Apu looked like he hadn't slept in a week, and like he was not going to sleep tonight either.
"Good morning, sir," he said, without looking up.
"Morning, Apu."
Apu looked up.
Apu slightly brightened at a familiar face. It reminded Leo of the kind of brightening a drowning man does when he sees a piece of driftwood. 'Ah, that reminds me of the Titanic. Good Movie.' The main actor shared half of Leo's full name along with half his looks.
"Oh, Leo! Our new Springfield neighbor. Please, please, come in."
"Just picking up a few things."
"Of course, of course. Take your time. I am, as you can see," he gestured vaguely, "not exactly overwhelmed today."
Leo grabbed a basket.
He walked the aisles slow, enjoying himself. He put the creamer in first. Then a loaf of bread. Then the eggs, cradled carefully. And finally, the cinnamon cereal Manjula said she loved to eat in the mornings.
He got in line behind the lone other customer. Gave Apu a minute.
At the register, Apu started scanning his groceries slowly, hands not quite steady.
And then Apu started venting.
Apparently he had zero filter with acquaintances. The kind of man who would pour his entire heart out to anyone who happened to be buying bread.
"It has been a very difficult week, Leo."
"Sorry to hear that."
"My wife. My Manjula. She has left. For a cooling period, you understand. Not… not forever. Just until tempers settle."
A scene of Manjula's broken wet whimper catching in her throat on the fourth thrust, climbing higher each one, flashed in Leo's mind.
"I'm sure that's hard," he responded to Apu.
"I miss her terribly. The apartment above is so quiet without her. Even though the kids are here. She just adds a different sound. You don't realize it until it she is not there. Now… nothing. Only when the kids are brought down. Otherwise, just the hum of the Squishee machine. Which, as you can hear, is also not doing well."
Another scene flashed in Leo's mind. His hand sliding up the back of Manjula's neck into the loose hair at the bottom of her braid right before he kissed her.
"That does sound quiet." Leo placed the eggs at the top of the bag himself so Apu wouldn't crush them.
"I have been reflecting, Leo. Truly reflecting. I have, I admit it, been a bad husband."
Leo made a small, sympathetic, noncommittal sound in his throat.
His flashbacks didn't stop. Manjula's silver toe ring clicking against his teeth.
"She has not returned a single one of my calls. Her voicemail is full, Leo. Full! When in twenty years has my Manjula's voicemail ever been full?"
This time Leo heard her voice cracking open into breathy Hindi while he fucked her.
"Maybe she needs some space." Leo suggested to Apu.
"Space. Yes. Space. I am giving her all the space in the world. Meanwhile," and here Apu lowered his voice, like the dead fly on the hot dog roller was an informant, "I have been on my very best behavior. Not one Squishee delivery girl in the back room since she left, Leo. Not one."
'Wow. Such a huge reform movement.' Leo thought sarcastically.
"That's real growth, Apu."
"Thank you. I am trying."
Apu scanned the cereal. Held it up.
"This — my Manjula loves this cereal. You also enjoy it?"
Leo didn't blink.
"Yes, it's great." Leo answered while he remembered Manjula's thighs locking around his hips when he told her he wanted to put a baby in her.
"I know my Manjula, Leo. I know her very well. She will come back. Where else does she have to go, truly? She is in a new country, with eight children, and no employment, and a husband who has, I admit, not always — but still, I am all she has. She will come back."
The scene of Manjula's back coming off the mattress. Him not pulling out until she took every drop continued to replay in his head.
"I hope it works out, Apu."
"It will. Thank you for saying so. Forty-two fifty‑six, please."
Leo handed over a fifty.
Apu counted out change with careful, trembling fingers. Two dollars short. Leo didn't mention it.
"The children," Apu said quietly, placing the change in his hand, "they miss their mother. Uma keeps asking. Every night. 'Appa, where is Amma? Appa, when is Amma coming?' I do not have an answer for her, Leo. What do you say to a child?"
Leo kept his face perfectly neutral.
'I don't know, but I do know that I spent last night inside her while Uma was asking.'
The bell over the door stayed quiet. Outside, a dog barked twice and stopped. Leo let a small, warm, neighborly sympathy come into his face.
"I'm sure she'll come around, Apu. Manjula's a remarkable woman. That's what I've heard, from others in my short stay here. You know… flexible. Open‑minded. Willing to meet people halfway."
Manjula's position from last night where her thighs reached her tits was fresh on his mind.
"Yes. Yes, she is." Apu was nodding, misty already. "She was always so understanding. When the water heater broke in '02, Leo... she heated water on the stove for two weeks without a single complaint. Two weeks!"
