The Neighbors Are Watching (12 page)

“So you—”

“I remember dancing with him. I told him I was eighteen, but I don’t know if he believed that. I don’t think he did. I remember he said my eyes were like dark suns. I thought that was so cool, you know? And then … I can’t remember anything after that. I woke up in somebody’s bedroom and I was … I could tell he …” Diana’s face flushed. Her hands were fists in her lap. “Everyone was gone. It was the middle of the night. I had to find my jeans on the floor. It smelled so bad in there. And I left.” She opened her hands, splaying them out on the table. “He didn’t even take my shirt off,” she said.

“Diana, that’s—”

“My fault,” Diana said, leveling a stare at Sam. “I told you.”

“No,” Sam said, “it’s not your fault at all. You have to believe that.
Diana, that’s—” Sam couldn’t say it. The word was lodged like a bone in her throat. “Did you tell your mother about this?”

“I told you, my mother thinks I’m a slut. It wouldn’t matter what I said, her mind was already made up. I wasn’t supposed to be there anyway. That
is
my fault.”

“But you have to tell someone, Diana.”

“Why?” Diana said. “It’s all done and finished and here we are.”

“But—”

“Hey, it’s all cool,” Diana said, flicking some hair off her shoulders. “And I’m fine. It’s all worked out.” She pulled the T-shirt tighter over her belly. “One more week and then we’ll … and then it’ll be over.” She leaned on the table and pulled herself up. “Hey, do you know what time it is?” she asked Sam. “I’m supposed to meet someone.” Her demeanor had taken an abrupt turn. She squared her shoulders and hardened her mouth. The tears were gone and her eyes were dry and slightly suspicious. There was no overt hostility, but Diana’s body language was eloquent in commanding that she be left alone. She was back to being the tough chick with an attitude Sam had met first; before she’d encountered the soft, frightened girl who’d been sitting opposite her only moments ago. Sam knew this was a defense mechanism, albeit a highly convincing one. It was difficult to tell who the real Diana was or if there even was a real Diana yet. She was so young; there hadn’t been time for her to formulate what kind of person she would become. This steely exterior was a way of coping and now that Sam knew the circumstances of Diana’s pregnancy, she wondered if there were other, more destructive ways she’d found to deal with everything that was happening to her. If she had to take a guess, Sam would put Kevin Werner (who was certainly the “someone” Diana was meeting) uppermost on that list.

“It’s around noon,” Sam said. “Who are you meeting?” Diana gave her head a little angry shake and Sam realized her mistake. “I mean,” Sam said, “do you need a ride? I’m happy to take you wherever you need to go.”

“Really?” Diana was laughing. “Why would you want to do that?”

“I’m flexible,” Sam said. “It’s one of the advantages of working at home. And I don’t mind at all.”

Diana pushed some stray hair out of her eyes and gave Sam a quizzical look. Then she shrugged as if she’d come to some sort of internal decision and said, “Thanks, but I’m just going next door.”

“Kevin?”

“You got a problem with that too?” Diana’s tone contained more frustration than anger, but Sam knew to tread carefully.

“Isn’t he in school?” Sam asked and quickly cursed herself. What a stupid question.

“He gets out early today. I’m going over to help him with his homework.” Diana winked, a bizarrely inappropriate gesture. “I forgot to tell you, I’m also a straight-A student in addition to being a slut. At least I was.”

“So,” Sam said, “there are people who have a problem with you helping him study?” They were playing some kind of verbal chess, all their words masking what they were really trying to tell each other, and Sam was rapidly losing her way.

“I’m pretty sure Kevin’s parents think I’m a bad influence on their son,” Diana snorted. “As if.”

“What do you mean, ‘as if’?” Sam said.

“I don’t know if you know them very well,” Diana said, “but those people are totally out of touch with reality. I’m, like, the least of their problems.”

“Really?”

“Come on,” Diana said. “No offense, but people around here are seriously fucked up. I mean, I’ve only been here since July and it’s really obvious to me all the shit that’s going on in this neighborhood. And I’m not even paying that much attention. As far as I can see people around here are a bunch of losers. But you all think you’ve got it going on. Well, maybe not you. Again, no offense.”

“None taken,” Sam said. “But what do you mean? What’s going on?”

