The Neighbor

by Gardner, Lisa

  I don’t say a word.

  “How ya doin, Aidan?” Vito barks abruptly.

  “Good,” I whisper.

  “Been attending your meetings, sticking with your program?”

  “Yes.”

  “Drinking? Even a sip? Tell me the truth, meat, ’cause I’ll know if you’re lying. This is my town. All of Southie is my business. You hurt anyone in my town, you hurt me.”

  “I’m clean.”

  “Really? Police don’t think so.”

  I wring my hands. I don’t want to. The gesture shames me. Here I am, twenty-three years old and reduced to hunch-shouldered groveling in front of a man who can take me out with one swat of his platter-sized hand. He sits. I stand. He wields the power. I pray for pity.

  At that moment, I hate my life. Then I hate Rachel, because if she hadn’t been so pretty, so ripe, so there, maybe this never would’ve happened. Maybe I could’ve found myself in love with one of those slutty cheerleaders on the football field, or even the slightly buck-toothed girl who worked in the local deli. I don’t know. Someone more appropriate. Someone polite society would’ve thought was okay for a nineteen-year-old boy to fuck. And then I wouldn’t be in this mess. Instead, I would’ve gotten a chance to become a real man.

  “I didn’t do it,” I hear myself say.

  Vito just grunts, stares at me with his beady little eyes. His arrogance finally pisses me off. I’ve passed half a dozen lie detector tests with no one being the wiser. Like hell I’m gonna break for some thick-necked grease monkey.

  I meet his gaze. I hold steady. And I can tell he can tell I’m angry, but that mostly it amuses him, and that sets me off all over again. My hands fist at my sides and I think for a second if something doesn’t give soon, I’m gonna plant my fist into his face. Or maybe not his face. Maybe the wall. Except maybe not the wall. Maybe the glass window. That will shatter my hand, and wake me up with a symphony of broken bones and sliced-up flesh. And that’s what I need: a good wake-up call to get me out of this nightmare.

  Vito squints his eyes at me, then grunts and tears out the check.

  “Final week’s pay,” he announces. “Take it. You’re done.”

  I keep my hands fisted at my sides.

  “I didn’t do it,” I say again.

  Vito merely shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. You work here, the woman had her car serviced here. This is a business, meat, not a freakshow I don’t have time for the morning wash of your dirty laundry.”

  He places the check on the desk, and with one finger pushes it toward me. “Take it, don’t take it. Either way, you’re done.”

  So of course I take it. I leave, hearing Vito roar at the other mechanics to get back to work, then hearing each of them start to whisper.

  It’s not over, I realize then. Vito’s gonna tell them the truth, three manly men hearing for the first time they worked day in, day out with a pervert. And now a woman is missing and they’re gonna start doing some math in their heads, the kind where two plus two suddenly equals five.

  They’re gonna come for me. Soon. Very soon.

  I try doing some math of my own in my frantic, pulse-pounding head.

  Running equals being arrested by the police, locked away for life.

  Staying equals being beaten by the goon squad, probably castrated for life.

  I vote for running, then realize it doesn’t matter, ’cause even with Vito’s measly check, I still don’t have the cash. Then I feel the agitation build, build, build again, until I’m nearly running down the street, crashing by some chick with floral-scented perfume, and I’m running faster with her perfume in my nose and a dozen unholy fantasies in my head and I’m not gonna make it. I’m not gonna make it.

  The system’s biggest success story is about to break. Yes sirree, Bob. The kid’s gonna blow.

  | CHAPTER SIXTEEN |

  You know what people want more than anything else in the world? More than love, more than money, more than peace on earth? People want to feel normal. They want to feel like their emotions, their lives, their experiences, are just like everyone else’s.

