A Quiet Neighbor (33 page)

How is this possible?
The
single, tri-folded sheet falls slack in my hands as I muse over that question.
I didn’t apply to any colleges, and I certainly did not send anyone a copy of
one of my poems. My thoughts suddenly turn to the only person who knows about where
my notebook is stashed and I frantically flip through the pages. Near the front
is a carefully torn page, the edges of ripped paper jutting from the spiral
binding. Furious, I retrieve my cell from my back pocket.

“Loral?”

“Mike—how dare you!” I screech.

“Whoa, wait a minute. What did I do?”

“I never asked you to apply to colleges on my
behalf. I don’t want to go to college. I thought you knew that. And I
especially thought you knew to keep out of my notebook. Haven’t you heard of
the word privacy? Maybe you should read up on it before attending UCLA.”

“Sorry Loral, I just thought—wait…,” his voice
lifts, “Did you get accepted? Which one?”

“Which one? You mean you sent my poem to more
than one place?”

“Yeah, well I just thought…I had to Loral.
You’re so talented and—”

“Mike, you really shouldn’t have.” I am so
pissed I hang up before Mike can finish his apology. I don’t want to hear it.
Frustration rolls into anger, which fizzles into uncertainty. I should feel
honored that a college wants me. They like my writing. They want me. But I don’t,
can’t. Instead, I feel violated. My private thoughts are now out in the world,
exposed, circulated by Mike in an attempt to be my knight in shining armor. I
know he means well, but hell, why did he have to go behind my back?

The road to hell really is paved with good
intentions.

Skimming my notebook again, I breathe a sigh of
relief that no other pages have been torn out.
Which one was it?
I can’t
be sure. Mostly I just write what comes to mind and never look at it again. I
never worry about meaning, or about how intelligent or beautiful my words might
sound to others. I never think about judgment, criticism, or popularity when I
write. I just write what I feel. My words are for my eyes only, and that is
enough to make me happy, or so I thought. Now I am not so sure. Maybe I do want
more.

The beauty of my passion is in the simplicity,
and Mike has gone and complicated things by inviting the outside world to cast
a critical eye on my deepest sanctuary.

Which poem did Mike pilfer and submit to the
various universities? My five-hundred page notebook is almost filled, and
considering it was one of my earlier pieces, I am drawing a blank.
They
actually liked one of my poems?

Chapter
Twenty-Seven:

Tuesday,
June 19, 2012

6:30
P.M.

Loral Holmes:

The day has been slow and tedious. I prepared dinner
with the help of Filippi’s pizza, paper plates and cups, and a two-liter bottle
of Coke. The girls change into their pajamas and watch
Kung Fu Panda
and
Kung Fu Panda 2
for the second time that day while munching on slices of
meatball and pineapple pizza with their eyes glued to the screen. Their hands
and chins drip with grease as they each slurp fizzy Coke through plastic twisty
straws they got while visiting the zoo the previous summer.

Leaning against the post of my bed, after
wiping the girls down with a damp paper towel and clearing their plates and
cups, I watch them giggle at jokes I am pretty sure they don’t fully understand
and fight to pry their heavy eyelids open until they no longer have the strength.
Right before Po achieves inner peace for the one hundredth time, their eyelids
droop closed, heavy with the exhaustion of a tiresome day. Sleep comes easy to
my sisters.
Lucky brats
. I am not blessed with that particular gene.
Probably
came from Brett; he can sleep through anything.

Tucking them into their respective beds, I turn
off the light and try my best at emulating sleep. God knows I had an exhausting
day—well, if there is a God. Taking care of Tory and Bella could run any person
ragged in an hour and I’ve had twelve going on thousands.

Staring at the walls bathed in dappled
moonlight, I can feel the prickling heat of anger again rise from its hiding
place. Tossing and turning, my head pounds with nasty voices that rob my body
of sleep: the admissions letter, Mike and my notebook, Tess and the guy in the
fancy Mercedes, Brett busy with school and doing who knows what, and most of
all, my impatience to leave it all behind.

After what seems like hours, headlights stream
in through my window. I hear the front door open shortly after. The door slams
shut and I hear a panic-patter of soft feet rush into the room down the hall.
Tess is home.

Soon after, the water pipes hiss in the walls. Then,
a second later, the front door again opens and shuts with similar force. The
footfalls up the stairs this time are slow and heavy, almost menacing. The
creaks in the stairs have emphasis. There is a pause in the footfalls outside the
room and the door parts slightly. A silent, dark head peers in. I close my
eyes, feigning sleep as I turn away. A moment later the door closes. The heavy,
brooding steps continue toward the room down the hall. Brett is home.