But Diana wasn’t listening. She’d put her hands on her belly and was paying rapt attention to what was going on inside it. “She’s moving around a lot today,” Diana said. “It’s like she can’t wait to get out. I don’t blame her. I don’t want to be inside me either.”

“Diana …”

“I gotta go. Thanks for the lemonade.”

“Diana, you know you’re welcome over here anytime. And if you want to talk about anything at all, you can. I understand what you’re going through, I really do.”

“Yeah, I know,” Diana said, heading out of the kitchen, “you were young once.” Sam followed her into the living room, a sense of helplessness growing with each step Diana took closer to the back door. But then Diana stopped and Sam saw her looking at a framed photograph on the wall. It was one of Sam’s favorites, a candid snap she’d taken of Gloria a couple of years before when the two of them had taken their boys to the zoo. Gloria’s hair was still long then, flowing down her back, glinting in the sunlight, and she’d raised a hand to clear it out of her eyes. Gloria was laughing. Happy.

“That’s your girl, right?” Diana asked, pointing at the picture.

Sam felt her entire body go cold and the blood drain from her face. Was Diana talking about the baby Sam had given away? How could she have known about that?

“I’m sorry,” Diana said. “Are you one of those … I mean, do you not like to be called
girl
?” Sam was still too stunned to talk. Her tongue felt thick. “This picture—it’s your woman, right? I don’t know her name. She’s really pretty, but I like her better with long hair.”

Sam had to swallow twice to get enough moisture in her throat to answer. “Gloria,” she said finally. “You meant Gloria.”

“Yeah, Gloria, whatever,” Diana said and paused at the threshold of the door, one foot already outside. Those dusty, ragged flip-flops wouldn’t last another week, Sam thought. “Listen, I don’t care, okay?” Diana said at
last. “I’m not like these other people. It’s not, like, a big deal that you’re with her. Girls get with other girls all the time, everyone knows that. I mean, it’s cool that you’re doing what you want to do. I don’t know why it’s such a big deal.”

“Who?” Sam managed to say. “Who thinks it’s a big deal?”

“You know,” Diana said. “People.”

“And what do people say?” Sam asked, but it was too late for an answer. Diana had slipped out as effortlessly as she’d come in and was already gliding across Sam’s backyard on her way to the very people she’d just been talking about. “Diana!” she called out. The girl turned, almost in slow motion, her hair and body swaying. The sunlight hit her shoulders, giving her a golden glow. Sam was struck again by how very young and vulnerable she seemed.

“Come over anytime, okay?” Sam called out to her. “I mean that.”

Diana smiled and gave Sam a quick nod. And then she was gone.

J
oe hadn’t intended it to happen. But then, who would have? Nobody planned these things.

He lay on his side, one arm growing numb under the weight of his own torso and one circled around her rib cage. His face was pressed into the soft flesh of her breast and his eyes were closed. Her skin smelled of sex and peach-scented lotion. His heart was still thumping; vibrating through his body with every beat, but his breath came slow and even. He was deep inside himself, in that place of senseless satisfaction, holding on for as long as he could before the rest of it—words, guilt, the reassembling of the future—came crashing in. He nestled into the feeling, savoring it, and watched as a series of stop-action still frames of the immediate past played out in delicious succession behind his closed lids.

The first was Jessalyn beckoning, her short red skirt in high contrast with the white bedding and the tan of her thighs. She moved her hand in a half wave—a come-hither motion that had a snake charmer’s pull. There was the turned-up corner of her lacquered mouth, the same color as her skirt. Not a smile exactly but not a sneer. A little Mona Lisa twist for his pleasure.

Then the first full physical contact; their two bodies crushed together
hard in that wave of need. The clothes shed somehow. Her fingers on buttons and zippers. Her hands everywhere. It was Jessalyn who had stripped them both bare. Joe hadn’t done anything himself. They were clothed, then naked. It was effortless and so fast he could barely remember it happening. Joe’s brain moved on to the next frame: the curve of her hip, the give of her body as he pressed himself into it, and her warm breath in his ear. The picture scrambled and sleep tugged at him, pulling him into sated blackness. Joe felt himself giving way. And then Jessalyn moved, her leg peeling away from his and creating a cold spot where their bodies had been joined. He felt the tension in her body now—she was ready to get up, change the venue—and just like that Joe was wide awake and returned unceremoniously to his senses. The contours of the room—soft and dreamlike only moments before—came into sharp hard focus as Joe cleared his throat and raised himself. Jessalyn smiled at him, and something about the smile caught Joe by unpleasant surprise. It took him a second to identify what it was that was troubling him.

