Bedbugs (12 page)

“OK, Jenna. Thank you. But seriously, like I said, I don’t think it’s bedbugs.”

Jenna took a bite of her salad. “What does Alex say?”

Susan took a bite of hers. “He doesn’t think so, either.”

Jenna sighed, picked up her BlackBerry, and began to scroll through it. “I’m going to give you this number. For this woman named Dana Kaufmann. She’s an exterminator. Pest control, whatever
they call it.”

“Jenna.”

“My friend Ron, who works at Actor’s Equity, he made everyone put this number in their phones after they found bedbugs backstage at the ATA. Apparently this lady is, like, the exterminator to the stars. She sprayed Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard’s house, in Park Slope.”

“OK.”

“Will you call her?”

“If I need to.”

Jenna let the subject drop, and they passed the rest of the meal more pleasantly, catching up on mutual friends and books each had recently read. Jenna said she would come out for a visit soon, and Susan promised to see the show she’d just started rehearsing, a new musical by Tom Kitt, one of the guys who wrote
Next to Normal
. Jenna said what she always said, which was, “Oh, you don’t have to do that. You’re so
busy …
”

When they were hugging goodbye, Jenna clutched her tighter than usual and then drew back and looked her in the eyes.

“Oh, and
perfect
little Emma,” she said, her voice an urgent whisper. “I’m serious, Sue. If it
is
bedbugs, you have
got
to move!”

*

Susan took the 2 train back, so she could avoid the creepy shrine on Livingston Street. When she got home it was 1:45 in the afternoon; Emma would be upstairs, already napping, and Marni would be inside, sprawled on the sofa, reading or taking a nap of her own. Susan stood outside the house with her hands on her hips, staring up
at the dark shape of the house against the sky, in just the posture she had discovered Andrea in the other day. When she was about to climb the steps to go inside, the red front door swung open, and Louis emerged at the top of the stoop, whistling lightly and carrying a hammer in one hand. When he saw her, he stopped and squinted, as if taking a moment to remember who she was, before calling out a greeting.

“Well, hello there, Susan. How ya doin’?”

As he trotted down the stoop toward her, Susan stayed put, glancing at the little door beneath the steps.

“Louis, can I ask you a question?”

The old man stopped at the bottom of the steps and smiled. “Sure thing.”

“Has Andrea ever had bedbugs?”

Louis came down the last step, and they were both on the sidewalk now, at the foot of the stoop. He leaned his bulk against the short wrought-iron fence and scratched his big bald head.

“No. No, I don’t believe she has,” he said slowly. “Not that I know of, anyway And if anyone would know, it’s me.”

“And what about the previous tenants. Jessica Spender, and whatever his name.”

“Jack. That fella’s name was Jack Barnum. I remember it, because it’s like the circus, you know. Barnum. My kids always loved the circus. When they were little we used to take ’em to the Midtown Tunnel in the middle of the night, to watch ’em bring the elephants across. You ever do that?”

“No. But, Louis—Jessica and Jack, did
they
have bedbugs?”

“Nope. Boy, those kids didn’t need ’em, though. They had plenty of other problems.” Louis shifted his weight, bobbled the hammer in his
palm. “Why you asking all this? You think you might have a problem?”

“No. No, I’m just—you know, it’s in the news and all.”

“Sure.”

They stood in silence for a minute, and then Louis nodded and stood up. “All right. You take care now.”

He began to amble down the street, but Susan wasn’t ready to go inside.

“Louis?”

He stopped on the sidewalk and turned back toward her; cheerful still, happy to help, but puzzled, maybe just the slightest bit put out. A man ready to proceed with his day.

“Yes?”

I should ask him to fix the broken floorboard
, Susan thought.
And the faucet, and the light-switch cover
. When she gave Andrea her inventory of complaints last weekend, the landlady hadn’t written any of it down, and Susan suddenly felt sure she’d never actually mentioned it to Louis.

Instead she found herself asking, “What’s in the basement, Louis?”

Louis’s gaze hardened. “Look, now. I already apologized for scaring your girl.”

“I know. I’m just curious.”

“Curious, huh?” He stared at her, taking her measure, and Susan thought he might just walk away. But then he shrugged and walked back over to where she was standing, spoke in a low, careful voice. “This is between you and me, understand?”

