I helped my next-door neighbours Bertha and Bruce to help with small household tasks because Mum and Dad believed that kids needed to do errands to learn the value of work. There were hardly any chores I could do in our house. Dad mowed the lawn even when it didn’t need mowing – for the exercise, he said. Mum did most of the cleaning and vacuuming because she couldn’t trust anybody but herself to keep the house spick and span, she said.

            So I went to Bruce’s and Bertha’s regularly. And today I let myself into their house and found myself in the middle of a fight.

            “Bruce!”

            Bertha’s voice was loud enough to rattle the knick-knacks on the mantelpiece. “Trying to slip past me again, aren’t you, Bruce?”

            Bruce, a little more stooped than usual, his hair tousled, had slunk in from the kitchen, and was quietly heading for the stairs. He continued to foolishly pretend that he hadn’t heard.

            “Smoking in the backyard again, Bruce?” Bertha’s voice had a hard edge, the kind I hated hearing in any teacher’s voice. “How many times should I tell you not to? You know what Dr. Chang said. Want me to tell him you don’t think his advice is worth anything?”

            Bruce stood still. His eyes met mine; they looked exactly like those of a kid caught red-handed. Bertha tracked our gaze.

            “Lyle, he was sneaking to the bathroom to rinse his mouth with Listerine,” Bertha said, grim and satisfied. “The level of mouthwash tells me how much he’s been smoking.”

            I took off my glasses and conscientiously polished them with the hem of my shirt to avoid looking at Bertha or Bruce. I had finished my chores for the day and was ready to pop back to my home next door. Maybe there’d be enough time to play a video game or take a nap before homework.

            “So I’ll be off then,” I simulated cheer as I slipped my glasses back up my nose.

            “See you later, alligator!” Bruce retorted, and then chortled at the look on Bertha’s face. “Lyle, Lyle, crocodile.”

            The contrast between the homes could not have been greater. Ours was bright and airy, sunbeams streaming in through angled skylights, rooms with wide-open spaces sparingly dotted with IKEA furniture that was all squares and rectangles, Venetian blinds on the windows, and gray wall-to-wall carpeting in every room. Their house was dark and dingy, hardwood floors gashed and scuffed, heavy velvet drapes on the windows, antique-looking furniture tottering on its last legs, including an old upright piano that had not been played in years. And you couldn’t take a few steps without knocking your knee on a couch or a table or banging your elbow on a credenza. There were many large shabby oil paintings; even I could tell the colours had been streaked onto the canvas by a second-rate artist. The walls of my home displayed famous Rembrandts, Turners and Picassos, but all of them were prints.

            Bertha and Bruce were up there in years. In their seventies, I recollected my parents say. Both had salt-and-pepper hair. Bertha always brushed hers straight back over her head into a pony tail with a bow-tie knot. I don’t think Bruce ever brushed or combed his; it was always in disarray and frizzled tufts stuck out from both temples. But his hair was the least peculiar feature of his appearance. His face had become elderly well ahead of his body, which was in good shape for his age. He was no weakling, as I saw when he took over the lawn mower from me one afternoon when Bertha was out on an errand. I had barely started mowing. 

Sometimes I did very little but got paid a lot, more than had been agreed to, a thing that would have greatly displeased my parents if they found out. Today, I had helped Bruce carry in the groceries and watched him get into trouble right away for going to the wrong store and buying the wrong items.

            “I asked you to get sourdough; we need a change from whole wheat. You bought pumpernickel. Pumpernickel.”

            “No, Hon, you didn’t say that. How would I confuse pumpernickel with sourdough? They don’t sound alike, not even close.”

            “Neither do butter and margarine, and yet you always mix up the two. Dimwit.”

            “But Hon….”

            I retreated from the kitchen into the shadows of the living room while their quarrel continued. I wished to spare them the embarrassment of a witness although when they were at each other I don’t think they ever noticed my presence until the very end. I wished I would be able to reunite them, to help them iron out their differences. I had no idea how I would do it, though. I was an admirer of Sherlock Holmes, but unlike the great detective, I was lost.