  It’s what drives us all The Type-A workaholic corporate lawyer who hits the bars at eleven P.M. to bolt back Cosmos and pick up a nameless fuck, only to rise at six A.M., rinse all evidence of the night away, and garb herself in a sensible Brooks Brothers suit The respected soccer mom, famous for her homemade brownies and Martha Stewart décor, who is secretly popping her son’s Ritalin just so she can keep up. Or, of course, the highly esteemed community leader, who is secretly banging his male secretary, but still appears in front of the eleven o’clock news to tell the rest of us how we need to take more responsibility for our lives.

  We don’t want to feel freakish or different or isolated. We want to feel normal We want to be just like everyone else, or at the very least, just like what some TV commercial for Viagra or Botox or debt consolidation tells us our lives should be. In our mission for normalcy, we will ignore what we must ignore. We will cover up what we must cover up. And we will disregard anything we need to disregard, just so we can hold on to our illusion of perfectly regulated bliss.

  And maybe, in wanting so badly to be normal in our own way, normal Jason and I became.

  So I took off for a night or two every six to nine months. Working moms need a break, right? How kind and considerate of my husband to allow me occasional “spa” breaks. So he stayed up late, hunched over the computer, typing furiously. Writers often have long and irregular hours, right? How kind and understanding of me to never complain of my husband’s demanding job.

  We gave each other space. We disregarded what we needed to disregard. And in the process, we stood side by side and watched Ree careen down the sidewalk on her first tricycle. We cheered her first jump into a swimming pool. We laughed the first time she tiptoed into the freezing Atlantic Ocean and came screaming full speed back up the beach. We celebrated our daughter We worshipped every giggle, laugh, burp, and chattering word that tumbled from her mouth. We adored her innocence, her free spirit, her spunk. And maybe in loving her, we learned also to love each other

  At least that’s how it felt to me.

  One night, toward the end of summer, when Ree was due to start preschool in September and I would start my first gig as a student teacher, Jason and I stayed up late. He had a George Winston CD playing. Something soft and melodic. Ree and I were constantly torturing him with rock-n-roll, but he always gravitated toward classical music He would close his eyes, and enter some Zen state where I was certain he was sound asleep, only to realize he was humming softly under his breath.

  Tonight, we sat on the little love seat. His left arm was thrown across the back, his fingers touching the nape of my neck and rubbing gently. He did this more and more. Light, little touches, caressing me almost absently. In the beginning, I had startled at the contact. I had learned since to sit still, not say a word. The longer I relaxed, the longer he touched me, and I enjoyed my husband’s touch. Heaven help me, I liked the feel of his calloused fingertips grazing the back of my shoulders, sifting through my hair Sometimes, he rubbed my scalp and I arched and shifted under his hand like a kitten.

  Once I had tried to reciprocate, to scratch his back. The second my fingers went to lift his shirt, however, he got up and left the room. I never tried again.

  A husband stroking his wife’s neck while they cuddled on the love seat, on the other hand … Welcome to our little slice of normalcy.

  “Do you believe in heaven?” I asked him casually. We’d watched some Harrison Ford movie that night, where the vengeful ghost of the husband’s first wife had wreaked havoc on the household.

  “Maybe.”

  “I don’t.”

  His fingers tugged gently on my earlobe, firm, erotic pressure. I nestled closer to him, trying not to startle him, but having a harder and harder time sitting still. Who knew ears could be such an erogenous zone? But mine were, mine were.

  “Why not?” he asked me, fingers m
oving from my earlobe, down the side of my neck, then back up again. A husband touching his wife. A wife snuggling with her husband. Normal. All perfectly normal.

  So normal that some nights when I woke up alone in my marriage bed, my heart shattered into a thousand pieces. Yet I got up the next morning and did it all over again. Sometimes, I even heard my mother’s voice in my mind, “I know something you don’t know. I know something you don’t know….”

  She was right, in the end. At the ripe old age of twenty-one, I was finally seeing all of life’s great truths: You can be in love and still feel incredibly lonely. You can have everything you ever wanted, only to realize that you wanted all the wrong things. You can have a husband as smart and sexy and compassionate as mine, and yet not really have him at all. And you can look at your own beautiful, precious daughter some days, and be genuinely jealous of how much he loves her, instead of you.

