When No One Is Watching

by Alyssa Cole

  Mr. Perkins and his dog stroll in our direction, both looking this way and that for a neighbor to greet or for anything that’s amiss.

  “Hey there,” Mr. Perkins says as our paths cross. “Having a good weekend?”

  “So far, so good.” I lean down to pat the old dog’s side, sure my hand will come away smelling of corn chips. “Who’s a good boy?”

  “Not this dog,” Mr. Perkins says affectionately, mock-glaring down at the hound. “Count stole the pork chop I was marinating last night when I nodded off in front of the TV.”

  The dog drops his gaze to the ground, as if he knows we’re discussing his misdeeds, and we both laugh.

  “Oooh,” Kim coos at the dog from next to me. “You’re going to get trichinosis because your owner was irresponsible!”

  “Kim.” I knew she was an asshole to me, but this is different.

  “I’m just joking,” she says.

  “Right,” Mr. Perkins says, his usually friendly gaze wary. “I just wanted to tell you in case you didn’t see on OurHood, we’ll be having our annual Labor Day block party next Sunday. The final planning committee meeting is tomorrow night at my house at seven or so.”

  “Sure,” I say. “We’ll come around—” I turn and realize that Kim has already walked away. I make a face of contrition, something I’ve mastered over the last year. “I’ll be there,” I finish, and when he nods and waves me off, I jog to catch up to her.

  “What was that about?” I try to keep my tone light, but the fact that we can’t even walk a few yards without drama is pissing me off.

  “I thought you were hungry.” I feel any semblance of goodwill she’d extended make a decisive retreat. I immediately regret saying anything. Now she’ll ice me out even harder, and the tiny step forward this walk was supposed to symbolize has taken us ten steps back. One day, one of those steps back is going to be right over the edge of a cliff.

  “Yerrr, Preston!” a young man’s voice calls out.

  The clicking spokes of bike wheels behind us follow the shout, and Kim turns with wide eyes, startled.

  I glance back and see a familiar teen—husky, dark skinned, sporting that Gumby-type haircut that’s popular again—pull up on his bike in front of one of the houses. The door opens and the kid I usually see at his side, this one lighter skinned and skinnier, steps out.

  “I told you, Len, Moms don’t like it when you yell in front of the house,” the boy named Preston says in a quelling tone.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Jones!” Len calls out with typical teenage obnoxiousness, and Preston lets out a long-suffering sigh.

  I like this aspect of the neighborhood: families and friends. Normal families who know each other and catch up at night after work, look out for each other’s kids, not just neighbors you hear arguing through your thin condominium walls.

  It reminds me of one of my favorite parts of my own youth, when I spent a summer with my grandparents in Michigan. They asked if I wanted to stay with them and signed me up for the local high school in the fall. There were kids my age who didn’t hear my mom getting knocked around at night, who hadn’t seen her bad makeup and so couldn’t single me out as either too different or too similar and thus someone they couldn’t be friends with. The group of boys in the neighborhood had loaned me a bike and we’d ridden around backwoods roads, laughing and joking.

  Just before school started, my mom got dumped again and decided I need to come “home” to be with her, promising I could go back to my grandparents the following summer. I looked forward to it all year, but Mom got into another situation and my summer was lost in the fallout.

  Most of my childhood was spent floundering in the wake of my mother’s turbulent decisions. The apple really doesn’t fall far from the tree, I guess.

  Falls there and rots.

  Kim starts walking faster. “They’re so fucking loud. Jesus.”

  She still has her phone, cradled in her other hand, open to the OurHood app and begins tapping awkwardly with her thumb.

  I pull open the door to the corner store and a blast of ice-cold air slaps into me, and Middle Eastern music drifts out. The place was still a little shady, but they were slowly trying to adapt by getting a better beer selection and offering vegan sandwich options and stuff. They don’t have a bulletproof plastic screen with a little merry-go-round for you to put your money on and get your food from, like the liquor store and the Chinese restaurant two blocks over.

  Frito, the spotted white store cat, trots over and twines his round body around Kim’s feet.