The argument starts off as a murmur. The water
pipes stop hissing in the walls. Then the low murmuring quickly escalates to a
cursing match. The door slams and I hear a muffled cry followed by a few
exasperated huffs. A few more rapid-fire streams of curses hissed from the top
of the stairs. Heavy steps move down the stairs, more agile this time. The
front door opens and slams shut for the third time that night.

Brett is gone.

I lift my head toward the bunk bed in the
adjacent corner. Soft breathing can be heard so I know the girls haven’t been
disturbed by the shouting or by Brett’s stormy exit. Slipping out from under
the covers, I exchange my drawstring shorts for jeans, toss a thin hoodie over
my ratty Mickey Mouse sleep shirt that is forming a dime-sized hole under the
left armpit from over-washing, and tiptoe over to the window.

Looking out, I watch the back of a lone figure
walking away from the house. He is hunched with hands jammed into coat pockets.
By the way he kicks at the stray gravel in the road I know the walk is more
than a casual after-dinner stroll around the block. If I stared hard enough I
probably would see wisps of steam escaping from his head. I wait until Brett’s long,
stringy shadow is no longer visible from my vantage point.

Tucking my notebook into the back of my jeans, I
snatch my cell and unlatch the window, pushing out into the dark night. The
cool air flushes my cheeks as I reach out to grab onto a sturdy branch that
pokes invitingly near. Closing the window behind me, I steady myself and climb
down the thick trunk of the aged oak tree that has loyally aided and abetted
many late night excursions.

Stepping down, I hear a soft thud from afar and
peer warily into the darkness. A shadow flits past the lamppost, pausing to
look both ways before crossing the street—a gesture that makes the figure much
less menacing in the deep of night when cars are few and far between—and then
weaves in and out of the hovering shadows toward me.

 “You can’t keep sneaking up on me like that,”
I hiss. “Do you want me to have a heart attack?”

Sheepish, Mike hunches his shoulders and jams
his hands into his sagging jean pockets. “Sorry, I just wanted to explain
myself about the poem. You didn’t give me a chance to earlier and I wanted to
make sure we are okay.” Scuffing his feet in the dirt, he shifts his weight,
like he is afraid to look directly into my eyes. “So, are we okay?”

“Mike,” I sigh, exasperated, “I don’t really
want to talk right now.”

Looking up, his blue eyes widen with hurt.
“But, I—”

“We’ll talk later, okay? Just leave me alone
for now. I just need some space.”

Hanging his head, he mutters, “Okay.”

I can’t deal with Mike right now, I have to
escape. I am not sure where I am going, I just want to be far away from this
toxic house. I don’t want to be here when Tess digs through her stash of hidden
bottles and drinks to oblivion. I don’t want to be here when Brett returns,
tired, and pretending all is forgiven or forgotten.
They are the adults, why
can’t they get their shit together and deal?

Folding my arms across my chest, I shiver
against the cool night breeze. I stop for a moment to pull the hoodie up and
over my long brown hair, then trudge on. I follow the curve of Golfcrest Drive
and make the usual right onto Navajo Road. Without thinking, I find myself
walking the well-worn route to school. There is comfort in the familiar.

I near campus. I stop for a moment to lean
against the fence surrounding the school’s perimeter, interlacing my fingers in
the cold chain link as I look down onto the rows of classrooms below. I rest my
forehead against the galvanized steel as I lean in to get a better look.

The school is set well below the road grade,
and from my vantage point on the sidewalk, the place seems to be swallowed by
oppressive darkness.
Into the belly of the beast
, I think, and shudder.

Would I go back and do it all over again? Hell
no. But a part of me wishes I’d want to. So many people look back on their high
school years and view them as their “glory years,” a time to reminisce and
cherish with friends. But not me.

I walk on.

Deserted parking lots. Chained gates. Athletic
fields. Parallel stacks of classrooms. They all sleep, hunkered down within a
sparse perimeter of sodium-vapor lamps. Even in the ominous dark, the
familiarity draws me near. I walk along the chain link fence, dragging a hand
as I go.

The rattling of the fence is suddenly
accompanied by a crunch of fallen leaves. It comes from behind. I turn partway
and freeze, peering into the darkness with my peripheral vision, afraid to turn
more. I see nothing except for the dim glow of street lights, casting evenly
spaced pools of light on the sidewalk and hedges. A prickling sensation touches
the nape of my neck as the breeze flutters my hair inside the hoodie.

Swaying eucalyptus trees and shadow-cloaked
apartment buildings crowd in. The darkness threatens, and each sound echoes
tremulously against the surrounding hardscape.

