I sat up in bed and lifted the damp washcloth off my forehead. It had grown warm from the heat of my body and the air in the house. It was almost dry, so I carried it to the laundry room and dropped it directly into the washing machine. From there, I walked quickly back up the hall and into their room.
It was a foreign place. The air was cooler than in the rest of the house. I felt like I was walking into a temple. I’ve never been inside one, but when religion was part of my curriculum, I’d seen lots of videos and photographs of various kinds of temples.
I went to my mother’s dresser first and opened the top drawer. It contained a box of jewelry and a few clutch purses. The drawer below held socks, tights, and a few open boxes with coins and buttons and other trinkets. I closed the drawer softly and glanced at their closet. I didn’t want to go digging inside her purse because I might not hear her coming. She might walk into the room, trapping me in the closet.
I turned to my father’s dresser and opened the top drawer. He also had a small box with coins and trinkets. Beside it was a larger oak box. Glued to the top was a photograph of a girl. The corners had lifted up slightly, possibly from the box being taken in and out of the drawer lots of times over the years. The photograph appeared old. It wasn’t an antique, but it was faded and didn’t have the same quality as the photographs my mother printed for the books she made me.
It seemed like the girl in the picture should be me. I wasn’t sure why I thought that. It was definitely not me. She looked like she was twelve or thirteen. Her hair was the same color as mine, but her lips were thinner and her nose more delicate. I wanted to lift the box out of the drawer and look more closely; it was hard to see with part of it hidden under the top of the dresser. If I pulled the drawer all the way out, it might fall off the track and make a terrible crash.
Who was she?
For a moment, I thought she was my mother when she was younger, but that didn’t seem right either.
Why would he have a picture of a girl glued to a nice box? It was a beautiful box and the glue had probably damaged it. The box had a lock on the front. There were keys mixed in with the coins, but I couldn’t start stabbing keys into it, trying to unlock it while I balanced the open drawer.
The sound of water running in the kitchen rushed down the hallway. I closed the drawer carefully. The minute it was shut I wanted to open it again. There’d been a five-dollar bill tucked under the coin box, but I’d been too distracted by the photograph to grab it. Now that I thought of it, I wondered if he’d notice it was missing. His drawer was so neat, so empty of clutter, he probably knew it was there.
I walked to the doorway and stepped into the hall. I darted into the bathroom and closed and locked the door so I could catch my breath and think. I rested my head against the door. It hurt worse than ever. I stood there for a long time. Too long, because after a while, I heard my mother’s footsteps in the hallway.
“Brittany?”
“I’m in the bathroom.”
“Are you feeling better?”
“No.”
She knocked on the door. “Let me in.”
“Just a second.”
“Is something wrong?”
I flushed the toilet, turned on the faucet, and soaped and washed my hands. I wanted to think about what that picture on the box in my father’s drawer meant, but my brain was refusing to cooperate. And now I had to lie down and have my mother rub my neck. With her close beside me, I wouldn’t be able to think at all. She liked to rub my neck and shoulders when I had a headache. She was certain it helped ease the tension, but it did no such thing.
39
Taylor
It was unlikely anyone would be enjoying the sunrise in the garden at the center of our cul-de-sac, but I felt drawn there, possibly by the memory of other meet-ups. I carried my coffee, steam rising visibly when I stepped into the cool air. It was technically past sunrise, but the light hadn’t washed across the street yet. It had that damp quiet, bathed in shadows, disrupted only when a garage door opened and a car backed out.
I sat on the bench that faced the space between the Cushings and the Bryants. Through the trees, I was able to see a sliver of the open space preserve. I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and placed it beside me on the bench. It had been strangely silent without any incoming messages from Crystal. The Find Brittany page had also become quiet, with only ten or twelve new comments each day, most of those the fervent hope of people suggesting prayer as the optimal solution for bringing her home.
Behind me, I heard voices. I turned slightly to see Nicole standing in the street. Luke was walking down their front path toward the curb. Nicole’s voice had been sharp, silencing the songbirds.
Luke’s voice drowned hers, loud and angry. “What the fuck?”
“We can’t have this sitting here. I need you to deal with it. Today,” Nicole said.
I picked up my phone and stuck it in my pocket. I stood and started toward them, placing my feet carefully on the damp stepping-stones that wound through the center of the garden.
A sound punctured the air, a fist slamming onto the hood of a car. “Why? What did I do to deserve this? It’s not fair!” Again his fist slammed into metal, making a sound like rocks crashing against the car.
I stepped into the street. Luke’s white Corolla was parked in its usual spot. The doors were sprayed with black paint. The two tires facing the street were flat, and I assumed the others were as well. The driver-side window was lined with cracks, turning the glass into pebbles that looked as if they’d crumble all over the ground the moment the door was opened. The word pedophile was painted in fat, dark letters on the hood of the car.
“Why are they doing this to me?”
