A Woman Alone

by Nina Laurin

  “No!” she shrieks. “No sleep!”

  Her eyes are red and shiny, and her upper lip is already glistening with snot. She wiggles with all her might when I finally pick her up. Her small but pointy little foot connects with just the right spot under my ribs, making me hiss and stifle a bad word.

  A headache throbs in the back of my head. Maybe I had enough wine after all. When did she become this bad? She was such a sweet baby. She slept through the night at a mere three or four months and was always smiling, eager to be picked up.

  Shame floods my face with heat, followed quickly by anger. Anger I have no outlet for because there’s no one left to be angry at, except myself. That’s what the child psychologist said. I thought Taryn was too young to understand but he said she could still pick up on subconscious cues. Detect my distress and fear, sense my lingering trauma for weeks and months afterward. Is that why she’s acting out? Because I, her mother, the person responsible for taking care of her and making her happy and safe, had failed?

  At least her screen is consistently there, present, unrelentingly cheerful and entertaining, not sneaking away into corners to cry ten times a day. And Scott was absent then and he’s absent now—his solution was to throw money at the problem, and this house is just the culmination of it. No wonder she prefers the screen.

  By the time I get Taryn to sleep—it feels like it’s been hours, although it can’t have been more than thirty minutes or so—the headache has evolved into a migraine, and all I want to do is follow her example and hit the hay. The room is dimly lit by Taryn’s moon-shaped night-light, and the only sound is her soft, little snore, which I used to find so adorable. Of course, once she was in bed and tucked under the ethereally soft blankets, she passed out almost instantly without further argument.

  I come to the window and lean my forehead on the cool glass pane, closing my eyes. When I open them, I see what I first think is a reflection in the glass, a glimmer of light. I blink but it’s still there, and I realize it’s not reflected in the window but outside of it.

  I take a tiny step back and look across the dark expanse of our backyard. Right now it’s an empty space. We had big plans, if we decided to stay on board and buy the place, to build a gazebo or a swing set for Taryn or plant a lush garden. For the time being, I planned to at least bring in some flower boxes, to plant lilies and other low-maintenance plants to dress up the acid-green expanse of empty lawn. But I’ve put it off and put it off, and now it’s nearing fall and it’s too late.

  The lawn eventually ends with a fence, and behind it looms the neighboring house. It’s not like ours—the designers have no doubt decided to avoid the trap of having rows of identical buildings, which the target clientele would consider tacky and suburban. So instead, each street is an assorted set of houses that nonetheless complement each other, with variety to suit tastes and price ranges.

  The house out back is bigger and starkly square and modern in contrast to our more traditional-looking abode with its slanted roof. The wall facing us is made up of floor-to-ceiling windows, all of them one-way glass, of course. But in that moment, it had let something through. Just the glimmer of our terrace light when it caught on the round shape of a lens.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I come back downstairs, unnerved and stone-cold sober. Even my headache has somewhat faded into the background. I linger in the door, observing the scene. My husband is topping off Mia’s glass, while Mia’s husband, Eric, is telling something to Emma in a hushed voice, which makes her giggle drunkenly. They don’t notice me at first.

  Scott is the first one to look up. “Taryn is sleeping?”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  He nods at my glass, which he—or someone else—has refilled, pretty much to the brim. Since those giant glasses fit half a bottle each, you’re only supposed to splash wine into the bottom, to let it breathe. But right now it’s welcome.

  “Thanks,” I say, and take a generous sip. He looks at me expectantly, and I sit down, hovering on the edge of the chair. I look over the faces around the table—wine-warmed, content faces—and realize there’s no good way to blurt, By the way, honey, someone is taking pictures of our daughter’s bedroom window from the house next door.

  “We have to go home,” Eric is saying, slurring his words. Mia groans theatrically, stretching her arms over her head.

  “No,” she pouts.

  “You know I have to get up tomorrow. We all do.”

  “Except Cecelia,” Emma chimes in.

