The New Neighbor: A Novel

by Leah Stewart

  That was his reason! She was taken aback. She said she understood, but she didn’t. It wasn’t like this happened every day. She was an under-the-radar person, that was who she was, which was one of the reasons why Tommy had happened in her life like a helicopter landing in a field, why even now she couldn’t bring herself to relinquish his attention.

  The next day she went to the client’s house at the agreed-upon time and found him home. He looked so purely astonished to see her that she was unnerved. “But I canceled,” he said.

  She summoned her resolve. “I know,” she said.

  He was eight years younger than she was and seemed younger still, she assumed because he had no children. He was a grant writer at a small science and technology company. Something to do with mechanical arms. He told her a story once about research on monkeys, monkeys controlling the arms directly from their brains. When she pictured this, she saw a row of monkeys concentrating hard on a row of robot arms, wearing on their temples those electrode things you always see on sci-fi television.

  She didn’t ask him many questions about his job. Honestly, she wasn’t that interested. She wasn’t interested in his life before her, in his family grievances or his painful breakups or what was the weirdest sexual thing he’d ever done. She felt a painful embarrassment when he brought up these topics, as if she were thirteen and a parent had just made a dumb joke in public. She liked his body—he was tall and skinny, very different from Tommy, who was all lean slouchy muscles, even now. Sex with him was pleasant and effective. Afterward she was relaxed. It was as if they’d just gone on with their regular appointments, only now he was the therapist. When they couldn’t get together, she felt the sort of disappointed restlessness you endure when your babysitter cancels or a friend texts that she can’t meet you for lunch. She looked forward to seeing him with an anticipation of pleasure, but she never yearned. She never slipped into the backyard with her cell phone because she just had to hear his voice.

  It went on like this for a while—six months or so. She and Tommy weren’t really having sex, because she refused when he was drunk and most nights he was drunk. For all she knew he was still getting it elsewhere. She more or less assumed he was. Why couldn’t she just leave him? She heard the question echo inside her head, but nobody ever replied. Zoe was thirteen, then fourteen, dating her first boyfriend, who was sixteen and already driving. Jennifer saw when she met him that he stood just like Tommy—that slouch, that lowered head, that watchfulness disguised as don’t-care cool. Of course. She could barely stand to say hello to him.

  What happened was that the other man started to act like he loved her. Alluding to their future. Gazing at her moony eyed. Working up to the question of why she didn’t leave Tommy. “You fight with him a lot, don’t you?” “Your daughter’s not a kid anymore, right? Not really.” “You deserve better than that guy.” In retrospect she sees a connection between this behavior and her own. She grew careless. She didn’t always delete his texts, leaving her phone on the kitchen counter. She went to his house without even bothering to take the massage table. She carried condoms in her purse. She agreed to go out to lunch with him, right in her own neighborhood. One afternoon they went to the movies. There was no one in the theater but a couple people way up in the third row. “Let’s sit in the back and make out,” she said, and he, agreeable boy, was willing.

  Even now she can hardly stand to think of it. She had her hand in his pants—in his pants—and her mouth was on his mouth, her eyes were closed and he was breathing hard, his breath catching in a way that told her he was close and she was wondering if she had any tissues in her purse, and she heard, “Mom?”

  Zoe and her boyfriend had ditched school. “Well,” Zoe said, “I guess I’m not getting in trouble.” Later, when Tommy came home, not even six and already with a buzz on, and Zoe banged her bedroom door open and said, “Mom’s having an affair”—was Jennifer wrong to think that Zoe’s primary emotion was triumph?

  But she hadn’t won, poor kid. Not even that story—not even that—could alienate Tommy. He’d cried, in a desperate choking way that made Zoe say, “Daddy, please, I’m sorry, Daddy.” Over and over he said, “This is all my fault.” Limp and wrung out, Jennifer sat in a chair and watched all this, until Tommy dropped to the floor in front of her and, looking up at her with those eyes and those unabashed tears, said, “I’m so sorry, babe,” and then it was her turn to cry. That was Tommy. He literally fell at her feet.