“We can’t think about that right now,” Nicole said. “After I get my car out, you need to put it in the garage so no one sees it. I want you to find a body shop who can take it today.”
“I don’t need this shit.” Luke shoved both hands into his hair. He grabbed it near the roots and tipped his head back, looking up at the sky. He wore nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. His feet were bare, his toes curled against the pavement as he walked into the street to stand beside his mother.
I took a few steps closer.
He raised his arm, ready to slam his fist into the car again. His mother grabbed his wrist. “Don’t. I don’t want the glass crumbling. Go get dressed and get your keys. I need to get to work.”
“My life sucks!” Luke wrenched his arm out of her grip and walked up the front path and through the open door into the courtyard.
Nicole turned. For one brief moment I imagined she’d apologize, or at least smooth things over between us.
She immediately corrected that notion.
“Why are you doing this to us? What has he ever done to deserve this?”
“I had nothing to do with this. Why would you think that? I would never—”
“Everyone on the street is accusing Luke of being a pedophile.”
“That’s not…he’s not. No one thinks that.” I looked at the car silently calling me a liar. “Maybe someone lost control, but it wasn’t me. I never said he’s like that. It’s normal, I think, for a boy to admire an attractive girl even if she’s too young. As long as he didn’t do anything.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Who invited you to offer opinions about him at all? To whisper innuendos to our neighbors? To report him to the police?”
“I just…Moira said he was watching Brittany a lot.”
“So you decided to take her word for it and talk about it to the police and everyone else when you don’t know anything about it? Your gossip could destroy his life. It already is. Do you realize that?”
“I didn’t say he was a pedophile. I never said that. I haven’t heard anyone say that.”
“I don’t want to hear that word. You’re sick.”
“I just…Moira said he—”
“I don’t car
e what she said. I don’t even know her. And Luke does not know her daughter. Look at this.”
“Maybe someone was drunk, or—”
“Freya is flipping out about her kids going out of the house anywhere on our street.”
“I’m sorry if anyone jumped to conclusions.” I felt terrible. I believed Luke was hiding something, but not this. Why couldn’t Nicole understand I mostly believed him?
“You’re sorry? Do you realize what that ugly word does to a boy’s life? Do you have any idea what it’s like to listen to the police insinuate the same thing? I want you to shut up and stop acting like you’ve been appointed as some sort of honorary cop.”
I moved away from her, glancing down at my nearly full mug of coffee. “Why don’t you come over? I’ll make a fresh pot of coffee and we can talk things out. It’s been ages.”
“We’re not going to talk things out. You’ve done far too much talking already. Look what you’re doing to this neighborhood. Look at this car. It’ll cost me a fortune to get it repaired and painted.”
“It’s awful. I’m so sorry.”
She laughed. “What a farce. It’s your fault.”
“I don’t think it is.”
“That girl disappearing has nothing to do with you, but you’ve been meddling since the beginning.”
“I’m just trying to help.” My eyes filled with tears. I couldn’t understand how things had gotten so badly off track. And Moira…Crystal. A sob caught in my throat.
“Maybe try helping by not being such a know-it-all. And not saying things about people that aren’t true.” She stalked across the lawn to her garage, disappearing inside. A moment later, I heard her car start.
Everything was going wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t have believed what Moira had said about Luke. And I shouldn’t have even contemplated that the threats might have come from him. Of course it wasn’t him.
I was no longer sure about Moira. She and Alan had been so heartbroken over Brittany’s disappearance. I’d felt drawn to their grief, wanting to help. It seemed as if we’d become friends. I’d decided to put aside what they’d done until Brittany was found. I’d half understood it and excused it and tried to explain it to myself over and over. Now I was no longer sure. Had Moira even told the truth, so insistent that Luke had been staring at Brittany? She might have imagined it. Now it felt like she’d pointed at him to take my mind off what they’d done.
I went into the house and poured the coffee down the drain. I walked slowly into my bedroom and lay on the bed. I kicked off my sandals and curled on my side, closing my eyes. All I saw running through my mind in an endless loop were the faces of our neighbors. I pictured them coming out of their houses like a vigilante mob, swarming down their front paths carrying torches, advancing on the gazebo, burning it to the ground with Luke inside.
I opened my eyes to make the image go away.
I’d known Luke since he was a little boy. Why was I more loyal to a woman I’d only met because she was desperate for help? If Brittany hadn’t disappeared, Moira would never have spoken to me.
I hugged my knees and tried to think about how I might fix things with Nicole. All I’d wanted was to support Moira and Alan. I wanted them to feel welcome and cared for, and I wanted everyone to come out of their homes and connect with each other. Was that too much to ask? Was that sort of closeness completely impossible in the life we’d created? We’d manufactured a world where everything was progressively easier because of technology, but instead of bringing humanity closer, it was tearing us apart.
I drifted to sleep. When I woke, I could tell by the angle of the light on the floor that it was late afternoon. I was shocked that I’d slept the entire day. Duncan would be home soon. Even after all that dreamless sleep, I had no desire to lift myself off the bed, no desire to think about making dinner.
