Thy Neighbor

by Norah Vincent

  Click.

  Door opening. She must have been in the downstairs bathroom. Nothing else is that close except the front door, and she was obviously still in the house. The brush of fabric again. The recorder is in her jacket pocket, maybe, a loose linen thing with room. Must be. The fabric brushes slowly as she moves. Back and forth with her hips. Standing, walking, sliding past.

  Robin: “Let’s go.”

  Mom: “We don’t have to do this. Not ever.”

  Robin: “I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Darling, I’m so sorry you’ve had to hear—you must disregard—people say things—this is about us. This is a very old argument.”

  “And this is my life. I won’t ever forget any of this. Ever.”

  Nothing from Mom.

  More shushing.

  Robin: “I’m going back in.”

  Mom: “But what for?”

  “To try to understand.”

  “But you can’t. I can’t.”

  “I have to try.”

  Shushing and rustling, in the background my mother’s low block heels on the floor crossing the foyer, echoing flatly.

  Shushing. A gasp.

  Dad, stage-whispering sharply: “Forgive me.”

  Footfalls stopping.

  Mom, booming: “Jesus, Jimmy. What are you doing? Have you utterly lost your mind?”

  Nothing from Dad.

  Robin, her composure lost, crying again.

  Mom, tremblingly: “Jimmy. Let’s just—”

  Dad, firmly: “No. You were right. It’s done. There is no going back.”

  Mom: “Not this way. Not with the chil—”

  “Yes. This way. With. We always said this, Di. With. This was always the choice. The choice, not the resignation, remember?”

  “Not like this, Jimmy. Not like this. The child. Think of the child.”

  “Yes. We knew it would come. We knew it would come when we didn’t want it, and we always said we would choose it then, when it was hardest. That was how we would know, you said—when it was hardest—and we would make no excuses, because there would always be excuses to be made, always last appeals that would seem so sweet in the terror of finishing. But resist, you said. And I agreed. Resist the temptation to run when the temptation is strongest.”

  “I was wrong.”

  “The gun within reach, you said. Live life to the fullest with a loaded gun within reach. Do you remember how often we said that? How many times we clinked glasses over those words and laughed and shouted that our life was recklessly complete because the way out was right there, lying on the table, and we chose not to take it. Until we did. Well, we are there now, my wife. We are at the point of picking up the weapon that has always been in full view. We put this here for that.”

  “We were kids, Jimmy. Stupid, arrogant kids full of high ideas we didn’t understand. We were drunk. We were alone in the world.”

  “We weren’t kids when we put this here.”

  “We didn’t put it there. How long have you had that?”

  “Oh, Di. Don’t back away now. You have always been my courage.”

  “Jimmy, stop this. Now. Stop it.”

  “I will stop it. It will all . . . just . . . stop.”

  “Jimmy, listen to me. Listen, will you? Just take a few minutes and let me tell you—”

  “Tell me what? What can you possibly tell me now? That’s an escape. We have to take what we have chosen.”

  “We will. All right? We will. But let me tell you—”

  “What?”

  “About—”

  Dad screaming: “About what?”

  Mom, chillingly calm: “About Robin.”

  Long pause. She has hit the mark.

  Mom, slowly: “I want to tell you about Robin. And I want you to tell me about her, too. And I will listen. And she will listen. Here. Right here. Between us there is everything to say.”

  The pause then was so long I could hardly bear it. I thought several times of turning off the tape. Turning it off and burning it so I would never be tempted to listen to this again. What you hear once now, said the voice in my head, you will hear for the rest of your life. And I knew that it was true. Pieces of this would be with me forever, thrown language splattering the walls of my mind indelibly. But I could not stop. I would not. I had heard too much already. And too little.

  Finally, Robin’s tiny frightened voice broke the silence, and when I heard what it said and remembered that I had seen those same words on a computer screen just days before, it was like the last heavy bolt of a combination lock sliding out of grasp and the strongbox opening.

  “Talk to me,” she said.

  And then more softly, “Please?”

  All we want is an explanation. Some way to understand. Still and always that. After we have pulled the trigger, somehow, or let it be pulled for us, maybe a little on our behalf, after we have witnessed something unspeakable, we want to understand what we have seen and known, because seeing and knowing are never enough when the shock is so strong. It cannot penetrate, and it cannot dissipate, either. It does not even seem real. It is only pain—illiterate, dumb pain that we are desperate to disintegrate with words.

  Mom, terrified, trying to be strong: “Robin, sweetheart. Look at me.”

  A pause.

  “Please, darling. Look at me.”

  A longer pause and the slightest break in my mother’s voice as she begins:

  “You have been my precious gift. Always . . . Talking with you has been like talking to a better vision of myself . . . like seeing and walking beside and sharing perfect language with someone I would have hoped to be . . . I have never been your teacher. You have been mine—my example, and my admired friend. Yours is the most expansive and supple, quick and capacious mind I have ever known. Feed it. Promise me, darling. Feed it every day and cherish it. It belongs to you, and nothing—not I . . . not Jimmy, nothing bad that has ever happened or will happen to you—can ever take that away. It is all just more experience . . . Nothing is either bad or good. Remember?”