  “Yeah,” Mia picks up with a giggle. “Except Cecelia.”

  Scott and I exchange a glance.

  “You’re tipsy,” Scott says to Mia’s husband, to break up the tension and shift the subject. “You’re not going to drive like that, are you?”

  “Well, I’m not going to walk like that, am I?” the man says, which elicits another burst of laughter from Emma. “Weren’t you supposed to be the designated driver, honey?”

  Mia looks embarrassed. “Oops.”

  Oh no. We’re going to have to offer to let them stay over. We have no excuse not to. We have three unoccupied rooms in the house and a fold-out couch in the basement. The thought of having to make Emma organic-vegan-fair-trade breakfast tomorrow while attempting to make small talk with the husbands through my hangover at six a.m. doesn’t appeal to me in the slightest.

  Scott saves the situation. “I’ll call you guys taxis,” he says. “Hey, Saya!”

  Everyone goes quiet with a sort of reverence as the electronic voice springs awake. “Yes, Scott?”

  “Can you call two taxis for my friends, please?”

  “Of course, Scott.” She proceeds to list the plate numbers and inform us all that the information has been sent to Kyle’s and Mia’s phones.

  Mia shakes her head in disbelief, checking the screen. “Wow, Cece. I’m so freaking jealous, you have no idea.”

  I’m not sure how I’m supposed to react or what she expects from me. So I decide to laugh it off. “Well, if you don’t care about your privacy at all, I guess you could say I’m lucky.”

  Instead of laughing, she gives me a blank look. The tension grows, visible only to me.

  Her husband saves the day. “Well, I’ll bet the crime rate in this part of town is really low, though, huh?”

  Everyone dutifully laughs at that.

  “Won’t people just come up with new ways to get away with it?” Emma asks. “Don’t they always?”

  The laughter dies down, giving way to an awkward silence. “I suppose,” I say.

  “Oh, you girls have no idea,” Kyle exclaims. “The lengths people will go to, it’s nuts. Just last week I was dealing with a client’s wife who tried to squirrel away assets before the divorce. Her scheme would put Bernie Madoff to shame, I tell you.”

  But we never find out what the scheme was because, in that moment, the phones ping, and Saya’s voice informs us the taxis are here.

  The door barely had time to close behind our guests, leaving Scott and me alone at last, in the silence that felt heavy somehow, filled with the barely perceptible buzzing of the electronics in the background. The headache that had been scratching behind my eyes takes over, filling my entire skull. Too much wine.

  “Thank God,” I mutter, pressing the heels of my hands over my eyes.

  “Thank God?” Scott echoes. “You’ve been looking forward to it all week. You always say we never see anyone anymore.”

  “I’m just tired,” I snap back.

  “You couldn’t get them out of the house quickly enough,” my husband points out.

  “All the noise made it impossible to put Taryn to sleep,” I say. I don’t know why I feel the need to justify myself. What I really want to add is, And it’s not like you ever have to deal with Taryn’s temper tantrums.

  “Nonsense. The rooms are all soundproofed. It’s what you wanted,” he says pointedly. This is becoming a regular refrain in our household: This is what you wanted, Cecelia. It’s all for you. As if it’s my
fault that I couldn’t sleep anymore in the old place, that I never ever felt truly safe.

  But I can’t just blurt this all out, throwing it in his face. I want to sleep, not start another argument. My bones ache with fatigue. Maybe I won’t even need the sleeping pills tonight.

  I still take them, just in case. It’s happened in the past: I assumed I was exhausted enough to pass out naturally only to end up staring into the dark ceiling at three in the morning, my bones humming with fatigue but my mind restless, racing around and around in circles, unable to relax against all logic.

  Downstairs, Scott finishes piling the dishes into the dishwasher. Through the open door, I hear the soft beep of commands and then the gentle whir of the machine springing to life. I listen to his steps as he climbs the stairs, the rush of the faucet in the adjacent bathroom as he brushes his teeth. And finally, I can feel his presence next to me as he climbs into bed. The mattress barely moves, not even a vibration to disturb my sleep. But I haven’t drifted off yet. The sleeping pills are only starting to act.