I dozed again and woke to the sound of Duncan’s footsteps as he entered our bedroom, his shoes tapping the tile floor, falling silent when he stepped onto the area rug.
“Are you sick?” He put his hand on my forehead. His fingers were strong and warm.
“No.”
“What’s wrong?”
I sat up and looked into his eyes filled with concern and love. Too often I forgot to look at his eyes, forgot that we loved each other as we tangled ourselves in the mental stimulation and challenges of our jobs, the details of everyday life, and diffused our connection with each other as we spent most of our free time with our friends and families.
All this time, I’d been holding back a little thing here and another there, staying silent when I should have talked. Telling him everything that was going on would drain all that pressure out of my head. We could figure things out together.
“Nicole is furious with me. Luke’s car was vandalized, the police are questioning him again, and she blames me.”
“Why?”
“It’s complicated. Moira said he—”
“Maybe you should stay out of it, like I told you. Do you want a glass of wine?”
I shrugged. I got up and followed him to the kitchen, where he opened a bottle of Pinot Noir.
“All I wanted was to help the Cushings. I feel like there’s this sort of mob mentality taking over the neighborhood.”
“Why?”
I told him about the word painted on Luke’s car, Freya’s paranoia.
“You need to let things be.” He came toward me with a glass of wine and gave me a long, deep kiss. I wondered if he was right.
Still…people should interact with their neighbors. They would support the people who live around them. It was a simple concept. Connections among people who lived close to one another had kept the human race alive for thousands of years.
I took the glass of wine and allowed him to touch the side of his glass to mine, but I kept silent when he said, “To us.”
We both sipped our wine tentatively.
“Everyone is so disconnected, so alienated. Can’t you see that?”
“We have each other. Why isn’t that enough?”
“It is,” I said. But when we carried our wineglasses to the patio, when we sat and he told me about his day, when he suggested going out for dinner, I wondered whether it was truly enough. It wasn’t about one or the other, a couple or a community. It was both. Did that mean he wasn’t enough? I didn’t want to choose one or the other. I needed both. We all needed both.
40
Brittany: Before
I couldn’t stop thinking about that box in my father’s drawer. It was like the sirens’ song I read about in our study of Greek myths. I couldn’t escape the enchantment, and I wondered if it would lure me to a rocky death. While that made no sense, it was part of the myth, so the thought drifted through my mind. There was no explanation for it, and trying to think of one made my brain feel like it had short-circuited.
Because my mind kept spinning, I returned to the photographs on the computer. Maybe I could find the digital copy and more like it. I scanned back in time through the photos of me, mesmerized by the thousands of images of such ordinary things alongside memorable events, followed by the sudden cut-off. Where was the rest of me? Were there ever any photographs of me as a baby and they’d been accidentally, or deliberately, deleted? What belonged in those empty spaces? There were no actual spaces, obviously, only the knowledge that more photographs should have existed. I continued my search for other folders that might contain images in the hidden corners of the computer.
Finally I found a collection of pictures in a folder titled “Family” buried deep inside four other folders. The only folder inside the Family folder was labeled “Grace.”
There were baby pictures and toddler pictures, vacations, holidays, birthday parties, a detailed record of everyday things. For half a second, I thought, hoped, maybe, they were my baby pictures, but they flowed smoothly into rows of images showing an older girl, the one glued to the lid of the box. There were shots of her with my mother, my father, and with both my parents. I stared
. I couldn’t move my hands to touch the keyboard or reposition the mouse.
I didn’t understand who this girl was, cuddled up to my parents. They cradled her like she was their baby. I leaned closer to the screen and enlarged the photos. Did she look like me more than I realized, besides her hair color?
No. She was not me. Besides, the older pictures in that folder were definitely not me.
I clicked back and forth, up and down the rows of pictures. I couldn’t stop looking. My brain dissolved like the Wicked Witch of the East when Dorothy threw a bucket of water on her. It fizzed, and steam rose out of my skull, the flesh inside my head shrinking into nothing. I couldn’t think.
I heard a soft scrape or maybe a tapping sound from somewhere else in the house. With two clicks, I closed the open images, closed the file folder, and dragged the mouse to put the screen to sleep. I turned off the wireless mouse, stood, and crept to the door with as little movement as I could manage. I flipped the light switch and waited.
My heart thudded in my chest, echoing deep inside my ears. The rapid beating was all I could hear, and I wondered now if the noise I’d heard had come from inside my own head.
After four or five minutes, there were no other sounds, so I tiptoed back to my bedroom.
For a few minutes I lay in bed and thought about not sneaking out to meet Luke and Ashling and the others. Then I realized I needed to be out there more than ever, to be normal, to not have to get up in the middle of the night and spy on my parents through their computer and find things that made no sense and be weirdly scared about who that girl might be. I couldn’t sleep anyway, thinking about those pictures.
The Good Neighbor Page 20