  “This has to be a violation of the health code,” she mutters as she toes him away.

  I ignore that and walk over to the grill portion of the store.

  “One tofu scramble on a roll with vegan cheddar and veggie bacon, and one ham, egg, and cheese, American, with salt, pepper, ketchup on a hoagie,” I say when the guy working the grill turns to me.

  He doesn’t smile, just nods and gets to work.

  The dude behind the register is the people person, chatting with customers, wishing people luck as they buy their lottery tickets while likely talking shit about them to his coworker in their own language.

  There are a few people milling around the store, and I move past them as I head to the refrigerators in the back, grabbing a six-pack. I need to cut back on the booze, but sometimes it’s like I can feel Kim’s disdain seeping up through the floorboards of the house, even though she spends most of her time ignoring me. When I’m not out of the house trying to make quick cash, a beer and a video game help create a force field of apathy. I’m focused on choosing between an IPA and a refreshing amber ale, something I used to make fun of people for before I met Kim, when the conversation at the front of the store gets louder.

  “Are you really gonna pull the tears out? Over this?” A woman’s voice. I recognize it—smooth, controlled, even in her annoyance.

  I hustle down the aisle and find Kim staring up at the woman from across the street, a familiar anger etched into her expression. “I told you I didn’t see you standing in line and—”

  “—and I pointed out that I am wearing bright yellow and I’m pretty hard to miss.”

  I should side with Kim, but the other woman is right. There’s no missing her, even without the yellow bandanna around her hair, yellow T-shirt, and denim overall cutoffs that should have looked like a ridiculous farmer costume but really, really didn’t.

  “What are you trying to say?” Kim’s eyes are wide and her lips are pressed together and oh hell, that expression never precedes anything good.

  “I’m saying that even if you didn’t see me, when you realize you’ve made a mistake, you don’t ignore me and continue making your purchase. You move away and let me make mine. Like a civilized person.”

  Kim’s face is pink now. “You need to stop attacking me.”

  The woman tilts her head in confusion. “Attacking?”

  “You’re making me feel unsafe, and if you don’t stop, I’ll—I’ll call the police.” There’s a malicious glee on her face as she says it, like when she knows her renovating work has woken me up. An expression that says, I’m fucking with you just because I can.

  Everyone in the bodega has gone still, and there’s sudden tension in the air that’s as stifling as the humidity outside. The people who’ve been in my peripheral vision come into focus. An older man holding a lottery ticket form, gray haired and blank faced as he looks at Kim. A woman in her thirties with a teenage boy almost taller than her. Her arm has gone around the boy’s shoulder, and there is anger in her eyes. A Hispanic teen covertly recording the interaction with his cell phone, his lips twisted with amused disdain.

  The employees are also still. The cheerful guy behind the counter has a neutral expression, but his eyes suddenly flick to mine, pleading.

  “Got the beer!” I say with aggressive cheeriness as I step forward, the same tone my mom used to distract from the bad concealer that covered her bruises.

  Kim’s head whips to
ward me, her vicious expression crumpling as she does. Tears suddenly spill down her cheeks and she runs into my arms. I feel both relief and confusion as her warm breath breaks against my chest in bursts. I haven’t held her in so long and I’d forgotten that it made me feel good. Needed.

  “Theo, she was saying the most awful things to me!”

  The woman sucks her teeth and grabs her bag from the counter. “Bye, Abdul.”

  “I threw something special in your bag. Have a good day, habibi,” Abdul says, looking at her regretfully.

  “Too late for that.”

  Kim peeks past my arm, eyes narrowing as the woman heads out of the store.

  “Can you believe that?” There are no more tears in her voice, just anger. “Just because I didn’t see her! These people are always looking for a reason to be angry.”

  I disentangle myself from her, feeling the weight of the other customers’ gazes.

  I pay quickly, my face hot. I think of the last time Kim cried to me, and the boundary she laid down.

  Us.

  Them.