Eventually, Bruce wandered into the living room looking flustered, and saw me off.

            “Fickle, fickle, Pumpernickel,” he sputtered in a sour voice. “Antelopes eat cantaloupes. Lyle, Lyle, crocodile.”

            The first clue, Sherlock whispered in my mind, was to discover why Bruce put up with Bertha. She always found fault, always scolded him, never let him off the roller coaster. I was at their house a few hours each week but Bruce was caged there all week every week. I once owned a hamster, and Hammy seemed happy enough scampering around the bedding of his cage and climbing up the wire walls but now I wondered if Hammy was really as cheerful as he seemed, cooped up all day and all night long.

            Bertha and Bruce fought over everything. They fought like dog and cat, cat and mouse, Harry Potter and Voldemort. They fought in the morning over which TV show to watch in the evening. My parents had the same disputes but ended up watching the same shows, but on occasions, one of them went to a spare room where we had our old TV set, the one with a small screen, and watched their choice there, or watched it on a computer.

            “Why don’t you watch your movie on your computer?” I asked Bruce, when Bertha disparaged what he had rented from the store. “There’s very little special effects in that one. A small screen is okay.”

            “Not the same as watching it on a TV screen, Lyle Lyle.”

            “And watching it on TV is not the same as watching it in a theatre. Why don’t you just try your computer? It’s not bad, really.”

            “Computers are for kids like you. Us oldies like to do it the way we’re used to.”

            Then there was the time when Bertha berated Bruce, this time through tears, for not accompanying her to church every Sunday.

            “Hon, I am by your side some Sundays. That’s all I can take, Hon, that’s all I can digest of sermons on sins, sinners, and repentance.”

            “Shut your ears to the preaching, Bruce. I don’t care even if you use earplugs, but come. Do it for me.” There was something strange the way she said it. At first I could not put my finger on it, but a couple of days later, when I thought about it, I got it — it was more of a plea than a command. I was astonished. Why would Bruce, used by Bertha as a rag to wipe the floor, do anything for her? Even if it was church? And earplugs! In his place, I would have used them at home and especially when her throat was in full flow.

            “Hon, I have to push myself to come, and on some days, I just can’t manage.”

            “Come off it, Bruce. The church was my main source of support during that difficult time when you…” She tailed off and smiled at her husband but the corners of her smile were sad.

            Bruce was on the verge of responding, but when he glanced at me he thought the better of it. There was a clue here but I did not know what to make of this whole exchange, for my family never went to church, except at Christmas and for the Easter Sunrise Service. My parents’ excuse was that they often worked weekends, but even when they didn’t we stayed at home or did other things.

            This was the only time I saw this softer Bertha, this Bertha who seemed unsure of herself. She then switched back to Voldemort yelling at Bruce as if he were her snivelling servant Wormtail.

            “Bruce!” She sure could hit the high decibels. “Brrru-uuu-ce!”

            After one such yell, I saw Bruce grimace and rub his forearm with vigour, his eyebrows knitted too tight.

            “What’s wrong?” I asked.

            “Lyle, what can I say?” There was a teasing twinkle in his eye. “Every time she screams ‘Bruce,’ I get a bruise.”

            I did not know whether to laugh or cry. I really didn’t.

            “Do you and Bertha agree on anything?” I asked, instantly regretting the question. It was tactless. Sherlock would never have been so blunt; he would have found another way to loosen Bruce’s tongue. Dad and Mum would have been horrified if they had heard me. They always insisted on politeness. But Bruce did not seem to think I was mocking him. He planted his chin on his palm, his face deep in thought.

            “Come to think of it, we sometimes do,” he said. “But even when we’re on the same page, Bertha won’t admit to that. She’ll make it seem like we disagree. We both love wine. But she prefers white and I like red, so she’ll say something like Chardonnay was made by God and Merlot by the Devil, to sour things up.”

