The Murderer Next Door

by Rafael Yglesias

  Years and years ago, before anything that I have written about so far, a bluebird flew into my first-grade class. Unable to find its way back outside, our schoolroom became its prison; and we also became inmates of the bird’s noisy terror. Her wings—the science teacher told us later it was a “girl bird”—slapped sickeningly against the blackboard, the glass door to the hall, the green wall map, the yellowing window shade. I seemed to hear the bird’s wild panic as a human plea; and though I ran from her unpredictable swooping flights, what really scared me was her situation, her inability to find the one exit, so cruelly obvious to us, and finally, fatally—when she dashed her tiny skull on the handle of a metal filing cabinet—hidden from her.

  I remembered this incident, not as a fanciful metaphor for my situation, but as an analogy so literal as to be a prophesy, an omen. There was no exit. I whacked into Stefan, Stoppard, Harriet, Ben, my heart, my head, my past—with no result but bruises. Perhaps the next obstacle would be that metal filing cabinet.

  I decided to calm down. To settle somewhere and get my bearings.

  I gave Ben the fifty thousand dollars and told him to pass along any bills he couldn’t handle. For two weeks I came and went from our apartment without explanation to Stefan, who, wary of me, asked for none. I went to the office, worked through lunch (billable hours were now important in a way they had never been), got Naomi from school, brought her home to a sullen, rather beery Ben, chatted idly like a housewife while I made dinner, supervised homework, hygiene, and faced the thorny problem of Naomi’s social life, in particular her upcoming birthday.

  Feeling a bit foolish I bought a paperback on good parental manners and discovered that the rule of thumb is: invite as many children as the number of the birthday. Wendy must have ignored this convention—Naomi was going to be seven and there had been more than six children at her previous celebration.

  I raised this question with Ben one night after reading Naomi her bedtime story. She still liked to be read to even though of course she was one of the best readers in her class. I left her finishing the chapter on her own, came out of her room, and found Ben in the kitchen, loading the dishwasher. “Birthday party? Hadn’t thought about it,” he said. His big head glowed under a harsh neon light shed by an ugly kitchen fixture—periodically Wendy had wished she had the money and time to replace it. In the glare his thick skin seemed smoother and darker. Squinting, I fancied I detected a hint of makeup. He watched my eyes study him. He was ashamed by my observation so I must have been correct. Head down, he slunk away in a slow shuffle, like a scolded dog.

  Why didn’t Ben tell Wendy about dressing up earlier? I wondered. And why did she insist he surrender the Battery Park apartment with its secret wardrobe? What difference does it make if he wants to put on pancake and blush and lipstick and eyeliner? I argued to myself.

  I did think him a fool, relinquishing the ease of being a man. After all, because he was a man it didn’t matter that he was unattractive, didn’t affect his life the way it had…But Ben didn’t want the oppression of womanhood—only its clothes.

  My sole context for dressing up was from when I was a little girl and liked to pretend to be Mommy. Pretending to be my benefactor Naomi was even more fun—naturally, her wardrobe outstripped my mother’s. Was parental identification Ben’s problem? Did he wish he was his mother instead of his father?

  “What were your parents like, Ben?” I settled down in the living room with coffee. We might be husband and wife, sharing intimacies after a long day of work and child care. He had come from the bathroom where he had apparently washed his face—his eyebrows were damp.

  “They were pretty typical.” He announced a new subject by clearing his throat: “I don’t think we can have a birthday party.”

  “We have to!” I was amazed he could consider doing otherwise.

  “We have to celebrate it,” he mumbled. “But those—” He was about to curse them; instead, he pursed his lips and continued, “so-called mothers won’t let her friends come.”

  “Sure they will.”

  “They look right past me. Like I don’t exist.”

  “I’ll make the calls, Ben. We’ll do something small in a public place—”

  “Like what?”

  “The circus?” I suggested. He frowned. “Ice-skating?”

  “Ice-skating,” Ben decided.

  “I’ll handle it.”

  Ben huddled into a corner of the couch, eyes glowering resentfully at the thought of all those parents staring through him. I tried to outrage myself: he killed Wendy, he hit her over and over, crushed her skull. But I couldn’t infuriate myself and he wasn’t scary. He was a confused, small-minded, unhappy man and I didn’t fear him. Ben nodded. “Thanks, Molly. It’ll be great for Nommy. You’re really a big help.”

