Yoharie (part nine)

Yoharie

Kate Hibbler and Mat Busby

(part nine)

At one time, it had been the Witticombes. And Cathlyn Burris. Then, the awful Trevor; lately, these Yoharies.

They were different…

“Like every kind of different.”

The ring of houses around the cul-de-sac had once (1987) been showcases, when the first buyers came in. One house for each configuration the builder offered: garage left, garage right, garage detached with mother-in-law apartment, garage behind porte-cochère; driveway straight, driveway circular; breezeway, sunporch. They were beige houses with brown roofs, except for Trevor’s. He had taken the vinyl off and put up wooden clapboard. He liked paint.

His threat of dark gunmetal had needed vetoing by the neighborhood association.

And so he’d picked white, roof green…so acceptable. So (getting away with it) I have to be my own little prima donna self. Even Kate, who skipped the damn meetings because Jeremiah didn’t, could see from hearing him tell it, that Trevor had been forcing the debate. Wasting everyone’s time for his dumb politics.

“Well, because, for one thing…” They were looking through Mat’s bay window at the house across the street. Unsold for seven months.

“Because it went up in January and he was asking too much.”

“Nah. I’m saying, the whole neighborhood’s old now. A lot of roofs going… What is that stuff?”

“Make sense.”

“That grows on the gutters.”

“Algae?”

“Remember the Karshes undersold us.”

“I never knew them. You mean that stucco place. Stucco looks shit if you don’t keep it up. But what’d they sell for?”

“Oh… Less than two.”

Once the median age of the neighborhood flipped, and couples like the Karshes started to downsize…and factoring that the economy was changing…

Mat used these words, gestured ineffability, and between the two of them this nutshelled concept—the economy, changing—answered all it was required to.

Dr. Petersen, gone after closing his eye clinic, suddenly, hadn’t been a man you could get to know. Everyone who caught him raking, or digging his grumpy fall mums, or who jogged up to ask him something—

Would he buy candy for the Bombadiers’ overnight to the Regionals? Would he sign to protest trash pickup being staggered with yard waste?

—had seemed to catch him on a deadline. “No, sorry, I can’t make time.”

“Just your phone number…”

“I’m not interested, Mrs. Hibbler. Thanks.”

9

Yoharie

Yoharie (part ten)

(2019, Stephanie Foster)