Neighborhood Watch (5 page)

nightmares.”

“Come on, honey,” Teddy said, taking Jennifer’s hand. “Help me get the cereals.”

Kristin thought for a moment and then hurried after them.

She wanted to tell Teddy more; she wanted to tell him how the woman, Mrs. Feinberg, had accusation in her eyes when she spoke. But she knew what Teddy would say—she

was exaggerating, imagining, reading more into someone’s gaze than was actually there.

Perhaps Teddy was right, she thought. After all, of course it was ridiculous. How could she and Teddy be in any way to blame for her husband’s death and her subsequent

miscarriage? All they had done was come along and offer to buy her home.

2

MARILYN
S
LATER SAT IN THElight cherry wood rocker and gazed out the living-

room window. From this corner of the room, she could look down Slater Court to the

corner of Courtney Street and see the house in which the Feinbergs had lived. She saw the new family move in, their comings and goings, passing like transition scenes in some soap opera. In a real sense, the activities of the residents of Emerald Lakes had become her entertainment and her windows had become her television screens. She couldn’t even say how many hours she spent gazing out of them. Sometimes she felt as if she were in a big bubble smack down in the middle of the development. She ventured out so rarely

these days, she might as well be confined to a germ-free environment.

In her right hand she held her glass of water spiked with Absolut vodka. Philip rarely drank so he had no idea how much alcohol they had and how much she drank. Marilyn

disguised her breath with mints and gum and made sure to wash her glasses thoroughly. It didn’t surprise her that Philip knew so little about what she did now. He seldom asked her about her day, just assuming she filled it with care of the house, shopping for their needs, reading, watching television, visiting with the few friends she had outside of the

development.

The truth was she had lost contact with nearly all but one, Ann Cassil, and only because Ann was as lonely as she was most of the time. Ann called herself a sports widow. Her husband was either golfing, skiing, or watching football games with his friends.

“I don’t know what drew us to each other,” she revealed to Marilyn during one recent phone conversation. “We don’t even like to eat the same things. How,” she wondered

rhetorically, “does something like this happen?”

Indeed, Marilyn thought as she rocked, how does it happen? She tried to recall her own romance, tried to understand what it was about herself as a young woman in her twenties that made her vulnerable and easy prey for Philip, for that was the way she thought of herself now, easy prey.

He was—and still is—a man of great strength, she thought. Perhaps her coming from a family in which the man of the household was weak caused her to be attracted to Philip’s strength. She saw how her mother had suffered because of her father’s frailties. Her father was easily intimidated by other men, was anything but aggressive in the workplace and often was passed over for promotions by younger, more vigorous men. He was the

sort who would just shrug and accept it if he were overcharged or given a defective product. Her mother had to fight all the battles and it aged her and wore her down until she withered away prematurely in her early sixties and succumbed to heart disease.

Ironically, Dad was still alive and in a home, the cost for which Philip paid.

Philip was generous when it came to worldly things and he loved to be in charge, the one responsible, the one who looked after everyone. He never stopped her from buying

anything. Actually, he was always after her to buy herself more, insisting that she keep up with the styles and look wealthier than anyone else in the development. After all, she was Mrs. Philip Slater, wasn’t she? That required looking and acting a certain, expected way.

That went for the house as well as for her. Philip encouraged her to shop for art, to update the furnishings, to change the drapes and shades, to redo rooms. He insisted she make the house her career, and she had.

She had gone to college and had graduated with a major in English, but she had no

intention of being a teacher or a writer. Philip, who was two years older, had started to date her when she was a sophomore. She had many opportunities to go out with other

men, but Philip was overwhelming in those days, not that he wasn’t as overwhelming

now. It was just . . . different.

It was almost as if he had become another person, or the person she fell in love with had either slipped away or been drawn down into him and buried somewhere under this

darker, colder, sterner man. But maybe he wasn’t all that different. Maybe she

deliberately had overlooked and ignored this part of him. Maybe she had dreamed she would change him instead of him changing her. She had been too immature to realize or care back then and now it was too late.

It was too late because she had more of her father than her mother in her. Direct

confrontation was difficult if not impossible for her. Just the thought of getting into arguments with Philip made her tremble and gave her an upset stomach. Of course, all this was worse since Bradley’s death. Whatever fragility she possessed before,

intensified. She would cry at the slightest provocation.

The fact was, she was comfortable with Philip’s domination and control. There wasn’t a problem, no matter how small, that he wouldn’t assume and solve. Could he be protecting her? Was it because he saw what she had become and he wanted to spare her any more

pain? She liked to think so, although the affection between them had run down until there was barely a perfunctory kiss on the cheek, a stroke of her hair, a quick embrace at the door. The flow of her love life, whatever there had been of one, was down to a drip . . .

drip . . . drip.

Philip Slater, however, was not the sort of man who admitted to mistakes, whether they occurred in business or with people, especially with people. He prided himself on his perception when it came to people. He loved to play the development game, as he called it. When he was in an amusing mood in the evening, he would sit by this window, too, and look out at the streets of Emerald Lakes. Then he would begin. He would go through each and every man and woman residing here, detailing their personality, what they

would do and not do. Sometimes to amuse himself, or maybe because he thought it might amuse her, he would imagine different wives with different husbands, predicting what the relationship would be, who would dominate, how they would speak to each other, even how they would make love.

“Now you take Nikki Stanley,” he would say. “She would most assuredly always assume the top position if she were married to Vincent McShane. Don’t you think?”

She would say nothing, but that didn’t matter to Philip. He heard what he expected, what he wanted to hear, and just continued as if she had spoken.