  Gifford Place OurHood post by John Perkins:

  The annual Labor Day block party is next weekend! We’ll be having our final planning meeting this Monday evening at my house at 7:00, or whenever you can make it before Law and Order comes on at 9:00. Refreshments will be served. :-)

  Amber Griffin: We might be late bc we have dance practice for the West Indian Day parade, but we’ll be there!

  Candace Tompkins: Get it, young ladies! If you’re lucky, I’ll show you some moves at the meeting.

  LaTasha Clifton: X__x

  Jen Peterson: Yay! Looking forward to hanging with Count!

  Jenn Lithwick: Super excited to help plan our first block party!

  Kavaughn Murphy: I’ll be there after the community board meeting. Folks are seeing if there’s anything we can do about the VerenTech deal but looks like it’s too late.

  Chapter 3

  Sydney

  MY PHONE VIBRATES IN MY POCKET AS I WALK THROUGH THE front door of the house.

  I switch the plastic bag containing chips and salsa to my left hand and tug the slim rectangle out. My stomach flips when I see the label MOMMY’S LAWYERS pop up. I never updated the contact to Gladstone and Gianetti, which would be easier on my nerves every time they called. I consider sending them to voicemail, but Mommy needs me to handle this shit since she can’t.

  “Hello, this is Sydney Green,” I say in a pleasant voice as I turn to the mailbox hanging next to the door. I haven’t checked it for two weeks, and a quick flip through the envelopes shoved into it makes me wish I hadn’t. Scammy credit card offers; collections notices from hospitals, ones here and in Seattle; the water bill; the electricity. The latest bill from the retirement home, too. I’ll have to try to figure out a payment plan next time I force myself to go out there.

  “Hi, Ms. Green.” The cool, familiar voice of the receptionist at the lawyers’ office. “I’m sorry there’s been such a delay in getting back to you about your mother’s case. I hope she’s doing well?”

  I flip the mailbox lid shut and start down the stairs.

  “She’s hanging in there. She’s about as tough as they come,” I say. A peek over the railing shows that no one is early for the meeting at Mr. Perkins’s and lingering within earshot. “Any news about the situation?”

  “As you’ve been told, with cases like this there often isn’t any recourse. But Ms. Gianetti has found some things that she’d like to share with you and your mother that might be helpful moving forward. Can she give you a call on Thursday morning at eight thirty?”

  “Yes! Yes, that would be great. I’m—I’m really hoping we can get this figured out. It’d make Mommy so happy, especially with everything else going on.”

  “Will she be on the call?” the receptionist asks.

  “We’ll see how she’s feeling,” I say.

  “Of course,” the receptionist says, followed by an awkward pause. “There’s the matter of the payment . . .”

  I scoff. Chuckle. Some combination of the two sounds. “Don’t worry about that. I sent the next payment by check, so you should be getting it in the mail soon.”

  “Right,” she says. “Great. Talk to you Thursday at eight thirty.”

  “Thank you.”

  I slip the phone back into my pocket with shaking hands. Okay. Thursday. I try not to get my hopes up, but if it was bad news they would’ve told me, wouldn’t they? This isn’t a medical diagnosis.

  I take a deep breath and head next door.

  The garden-level entrance to Mr. Perkins’s house is shrouded by the leaves of the plants that fence his windows—they started as clippings from my mom, like so many of the plants in flower boxes and pots lining this street. The leaves brush my face as I walk in, soft and smelling like Mommy’s green-thumbed hands.

  The door is unlocked and ajar, and I huff an annoyed sigh as I step inside. “How many times do I have to tell you to lock this door?”

  No response, apart from the low murmur of television announcers and the drone of the air conditioner.

  More familiar scents greet me, even if Mr. Perkins doesn’t—Folgers coffee grounds, newspapers as old as me and stacked as tall, moldy carpet, though the old carpet had been pulled up at last after Hurricane Sandy.

  When Mrs. Perkins was around, she called this part of the house City Hall because people would pop in to talk about neighborhood business like local elections, how to deal with troublemakers of both the criminal and police varieties, and who needed help and wasn’t asking for it.