"That's exactly what I mean," Leo said.
"She is a saint."
"She really gives everything she has."
"Everything." Apu's eyes were shining now. "Always everything."
Apu bagged the bread.
"Thank you, Leo. It is — it is helpful to talk. You are a good neighbor."
He was reaching for the bag when the bell over the door chimed behind him.
It was a nondescript guy. Windbreaker. White creamy envelope. Slight stoop, like he'd done a hundred of these this month.
"Apu Nahasapeemapetilon?"
Apu brightened.
"Yes! Welcome, welcome. How may I help you?"
"You've been served."
The envelope slid across the counter.
The man turned and was gone before Apu's hand had finished closing around it. The bell chimed behind him.
Apu stared at the envelope.
He opened it slowly.
Leo watched his face move through four expressions in eight seconds. Confusion. Recognition. Denial. And then, very quietly, something that wasn't any of those — something that looked like the lights in a building going off one floor at a time. His hands started shaking around the pages.
He looked up.
"She is — she is filing? Divorce? No. No, this — this must be a clerical error. A mistake. Manjula would never —"
Leo picked up his bag and walked out. The bell chimed behind him.
In the car, before he turned the key, he let himself exhale once. Not quite a smile.
"Worth the trip," he said to no one.
He started the car.
…
Four o'clock. Leo walked across the street with a canvas bag of materials over one shoulder.
Marge's reply the afternoon before had been short.
Tutoring at our house, 4pm Tuesday.
He knocked.
The door opened before he'd finished.
The scene had become familiar. Strapless green dress. Hair done, freshly brushed, pinned at the sides so it fell clean down her back.
She had not done her hair because Leo was coming over. She always did her hair. She had been telling herself for twenty‑four hours that this was a normal afternoon.
"Hi, Leo."
"Hi, Marge."
Three seconds of eye contact.
She broke first.
"The kids are in the kitchen. I set up the table for you. There's lemonade. I have laundry going, and Maggie will need to go down for her nap soon, so — just help yourself to whatever, okay?"
She was up the stairs before he finished saying "sure."
…
Maggie was in her playpen by the front window, pacifier bobbing. She tracked him across the room with her large round eyes and did not blink.
Leo gave her a small nod.
Maggie sucked her pacifier slower.
'What an observant baby,' Leo thought, and kept walking.
…
Kitchen.
Bart was at the table with a comic book inside his open math textbook, kicking the table leg at a steady rhythm. Lisa had a fresh notebook, three newly sharpened pencils lined up parallel, her index card system from Saturday already in a neat stack, and a second stack of flashcards she had clearly made herself. Her turn was second. She had decided to do review while she waited.
"Hi, Mr. Leo."
"Hey Lisa. Hey, Bart."
"Sup."
Leo set his bag down, pulled out the chair Bart had helpfully left for him, and sat on the wooden edge of the cushion instead of in the middle of it.
He saw it walking in. A joy buzzer wedged under the seat pad, one of the old metal wind-up kind, spring coiled tight, the flat buzzing plate facing up. Any weight on the plate released the spring and ripped a loud vibrating buzz through whatever was pressing down on it. Bart had even gotten the angle right. Leo could see the faint round outline through the fabric.
Leo kept his weight on the bare wood, a couple centimeters clear of the plate.
Bart glanced at him. Waited. Kicked the table.
Leo opened his notebook.
"Batting averages. You know what a batting average is?"
"Duh."
"Good. Because we're doing fractions."
"Awww."
Bart was engaged for ninety seconds. Then he did his best to change the conversation to fun topics. Leo redirected each time. Bart pivoted to asking if Leo had ever been to a real game. Leo gave him a real answer in two sentences and pushed a worksheet across the table.
Bart picked up his pencil. Put it down. Shifted. Kept glancing at Leo's side of the cushion.
Leo stood up. "While you finish that, I'm getting water. You want one?"
"Nah."
Leo crossed to the sink.
Behind him, a scramble. Bart was already out of his own chair and sliding into Leo's, dropping his whole weight into the middle of the cushion. It must have been broken. He was testing it, resetting his faith in his own engineering, needing to know the thing was still live.
BZZZZZT.
"OW — son of a —"
"Language," said Lisa, not looking up.
"I told you," she added.
Leo turned slowly at the sink with a glass of water in his hand.
Bart was frozen halfway up out of Leo's chair, one hand clamped on his own ass, the other braced on the table, face red.
"…That one was supposed to be for you."