  Yes, I was. For once what I was doing was useful. I was actually helping.

  Naomi came into the living room, wearing a long pretty nightgown. It was a gift from me and Stefan, very feminine, powder blue with a lacy collar. Naomi’s huge eyes were a brighter, more brilliant blue than the fabric, but it still made a good match. She stood in bare feet, regarding us wistfully. She held a mass of her thick brown hair in one hand, pulled forward over her left shoulder. She was beautiful.

  “What is it, honey?” Ben asked.

  Very softly she said, “Good night,” her tone a tragic farewell.

  “Want me to tuck you in?” I offered.

  She shut her eyes, pained. Slowly, she raised her right hand and pointed to Ben. “Daddy.” She spoke her choice in an ominous tone.

  Ben moved to her side, offering his hand. Instead, she took his whole arm, clutched it against her chest, and walked with her prize, pulling the rest of Ben in tow.

  “Where would I find the phone numbers?” I called to him.

  “In that book.” He nodded at a desk-size address book beside the phone.

  He was gone—and I heard him reading to her again in a moment—before I remembered that I didn’t know the last names of most of her classmates. Besides, I had to ask Naomi whom she wanted at the party. I opened the book anyway.

  A mimeographed sheet slid out, a class list of home addresses and phone numbers. I was fascinated by it, noting that only three women used their own names, that half had no office phone numbers. Two of the men had no business numbers either. One of them—Tony Winters—I knew to be a successful playwright. I studied all the addresses and determined which were lofts, which were brownstones, which were prewar apartments, which were white brick plasterboard boxes. I imagined their marriages, their decorations, their attitudes toward Ben.

  I couldn’t dream up the person who would be sympathetic to his situation.

  After a while, I could no longer hear Ben reading to Naomi. I looked for him in the hallway to the bedrooms. The routine was that after Naomi was in bed for good, he lodged a few complaints about his lawyer and kicked me out. I waited at the hallway entrance for several minutes. When there was still no sign of him, I returned to the living room and copied down the class list.

  Half an hour passed and still Ben didn’t emerge. I whistled and paced and called, softly, into the hallway, “Ben?” No response.

  When an hour went by and there was still no sign of him, I got scared. For the first time since becoming the household nanny I feared him.

  I pictured Ben, teeth bared, hiding in the dark of his bedroom, armed with a bat, waiting for me to walk in out of curiosity…and then striking.

  I pictured him, grotesque, squeezed into an evening gown, wearing a huge stiff wig, face painted, masturbating into panties, ready to murder the poor soul—in this case, me, stupid yellow-haired lobster girl Molly Gray—who naively interrupts.…

  I pictured him, one heavy hand silencing little Naomi’s mouth, the other roughly spreading her legs, eyes red with rage as I appeared at her door, his dragon’s mouth opening to breathe fire.…

  Stefan was right. Brian was right. To be with Ben was madness.


  I got up to flee. Only I was stopped when my mind bounded through the familiar cars of that old train of thought until I reached the logic of its engine: If Ben is too horrible for me to deal with, then how can I justify abandoning Naomi to his mercy?

  And what the hell was he doing in her silent and dark room for so long?

  I reminded myself that the point of everything I had done was to protect Naomi. Terrified, I walked down the hall, stamping my heels, clattering a warning of my approach.

  Peel off that dress, Ben.

  I found father and daughter asleep in each other’s arms. Ben, huge and hairy everywhere except on top of his head, lay spread-eagle on her bed. She was huddled against his side, head pillowed in the crook of his arm, hair flowing over his thick chest.

  I put her completed math sheet—it had slipped off her desk onto the floor—into her backpack, zipping it shut noisily. I hoped that would wake him.

  Ben stirred, brought his legs together, and draped an arm over Naomi’s slender body. In that position, she seemed hardly longer than his arm.

  I tapped him on the hand to rouse him, to get him up and out, talking again, to learn something of his parents, maybe his first marriage.

  I had to understand something else about him other than that he was evil.

  Ben’s eyes, large and vulnerable without his glasses, opened and regarded me with calm interest.