At times she wondered if she were really here. Maybe she was a ghost. Maybe she had died with Bradley. Philip often looked at her as if he were looking through her, thinking about something else, and if she did tell him something new, he would either have

already learned about it or act as if he hadn’t heard her speak. Unless it was something about his precious Emerald Lakes, of course. That would perk him up and get her his strict attention.

Emerald Lakes had become his life. It was his church, his school, his world. He lost his only child so he made everyone here his children, even if he or she were older than he was. Philip had to have someone to look after and she wasn’t enough for him. She was too easy.

Maybe I am dead, she thought. Maybe this is hell. She gulped her drink and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand roughly. Philip would have a hemorrhage if he saw her do anything that wasn’t dainty or ladylike. But seriously, she wondered—how do you

really know if you’re alive? How do you really know where you are?

She thought for a moment as she gazed at the Feinberg house. Marilyn had watched that new family and she had seen their excitement. Her attention was focused on the little girl.

Bradley was about that age when he died. Or was he younger? What was happening to

her mind? How could she forget even the slightest detail about her own child, much less his age? She had trouble remembering his face now. What mother had trouble

remembering her child’s face?

She rose slowly and put the glass down on the coaster on the marble table. Then she went to the basement door, opened it and flicked on the light before descending the wooden steps.

The basement was finished in a light pine. They had a pool table and a beautiful white marble bar, but it was never used. Philip and she didn’t entertain, and especially never invited any of the residents of Emerald Lakes to a social occasion. It was as if Philip saw them and his life here as all business and he didn’t want to mix business with pleasure.

At the back of the basement was a storage room with everything in it organized neatly on shelves and in boxes. It, too, had a tightly woven grayish white Berber rug. She flicked on the storage-room light and squatted beside a carton at the rear of the room, just under the bottom shelf and began to dig through the carton until she found an album buried under a pile of Philip’s old work shirts. Sitting back on her haunches, she opened the album and began to look at the photographs that had captured the stages of development of their little boy.

He had such a troubled face, she thought, even at the age of two or three. She turned the pages lethargically, the tears starting again. Her little boy, her baby . . . it was Philip’s fault that she had trouble remembering. He never liked to talk about Bradley. It was better to pretend he had never existed, none of it had ever happened.

But there were the pictures of her and her child on the lawn or in the back by the swings Philip had long since removed. There were pictures from birthday parties and the pictures from their vacations. Bradley looked so fragile in all these pictures, small for his age and underdeveloped because of the illness. Philip used to hate her to tell people what their child’s actual age was. He was ashamed of the child’s illness. It was a detraction from his strong, successful image. How could he be the father of such a sickly little boy?

She slammed the photograph album closed and buried it again in the carton. Got to keep it hidden like this, she thought, or Philip will get angry. He’ll say I’m doting on the tragedy and therefore making it last longer.

But when does a tragedy like this end? she wondered. She got to her feet and walked up the stairway, flicking off the lights behind her and moving slowly, like one in a daze, toward the bedroom. She sat on Philip’s side of the bed, just staring down at the floor.

After a moment she reached over and opened the nightstand drawer. When she felt the metal, she wrapped her hand around it and brought it out slowly. Then she gazed down at the pistol in her lap.

A bullet would come from the barrel of this gun to tear into my flesh and drive my soul out of my body and into whatever oblivion awaits us all, she thought. This was the ticket, the vehicle of passage, this was the key that unlocked the door of darkness.

There were bullets in it. She knew that. She lifted the gun and placed the barrel against her left temple. Marilyn had done this before and she had counted as high as seven, the point being that when she reached ten, she would pull the trigger. One, she began. This time she reached eight before her hand began to shake and the tremors traveled through her body into her feet. Weakened by them, she barely had enough strength to put the pistol back and close the drawer.

Then she stood up, took a deep breath and returned to the chair by the window. She

sipped her drink and stared out again, waiting, watching, wondering: Am I alive? Where am I? Is this hell?

An hour later after she had washed her glass thoroughly and started to prepare their dinner, she had forgotten she had made a visit to the basement. Philip was right. It was better to block it out.

Philip Slater cradled the receiver of his office telephone and sat back to read the cost analysis for the new house he wanted to construct on lot thirty-eight in Emerald Lakes.

Erik Richard, his architect, had come up with a design that was more original than

anything yet constructed in the development. It departed considerably from the traditional ranch, employing characteristics of Greek revival: a gabled, low-pitched roof, a full-width porch supported by prominent rounded Doric columns; but the most dramatic

departure from the other homes was the fact that this would be a two-story home. To build it, he would have to get his homeowners committee to approve a variance on the height restriction. Because of its location on the lake, however, it wouldn’t block anyone’s view, and he had been toying with the idea of selling his own house and moving into this. He deserved it, deserved to stand out and above the others. Besides, his present home was cluttered with too many painful memories. Marilyn needed another start, a

fresh view. It would do both of them a world of good.

Of course, he would have no trouble getting the committee to agree. It was just that later on someone else might ask for a similar variance and he would have to find a reason to deny it. He would be accused of being treated specially, but what of it, he should be treated specially. This development and just about everything in it was his baby.

Whatever pleasure and security these residents enjoyed, they enjoyed because of him.

The buzzer sounded and he tapped his intercom button. Philip didn’t have a plush office in his construction company. It was spartan, a workplace and not a showplace. He had a handsome enough dark oak desk and an orthopedically designed desk chair. There were bookcases, primarily for the building codes, books on house design and books on

construction practices and materials.

Directly behind him and above the desk was a portrait of his father, John Thomas Slater, from whom Philip had inherited his sharply chiseled features and his black onyx eyes. It was his mother from whom he had inherited his competitive drive, his ambition and