My heart beats heavy against my chest. The
prickling sensation intensifies. Am I being followed, or am I just hallucinating?
Should I turn back?

“Mike?” I whisper, hopeful. “Is—is that you?”

Just as I am about to relax, something soft
grazes my leg and I jump, too surprised to utter a sound.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

Slowly I turn toward the man’s voice. Noticing
the leash, I follow it with my eyes until it lands on a tiny black pug with a
white indent on its left cheek. The pug is old judging from the look of its
lazy gait, the most likely culprit in scaring the bejesus out of me. Switching
my gaze to the man who stands before me, I begin to relax.

His hazel eyes hold no threat as they gently
follow my meek gaze back to his leashed pug, the leash tangling about his feet.

The man is middle-aged and lanky. His gait, a
slight hunch. His hair, a wild shock of white with a residue of wispy dark
strands interspersed. His eyes deepen in apology, worry lines fanning from the
corners. There is a disarming sadness in his eyes. When he offers me a friendly
smile, an odd sense of understanding washes between us, as if he should be
familiar to me somehow. As if we’ve met somewhere before. I think of the
lavender woman at the train station.

“No, it’s okay. You just caught me by surprise.
I didn’t expect to run into anyone this late.”

“Yeah, it is pretty late. Pretty dark out.”
Checking his watch, he frowns. “I didn’t realize that it was already ten
o’clock. What are you doing out so late by yourself?”

I shrug. “It’s not that late. I wanted some
fresh air…to think.”

“Ah. Bad day?” He scratches slow circles into
the ground with the toe of his worn walking shoe, beside the latest spot his
pug sniffed with alacrity. “Yeah, I’ve had a lot of those in my day.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No biggie. You can’t age without a few bad
days under the hanging belt. So what’s your story?”

“Oh, well…it’s just that Tess, my mother, and stepdad
had another one of their fights…I needed to get out of the house for a while.”
I realize I am grabbing the hem of my shirt with balled fists in exasperation.
The man smiles sympathetically.

For some reason, I am compelled to talk to this
stranger. Perhaps we feel more comfortable openly discussing our problems, our
innermost feelings, to complete strangers than to our loved ones. Something
about the anonymity of it is cathartic. Strangers don’t know anything about you
or your history. Their ears are only half open, their knowledge of your
situation limited to your perspective (thus it is only natural their sympathy
is easier to win), and you don’t have to see pity or judgment on their face the
next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. Their role is only to
listen. And I desperately need someone to listen.

“Why were they fighting?”

“Probably because she’s cheating on him.”

“Oh…” He shakes his head. “I’m sorry to hear
that. I could never think of cheating on my wife. How are you holding up?”

“It isn’t like she loves the other guy or
anything. She’s just like that, you know. Fickle. She craves excitement, attention,
and I think that this guy gives her that…I don’t know.”

“Do you feel betrayed?”

“What? Oh, um…” I shrug my shoulders and
shiver. A cold gust of wind slashes across my face. Absently I cross my arms,
uncross them. “Not really. She does what she wants and she lets me do what I
want.”

“I see.”

Neil Wilcox:

9:53
P.M.

I do see. I notice the catch in her breath and
the pain radiating in her voice. Emotionally she has borne the brunt of guilt
from her mother’s indiscretions. And her stepfather is likely no picnic either;
probably a whole other can of worms. I can read it all over her face. She is
crying out for help and more than anything, I want to soothe her pain.

She is still beautiful.

So, so beautiful.

“Is that all that’s troubling you, my dear?”

She jerks back, again crossing her arms over
her chest, looking away from me.
No, don’t look away from me. Stay.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m telling you
all of this. You don’t need to be troubled with my problems. It’s late and I
should be heading back.”

Her voice…there’s something soothing about her
confidence and control. She sounds so much like her. So much like her.

Something catches in my mind, something slips,
clicks. Many might pass off this mental hiccup as a “senior moment,” but quite
a few might see something else, something more insidious dancing behind the
veil. I think it is my mind trying to bring me back to my Betsy.

Still holding the leash, my hands start
fumbling nervously with each other and my jaw goes slack.

I see her clearly now.
My darling Betsy.
She is here now, but she is about to leave.
Would she leave me again?
I
know the answer before I ask it.
Yes, she would.
I need to do something.
She is shrinking back into her shell.
No! Not again.
Desperation washes
over me. I don’t want to lose her again. I can’t. I spent too many years giving
her space and time to come around and trust me. I can’t let her retract her
steps. I don’t have time in this world to walk that patient path again.