  “You fell asleep,” I told him.

  “Good night Molly,” he answered in a sweet whisper, a lover’s tone. “Could you lock up on your way out?” His heavy lids shut like a mechanical doll’s.

  It was frightening to do, but I managed to will myself into shaking him again.

  “What!” Although he spoke in a whisper, he sounded furious.

  “Sleep in your own bed,” I told him. I thought my heart would burst from terror, but once I had announced myself, I felt brave.

  Ben’s eyebrows merged across the bridge of his nose. “Mind your own—”

  “Ugh!” Naomi shifted violently. She must have kicked Ben because he groaned and fell partway out of bed. He caught himself from a complete spill with an outstretched hand. Slowly—comically—he descended the rest of the way and was dumped onto the floor. Apparently Naomi was unconscious, but I doubted that—I sensed she was trying to help me, interrupting Ben from unselfconsciously displaying his anger.

  I took his hot thick hand and pulled very gently, coaxing him to rise. He moaned and sat up. He stared at me for a moment, then rubbed his pale face vigorously. When he uncovered, red streaks showed where his fingers had been. They made prison bars; he peered through them, furious. “All right, I’ll get up!”

  I went ahead of him, waiting in the foyer to make sure he came out. He did, eyes closed, head lowered, feet shuffling. En route to the kitchen, he passed me, saying, “She’s just going to climb into my bed in the middle of the night.”

  “You shouldn’t allow that,” I said to his retreating sluggish form. “She’s too old to be in your bed.”

  “How the fuck do you know?” he mumbled, and disappeared into the kitchen. “Good night!” he called loudly once out of view. “Thanks for everything!”

  I waited to insist on my point.

  Again, his absence nurtured fear in my imagination.

  I pictured him armed with the scariest of the large Sabatier knives from the cutlery—gunmetal gray, handle thick and black, blade as wide as my hand. He smiled and cut a few practice strokes in the air, ready to slice me up if I was still in the apartment when he exited from the kitchen.

  Instead there was the air burst of a beer being opened and the clatter of its top rattling on the counter. He shuffled out, bottle upended and draining into his mouth. His eyes widened at the sight of me. “You’re still here?” he said after disengaging from the Heineken.

  “You shouldn’t allow her to sleep with you. I read in one of the books—”

  “Her mother’s dead!” Ben’s face was a caricature of disgust. “She comes crying into my bed at three in the morning—‘I miss Mommy. I’m scared.’” He imitated her high little girl’s voice extremely well. “I’m supposed to open Dr. Spock and quote her a passage? Come on. Give me a break.”

  “Sit with her until she falls back to sleep.”

  Ben groaned. He put the cool green bottle up to his broad forehead, shutting his eyes at the sensation of its touch. “Go home,” he mumbled.

  “It doesn’t look good—”

  “Get the fuck out of here!” Yanking the drink away from his forehead, he sloshed some on the floor. “I took your money, thank you very much, but I don’t want your goddamn advice! You don’t have any children—what the fuck do you know about it?”

  He stung me with this harsh language. I thought I had won a little of his trust over the past few weeks. “Don’t talk to me that way!”

  “I’ll talk to you however the fuck I want to talk to you. If you don’t like it, then get out of here! I could care less whether people like the way I talk!” He snorted at me. “I’m beyond all that crap now, don’t you think?”

  I had to agree with him. He was beyond a lot of things. Was I? How could I deal with him effectively if I tried to hang on to the old manners, the old values? I put my hand on the glass doorknob (not the originals; Wendy had found these on the Lower East Side), turned it, about to retreat, and decided civilized talk, subtle manipulation, was worthless. “Ben,” I said to his angry face, fixed on me, jutting forward in a dare. “I’m the only ally you’ve got. You know why you have me?”

  “You think I’m innocent, right?” The sarcasm was hardly played—underscored softly and quickly, easily missed.

  “If you touch her I’ll destroy you.”

  His lips buzzed as he exhaled a grunt and a laugh simultaneously. “Don’t threaten me,” he said wearily.

  “I mean it.”