  She doesn’t want to think about what it was to give in to Tommy. To stop resisting. Resisting was so hard. Their love was a cobweb and when she fought it she just wound herself tighter. If she stopped fighting—the pleasures of being held that tight! If she thinks about it she misses it, and then she grows angry at herself.

  It was after that they conceived Milo, and then things were lovely for a while. Not, of course, with Zoe. What was it Zoe held against her most—the image of her mother with her hand inside a strange man’s jeans? The sight of her father crying? Jennifer thinks it was the fact that Tommy forgave her, which, like all things, must have been Jennifer’s fault.

  Later, her ex-lover told the cops she’d once said she wanted Tommy to die, though that wasn’t exactly what she’d said. He’d asked, again, why she didn’t leave Tommy, and she’d tried to explain what she couldn’t explain—she fell in love with Tommy so young, she’d surrendered herself to him.“You can rebel, can’t you?” he said, and his voice was sharp and loud with frustration. “You can leave.”

  “You’ve surrendered yourself,” she said. “You can’t leave because you’d leave yourself behind, and that’s impossible. All I can do is wait for him to die.”

  If she’d known what was coming, she’d never have said such a thing. At the time she wasn’t picturing the man in the interview room at the police station, offering his damning paraphrase. She was lying in his bed next to him, with his naked leg pressed against hers, and he’d wanted an explanation, as people always do, and against her better judgment, she’d tried to give him one, and had learned once again that she should have chosen silence. People don’t understand. This is something she needs to remember in the face of Megan’s sympathetic gaze, in the face of her own bifurcated impulse, so very much like Margaret’s: conceal, reveal; reveal, conceal. People don’t ever understand. No one will love us if they know the worst and yet if they don’t know the worst we can’t trust their love. Her whole life the only person who’s ever really known her is Tommy. She wishes she hadn’t told Megan his name. She likes the way Megan’s looking at her now, the charmed affection, the confident assumption of intimacy. Open as a rose, Margaret said. Shining in the light.

  Jennifer’s been silent too long, because Megan prompts her. “Where’d you go?” Megan says. “Are you thinking about your client? Margaret?”

  Jennifer nods. She pictures Margaret, alone in the lonely woods. Banished, or in hiding. Under an enchantment, maybe of her own design. Her house is so quiet, quieter even than Jennifer’s. The grandfather clock, though it makes a noise, somehow amplifies the silence. In the guest room, two high, ornate twin beds have the grand severity of thrones. The king and queen will see you now. The dresser is squat and unfriendly. The antique mirror watches with haughty disdain. Maybe it’s the silence that brings these things to life. Margaret is the Beast in the castle, before Beauty came along. Or maybe after she was gone.

  “I am curious about her,” Jennifer says. “About what happened to her. But I don’t know if I really want to know.”

  Ticktock

  I cannot get the world’s attention. That is what it means to be old. I shout but no one can hear me. I am of no consequence. People imagine I don’t know that, talking to me with their voices that pat pat pat me on the head. Feigned interest, faux concern. As if this fools me. As if you fool me, world. I know you don’t give a shit.

  Jennifer has touched my naked skin, seen the inside of my house, rummaged in my medicine cabinet for all I know. She caught me on tape. S
he wrote me down. No detective could have infiltrated better. I have been investigated. She got me to talk.

  And what do I know about her in return? Nothing. Nothing! Except that there is something to know. Of that I’m certain. There is something to know. But all my stratagems for solving her mystery have ended only in exposing my own.

  Oh, I would like to see the inside of her house, though I’m not sure what I think it would tell me. Perhaps I’m imagining Bluebeard’s castle or the house in Psycho, with its taxidermied animals auguring no good. But I know from my many detective novels that a person in possession of a secret is as likely as anyone to own a television, a coffee table, a couch.

