“How weird is it,” I croaked at Stefan, despite my lack of faith, “for a married man, presumably heterosexual, to put on his wife’s panties and bra?”
Stefan was reading the Times. He lowered the paper comically, one semicircular eyebrow raised. “Sometimes your bathrobe when I can’t find mine, but never the panties. I swear.”
You see, even a professional finds it silly. Silly things are harmless, no? “Come on, you know about this stuff.”
“Depends on the context. Does he do it all the time? Is it part of a masturbation ritual? It’s only a symptom. Like any doctor, I would have to run some tests, know more about the patient. Why?”
I told Stefan what I had seen. I would have preferred to gossip with Wendy about it, but she was excluded from this one.
Stefan was fascinated, delighted. He took the information from me as if he were selecting a delectable chocolate from a dessert tray—examining the sweet with relish before he popped it in his mouth and pronounced it to be: “Not surprising really. Ben’s obviously uncomfortable with himself. Wish I knew more.” Stefan raised his brows and stared off, lost in silent inquiry.
“Is it something for me to worry about?” I almost snapped at him.
“Worry about?”
“Wendy and Naomi. They live with him.”
“Just be sure to buy them oversized clothes—”
I was tired and disappointed my snooping hadn’t been worthwhile. “Sometimes you’re a jerk,” I told him.
He snapped to attention, the alert charming Disney chipmunk. “Sorry. Of course you’re worried. I don’t think there’s anything to be concerned about. I wouldn’t discuss it with Wendy, especially not now—”
“I’d never bring it up to her! Of course not!” I was furious with him.
“Of course you wouldn’t,” he asserted, and smiled, paws crossed, cheeks puffed with self-satisfaction.
“You haven’t said anything about my being a Peeping Tom.”
Stefan nodded sagely. “You don’t trust Ben. You worry about how he treats Wendy. You don’t believe he tells you the whole story, so when the opportunity presented itself to get a glimpse of his private life, you took it.”
I must confess that made me feel better. Nevertheless, I hesitated before ringing Ben’s doorbell half an hour later when I was supposed to pick him up to drive him to the hospital. Ben answered right away, as if he had been waiting behind the door.
I jumped back.
“I was just about to get you,” he said.
“You startled me.”
“Sorry.” He reached for me, his elegant fingers and long nails wrapping around my wrists. “Listen, I want to say something.” His small eyes, alternating between wariness and resentment, darted from the floor to my face and back again. His tongue unraveled slowly to make the words. “I’m very grateful for your helping with everything. Wendy had a rough time in delivery and your visit yesterday really made her feel better. I’m really thankful.” He pulled me to him, hugging hard. His body was big, stronger than I had expected. A thick odor, a man’s smell, enveloped me. I felt stupid and embarrassed. I hurried to squirm out of his arms and talked brightly of how beautiful his daughter was.
“She’s a jewel,” he said with great feeling, his slow voice quavering, his eyes shimmering. “I hope I can be a good father to her.”
“Of course you will.”
He looked at me straight, with those nervous eyes, and they paused. Behind his thick glasses, I noticed how worried he was, his almost childish fear of failure: “I don’t know,” he whispered. “I want her to be happy.”
I liked him. In spite of everything, that morning I liked him.
IT’S EASY TO BE THE GENEROUS AUNT. UNRUFFLED, rested, able to break Mommy’s rules with a single wink. I was shameless, seized any excuse to indulge little Naomi.
She was an extraordinary child. She had Wendy’s big face, only she didn’t have her mother’s sallow skin or her father’s thick rough hide. Presumably smoking, lack of exercise, poor diet, something had corrupted Ben’s and Wendy’s complexions, because their daughter had bright, smooth white cheeks, soft and sweet as clean linen on pillows. Nor did she have their sluggish bodies. Once she was past the beer belly of the two-year-old, her figure was lean, with slim elegant legs and wide bony shoulders. Even her thick head of reddish brown hair had no origin in what could be seen of Ben’s once-black hair or Wendy’s dull, partly curly, mousy brown. And the oddest trick of genetics topped off her difference from mother and father—her deep blue eyes. Not Wendy’s curious pale blue or Ben’s small, almost black, suspicious eyes. Nor did they magically resemble the bright, cold, shallow blue in my eyes—my father’s heartless eyes. No, Naomi’s had the deep life-giving blue of the ocean, populated by feeling and love.
