Skinny Matilda's Arc

Chapter 6 of 6

Three days after the bread, the old man knocked on Matilda's door. She opened it in her bikini and did not flinch. He held out a folded paper towel with two tomatoes on it. "From the yard," he said. "Wife's plants. I can't eat them all." He looked at her face when he spoke, not her body. Matilda took the tomatoes. She asked if he wanted to come in for coffee. He said yes. They sat at her kitchen table inside the pink and white house. He kept his boots on the mat. He said his name was Mr. Grumpypants, that the kids on the block had called him that for years and it stuck. He said the neighbor at the fence, the one who had laughed with him, was not really his friend. "He talks about everyone," he said. "I joined in because I was angry at the wrong things." He looked at his coffee. "I said what I said about you. I'm sorry." Matilda nodded once. She did not make him say it twice. After that, a routine grew between them. Twice a week she cooked and brought a plate to his door. She made pot roast, chicken and rice, a shepherd's pie. One Sunday she baked a peach cobbler because the store had peaches on sale and she wanted to see if she could stand in that aisle again. She could. She brought half the cobbler to him warm. He ate two servings at her table and told her his wife had made it the same way, with the crust cracked on top. He paid her back in dirt. He weeded the strip along her walk. He cut back the shrub that scraped her window. One morning he came through the gate with a young peach tree in a burlap ball, roots wrapped tight. "Saw you liked them," he said. He dug the hole himself in her side yard. She held the sapling straight while he packed the soil. When they were done she stood in her bikini in the sun with dirt on her knees, and she did not count the cars that slowed on the road. She forgot to count them. That felt like the point. That night she added two lines to the envelope. One for the cobbler. One for the tree. She sat at the table and looked at the list. Four months ago she had counted eight looks before the dog stopped her at the store. Tonight she had counted none. The scale in the bathroom still read ninety-eight pounds. The number had not moved. But the day had, and a man who once mocked her had planted something in her yard that would take years to fruit. She wrote the date next to the tree and closed the envelope.