Someone Is Watching (7 page)

“I’m okay. There was really no need for you to come over.”

“I
told
you,” Jade said.

I decide I like Jade. There’s no pretense or forced concern. “You can go watch TV, if you want,” I tell her.

“Great.” She is already heading down the hall before her mother or uncle can object. Seconds later, we hear the TV blasting from my bedroom.

“Turn that down,” Claire yells in her direction.
“Now,”
she adds when nothing happens. The television’s volume lowers a barely perceptible notch.

“More,”
Gene commands. Then: “Really, Claire. I thought you said you had a handle on things.”

Claire says nothing.

“Why don’t we go into the living room where we can talk like reasonable adults?” Gene suggests, as if this is his place and not mine. I bristle, my feet refusing to budge.

“I think that’s up to Bailey,” Claire says.

“Sure,” I say. “By all means, the living room.”

We arrange ourselves on the sofas, Claire sitting beside me on one, Gene sitting across from us on the other. I brace myself for the conversation of reasonable adults.

“How are you feeling?” Claire asks. “Any pain or infections?”

“No infections,” I say.

“Pain?” she presses.

I shake my head. The pain I have is no longer physical.

“I see your bruises are fading. Have you been sleeping?”

“Off and on.”

“Have the doctors given you anything to help you?”

I nod, although I don’t like to take the pills they’ve prescribed. I need to stay alert. I need to be vigilant.

“You need to take them,” Claire says. “You need to sleep. Have you spoken to a therapist?”

“I don’t need a therapist.”

“Everybody in Miami needs a therapist,” she says with a wry smile. “I have the name of a good one, if you think you’d like to talk to someone.”

“I’m tired of talking.”

“I understand. But you may change your mind.”

I shrug.

“Okay. What else can I do for you?”

“Nothing. I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine,” Claire says, looking around. My eyes follow hers across the room. Aside from the pillows that Gene tossed to the floor earlier, everything seems to be neatly in place. Maybe there are a few dust bunnies in the corner but … “The windows could use a good scrubbing,” she says.

“It’s all the construction,” I hear myself say, vaguely remembering getting a notice from the superintendent about window washers coming later in the week to clean the exteriors. “They no sooner wash them, they’re dirty again.” Just like me, I think, wishing everyone would leave so I can hop into the shower.

“How about the laundry? I could do a few loads while I’m here.…”

“It’s under control,” I tell her, although my hamper is overflowing. I’ve run out of fresh sheets. I’m all out of detergent.

“Do you need groceries?” Claire asks. “When was the last time you had something substantial to eat?”

“Heath brought over some pizza last night,” I say, although it could have been the night before. Or maybe the night before that.

“You’re way too thin. You need to keep your strength up.”

“Why? So I can fight you guys in court?”

Claire gives Gene a wary look. “Please tell me you haven’t been bothering her about that now.”

“I haven’t said a word.”

“Okay, here’s what’s going to happen,” Claire says. “I’m going to go through this entire apartment and see what needs doing, then Jade and I will go to Publix and get some food so I can make us supper.”

“Rita’s expecting me home for dinner,” Gene demurs.

“Good, because you aren’t invited. Now, give me some money and get out of here.”

Gene is quickly on his feet, reaching into his pocket for his wallet. “How much do you need?”

“Three hundred dollars should do it.”

“Three hundred dollars?”

“My guess is that Bailey’s cupboard is pretty bare. Come on, little brother, let’s have it.”

I remember now that Claire is, in fact, older than Gene by two years and that, at almost forty, she is the oldest of my father’s seven children. I am the youngest. Bookends, I think, and feel my lips relax into a smile. I’m glad she is here, whatever ulterior motives she may have. It feels nice to be taken care of again. It’s been a long time.

Gene reluctantly gives his sister three hundred dollars in cash, then hands me his business card. “Call me if you feel like talking,” he says, and I know he’s referring to the lawsuit he and my half-siblings have launched against Heath and me over our father’s estate and not my more recent trauma. Claire hurries him to the door. “And you, call me when you get home,” he says as his sister is closing the door after him. Seconds later, I hear her rumbling around in my cupboards. “Jade,” she calls toward the bedroom. “Turn that damn thing off and get out here. We’re going to Publix.”