  Still—and perhaps I read too many of those novels and should, at this late date, give them up for something more sensible and edifying—still, I keep imagining myself as a detective, and what does a detective want but to be admitted into the house of the suspect? Think of all the little old ladies of mystery land—Miss Marple, and the one played by Angela Lansbury on TV. We look sweet and doddering, but we are wily and clever, and everything you assume about us we use to our advantage. If she would just invite me over. We’ll have a nice chat and then she’ll excuse herself for one reason or another and I’ll notice something—a glint of metal or a corner of a letter peeking out from under the bookcase—and I’ll go investigate. I’ll be drawn into some dark room where there may be clues. But she’ll catch me. She’ll come in and I won’t know it, so engrossed in my clues, and she’ll say, “What are you doing?” or “Lose your way?” in the eerily calm voice of the possible murderer. I’ll stammer out some excuse—oh my! Just an old lady! Confused! I’m too old to flee so I’ll have to rely on my wits to escape her.

  I have been exposed. And still she doesn’t see me. She doesn’t even recognize me.

  I ran into her at the Piggly Wiggly first thing this morning, Jennifer and her little boy, let loose in the aisles though he’s a hazard. It terrifies me to watch him run. He contains infinite possible collisions. I picture him in my house and shudder—everything there is fragile, including me. He was begging his mother for this and that. I watched for a moment without her noticing: he wanted cookies and where she should have said an outright no she was negotiating. Him the world cares about. His needs, his wants, his feelings.

  She looked up at last and saw me, but she didn’t really see me. She gave me a polite vague smile. There I was a few feet from her, a woman whose naked skin she has touched with her hands, and she didn’t recognize me.

  Jennifer, I think about you every day.

  She was saying my name. She was saying, “I didn’t recognize you for a second. Out of context.” She was pushing her cart closer to mine, telling the little boy over her shoulder to put down the cookies and come on. She said something about having forgotten she was supposed to take snacks to his school. I wasn’t really listening. I was still in the moment when she looked at me and had no idea who I was. What more do I need, to convince me how little I matter?

  The rest of the morning I was teary eyed, the world filmy, the pages of my book hard to see. I sit in my armchair and reread Agatha Christie. Behind me the clock ticktocks. It’s a grandfather clock that belonged to my parents, ponderous and loud. Its low and solemn voice counts each hour that passes; how else would I know to mark them off?

  After a while I called Lucy. Lucy is a doctor, which gives us plenty to talk about. She’s in general practice. She could’ve gone into a luxury-car specialty, but she was already married by then, and knew she wanted a family, and so that is what she chose. Her husband is a decent man, I guess. He does something with computers. I don’t know what exactly, but truthfully I don’t really care. He matters to me chiefly as he advances or impedes my access to her.

  “What if I buy you a ticket?” I said to Lucy when she answered the phone. “Will you come see me then?”

  There was a slight pause. “That’s sweet of you,” she said. She sounded a little stiff, and it occurs to me now that perhaps I offended her, assuming her hesitation was financial.

  “I’ll spring for first class,” I said, and she laughed.

  “It’s not really an issue of money,” she said. “It’s an issue of time.”

  “You could come for a weekend.”

  “I could. But the kids are in all kinds of activities now, so leaving Austin alone with them really complicates his life, and you know I often have to round on Saturdays, so being away takes some planning.”

  “Maybe you’d just rather not come,” I said. “Your life is very important.” This time I knew I’d offended her. Even if I hadn’t heard it in the silence, or the careful control in her voice when she spoke again, I knew because I’d done it on purpose.

  “That’s not the case,” she said.

  “Those children won’t thank you for dancing attendance on them, you know,” I said. “Applauding everything they do. What are you teaching them?”

  “Margaret,” she said, and then she seemed at a loss.

  “Life is not soccer games and trophies,” I said. “Life is an uphill battle against idiocy and despair.”

  “Margaret,” she said. “I will look at my schedule and get back to you.”

  “I won’t be around much longer,” I said to her. “There are whispers. Don’t talk to me about time.”

  She said I’d hear from her soon, but who knows. She hung up unhappy with me, I know it, and that wasn’t my original intent, though it seemed to become my intent over the course of the call. I should call back and apologize but I haven’t, and I won’t.