  “You’re like everybody else in this fucking city. You’re so unbelievably arrogant. You think you know everything, you think you know what’s good for everybody. Go fuck yourself. You think you’re my ally? You’re not. You’re helping her. Cause I love her, I’m grateful. For the rest of it, I don’t give a shit. From now on, when dinner’s done, I want you to get out.”

  “I refuse to let—”

  “Come on!” Ben put the beer on the floor and made for me.

  I put up my hands to block his blows. My heart pounded. At last it had come: he was going to attack.

  Ben took my wrist with one hand, the doorknob with the other, opened the door, and flung me out. I stumbled into the hallway. He shouted, “Get out!” and slammed the door on me.

  The noise reverberated throughout the whole building, carried and amplified by the stairwell. I felt ashamed. Crazily, I thought he was right, that I had something to apologize for. Exactly what I didn’t know. Probably for my fraudulence. He was honest, while I played at being a mother, pretending to saintliness. Ben at least was real.

  That night I took out a foam mattress left over from my single days and made up a bed in the gym room. Stefan watched me, silently. He went away as soon as I was done.

  Later, I lay awake among the skeletal shadows of the Nautilus equipment and replayed my fight with Ben. My anger glowed in the dark. I didn’t give a thought to Stefan, alone in our big bed. Whatever the future held for me, at least I knew that was one lie I would no longer live.

  FOR THE REMAINDER OF THAT WEEK BEN REFUSED TO talk to me. I was allowed (that’s how it felt, a scolded child briefly permitted certain privileges) to continue my caretaking of Naomi. But once she was in bed, Ben’s face settled into immobile sternness—angry stone. He simply wouldn’t respond to anything. I humiliated myself the first night of this silent treatment: cajoling, teasing, entreating, pleading.…Ben stared as if I were a broken television set whose warranty had elapsed the day before. After that ghastly evening I gave up trying to break his sadistic withdrawal. I returned meekly to my apartment, shivering from his hatred.

  During the three days of Ben the
Mute, I arranged to rent an ice-skating rink for Naomi’s birthday. I told her we would keep the party small; Naomi bluntly said no. “I can’t only ask my seven best friends,” she told me. She hooked my arm with her hands and pulled down for emphasis. “Everyone would hate me.”

  “It’s not that you want twenty-eight gifts instead of seven?”

  “Okay. Forget it. I don’t want a party.” We were on the daily walk to school. She stopped using my forearm as a chin-up bar and skipped ahead to the corner. When I caught up she averted her eyes; her face was flushed. She exaggerated her petulance so that it was almost as laughable as it was effective.

  “That’s ridiculous,” I told her. “Of course you’ll have a party. If we invite your closest friends, you can spend more time with each—”

  “I have more than seven friends!” she whined. “It’s not a party if it’s only seven people!” Like Wendy, she wanted the world; she enjoyed everyone.

  Friday night Ben pulled another disappearing act with Naomi. No warning. Nothing about where they were going. This time he did it to punish me.

  Saturday morning Stefan appeared in the gym and woke me. I had been up most of the night, anguished, unable to fight off terrible thoughts about Naomi’s fate. Having finally succeeded in falling asleep, I was unhappy that Stefan didn’t let me be. In general I wanted him to give up, to let go.

  Stefan tapped me on the shoulder to rouse me. He had brought a cup of coffee. I sipped; he watched. When I was half-done, he said, indicating the mattress with his eyes: “Is this permanent?”

  I shrugged.

  “What does it mean?”

  “I want a divorce,” I said.

  He shook his head no. He stood up. “Not now,” he said, and left the room. I didn’t pursue him. Things have to be ground slowly and thoroughly for Stefan: reduced to an easily swallowed size.

  That miserable Saturday morning, in Naomi’s absence, I gave in to her wish and mailed invitations to her entire class. This isn’t the year to teach her self-denial, I reasoned, if you can call what my brain was doing under those conditions reasoning.

  Afterward I made myself lunch, but couldn’t eat it. I urged myself out to a movie or a museum, but I didn’t want to leave the phone, in case there was some word from them or—worse—about them. (Remember: I wasn’t sure they would return. For that matter, each morning when I crossed the hall to fetch her for our three-block walk to her school, I wasn’t sure they would answer the bell. As soon as they were out of my sight, uncertainty and fear were my companions.)