            I wasn’t sure I understood what he was saying. When you always had bad dreams and then got a good one, why deliberately sour it? The next time I went over, they were at the tail end of a snapping contest over money and vacation, and it was clear that Bruce was losing as usual. But he kept waving his arm as though it was a magic wand that would lock up Bertha’s jaws. When it was over and he and I were alone I again became tactless, asking how he put up with the bullying without being able to turn to a teacher to intervene. He didn’t show the slightest hint of irritation or anger, but turned quiet and thoughtful.

            “You’ve heard me call her ‘Hon,’ haven’t you?” he said. “And you thought, as she does, that I mean ‘Honey’ when I say ‘Hon.’ But I don’t. I’m actually calling her ‘Hun.’ Hun, as in Attila. Yes, Hun. No, Hun. All right, Hun.”

            Then he emitted a chuckle that quickly turned into a snort.

            “And all the while she thinks I’m calling her ‘Honey’ when it’s the exact opposite. It’s things like that which keep me going.”

             “Get a gun, shoot the Hun,” I said, using the kind of catchy rhyming sentence that he so loved. I expected another chuckle but he looked like he had been whacked across the face.

            “Don’t say that, Lyle,” he said in a dull voice. “Don’t say that.”

            “Sorry,” I said, equally taken aback by the sudden turn of events. Did he not know I was only kidding? Guns, Cowboys and Indians, Cops and Robbers, games, guns, bang, bang, bang-a-bang. Couldn’t he see that?

            There was an uneasy silence, then Bruce went to the kitchen and brought out two bottles of root beer.

            “Have a root beer,” he said. “There’s also lemonade, if you’d rather have that.”

            “Root beer is good,” I said, and we finished our beverages in silence. As I left, he called out after me, “Aristotle hit the bottle.”

            He had never sounded more sober.

            I was frustrated that I had made no headway in finding out how to make Bruce and Bertha sink their differences. My visits didn’t seem to go beyond performing chores. On one visit I took it upon myself to clear the living room and the stairwell of cobwebs. The webs were everywhere. They stretched in sticky strands behind the paintings (and paintings hung on all the walls, even in the stairwell), behind and under the furniture, between the folds high up on the drapes, and in the hollows on the carved panel above the piano keyboard. It was as though Bertha and Bruce had decorated, not their front yard but the inside of their house for Halloween, and then left the decorations in place for the rest of the year.

            The cobwebs on the ceilings were beyond my reach but I could get at the others even though I had to mount a stool in some spots. And so I set to work. It was harder than I thought – the webs clung so tight they wouldn’t come unstuck no matter how much I tried. A couple of times an unexpected spider scared the shit out of me and I suppose I must have done the same to him too.

            Threads of webs, invisible from a distance, stretched across some paintings, and when I removed them I had to be careful not to scrape off the paint. I remembered Mum’s casual remark to Dad that it was a pity our neighbours lacked the cash to maintain the valuable treasures they had inherited. Bertha worked full-time at a telecommunications company but Bruce languished in part-time temporary jobs with long spells when he stayed at home and whiled away the time. If he held a regular job, I suppose they could have afforded maid service like we did.

            By now I had got it: they wanted me over more for my company than for doing chores. Bruce and Bertha had no children, and therefore no grandchildren. My grandparents lived halfway across the country and I rarely saw them, so in a way Bruce and Bertha filled that role. Nevertheless, when I did something well, they were delighted.

            “Thank you, Lyle, for all that work.” Bertha beamed. “Bru-uce, I expect you to follow in Lyle’s footsteps and get the rest of the junk off the ceilings. But we must give Lyle an ice cream treat now. Go to the gelato place and get us some Spumoni. Right now.”

            The gelateria two streets down was a popular place, and I had tasted many of their flavours. I detested Spumoni. Tiramisu was my favourite and I wondered if I could mention that, seeing that it was a treat for me. But when the Hun was in a mood as good as she was in — beaming brightly, humming a merry tune — it was foolish to say anything that might dampen it. This was Bertha — she adored Spumoni, so how in the world could everyone else not adore it as well? But I didn’t. I thought three flavours in one ice cream clashed with each other and I didn’t like suddenly encountering the shreds of dried fruit and nuts sprinkled in it.