She nodded.

“Strictly between you and me. Now, like I said, Howard killed himself before his blood could kill him first. What I didn’t tell you, what I didn’t
want
to tell you, but since you’re asking.… ”

He leaned in, and Susan did, too; their foreheads were nearly touching. “He did it here in the house. Right down in the basement, real late one night.”

“Jesus.”

Louis straightened up and glanced over his shoulder at Andrea’s dark first-floor window, before continuing in an urgent whisper. “This is all part of … part of why I’m a little concerned about Andrea, see. After it was over, you know, she never … never let anyone go down there and, you know,
tidy up
. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a gunshot wound to the head, what happens to the wall, the floor … ”

Susan grimaced. She was feeling warm and tired, the wine from lunch catching up with her.

“Most I could do, after they came and took his body away, before she shooed me off, was put the damn hunting rifle back in its trunk. Figured at least get the thing out of sight, so it wasn’t hanging around taunting her whenever she went down there for a roll of paper towels. Rest of the basement’s just as it was on the day, so far as I know. Goddamn horror show, pardon my language.”

“What do you mean, so far as you know? You never—”

Louis shook his head. “She won’t let me down there. Because she knows if I do go down there, I’m gonna get down on my hands and knees and clean up what poor Howard did to himself. It just isn’t right, leaving a scene like that. Like it’s some kind of death museum.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. Now, look, Susan. We’re keeping this between you and me? Understand?”

“Sure. Of course.”

Louis was smiling again, but there was coldness behind his smile, and force. It was not a request.

The thundercloud that had hung low and heavy all week over Susan and Alex’s marriage erupted with ferocity on Sunday night, just after Alex came down from putting Emma to sleep. Though he’d already had two beers with dinner, Alex went straight to the fridge, opened a third, and drank half of it in one long swallow. Susan, at the kitchen table finishing her dinner of salad and sliced roast beef, looked up and said—simply, casually—“Thirsty?” It was the kind of little bantering tease that would normally earn a comical assent (“As a matter of fact I am!”) or, at worst, a dismissive and weary, “Ha, ha.” But Alex, sullen and discontented as he’d been for days, stared back at her, bottleneck gripped tightly in his fist, and said, “What? What’s the problem?”

Susan pushed her chair away from the table. He was spoiling for a fight, and Susan, in her own dark and unsettled frame of mind, found herself itching to give him one.

“What’s
my
problem? Come on, Al. Something’s making you all pissy, but guess what? You share your life with another person. Two people, in fact.”

He made a sour face. “You don’t have to tell me that.”

Susan’s steak knife trembled slightly in her grip. “What the hell
does
that
mean?”

“Nothing.” He exhaled, turned his face away from her and gazed down into the sink. “I’m just anxious about money. I have to write the rent check, and it’s going to be a tough one.”

“Oh.”

As soon as he softened, Susan relaxed, too. This was all she wanted, for Alex to open up, to share what was eating him, instead of moping around like a human black cloud. Now she could do what spouses did, say all the right things about how it was going to be OK, how they were a team, how they could figure it out together.

But just as she said “Alex …,” he turned back around and said the magic words: “Especially since you’re not working right now.… ”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Susan said sharply, tossing the steak knife onto her plate with a clatter. Over the baby monitor, Emma made a discontented moan in her sleep.

“What?” said Alex, with obnoxiously exaggerated innocence.

“I am just so sick of hearing you say that.”

“Why? You were the one who decided to stop working.”

“It wasn’t unilateral. We talked about it a thousand times.”

“Exactly. You talked me into submission.”

Susan’s jaw dropped. She felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. “And, by the way,” Alex continued, jabbing his finger at her, his nostrils flaring, “
You
were the one who decided that we needed to spend several thousand dollars to move. To move to a
more
expensive apartment … ”

“OK, well, once again, I didn’t decide anything by myself.”

“Oh, come on.”

“You agreed with me!”

“I went
along
with you.”

Susan snorted. “
Please
.”

Alex shook his head angrily. She could see him building steam, convincing himself of the accuracy of his own memory. She felt aware of how much bigger he was than her, of his thick torso and big arms. “No, I did, I went along with you. I knew it was a stupid idea, but I gave in. That’s different from agreeing.”