  It still serves that function, but with so many of the original neighbors gone and the new ones skittish, it’s more town hall than city.

  The walls are still covered by the dark wood paneling of a bygone era, and there are still boxes full of papers, books, and lord knows what else stacked along the walls. He’s not quite a hoarder, but Marie Kondo would advise him to let some of this stuff go.

  I know why he doesn’t. Mommy’s room is still how it was the day she left, minus her favorite blanket. I thought she’d want to take that with her, to have something familiar. When she’d been at the hospital the first time—well, the first time after I came back from Seattle—she’d complained about the cold and kept reaching for the crocheted blanket that was usually at the foot of her bed at home.

  An odd draft passes through the hallway, cool in a way AC can’t replicate. “Mr. Perkins? Count?”

  I walk into the darkened den, with its hodgepodge of couches and chairs picked up from the Goodwill over the years. The blackout curtains are drawn, and Mr. Perkins is napping on his torn and duct-taped La-Z-Boy. Count snores at his feet, the most useless guard dog ever. The light of the television, tuned in to the Home Shopping Network, shifts shadows over both of them, but after a second I realize that what I’m seeing isn’t just the play of light creating an illusion of motion or my sleep-deprived brain playing tricks on me.

  Mr. Perkins is jerking in his sleep—small, isolated movements all over his body. Count is doing the same at his feet. Unnatural twitches and spasms that I might have confused for a seizure if it wasn’t moving through both of them. If it didn’t spark a sudden fist of nauseous worry that presses against my diaphragm.

  Count whines and growls as his legs twitch.

  “Mr. Perkins?” I try to call out, but my voice is a barely audible whisper, like in a bad dream. Like when I walked in and found Mommy . . .

  No. No.

  Clammy sweat dampens my skin and anxiety fizzes through my body like an Alka-Seltzer tablet made of fear. I fumble for the light switch, forgetting where it is even though I’ve seen it a thousand times. My shaking hand passes over dusty paneling for a frantic moment that goes on for far too long, until the webbing between my thumb and index finger finally bumps up under the switch. I slide my palm up to flip it on.

  I clear my throat. “Mr. Perkins?”

  He startles awake, finally, eyes wide as they turn to me. For the b
riefest moment, there’s no recognition, just terror, and then he places a hand on his chest and exhales.

  “Lord. You ever have one of those nightmares where something is just standing over you, watching, and you can’t move?” He rubs his hands down his arms, smoothing away goose bumps. “Like your arms and legs are just locked up?”

  Mommy used to call that the devil at your elbow, and that same devil has been visiting me for months now. Drea says it’s anxiety and gave me some Ambien to make me sleep, but that made it worse.

  “You’re okay now, though, right?” I ask.

  He glances at me and smiles reassuringly. “I’m fine. Shouldn’t have had roti for dinner, that’s all. Too heavy on my stomach.”

  “Hard to resist good Trini food,” I say as I scratch at my shoulder. I glance down to make sure there are no new bites. “How many people do you think will show up tonight?”

  “Maybe ten? Not like it used to be, when this whole den would be full and Odetta would make her sweet lemonade . . .” He trails off, hand gripping the arm of the chair as he stares at the floor. His shoulders rise and fall and then he nods decisively. “Let me go get the refreshments from the kitchen upstairs.”

  “I can get it.”

  “Sydney, you tryna make me feel old? I got this.” He smiles, seemingly having shaken off the remnants of the nightmare. “Count’ll help me out.”

  Count hefts himself to his feet with a wuff and follows him, bumping into Mr. Perkins’s legs when he stops short and turns back to me. “Oh, I found some papers for you that might help with your tour, in Odetta’s things. In that folder over there.”

  His wife had been a librarian who’d loved doing programs about the history of the neighborhood. I know it must have been hard for him to look through her stuff to find this for me, but he’d done it to support this dumbass plan of mine.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  He and Count trot off, and I replace the accordion folder on top of the TV with the bag of snacks, pull open the curtains to let in the evening light, and settle into one of the room’s mismatched armchairs.