  Robin, mechanically: “But thinking makes it so.”

  Mom: “Yes, darling. Yes. That’s it. Keep that. Keep it close always and it will comfort you and free you from all of this. I promise.”

  Robin, crying: “But I don’t want you to go.”

  “I know, darling. I know. But this is your freedom.”

  Robin, crying harder: “I don’t understand.”

  “I know. But you will. You will. And you will thrive in the only possession you will ever need. Your home is in your mind, your gorgeous mind. You will need nothing else. Anything else would be a hindrance. We—we are in your way, just as everyone else will be in your way . . . Every weak loser clawing for a piece of you . . . every adoring lover and friend and teacher and pupil . . . all of your inferiors . . . You must shut out all of them—shut it all out with sentimentality. It has no place in you.”

  Dad, gruffly: “That’s enough, Di. You’ve said enough.”

  Mom: “Then let her go, Jimmy.”

  Dad: “I will. I am.”

  Mom: “No. Let her go now, and you and I will finish this alone. That is how we said it would be.”

  A long pause.

  Dad, barely audible: “Okay.”

  Mom, confirming: “Okay?”

  “Yes, okay.”

  “No good-byes, Jimmy.”

  Dad, sobbing: “I’m sorry. God, I’m so, so very sorry, dear girl.”

  Robin sobbing.

  Dad, plaintively: “I only wanted to be near you, to believe that you could—”

  Mom: “Jimmy, stop. Leave her be now.”

  Dad: “Okay, okay. I
’m sorry.”

  Mom: “Shhhhh.”

  Dad and Robin whimpering.

  Then Mom again, so tenderly: “Time to go now, my love.”

  Robin: “I can’t. I’m afraid.”

  Mom: “I know, my lovely girl. I know you’re frightened, but don’t be. You can do this. Do this for me. Go on with words . . . Go on with everything we started . . . You can.”

  More whimpering, shushing, her small body moving. The tape in her pocket, circling.

  Robin, muffled: “Good-bye.”

  Mom, very close, kissing, an embrace: “Good-bye, darling.”

  Robin: “I love you.”

  A rustling separation, then Robin again, aside: “I don’t . . . forgive you.”

  A pause. Nothing from Mom or Dad.

  Shuffling, slow, light footsteps in the hall, the heavy, sucking front door opening, swish, closing, pause, tat. Closed.

  Rhythmic walking, pocket fabric, breathing, soft shoes, and outside air.

  Panic, moaning, deep croaking, throat-drying cry.

  Fingers coursing, searching, finding, pressing.

  Click.

  * * *

  I am startled by the click, still fogged in their good-byes, still listening. It cannot be over. It cannot. It will go on again. It will, I think, I plead. It must. Please, go on. Please.

  I try her words.

  Talk to me.

  But it does not.

  I feel abandoned. Absurdly, childishly, and—again, exactly as before in this house—impotently enraged. I think there must be, there has to be more. Not moving, I listen to the rest of the tape. I listen until it clicks, physically clicks itself off.

  Nothing. There is nothing more.

  Just a flood of my own questions trying to grab hold.

  How much longer did it go on? How long did they wait? Did they watch her walk down the sidewalk and the drive and into her grandparents’ house, just to make sure she was gone? And did she, lying in bed in the room above the garage where the nightlight goes on, did she stop her ears and wait? Or did she listen for the first shot, expecting it, knowing it would come, yet startled still when it did?

  Or is that when she left, and why? That night, right from this room, left at their behest, and kept on going? Running as far as she could go, running so as not to hear the shots she knew were coming, not to see the bodies carried out under covers, not to hear the cries and see the gaping faces of her neighbors looking on in horror at what she—or so she thought—had done.

  What had she done?

  This morning, did she run across the street not for Iris, but to Gruber, hoping for the bullet, the bullet that she thought she deserved? It’s what I did, she said. What I did. And what was it that she did? Telling? Was that the beginning of their deaths to her? Deaths, she thought, that should have been three and not two? Why? Because she told? Because she said something?

  The loop of time coming back to the same place. Mrs. B. had said it. Running and running away until you are running back again and into the bullet. At last into the bullet that has been here all the time, waiting for you.

  That is the worst of superstition.

  The loop of time. The loop of tape.

  For me?

  Stop it.

  Stop this now.

  And don’t listen. Don’t think. Anymore.

  Burn it.

  This has not been deserved.

  There is no significance for you.

  In suffering.

  I popped the tape out of the machine.

  Don’t think.

  Don’t think.

  Don’t answer the fear of what might be.

  There is no prophecy in this.

  No same place to come back to and die.

  I eased a loop out of the cassette and pulled, right arm flinging to the right.

  Again, again, again.

  Until a pile of shining ribbon was lying on the table.

  Scooped it in both hands, dropped it in the trash. Full circle.

  The mesh trash where Robin had placed the first note.