  “Scott,” I find myself murmuring. As if I need to reassure myself that it’s really him and not some stranger who took his place.

  “Yeah?”

  “What do you know about the neighbors?”

  “The neighbors?”

  “The house behind ours. Do you know who lives there?”

  “How would I know that?” he says and gives a soft snort, as if it were a truly ridiculous thing to ask.

  People used to know their neighbors, didn’t they? They used to have neighborhood associations and block parties and things like that. Welcome baskets full of homemade muffins and what have you. In this sleek bedroom with its windows that black out at a set time like screens switching off, with its lights that gradually fade to sepia before dimming out to help with relaxation, with the hidden speakers gently humming with white noise, such things seem not even retro but antiquated. What would anyone need homemade muffins for, anyway, when you can order them from a bakery and have them at your door in minutes?

  “I was just wondering,” I murmur. The urge to sleep is stronger than me, pulling me under fast. “Maybe I should go introduce myself, or something.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “I don’t know, Scott.” The amusement in his tone that he doesn’t try to hide annoys me, momentarily tugging me back out of dreamland. “Because it’s civil?”

  “There’s no point,” he says, again with that little derisive snort.

  “Why not?”

  “They’re either early adopters or testers, like us, which means they’ve been selected by IntelTech. And that place does background checks like it’s hiring for the FBI.”

  He is right, of course. Everyone on the block has been preselected and carefully vetted, says Clarisse’s voice in my head, clearly like she’s standing right there over my bed. I took it to mean everyone was thoroughly background-checked but of course, that’s not what it really means. Kind of classist, some of my old friends would say. Did it really not cross my mind until now? Of course it did. I just didn’t care and decided not to think about it too much. Because in my mind, it would mean that it’s safe.

  I am safe.

  I close my eyes, and in that moment, the image in my head becomes softer, less real. Did I see a lens? Or did I mistake something for a lens, some techy gizmo? There’s no reason for it after all. Why would someone be spying on my daughter? On me. On us.

  “Anyway,” Scott says. He puts his arm around me, which takes me by surprise. It takes me a heartbeat or two to relax into it. “Why don’t you look them up? There’s probably some kind of app for that too.”

  I pick up my phone blindly from the nightstand—how long has it been since it was farther than arm’s reach at any moment?—and check the screen. As if by serendipity, that’s when it gives a short buzz.

  “Will you put that away?” Scott groans into his pillow. “You can check tomorrow. Anything interesting?”

  “Just an email.”

  I swipe left and delete the message without reading.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  TRANSCRIPT: Session 8, Lydia Bishop.

  Dr. Alice Stockman, PhD.

  May 29th, 2018

  LB: Is this being recorded?

  AS: Yes. It’s something I’m trying. That way I can focus more on you and less on taking notes.

  [pause]

  AS: It’s solely for my personal use. It will never leave my office. But I’ll understand if it’s making you uncomfortable, and I can stop.

  LB: No…no. Not at all. It’s fine. [nervous giggle] I mean, yesterday I went and signed release forms to live in a high-tech aquarium so I can hardly object to a little tape recorder, right?

  AS: Is that a question you’re asking me or yourself?

  LB: I’m just…I still can’t believe I did that, you know? And a tape recorder. That’s so quaint somehow. With a cassette inside and everything. I didn’t know they still made blank cassettes.

  AS: Sometimes I think it’s best to go low-tech.

  LB: I couldn’t agree more! Well, I know I’m a total hypocrite for saying that.

  AS: What was it like, signing those papers? Let’s unpack this.