            So there we sat, eating an ice cream that was at war with itself in a home whose residents were at war with each other. Did they see the irony, I wondered.

            “Tummy, tummy, that was yummy,” said Bruce, licking his lips with a fat, fleshy tongue. “Lyle, Lyle, crocodile.”

            Was red wine quite different from white? I wish I knew. I felt this in some way would help me better understand Bruce’s comments about Chardonnay and Merlot. There was a clue there. I could have asked my parents, but they would have raised their eyebrows and inquired why I wanted to know. Besides, I wasn’t even sure if they knew the answer, for they drank no wine, red or white. They mostly did what they were doing right now, relaxing on the back porch — delicately sipping Southern Comfort out of crystal goblets between nibbles of small cubes of orange-rind Muenster cheese or Prosciutto impaled with toothpicks on melon cubes.

            I sometimes sat in the evening at the long folding table at the rear of the back porch to do my homework. This evening, my parents did not hear me because muffled yelling from our neighbour’s house had their full attention. It took me by surprise as well, for our houses stand fairly apart. The yelling must have been really loud if we could hear it on our back porch.

            “Poor Bruce. In the doghouse again,” Dad said.

            “Again, did you say?”  Mum’s voice was tart. “He’s permanently in the dog house.”

            “ Touché,” Dad acknowledged, as he refilled Mum’s goblet. “Must say he’s dealt very well with it so far, seeing that he isn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier. Bertha’s demanding too much of a payback, though.”

            “Bertha had it tough, going it alone when Bruce was serving time.” Mum took a big gulp of her drink. “We don’t know what she went through, so who are we to decide what the payback, as you call it, involves?”

            What she said next did not register, for it was about this moment that her words “serving time” hit me. Prison! Bruce had been imprisoned — but for what? He was such a sweet guy. The worst crime I could associate with him was slipping out to his backyard for a smoke. Bruce — in prison? I immediately thought of the look on his face when I had said “gun.” How would Sherlock have dealt with this information?   

            There were a few things my parents could not stand. One was gossip. Another was eavesdropping. I cleared my throat self-consciously.

            “Oh, hi there, Lylie!” Mum’s voice rang out in a voice of embarrassed false cheer while Dad’s expression said: When did he come out here and how much did he overhear?

            “Doing my homework,” I offered, although they knew that.

            “Cheese?” Mum held out the plate while Dad asked “What’s your homework?”

            “Thanks, I’m fine,” I told Mum, and then to Dad, “The solar system. We’re studying the solar system.”

            “Good,” said Dad, and then he and Mum started discussing work. Mum was a portfolio manager at an investment firm and Dad was a financial executive at a company, so they could talk endlessly about assets and returns and about — as I had once thought — buying and selling animals, particularly bears and bulls, in some kind of market.         

            A couple days later, I cornered Mum in the dining room after supper. I had spent those days coining rhyming sentences the way Bruce did — dogs have rabies, babies have scabies — and gave myself a pat on the back for knowing what ‘scabies’ was. I bet a lot of kids didn’t. But in the end, all of this failed to pull my mind away from what troubled it. I just had to know.

            “Mum, was Bruce in jail?”

            “You heard us talking, then,” Mum sighed.

            “Yes.”

            Mum put on her deep-in-thought expression while I waited patiently, the way I waited on a computer that had slowed down to speed up again.

            “All right, Lylie. But all I can give you are the bare facts. You are not to ask questions. Bruce and Bertha once led a regular life like the rest of us. Then Bruce was arrested, tried, and jailed for a crime he did not commit. Bertha went through hell — a lot of sorrow and pain for years, trying to shake up the world to prove his innocence and get him released. She finally managed it, but it wore her out and absolutely changed her personality. Not to mention the fortune she spent on lawyer’s fees.”

            “But if Bruce was innocent, why did they jail him?”