What a lot of love she had to give! She was affectionate to everyone and yet in a distinct and individual manner; she found a private entrance to each of their hearts. She performed as an early through-the-night sleeper, talker, walker, bottle forsaker, toilet trainee, reader, and so on, to the delight of Wendy, who was vain of her intelligence and precocity. She was cuddly and affectionate to Ben, who obviously longed for this feminine attention. She laughed at Stefan’s jokes, which made him feel young, and took seriously his sporadic attempts to teach her what science he remembered from his college days, which made him feel wise. With her babysitter, Yolanda, she was imperious until scolded, and then she was as prim and sweet as a novitiate, shaming the other caretakers who could not control their spoiled charges, thus lifting Yolanda to the status of lecturing expert on proper child care. Among her many friends, she had possession of their hearts and minds, the leader of a clique which you and I would have died to get into if we were little and knew her. I like to think she was a beneficent despot, but she ruled, there was no doubt of that.
I don’t know how to explain that she filled up all the blanks in my life. Unless you have loved a child, not merely raised one, but cared deeply, you can’t understand the complicated and beautiful pattern that fills your head. Watching a child evolve from creaturehood into human being, from expectation into reality, writes a text of memory that can always be read with pleasure, accompanied by the images, a coffee-table book of moments for reminiscence and for encouragement. Naomi, big-eyed, feet flat, stumbling out, hands spread ready to catch the floor should it decide to rush up and whack her, waddling the first steps of her life. Naomi finally letting go of her grip on the park slide, leaning back, her long hair splayed on the metal, her wide-spaced teeth popping out with joy, gravity whisking her into my arms. Naomi wandering between Wendy’s and my legs in the clothing store, briefly decapitated as she ducked under and out of the racks, until we took her to the girl’s section and made good on our promise that she could pick out a dress for her fifth birthday party. Wendy and I held each other’s hand, suffering through the tension, fearful that she would select a fashion nightmare, and watched her imitate us, sternly pushing her way through the hanging garments, thoughtfully pulling them by the hem to hold against herself, finally removing several and solemnly pronouncing: “I’m going to try these on and see which one I like best.” They were all in excellent taste. Or Naomi, pale, burning hot, asking Wendy if I would come over on a dreary Sunday and keep her company, saying, “I think Mommy is enervated,” a word she had picked up, to his delight, from Stefan. There’s no sense to it, no logic: I knew her life, its secrets, its smallest details, better than my own, certainly more honestly. Her flaws and brilliancies were the same to me: all precious.
Her fifth birthday was a festival. It seemed to last a week. I began to expect that our street would be blocked off and all the buildings would empty out to celebrate. It climaxed with a party for her entire nursery school class. I helped Wendy and Ben clean up. They were dead by evening and I took their place for the bedtime ritual. Naomi’s legs were still hopping with excitement, pushing at her sheets while I read, eyes nervously taking an account of her presents. Her gifts were
lined up in a neat row on her dresser; she couldn’t light on one to relish, and her vision skipped frantically. “I’m too happy,” she said, her cheeks drawn. “I’m too happy!” she repeated, crying out.
“It’s okay.” I stroked her forehead and kissed its hot skin, fairly melted from exhaustion.
“Take them away!” She pointed to the presents, horrified, threatened by them.
“I’ll cover them up,” I suggested, and used a bed sheet from her dresser to do that.
“Please stay with me,” she said when I had finished reading the book.
I turned out the light and sat on the edge of her bed.
“Could you pat my back?” she mumbled. Her profile on the pillow relaxed when I put my palm down between the bony wings of her shoulder blades. Her eyelids were swollen, her mouth sagged. I saw the suggestion of adulthood in her face: that’s what she had experienced; with all the fuss and greed of her party, she had known how unsatisfying the world can be, even when it gives you everything you want. At that moment I was glad she wasn’t my daughter. I would have felt too sad, too sorry to see that sweet face growing old before my eyes.