  My parents taught me that the world is unfair. These parents now, including my Lucy—what they try to teach is the opposite. We like to share, etc. A lifetime of disappointment awaits their children. My parents used to whip us with switches when we were bad, switches we’d have to select ourselves from the yard. Across the street was a boy named Jimmy. He and I were always getting in scuffles. My mother told me that if a fight kicked up between us, I needed to come straight home. The next time it happened I tried to obey her, but his father held my arm asking what had happened, what we were fighting about, insistent even though I kept saying, “I need to go home, I need to go home.” It was a weekend and both my parents were there. Though my father was not the daily disciplinarian, not the maker of rules, if he was home you could be sure he would go to great lengths to enforce my mother’s.

  When the man finally released me, I went home to find both my parents in the parlor. Not all the details are clear in my memory—how did they know I’d been fighting with Jimmy? Somehow they knew. My mother said, “I told you to come straight home,” and my father said, “Why didn’t you do what your mother told you?” I explained, but my father said I needed a whipping anyway. He said if they whipped me, then Jimmy’s parents would feel compelled to whip him. I saw my mother’s hesitation, but my father ruled our house, and she took me in the bathroom and hit my bare legs with a switch. At first I refused to cry, but then I thought that I’d better go ahead so she’d stop, so I did and she did.

  My father wanted his victory. He cared about that more than he cared about causing his own child unjustifiable pain. My mother, my lovely mother—she knew he was wrong but whipped me anyway.

  Tell that story to your children. That, my dears, is the world.

  Please Don’t Tell

  Jennifer is trying to remember all the names. Erica, Juliana, Leigh Anne. Jodi, Nicole, Susan. These are the people at Megan’s party, what Megan called her “girls’ night in”; she says hello to them one by one. Megan’s friend Amanda—appointed Jennifer’s guide while Megan tends to hors d’oeuvres in the kitchen—dutifully introduces her. Samantha. Shivika. Terry, who hugs her. “I’m a hugger,” Terry says in her ear.

  “Okay,” Jennifer says, startled, patting the other woman’s back.

  “You should have told her that before you hugged her, Terry,” Amanda says.

  “That’s true.” Terry pulls back and gives her a look of playful apology. “I shou
ld warn, then hug.”

  “But you’d lose the element of surprise,” Jennifer says. The other women laugh. They laugh! Jennifer made a joke. Is it possible she might enjoy this party, which she’s been dreading for days and days?

  Tommy always liked a party.

  “Leigh Anne!” Amanda calls, waving the woman over. Amanda wants the scoop from Leigh Anne about the meeting of some committee, and Terry asks things like, “What did Karen say?” and from this Jennifer deduces that the three of them must be colleagues. Professors, she assumes. Terry turns to her at one point and says, “Sorry, this is so boring.” But Leigh Anne is saying, “And I promise you, you will not believe what he said next . . . ,” and Terry can’t resist diving back in. Jennifer doesn’t blame her. They all care very much about whatever they’re discussing. They’re all completely absorbed.

  Jennifer stands on the other side of the looking glass, where she always ends up, where she’s always been, and what she’d really like to know is, is she cursed or did she do it to herself, and is there a difference? Either way, she believes she understands something these women do not. The ordinary is a mask worn by the awful. What we accept as normal is a play in which we’ve all agreed to take part. They don’t know it’s a play, or they willfully forget. She can’t forget. She just keeps watching, bemused by their commitment to the performance, forgetting to say her lines. Why can’t she change this about herself, as easily as she changed her name? Stack the past away like boxes in the attic. Be one of these women, remake herself in their image—be cheerfully annoyed with the preschool teachers, discuss the last book she read. Lighten up.

  “There you are!” Megan cries, appearing before her wearing a pinkish glow. She pulls Jennifer a little farther from the other women. Her smile is larger than usual, her gestures more expansive, and from this Jennifer deduces that she is drunk. That she is a happy drunk. That before too long she’ll be saying things to Jennifer like, “You know what I like about you?” On her face that drunken-epiphany expression, stupid and profound.