After-Easter Chocolate Lab

I will take the plastic Easter eggs down from my trees soon, I swear, but for now, while it’s still April, because it never seems to be April, I’m keeping them up. They are yellow, purple, teal, and green. They’ve got a sheen, like oysters. 

“How’d you get these pretty eggs to grow?” says my neighbor, who is wearing Crocs and looks like he’s been dying to talk to somebody all day. “My trees only grow leaves.” 

Every neighborhood has a neighbor like this, the one who waters his plants for hours and is forever checking the mail. He is a widower, a car washer, the devoted owner of a chocolate lab. Call me Roger, he says. Much to Roger’s chagrin, there is only so much lawn to be mowed, but plenty of Saturday before it’s time to feed the dog his dinner. 

And so he walks around the neighborhood with a sleeve of paper cups and pitcher of lemonade. 

“Fresh squeezed!” 

He wants me to say, “Do you have a ladder I could borrow?” Or, “Can you believe this weather we’ve been having?” 

I can’t give him my afternoon, but I can give him the sight of the eggs, like happy neighbors waving. Maybe that’s why I keep them up, because the real neighbors are not always happy and not always waving. Case in point: Roger offers lemonade to the umpteenth naysayer. Mrs. Wilson doesn’t “do” sugar anymore. Chester with the bird feeders says sorry, but he’s running late. Even the Parsons, who will humor anyone selling insurance or heaven, are out of town, their house-sitter some teenaged rascal who still hasn’t figured out the tangle of remotes on the coffee table. 

Everyone has retreated to their own backyards, it seems. Roger looks solemn as the sprinklers kick on. Oh, lonely Spring; oh, dastardly, ubiquitous pollen. No kindness but the eggs on the trees. Roger will move to Florida next year if this keeps up, and his grandchildren will visit more because they will get to go to Disney World after the lemon-square-big-hug-memory-lane-scratchy-quilt visit with him has concluded. 

Just when he is ready to give up, Roger finds takers in Skip and Emily, the kids down the street. They fling their bikes onto the sidewalk and reach for the flimsy paper cups like there’s no water left on Earth. These are the disciples Roger has been waiting for. This is the comeback, the resurrection, the isn’t that a fine how-do-you-do. While they sip the sweet nectar of Saturday afternoon, the chocolate lab slips away. Calls will have to be made. Flashlights handed out. For the first time in years, Roger has something to do on a Saturday night. 

MARY LIZA HARTONG

Mary Liza Hartong is a writer and artist from Nashville. Her work has been published in StyleBlueprint, the Saturday Evening Post, and the Lascaux Review, and she was recently named a Best of the Net finalist. When she’s not writing, you can find her combing the local thrift stores for treasures and playing with her five adorable nieces.