I waited until the poor child was fast asleep. Even then her chest heaved from time to time, sighing through uneasy dreams. I was reluctant to go. Her room was quiet and peaceful, the dolls and toys idle, waiting for their duties to begin. Her yellow night-light cast a gentle shadow over all: it was safe there in her child’s world.
Ben had fallen asleep on the couch in the living room. Wendy sipped coffee, a blank look on her round face, her pale eyes almost completely white. I told her about Naomi’s hysteria; we gossiped about the various mothers; I praised her for all her work; reassured her that Naomi wasn’t spoiled. “Indulged,” I said. “If you say no, she accepts it.”
“I never say no,” Wendy mumbled.
“Yes, you do.”
“There’s something I want to ask your permission to do,” Wendy said. Ben groaned on the couch and we both looked at him for a moment. He mouthed something with his small red lips, chewing. He could have been a bum on a park bench that we passed, unconcerned. He used to be an enormous roadblock; since Naomi’s birth, he was shunted off to the side, a bystander holding a video camera. Not to Wendy, presumably. “I’m sure you’ll say yes, but Ben thought I should make sure it’s okay with you. We’ve finally gotten around to writing our wills. It’s incredibly irresponsible that we’ve taken this long—”
“It certainly is!”
“You know me. My uncle’s been hocking me every month for five years and I finally gave in. Anyway, I’ve already had the lawyer—”
“What lawyer did you use?”
“Someone who works for Ben’s firm and did it for free.”
“You get what you pay for, you know. We could have done it for you. I could have gotten Peter Thompson to do it cheap.”
“Well, no big deal. We left everything to each other or to Naomi if we both die, and that’s what I want to ask you. We want to name you and Stefan as her guardians.”
“Of course,” I said casually. I was very pleased. I had never thought about it, and obviously it didn’t surprise me that I would be Wendy’s choice—still, I was moved and nattered.
“You’ve been another mother to her anyway, so I took for granted—”
“Yes!” I said emphatically, and there were tears in my eyes. I felt silly about them.
Wendy cocked her head and smiled, her chin up sympathetically. “Thank you. She loves you very much, you know. I wanted to make sure, just in case some cousin of Ben’s or my uncle got a crazy notion in their head, I wanted to be sure you would take care of her.”
“Okay, okay, stop,” I said, and tears rolled out of my eyes and I laughed and she laughed and there were tears in her eyes and we hugged. It was a simple, pure exchange between good friends, one of those ambushes of happiness that life can sometimes spring when you are in the middle of nowhere.
ALMOST TWO YEARS LATER, ABOUT NINE ONE EVENING, Ben rang the doorbell. He had been careful of us all those years, always phoning before coming over. Little Naomi, naturally, was the one who knocked without warning and I expected it to be her. “Ben.” I greeted him dully, obviously disappointed, blocking the doorway, unable to will myself into a smile.
Ben was dressed in jeans that sagged below his waist, suspended from total collapse by his hips. Impressions made by his knees now puffed out near his shins and the heels dragged, frayed, on the floor. He was barefoot and shirtless. His laurel of hair was darker and sleeker than usual, pressed flat to his skull. There was a towel around his neck. “Sorry for the interruption,” he said. “Wendy sent me over. Naomi came home from school today with a note saying she has lice.”
The word sickened me, a finger touching the back of my throat. Not me, I thought, remembering the endless dirt of my parents’ trailer, the humiliating consciousness of my shabby clothes when the richies drove up to buy lobster—the microscopic, itching discomfort of poverty, too small and too plentiful to get rid of, and still pursuing me.
“Since she was here last night—,” Ben began.
“She didn’t have it then!” I cried out.
“She’s had it for weeks. The nits are halfway down her hairs.” Ben showed me two boxes, the words LICE, EGGS, NITS written in black, nauseating letters. “You and Stefan should both shampoo with this.” He held up one box. “And all your furniture should be sprayed with this.” He showed me the other.