“That’s not fair, Alex. It’s not fair and you know it.”

All the while an accusing voice was chattering in the back of Susan’s mind, an insistent and taunting whisper:
he’s right, he’s right, of course he’s right
. It was
Susan
who had dragged them from their cozy nest off Union Square, it was
Susan
who saddled them with this new burden, with this new apartment
—which, by the way
, she thought crazily,
is very possibly haunted and/or infested with—

She shook her head violently, wrestled her mind back under her control.

“So your business is tanking?” His eyes widened, and she liked it; she liked to see that she’d wounded him. “So I’ll get a job! I’ll go to a firm. I’ll be making three times as much as you by next week.”

“Great. And then you’ll be wandering around here whining, every night, how miserable you are … how hard things are for you …”

“Oh, like you’ve been doing for the last two weeks?”

The fight carried on for hours, the kind of interminable and miserable argument that would peter out into brutalized silence, then flare suddenly back to life, worse than before—another round of recriminations and accusations, snorts of derision, unrelated grievances dragged out to be aired and re-aired. When they fought this way, Susan imagined them as two mad and vicious dogs, tearing at each other’s throats, charged with pure animal hatred. Later, lying awake, her heart pounding and her chest trembling from the exertion, Susan
thought that without question it was the worst fight in the history of their marriage, the worst since they had known each other.

Beside her, Alex lay sleeping peacefully, his flesh gently glowing in the moonlight, a line of spit running down his fleshy cheek. Like a child. Like nothing had happened. Susan stared at the cracks in the ceiling. She resisted the urge to shake him awake, scream in his face, go for another round. His easy slumber was just one more attack on her, one more way of making her feel bad.

Christ
.

Every night, it seemed like there were more cracks in the goddamn ceiling.

*

The dream came again.

It began, this time, at the shrine on Livingston Street. She was sorting through the wilting pink roses and dirty teddy bears, trying to find a good one to take home for Emma. These bears had been out on this grimy street for so long, surely the fleas and maggots had had their way with them? But oh, Emma wanted one so, so Susan lifted the dilapidated toys one by one, looking into their dead black plastic eyes, running her hands through their matted fur. Until a throaty voice called
watch out
, and she looked up, up along the dizzying height of the building, and saw the massive double stroller tumbling down, faster and faster, spinning in the air, the twin girls screaming and screaming in their seats. The stroller slammed against the pole of the awning and hurled outward in a long final arc, sailing over Susan’s head and bursting on the sidewalk beside her. Blood gushed out in all directions, great horrid fonts of blood, pouring down over her,
running into her eyes and filling her mouth as she screamed and screamed—

—and woke, panting, with Alex shaking her. “Honey? Honey,” he said, “It’s all right.” His eyes glowed with love and tenderness, and she collapsed into his bare chest, ran her hands desperately through his hair. He shushed her, cooed into her cheeks. “Your pillow is soaked,” he said, and went to the linen closet to fetch a fresh pillowcase.

“No,” she whispered, tried to whisper, but found the word lodged in her throat like a marble, round and hard.
NO
. He unfolded the pillowcase and flapped it once, neatly, and bugs went flying, like sand shakes out of a beach towel, thousands and thousands of bugs, their antennae twitching in the darkness, bugs coating the sheets and the floor. She could feel them, rushing in every direction, disappearing into every crack and corner of the room.

We’ll never get them out—never get them out now.…

*

Her eyes shot open and she was awake this time, really awake. Quiet darkness. The ceiling. The cracks. It was 3:32 a.m.

The pillowcase
, Susan thought.
The pillowcase!

She slipped out of bed, her heart thudding
wham wham wham
in her chest, stepped out onto the landing, and opened the linen closet. The pillowcase, her pillowcase from last weekend, was still where Alex had tossed it indifferently atop the otherwise neat pile. She lifted the thin folded fabric under her arm and took it to the bathroom, where she shook it out and held it up to the vanity lights above the mirror. They had convinced themselves it wasn’t blood, but it
was
. It was a small ragged circle of deep, rich red against the lemon yellow
of the pillowcase.