The Property Line

The strip of grass between the two driveways was, according to the plat, eighteen inches wide and belonged to nobody. The city owned it. The city had never once mowed it. For twenty-two years Ed Kowalski had mowed the north nine inches and Barb Ferreira the south nine, and the line between them was invisible and absolute. In September Ed put a sign on his side. Barb saw it while getting the mail. She didn't say anything. She went inside, and on Saturday there was a sign on her side, for the other one, the same size, facing the same way, four inches from his. They'd been neighbours since Barb's kids were small. Ed had plowed her drive the winter her husband was sick. She'd taken in his packages for a decade. They had a thing at Christmas where he'd bring over a bottle and she'd send back a tin of the cookies her mother used to make, and neither of them had ever once discussed anything that appeared on a sign. The signs stayed up. The leaves came down on both of them equally. In the second week of October, Ed came out one morning to find his sign had blown over in the night. It was lying face-down on Barb's nine inches. He stood there in his robe looking at it. He picked it up. He pushed the wire legs back into the ground on his side, straight, and then he looked at hers, which was leaning, and he straightened that too. Barb was at the window. He didn't know that. Election day she was coming back from the polling place at the elementary school as he was pulling out to go. Their cars stopped in the street, window to window, the way they did. "Long line?" "Twenty minutes. They've got the coffee going." "Good." "Ed." "Barb." "Your gutter's coming off at the corner." "I know. Saturday." He drove off. She went in. That night, whichever way it went, she made the cookies early, and on Wednesday the tin was on his step, and on Thursday both signs were gone, and neither of them mentioned it. The grass between the driveways still isn't mowed by the city.