The smile was … 
polite
.

It was the kind of smile a person gave you when you stood on line together at Starbucks or caught each other’s eyes on a train, an acknowledgment of the other’s existence and a gesture of wordless, if bland, goodwill. It was not the sort of smile one received or gave after fierce, sweaty, illicit sex. Joe felt the slightest tremor at the base of his spine. He looked away, blinked hard, and turned back to her. Now there was no smile, just a look of
wantonness
and something else in her expression that Joe took for satisfaction. She licked her smudged lips and smoothed the hair out of her eyes.

“Hey,” she said. “You okay?”

It struck Joe as an odd question, but it didn’t worry him. Not like the shadow of that strange smile. She was holding herself still as if she was waiting for some kind of signal from him that she could get up, or get dressed, or maybe … maybe she wanted more. He ran his hand up the length of her thigh, stopping just short of the professionally waxed
V
between
her legs and letting his fingers linger there. If only he could stay there, he thought. Just
there
. Forever.

“I’m great,” he said. “I mean, really great.”

“Good,” she said and grabbed his hand, lacing her fingers into his and then, miraculously, guiding those fingers home. “For a minute there you looked kind of worried.” She was talking, Joe thought, talking and rubbing and now making little
mmm
noises of satisfaction. He was acting in his own porno and this was the part, he thought, where the couple did it again. He lunged, his mouth hungry, but she laughed.

“Baby,” she said. “You think we have time?”

Joe didn’t know if it was because she used the term
baby
, which nobody had ever called him before and which rang loud and wrong in his ear, but something about her words stopped him.

“No,” he said. “And we shouldn’t. I mean …”

“I know,” she said and instantly the look of desire on her face changed to one of concern.
Polite
concern. Joe thought again about how he hadn’t planned any of this, but now he wondered if perhaps Jessalyn had. He remembered the moment he’d gotten out of his car that Sunday afternoon after he’d backed into her as she was coming out of her driveway. Had she known it then? Had she seen the two of them here on her tangled sheets on another hot Sunday afternoon no more than a few weeks later? Had
he
?

No, he hadn’t. Not even when he’d gone over to see her with his insurance information soon after their fender bender. Nor when he’d chatted her up at the block party. It hadn’t occurred to him then that there would ever be more than anything between the two of them other than flirting (had it?). Even later, when he’d dropped by again to give her the rest of the insurance documentation, it hadn’t been for anything more than a bit of company—a bit of attention—just a reason to get away from the crushing female oppression in his own house. And how could he be blamed for that? Because there was nothing Joe could do or say or
be
to either his wife or his daughter that would remove him from the rank of perpetual asshole, and it had been that way from the moment Diana had arrived.

He ran his hands through his hair and moved to the edge of the bed. He was light-headed—almost dizzy. And then the guilt hit hard and suddenly. He could see Allison in his mind’s eye, her face aging with submerged anger, her eyes filled with constant accusation. Her progression from quiet hurt to silent scorn had been so quick. He’d tried talking to her, tried leaving her alone. He’d tried being angry—the best defense being a good offense—but that hadn’t worked either. He’d even floated the idea of going to see a marriage counselor, although the very thought of it gave him indigestion. But Allison had shut him down there too. “What would be the point?” she’d asked him. “Why should we share our dirty laundry with someone else?”

“What is it about our laundry that’s so dirty, Allison?” he’d asked. “Can you even tell me?”

“I think you know the answer to that question, Joe.”

“I’d like to hear your version. That’s why I’m asking.”

Allison didn’t bother to answer that one in words. She lifted the glass to her lips and that was response enough. At least she’d laid off the booze a little the last couple of weeks, saving her slide into drunkenness until after 5:00
PM
. He supposed there was some small mercy in that. And at least she was a quiet drunk. Of course, it didn’t make up for the fact that she’d taken a leave from work for no good reason. Exactly the wrong time, Joe thought, to be taking time off, because they needed that second income. It was her way, Joe supposed, of making sure that neither Diana nor her baby stayed with them one second longer than necessary. Of course, he’d just let Allison do it, let her put in for a leave from teaching with hardly an argument. She’d counted on that, Joe realized, sure that he’d be too guilty to protest. Well, now he was.