There is no response.

“Jade, did you hear me?”

Still nothing.

“Honestly,” Claire says, walking quickly down the hall. “You’re going to go deaf with that damn thing on so loud.”

I follow her down the hall to the master bedroom where my large-screen TV is mounted on the sliver of wall between the two large windows opposite my queen-sized bed. On the television, a man is running from the police. He leaps over a tall, chain-link fence, landing in some high grass and finding himself face to face with an angry alligator. But Jade isn’t watching the TV. Instead, she is standing in front of the window, in much the same position I occupy every day, staring through my binoculars at the building directly across the way. “These are great,” she says, without turning around. “You can see everything and nobody knows you’re watching.”

Claire quickly takes the binoculars from her hand, returning them to the nightstand beside my bed. “We’re going to Publix,” she tells her.

“What? You’re kidding me.”

“Why don’t you lie down?” Claire says to me. “We’ll be back in an hour.” She pushes Jade toward the hall.

I hear the door to my apartment close, then do as I’ve been told and lie down on my bed, overwhelmed with exhaustion. My eyes stay open long enough to witness the man on TV struggling with the alligator, his legs inside the creature’s mouth. The alligator becomes a shark as sleep overtakes me and my nightmares settle in, the shark’s giant fin breaking through the surface of the ocean like scissors through tinsel. It glides menacingly toward where I am treading water, and I look down and see at least six more sharks circling my feet.

I swim frantically toward a distant raft, my arms and legs like propellers, chopping at the once placid water. I’m almost there.

And then I see him.

He is crouched at the edge of the raft, his body leaning forward, his face blocked by the sun. He reaches out his hand and I grab for it, about to pull myself to safety when I feel the roughness of the black leather glove he is wearing and smell my blood on its fingertips. I scream and fall back into the water as the sharks converge.

I wake up bathed in sweat.

It is dark, and the TV is on. A woman on the screen is posing for photographs near the edge of a tall cliff. She is laughing and adjusting her wide-brimmed sunhat while her husband busily snaps her picture. “Back up just a bit,” he motions. She complies, tripping over a small rock and losing her balance, her feet shooting out from under her as she tumbles backward over the precipice. Her screams echo throughout the giant chasm as she plunges to her death, her hat flying off her head and into the air, swooping up and down with the wind.
Falling off the Grand Canyon,
the doomsday voice announces with barely concealed glee over the cheesy reenactment.
Number 63 of 1000 Ways to Die.

I grab the remote from the nightstand beside my bed and turn the TV off. I’ve been asleep less than an hour. At least I think it’s been less than an hour since Claire and her daughter left to get groceries. If they were here at all. Maybe they came yesterday or the day before. Perhaps they were never here. Perhaps I only dreamt them.

I get out of bed, throw an old gray sweater over my shoulders and walk toward the window, grabbing my binoculars from the
top of my nightstand as I go, lifting them to my eyes and adjusting their focus as I scan the exterior of the glass buildings opposite my window and direct them to the street below.

It’s not quite six o’clock, and the streets are busy, people rushing off in all directions, leaving work, heading home for dinner. I see a man and woman embracing on the corner, then follow them as they continue down the street, arm in arm. From this distance, I can’t make out their faces, but their posture tells me they’re happy, relaxed with one another. I try to remember what that feels like. I can’t.

Tell me what you see,
a soft voice whispers in my ear. My mother’s voice.

And just like that, I am transported from the bedroom of my glass house on the twenty-third floor of a downtown high-rise into the master bedroom of my parents’ palatial estate in South Beach. My bare toes sink into the plush white broadloom as I stand by the window and gaze through the binoculars into the spectacular garden beyond, reporting on the exotic variety of birds beyond the glass. It is three years ago, a year since my mother received the devastating diagnosis that the cancer we prayed had disappeared had instead returned and that it was terminal.

In four months, she will be dead.

“I see a couple of herons and a gorgeous spoon-billed platypus,” I tell her. “Come.” I move quickly to her side.