"I know."
Leo came back. Bart slunk back to his own seat without being asked. Leo sat on the wooden edge again and didn't comment.
He got three fractions out of Bart with a visible grievance on his face the whole time before the radio cut.
Kent Brockman's voice, dead serious: "We interrupt regular programming. Springfield has declared a Level Three Bear Emergency following the sighting of a single bear in a residential trash can in the neighborhood adjacent to Evergreen Terrace. All residents are advised to remain indoors."
Five seconds later the Bear Patrol truck screamed past the kitchen window, sirens on.
Fifteen seconds after that, Chief Wiggum's voice came on taking credit for the rapid response.
Bart shot upright. "A BEAR? Can we go see it?"
"No."
Lisa, writing: "The bear census for Springfield last year was zero. This is the fourth bear emergency this year."
"So?" Bart asked.
"Nothing," Lisa answered.
The broadcast ended. Somewhere outside, the siren faded.
Bart stood up.
"I gotta go check something."
Bart's session still had ten more minutes. But Leo let him leave. He really didn't want to be doing this either. Besides, Bart had learned something at least.
"I'll be right back."
He was out the back door before Leo finished the sentence. The screen banged twice behind him and didn't open again.
Leo looked at the half-finished fourth fraction, wrote a small 'eh, close enough' check mark next to the three he'd done, and set the worksheet aside.
Lisa slid neatly into his chair without waiting for permission, flashcards already in hand.
Her section was clean. Productive. She worked through the review problems with the kind of quiet focus.
Halfway through she looked up.
"Can I ask something that isn't on the sheet?"
"Sure."
She tapped the worksheet Bart had abandoned. "When you were doing the averages with him. If a player goes three-for-ten, that's .300. But three-for-ten isn't really the same as thirty-for-a-hundred, is it. As a measurement of how good a player actually is?"
He set his pen down.
He walked her through it without dumbing it down. Small samples shouted, while large samples told the truth. A hundred at-bats and a hot streak evens out, ten at-bats and a hot streak lies about you. He gave her the word 'variance'. He sketched, on the back of Bart's worksheet, a quick rough picture of why a lucky weekend doesn't equal a good hitter.
Lisa set her pencil down about thirty seconds in.
When he finished she had the look she'd had in his classroom during the strike, back when Leo was her teacher. She had the look of a kid who had just been told by an adult that the question she'd been sitting on was a real question, and that real answers existed, and that she was allowed to have both.
"That's — that makes a lot of sense."
"It's a real problem. People get paid a lot to solve it in more complicated ways." Leo thought of the movie Moneyball. 'That was a good movie.'
"Does it come up at your job?"
"Every day, in a different shape." Leo lied. None of the deeper concepts people learned in school were ever really used at work.
She wrote 'variance' at the top of her notebook in her best handwriting and underlined it twice.
Then she picked her pencil back up and kept working.
Then she asked him something without looking up.
"Mom says you're a really good neighbor."
Leo kept his face the exact temperature it had been.
"Your mom's very kind."
"Mmhm."
Lisa didn't look up. She kept writing.
He gave her a short list of practice problems, closed his notebook, and stood.
"Good work today, Lisa."
"Thanks, Mr. Leo. I would've usually tried my best to keep it going longer, but I gotta run — Janey's mom is picking me up at quarter past. Thursday is the next session, right?"
"Thursday."
She scooped her flashcards into her bag, pulled on her sweater, and was out the front door in under a minute.
…
Leo packed up slowly.
He wrote notes on Bart's and Lisa's worksheet for Thursday, rinsed the lemonade glasses at the sink, and slid his notebook back into his bag. The kitchen was quiet for a second. Somewhere off the hall, a dryer started its cycle.
Bart was still wherever Bart went.
Maggie had been collected from the playpen at some point.
Leo zipped his bag.
He heard the stairs. Then Marge entered the room.
She had a white envelope in her hand.
No apron. No Maggie. A second pair of small silver earrings on her ears that she hadn't been wearing when he arrived.
She stopped on her side of the table.
"I wasn't sure if you wanted — session by session, or at the end of the week, or — so I just —"
She set the envelope on the table.
Leo didn't pick it up.
"Marge."
"I put what I thought might be acceptable for tutoring. And a little extra for the first one, so — it's fine if that's —"
"Marge."
She stopped.
Her hand stayed flat on the envelope. The refrigerator clicked on behind him.
For a second neither of them moved.
Then she took her hand off the envelope and set it into her pocket.
"Okay," she said, to nothing in particular.
"Okay."