  LB: Oh. They wooed us. I really can’t come up with another word. They sat us down in this gorgeous room, one table and three chairs, two for us and one for that woman, Clarisse. I guess they were going for intimate—the irony. And an assistant brought us espressos and a plate of biscotti. But if we’d wanted to, we could have had champagne. She offered. I thought it was weird, kind of inappropriate. To be under the influence while taking a step like this? But they were just trying to put us at our ease. They gave us a week with the papers so there was nothing new in them. They actually encouraged my husband to have his lawyer look at them. But he ended up asking Faye. I wasn’t so sure about it.

  AS: Why?

  LB: I don’t know…I would have paid someone. Someone qualified. Someone impartial.

  AS: And your sister wasn’t qualified enough? Or impartial enough? You mentioned that she just got promoted at her law firm—

  LB: [laughs] Oh no, she’s plenty qualified. Of the two of us, she’s the one who went to an Ivy League school, you know, and I swear, she has worked that fact into every conversation for the last ten years. And yes, they love her at the law firm. She went over the contract and said it was all pretty standard stuff. There’s worse on your iPhone user agreement—that’s how she phrased it. And that never stopped anyone, did it?

  AS: The real question—and the reason we’re here—is, does it bother you?

  LB: Oh, I don’t know. I guess it doesn’t. She knows her stuff. It’s just that this seems like a family matter, and by family I mean my husband and me, not my sister. Besides, she’s going to go and discuss it all with our parents, and I like that idea even less.

  AS: That’s not what I meant, Lydia.

  [brief pause]

  LB: If you’re talking about the house…

  AS: I am.

  LB: I can’t explain it. I thought it wouldn’t bother me. I mean…I should be glad, right? After everything that happened. After Walter.

  AS: I hear a lot of uncertainty. A lot of should and would and might.

  LB: One thing I’m unequivocally happy about is the safety. That’s for sure. I don’t doubt that part for a second. I’m much safer there than I ever was in my old house. Most people take it for granted but I don’t.

  AS: Would you like to talk about what happened at your old place?

  LB: I thought we talked about this. Not yet. I’m not ready.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The truth is I liked my old life. I liked our old house. It was old in more ways than one. It dated back from the 1910s, a quaint art nouveau beauty that was a bargain, comparatively speaking, because it hadn’t gotten as much care as it should have over the years. The former owner, an elderly lady, was happy to sell it to a young couple who planned to raise their family there.

&
nbsp; Even considering all this, we offered twenty thousand dollars more than the listing asked. That, our real estate agent explained to us, was the market. The neighborhood was up-and-coming, trendy. On a nearby commercial artery, an organic grocery had just opened, and little high-end cafés and shops were popping up like mushrooms. Hip young families were buying up the duplexes left over from the neighborhood’s working-class origins and turning them into airy condos or single-family homes, keeping only the picturesque façades with their brick patterns as an embodiment of living history.

  It was the exact opposite of the place we live in now. I loved being able to walk for five minutes and have a cup of fair-trade French roast in a cozy coffee shop while reading a book. It added something to the monotony of my days as I worked from home, gave me a break from staring at the computer. Most important, it fit the image I had of myself, of us, the kind of family we would be. McMansion in the suburbs—not for us, not for the Holmeses.

  Our old house was one of the nicer ones. Fully detached, on a street corner so we only had neighbors on one side. Back then it was an asset, not something I ever thought would turn against me. It had a vast, albeit overgrown, yard out back, and a beautiful maple out front that provided a little shade in the summer, without its bare branches blocking too much light in the winter. It hadn’t been remodeled in decades and was full of those old-house quirks: rooms a touch too big or too small, closets in odd places, a little nook in the hall that had probably been designed to house a little console for the phone and the chair next to it, back when such things were practical. The door had a stained-glass insert at the top, as did the windows. Multicolored light fell on the parquet floor on sunny days.

  It had a habit of creaking and groaning in windy weather and in winter when you just turned on the heat for the first time and the house seemed to stretch its old articulations and bones as the boards adjusted to the temperature. For no reason at all. It was cozy instead of creepy. If there were ghosts, they had to be friendly ones.