“Lylie, most of the time our judges and juries get it right but sometimes they make mistakes. It’s called ‘miscarriage of justice.’ It’s rare, but sadly, Bruce fell victim to it.”

“But why did it take Bertha so long to prove his innocence? What was he jailed for?”

“Oh, Lylie.” Mum slipped back into her slow computer mode again. “I can’t discuss that with you now. But I promise I will, when you’re a little older. For now, I’ll say this much: sometimes it takes a long time, a very long time, to right a wrong.”

“Is that why Bruce is not working in a regular job?” A crack of light suddenly opened.

“That might partly account for it, yes.” Mum sounded guarded.

“But his innocence is proven.”

“Yes, Lylie, but the world has its own way of operating. If you were a jailbird, even if you could show that there was a mistrial and you were innocent, employers still want to play safe and hire someone else. There are plenty of others in the job market applying for the same jobs.”

“Not fair.”

“It’s not, that’s for sure. But that’s the way life is.”

“So now even Bertha treats Bruce as though he’s really a criminal.”

“No, Lylie, no!” Mum looked stricken. “Of all the people in this country, Bertha is the one who knows Bruce is entirely blameless. Well, your Dad and I do, too. If we had the slightest doubt, we would never let you step into their house. Now, it’s time to brush your teeth and go to bed. And don’t think too much about this. Goodnight, Lylie.”

“Goodnight, Mum.”

I felt dejected. I could never be Sherlock Holmes. He was an adult and he knew a lot more than I did. I really wanted Bruce and Bertha to patch up. I did not want new neighbours.

Bickering, quarrel, row, argument, fight — I expected to encounter one or the other during a visit to Bertha and Bruce’s. This time they were squabbling over the cobwebs on the ceiling.

“It’s over a month since Lyle cleaned the rooms unasked, and you’ve not done a thing, Bruce. The spiders are going to crawl down from the ceiling and spread all over the house.”

“Yes, Hon.” Bruce looked downcast. “I’ll do it right away, Hon.”

Gloom was plastered across his face from scalp to chin, doom in his hunched posture. In a split second my mind sped on a journey from Mercury to Pluto and back, and a stark realization swept over me: for whatever reason, this was a man confined in his own house with no chance of release or even parole, and his lie of pretending that “Hon” was really “Hun” was just his way of putting on a brave face, a false front, to help him to stomach a hard truth that he had accepted. He dragged one foot behind the other as he made his way to the garage and returned with a stepladder and a broom. I drew back the drapes from the living room windows so he could get a little more light.

“Anything else I can do for you?” I asked.

“Thanks, Lyle, but I’ll take it from here. We’ll have something lined up for you to do next weekend, so you can run along now.”

“All right,” I said, and turned to leave.

“And oh, Lyle –”

“Yes?” I looked up. Bruce was grinning down at me; the mask was back on his face.

“Camels are mammals and birds are nerds.”

“I’m a bird, ’cause I’m a nerd,” I chirped, flapping my arms vigorously, pretending they were wings. I was conscious that I, for the first time in this house, had also donned a mask, and that it fit my face nice and snug. “I’m a bird! I’m a nerd! But I am not a crocodile.”

About Vishwas Gaitonde

Vishwas Gaitonde's formative years were spent in India. He has lived in Britain and now resides in the United States. His short story collection 'On Earth as It Is in Heaven' won the 2023 Orison Prize in fiction, and will be published by Orison Books. Literary awards include two residencies in fiction at the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies (Minnesota, USA) scholarships to the Tin House and Sewanee writers’ conferences and fellowships to the Summer Literary Seminar (Montreal, Canada) and Hawthornden Writers Residency (Scotland). He was a finalist in 2020 for The Chautauqua Institution’s Janus Prize “for daring formal and aesthetic innovations that upset and reorder readers’ imaginations.” He was a finalist in The George Floyd Short Story Competition conducted by the Nottingham Writers’ Studio, Nottingham, England, and his story is included in the anthology Black Lives, published in the United Kingdom, with an audio recording posted on the Nottingham City Libraries website.

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