I live in a fairly small neighborhood. Everyone pretty much knows who everyone else is, or at least we know who belongs to which house. There are lots of benefits to having few neighbors. For starters, it's easy to identify and return escaped dogs to the proper family. We know all the kids, not just by name but by personality too, which makes us all feel a little more protective of them. In a small neighborhood, you notice when someone is out of town, so you keep an eye on their house. In a small neighborhood, news travels fast - good and bad - and our neighbors have always been quick to lend a helping hand, or good wishes, or a home-cooked meal, depending on the circumstances. It's not Mayberry R.F.D. by any means; we've disagreed loudly and often over things like landscaping and association dues. Still, having just a handful of homes makes our neighborhood feel cozy and personal - a nice antidote to the anonymity of city life. Unless of course, you're doing something you shouldn't be.

In my temporary new life as a stay-at-home-mom, I spend about an hour each night, somewhere between two and three a.m., nursing the baby. She's very reasonable for an infant, only waking me once to eat, but she's leisurely about it. She likes to nurse, have a look around, soil a few diapers, make some faces, then nurse some more before passing out cold - and giving me another three or four hours sleep. At first, I'd turn on all the lights in the bedroom, prop myself up with a bunch of pillows, and time her eating with a stopwatch. After a week, I actually began to pity my husband, who was as sleep-deprived as me, but who received no sympathy or attention beyond being given lists of groceries to go buy. I decided to spare him the middle of the night feeding so that he could get some rest. Now, when the baby wakes up, I put a tiny flashlight on my head (like the kind coal miners wear), scoop her up, and sneak her out of the room. I look like a complete dork, and with the flashlight's beam sweeping the house, no doubt a prowler as well, but it works like a charm. I struggled to stay awake through her feeding - until I began watching television while nursing. One night, we watched Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window", the ultimate nosy neighbor movie. Jimmy Stewart plays a photographer who, because of a badly broken leg, is forced to recover in a wheelchair in his apartment. Bored, he takes to spying on his fellow apartment dwellers through the window. He becomes suspicious of a man across the way; a man that he believes has killed and butchered his wife in the bathtub. No one believes him at first, not his girlfriend (the painfully gorgeous Grace Kelly), not his detective buddy, not his nurse. Eventually he's proved right, and there's a harrowing scene in which the murderer comes to his apartment to kill him for his snooping. I've seen "Rear Window" at least a dozen times and never get tired of it. The idea that my neighbors are up to no good is irresistible for me.

I come by my fascination with the neighbors honestly. The man who lived four houses down from my Grandma Blackhair snapped one day, brought a gun to his workplace, and killed some folks. It happened in the mid 1980's and may have been one of the first workplace murders. The man was employed by The Philadelphia Inquirer in, I think, the typesetting division. He was married, had a houseful of children, most of them grown, and was known to be a quiet, hard-working, decent guy. They were the only family on the block with an in-ground swimming pool, which made them seem both exotic and wealthy. Since their youngest son was about the same age as my younger brother, we all spent a lot of time in their pool and backyard. The dad wasn't home much, or if he was, he wasn't inclined to spend his free time in a pool full of neighborhood kids. He was a small man, pale, and unfailingly polite. He was the proverbial quiet type who kept to himself, the kind you hear about on the six o'clock news, the kind of man who seems more part of the furniture than part of the family.

It came as a tremendous shock, of course, to hear that he'd opened fire on some of his fellow newspaper employees. It was a tragedy and a scandal. And yet, since no one had ever heard the term "workplace killing", and the phrase "gone postal" hadn't yet been invented, there was no easy way to categorize what Mr. V. had done. His wife was devastated, his kids near paralyzed with the shock and horror of it. There was a fair amount of publicity - nothing like you'd have today in the era of "Dateline", and CNN, and the 24-hour news cycle - but enough to make the family hole up in their house, enough to age his wife at least ten years. There was a trial, and he was found guilty by reason of insanity, and sentenced to a hospital for the criminally insane. After his trial, the house gradually fell into disrepair and neglect. The family didn't move away, and I've often wondered why. They stayed put, despite the headlines and the shame, and when Mr. V. was finally released from state custody, he came home to that house, and those neighbors. The strange thing was, he was more pitied than feared. You'd think that having a murderer a few doors down would have kept people talking. You'd think that the neighborhood kids would steer far clear of the house. It didn't happen that way for Mr. V. People minded their own business where he was concerned, and more than that, frowned upon jokes made at his expense. Their behavior was protective and respectful - and somehow, weirdly neighborly.

About a year ago, a couple built a house on one of the few remaining lots down the road from us. They're good-looking, childless professionals. We see the husband all the time - working on his lawn, shooting hoops, silhouetted in the window at his computer. Nobody ever sees the wife. In fact, it's been seven or more months since she's been spotted at all. He says that she's always at the office. We're starting to think that he's buried her in the crawlspace. Her absence has become so mysterious and so conspicuous that one neighbor recently remarked, "I'm just waiting for the TV news crews to come so that I can tell them that the last time I saw her was on Halloween, year 2000. I am convinced that he's done something to her." This man is well liked and very involved in neighborhood business; there isn't anything creepy or unusual about him. When the reporters ask, we'll say that he was charming and friendly and kept to himself a good bit. We'll be shocked when the police come in with ground-penetrating radar and special dogs and backhoes. We'll shudder, thinking of the times we stood right on the lawn where he buried her and chatted about the weather as though he were a regular person and not some crazed wife killer. Of course, it's entirely possible that she really does work all of the time and he hasn't chopped her up and hidden the body. But now that I'm awake at odd hours, I'm keeping an eye on the guy. Nothing crazy, mind you: I'm not lurking in the shrubbery. I'm just paying a little extra attention. Just until his wife shows up. Just being a good neighbor.