  All four notes were there on the desk. I threw them in on top of the tape.

  And poured on some Jameson for closure.

  I walked through the hall, through the kitchen, for matches, then the door.

  Sliding out back.

  Striking.

  Slitch. Whoosh.

  I dropped the bright gold match into the bin.

  And a sickly blue-green flame leapt up.

  Above a scar of melted black plastic bubbling, and the ash of a girl’s diary expiring.

  27

  They had the service for Robin at Temple Israel. Same synagogue, same rabbi who buried John Bloom.

  Mrs. B. greeted the mourners with her signature poise and salt of the earth. Most of them were people she hadn’t seen in years or barely knew. They were there to be part of the history that they had heard, and sometimes said, so much about. The real estate agents and the classmates all grown up, the professionals who’d had some contact with the myth, or years ago maybe with Robin herself. Dr. Cunningham’s widow was there with his surviving sister, Rose. Dorris and Jonathan Katz were there with the kids, chastened, looking like a family, remorseful over the good fortune they’d scorned.

  Gruber and family were there, too, including, at Mrs. B.’s insistence, Jeff, who was ravaged with guilt and remorse over the accident and had thought it more seemly to stay away. But Mrs. B., being Mrs. B., took him aside and worked her magic, erasing all blame and the validity of self-torture. I can see her saying it: “Just come if it will make you feel better. If it won’t, don’t. But let it go, dear boy, let it go. This is not yours to carry.” Or something like that. And I can see Jeff crumpling to the floor in relief and admiration, worshipping, as I did, the release in an old woman’s words.

  Jeff’s case is still pending, natch, so no one knows for sure what’s happening. My guess is he’ll plead to involuntary and do a stint of probation/community service, or at the very most wear an ankle bracelet for a while. Definitely no time in juvie, even. He’s a model kid despite his surroundings, and the lawyers involved will settle, no question, because there isn’t a jury in four counties who’d convict an abuseling son of Gruber’s for shooting at the oncoming ghost of Robin Bloom at five in the morning while having at it with the old man over his pistol collection.

  Just a guess, but judging by the size and mood of the crowd at the funeral, the whole incident has been like a great collective sigh of relief for the community, as if someone—thank God it didn’t have to be them or theirs—had finally slain the succubus and broken her curse.

  Dave, Kitty, and Sylvia even showed up at the service, looking painfully related, like day-old sausages all gray in a row—same girth, same face, same hypertension. It’s a testament to Mrs. B. again—a huge one—that they even let those three bears in the door, given Eggnacht, but then maybe everyone figured this was part of the purge. Tears of the neo-Naz wash away the stain? One Jew is very like another? Mourn one, absolve all.

  God only fucking knows. Mrs. B. had way too much class to even notice, and—oh, I don’t know—maybe she had a few other things on her mind just then. She wasn’t likely to be concerned about whether Dave had completed his sensitivity training after all this time, or whether this was part of it. Every person there, including me, was an invader more or less. It didn’t matter what your stripes were.

  It made me sick. The whole service—being there, knowing all the dirty lines of contact that had run between the corpse and the crowd, and between the presiding and the lesser mourners—was like watching a lurking, slinking pack of scavengers circling a kill, waiting for the alpha to finish his meal.

  At the mingle after the service, it got worse. Then it
was like a receiving line for my spy self and his drunk infelicities, patching over or poking at all the shit that had gone down in recent weeks between my neighbors and me.

  Katz offered me his hand and, with typically vulgar self-absorption and bad taste, said, “Did I do this?”

  “How’s that?” I said, not even looking at his face.

  “Well, I don’t know,” he stammered, guiltily. “I guess I just thought I might have set this whole thing in motion.”

  I locked in on him coldly.

  “Is that why you came?”

  He looked away, embarrassed.

  “God, no. I just feel so awful about all this, you know?”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said in a tone that was distinctly not understanding. “This is a funeral for everyone but Robin. I’ve never seen so many different people gathered to mourn themselves.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Nobody means anything. That’s the problem. You’re all here wandering around as if you’d had a summons and you’re waiting for your name to be called.”

  “Come on now,” he said. “That’s not really fair.”

  “Whatever.”

  I said this dismissively—conversation over—but he lingered, shifting his weight awkwardly and straightening his tie.

  “Listen,” he said, leaning in. His breath smelled of last night’s booze and bad sleep. “What the hell happened with you and Simon?”

  I chuckled dryly.

  “See what I mean?”

  “I’m just asking.”

  “Yeah. Of course you are. Pediatrics is a small world out here, right? Wouldn’t want it getting around that you hastened one of your colleagues to his end.”

  “You really are a nasty piece of work,” he said, squinting at my nasty face.

  I ignored this.

  “So, old Simon. You want to know, huh? Well, I’d say you definitely put the kibosh on that old man. Led me right in. He was waiting with his neck out, just as you said.”

  Katz looked as if I’d punched him in the stomach.

  “Oh, relax,” I said wearily. “I would have found him with or without you. Or he would have found me.”