  “Just don’t,” I said now. “Nobody wants to die, that’s all. So they make up pretty stories of an eternal afterlife, to take away the fear. If you think about it, however, it doesn’t make any sense. Without sadness, there can be no happiness, which means a state of eternal bliss really wouldn’t be that blissful. In fact, at a certain point, it would be mostly annoying. Nothing to strive for, nothing to look forward to, nothing to do.” I slid him a look. “You wouldn’t last a minute.”

  He smiled, a lazy look on his dark features. He hadn’t shaved today. I liked the days he skipped the razor, his unkempt beard a nice compliment to his deep brown eyes and perpetually rumpled hair. I’d always appreciated the bad boy look.

  I wished I could feel his beard, trace the line of his jaw until I could find his pulse point at the base of his throat. I wished I could know if his heart was beating as hard as mine.

  “I saw a ghost once,” he said.

  “You did? Where?” I didn’t believe him and he could tell.

  He smiled again, unconcerned. “An old house near where I used to live. Everyone said it was haunted.”

  “So you just stopped by to check it out? Test out your male prowess?”

  “I was visiting the owner. Unfortunately, she had died the night before. I found her body on the sofa, with her brother sitting beside her, which was interesting since he had died fifty years earlier.”

  I was still dubious. “What did you do?”

  “I said thank you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because once upon a time, her brother saved my life.”

  I scowled, agitated by the coyness of his reply, and worse, the ten thousand nerve endings he had now stroked to life.

  “Is it always going to be like this between us?” I asked abruptly.

  “Like what?” But his hand was retreating, his face shuttering up.

  “Half answers. Semi-truths. I ask a simple question, you dole out one tidbit of information while hoarding the rest.”

  “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “Will it always be like this between us?”

  “We’re married!” I said impatiently. “It’s been three years, for God’s sake. We should be able to trust each other. Tell each other our deepest darkest secrets, or at least the basics of where we come from. Isn’t marriage supposed to be a conversation that lasts a lifetime? Aren’t we supposed to take care of each other, trust one another to keep each other safe?”

  “Says who?”

  I startled, shook my head. “What do you mean, says who?”

  “I mean, says who? Who makes up these rules, sets these expectations? A husband and wife should keep each other safe. A parent should take care of a child. A neighbor should look after a neighbor. Who sets these rules and what have they done for you lately?”

  His voice was gentle, but I knew what he meant and the starkness of his words made me flinch

  He said softly, “Tell me about your mother, Sandy.”

  “Stop it.”

  “You claim to want to know all my secrets, but you keep your own.”

  “My mother died when I was fifteen. End of story.”

  “Heart attack,” he stated, repeating my previous assertions.

  “It happens.” I turned away.

  After a moment, Jason’s fingertips brushed my cheek, whispering across my lowered eyelashes.

  “It will always be like this between us,” he said quietly. “But it won’t be this way for Ree.”

  “There are things you lose you can’t get back,” I whispered.

  “I know.”

  “Even if you want them. Even if you search and pray and start completely over. It doesn’t matter. There are things you lose you can’t get back again. Things that once you know, you can never unknow.”

  “I understand.”

  I got off the sofa. Agitated now. I swear I could smell roses and I hated that smell. Why wouldn’t it leave me alone? I had fled my parents’ house, I had fled my parents’ town. The damn roses ought to leave me alone.

  “She was mentally ill,” I blurted out. “A raging alcoholic. She did … crazy, crazy things and we covered for her. That’s what my father and I did. We let her torture us every single day and we never said a word. Life in a small town, right? Gotta keep up appearances.”

  “She beat you.”

  I laughed but it wasn’t a pleasant sound. “She fed me rat poison so she could watch the doctors pump my stomach. I was a tool for her. A beautiful little doll she could break every time she wanted attention.”

  “Münchhausen.”

  “Probably. I’ve never sought an expert opinion.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s dead. What’s the point?”

  He gave me a look, but I refused to take the bait.

