New fiction from NER 40.2

he city, like so many others at that time, was reviving. The neighborhood of modest bungalows, a mile from downtown but seeming farther, was in transition. There were working class couples whose children had long since left home; grown sons who’d moved back after a divorce or lay-off, taking over the work of mowing the lawn, visited on weekends by children wearing Disney T-shirts and sneakers that lit up. There were young professionals with Japanese cars, replanting their stretch of boulevard with native grasses, taking down the ugly asbestos siding that was so effective at keeping out drafts; Public Defenders and stay-at-home parents, programmers, academics. For four years Jerome had felt he belonged in this latter category. Then his wife left him and everything went to seed. The front garden she had made, cultivated out of the stubborn monotony of turf, steadily became feral. Un-pruned branches of ninebark and hydrangea half-covered the front windows—a detail the realtor remarked upon when the bungalow next door came on the market. 

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