“Ugh.” My hands went to my scalp, abruptly on fire with movement, and scratched. “How did this happen? Don’t you regularly shampoo her head?”
“Hey!” Ben jerked his head, offended. His glasses slid down his nose. “It’s got nothing to do with cleanliness. If one kid at school’s got them, they jump onto anything, a coat, furniture, anything—”
“Did she get it from Yolanda?”
“Jesus, Molly, isn’t that racist? It has nothing to do with money. Being rich doesn’t kill them or stop them. Fucking detergent doesn’t stop them. You have to use this.”
I took the boxes, leaning on the doorway to stabilize my queasiness. INSECTICIDE was written on the side, cautioning the user not to get it in the eyes. I thought, quite seriously, of walking out of the apartment forever, abandoning all my possessions, moving to a hotel, and starting life over tomorrow with a new apartment, new furniture, new clothes. Behind Ben, their door opened. Wendy, her hair also wet and plastered to her skull, peeked out. “It’s a nightmare. I’m sorry. Just remember you love Naomi.”
“I’m going to kill her,” I mumbled.
“Look, it’s a drag, but it can be done,” Ben lectured, belly forward, spilling over his wilting jeans. “We’ve stripped all the beds, sprayed everything. Only took two hours. It’s not like it’s another Black Monday. There’s no point in whining about it.”
“Don’t use that tone with me,” I said, enraged. Ben had gradually become more familiar and belligerent to me, as if I were another Wendy, part of his family.
“Sorry.” He lowered his head, touched me with a hand, and backed away. “You know I love you—I’m tired, that’s all. I felt exactly like you when I heard. But really, they say you do this and they’re gone. I’ll help you do it. Yolanda will wash your things tomorrow—”
“No,” I said, only half-joking. “I’m burning the sheets.”
Wendy smiled. “Ben, take care of Naomi. I’ll help.” She came in, babbling, joking, apologizing. “We send her to a six-thousand-dollar-a-year school and they give her lice.” Wendy and I got to work, doing, in effect, an extermination job. Stefan took the infestation with good humor, suggesting we get ourselves arrested and let the city hose us down for free. Later on, my own hair slicked and stinking from the insecticide in the shampoo, I held a screaming Naomi’s head in my hands while Wendy slowly, painfully, pulled a fine-toothed comb through her hair to pick out the nits. “It’s the collapse of Western civilization,” I said in the smelly wreckage of my living room at around midnight, pil
lows airing by the window, sheets in a pile by the hall, the vacuum cleaner and its many parts still not put away. Stefan had gone to sleep. So had Ben and Naomi, of course. Wendy and I were having brandy, giddy from the horror and the work, girlish together, a reminder of the days when we were single.
We had more than one drink and let two o’clock pass, careless of our work schedules. Wendy was in charge of the Special Education Program for all of Queens and had an early meeting with the chancellor. I was supposed to advise whether a major bank should withdraw from the financing of a telecommunications satellite in light of the minor error that had occurred with the latest launch into Earth’s orbit—namely, somehow the satellite had been lost. “We’re so irresponsible,” I mumbled.
Wendy’s mood had darkened in the last half hour. She had gone from jokes about the lice to complaints about work. Her mouth settled into a gloomy frown and her shoulders slumped. “I don’t care if I never work again,” she said. “I wish Ben would come up with some great idea, make a lot of money, and I could sleep late.”
“Naomi would wake you up anyway.”
“I’m so tired of fighting.” She spoke in a hoarse croak, presumably from the cognac and the late hour.
“Fighting?”
“With Ben. It seems like we do nothing but bicker. Or he screams at me. And I feel sick. Sometimes I wish he would just say ‘I’m leaving you’ and go.”
I waited. To make sure she meant it? To replay the words to be sure I understood? “You think he wants to leave you?”
“He’s not happy. He yells at me about everything.”
“He does? Yells?”
“Throws fits. Temper tantrums.”
“I’ve never seen—”
“Doesn’t do it in front of you. He’s scared of you. You’d punch him in the mouth.” She laughed, straightening a bit, and then slumped into a pathetic pose. “I’m getting a little scared of him.”
The Murderer Next Door Page 6