  “Your father?” he asked at last.

  “Successful lawyer with a reputation to uphold. Can’t really be admitting that his wife bashes gin bottles over his head every other night. Wouldn’t be good for business.”

  “He put up with it?”

  “Isn’t that how these things work?”

  “Sadly, yes. Tell me again, Sandy, how did she die?”

  I thinned my lips, refused him.

  “Carbon monoxide poisoning,” he said at last, a statement, not a question. “Found in her car in the garage. Suicide, I would guess. Or maybe she drank too much and passed out behind the wheel? What I don’t understand is why the authorities let it go. Especially given that it was a small town, and someone, somewhere, had to know how she treated you.”

  I stared at him. I couldn’t help myself. I stared and I stared and I stared. “You knew?”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t have married you otherwise.”

  “You investigated me?”

  “It’s a prudent thing to do, before asking a girl to become your wife.” He touched my hand. This time, I jerked away. “You think I married you for Ree. You have always believed I married you for Ree. But I didn’t. Or at least, not for her alone. I married you because of your mother, Sandy. Because you and I are alike that way. We know monsters are real, and they don’t all live under the bed.”

  “It wasn’t my fault,” I heard myself say.

  He was silent.

  “She was mentally unstable. Suicide was probably only a matter of time. Last way to screw with us and all that.” I was babbling. Couldn’t shut up. Couldn’t stop myself. “I was getting a little too big to keep dragging to the emergency room, so she upped and killed herself instead. After planning the biggest funeral the town had ever seen, of course. Oh, the roses she demanded for the event. The mounds and mounds of fucking roses …”

  My hands fisted at my sides. I stared at my husband. Dared him to call me a freak, an ungrateful daughter, a white trash piece of shit. Look at me, I wanted to cry. My mother lived and I hated her. She died and I hated her more. I am not normal.

  “I understand,” he said.

  “Afterward, I thought I would be happy. I thought, finally, my father and I could live in peace.”

  Jason was studying me intently now. “When you first
met me, you said you wanted to get away, never look back. You weren’t kidding, were you? All these years later, you’ve never called your father, never told him where we live, never let him know about Ree.”

  “No.”

  “You hate him that much?”

  “All that and more.”

  “You think he loved your mother more than you,” Jason stated. “He didn’t protect you. Instead, he covered for her. And you’ve never forgiven him for it.”

  I didn’t answer right away. Because at that moment, I was picturing my father again, his charming smile, the crinkle lines that appeared at the corners of his bright blue eyes, the way he could make you feel as if you were the center of the universe just by touching your shoulder. And I was so filled with rage, I could barely speak.

  I know something you don’t know. I know something you don’t know….

  She had been right. She had been so fucking right.

  “You said we’re different,” I whispered hoarsely. “You said we know better, that the monsters aren’t all under the bed.”

  Jason nodded.

  “Promise me, then: If you ever see my father, if he should ever show up at our front door, you’ll kill him first, and ask questions later. He’ll never touch Ree. Promise me that, Jason.”

  My husband looked me in the eye. He said, “Consider it done.”

  Ree fell asleep in her booster seat before Jason even pulled out of the parking lot. Mr. Smith was curled up in the passenger’s seat now, licking his paw, rubbing his cheek, licking his paw, rubbing his cheek. Jason drove aimlessly toward the interstate, not sure what to do.

  He was tired. Exhausted. What he wanted most in the world was to curl up in the sanctuary of his own home, and let the world disappear. He would sleep like the dead, and when he woke up again, Sandra would be standing beside the bed, smiling down at him.

  “Wake up, sleepyhead,” she would say, and he’d take her in his arms, and hold her as he should’ve been holding her the past five years. He would hug his wife, and he and Ree could be happy again. They would be a family.

  He couldn’t go home. News vans would be there, staked out across the street. Lights would flash, reporters shouting out questions Ree was too young to understand. They would scare her, and after the morning she’d had, he couldn’t bear for her to be traumatized again.