But she is too weak to get out of bed, and I watch her suppress a grimace when I try to move her. She is so frail, I fear she will disintegrate in my hands, like ancient parchment. “I’ll see them next time,” she says, tears filling her eyes. We both know there will be no next time.

“Would you like me to read to you?” I ask, settling into the small, peach-colored chair beside her bed and opening the mystery novel I’ve been reading to her, a few chapters every day.

My mother always loved mysteries. When other children were listening to bedtime stories about Snow White and Cinderella, she was reading me the novels of Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie.

Now our roles have reversed.

Occasionally we watch TV, crime shows mostly, anything to keep her mind off her pain and my mind off the fact I am losing her. “It’s uncanny,” she’d tell me, “the way you always know who did it.”

When did that power desert me?
I wonder as the ringing of the telephone yanks me from the past like a fish hooked at the end of a reel.

“It’s Finn, at the concierge desk.” I try to still the rapid beating of my heart as he continues. “Your sister and your niece are on their way up with what looks like a year’s supply of groceries.”

“Thank you.” I realize I’m hungry, that I haven’t eaten anything all day.

“You can tell them to put the empty carts back into the elevator when they’re done with them,” he says, and I say I will, although seconds later, I have no idea what he said.

I wait by the door to my apartment, listening for the sounds of the elevator down the hall. I watch through the peephole as Claire and Jade come into view, each pushing a shopping cart, both carts overflowing with bags of groceries.

“We bought out the store,” Jade announces as I open the door. “Hope you’re not a vegan.”

“Thought I’d grill us some steaks,” Claire says as she starts unloading her cart. She hands two of the bags to me.

I stand there, not sure what she expects me to do with them.

“You can start unpacking,” she tells me.

I want to tell her that I don’t have the strength, that I don’t know where anything goes, that this whole grocery thing was her idea, not mine, but the look in her eyes tells me she will brook no such nonsense, and I don’t know her well enough to argue. The truth is that I barely know her at all. We’ve probably spoken more today than in the past decade. So I take the two bags into the kitchen without protest and deposit them on the gold-and-brown-flecked marble counter.

“Those aren’t going to unpack themselves,” Claire says, following after me with two more bags that she puts down next to
mine. “Come on, Bailey. You know where everything goes.” She gives my arm a pat. “You can do this.”

What if I don’t want to?
I’m about to ask, but she’s already back in the hall, gathering up more supplies. What choice do I have but to comply?

It quickly becomes apparent that Claire has thought of everything. Along with at least a week’s supply of fruit and vegetables, she’s bought steaks, chicken, pasta and several different sauces, at least a dozen cans of soup, bread, jams, butter, milk, eggs, coffee, tea, even a bottle of wine. There is dishwashing detergent, laundry detergents for both warm and cold water washes, fabric softener and a variety of cleansers, toothpaste and a couple of fresh toothbrushes, deodorant, shampoo, body lotion, mouthwash.

I lift the large plastic bottle of emerald green liquid from the bag, my hands shaking.
Tell me you love me,
a man directs, the mintiness of his breath taking mine away, causing the bile to rise in my throat.
Tell me you love me.

I’m not sure whether I start screaming before I drop the bottle or whether I drop the bottle and then start screaming, but one thing is certain: I am definitely screaming, as loud as I have ever screamed, my screams bringing Claire and Jade flying into the kitchen.

“What is it?” Claire is shouting, looking everywhere at once.

“Was there a spider in the bag?” Jade asks. “I saw that once on
1000 Ways to Die.
This lady …”

“Jade, please,” her mother snaps, her eyes skipping across the kitchen floor. Then she says, “
Was
there a spider in the bag?”

I shake my head furiously from side to side, my screams having given way to sobs.

“Maybe she just doesn’t like mouthwash.” Jade retrieves the bottle from the floor. “Good thing it’s plastic.”

“Get it out of here,” I manage to spit out between sobs.

“What is it?” Claire asks as Jade grabs the offensive bottle and runs from the room. I hear the door to my apartment open and close. “Bailey, what just happened?”