The New Neighbor (13 page)

Jennifer’s been silent too long, because Megan prompts her. “Where’d you go?” Megan says. “Are you thinking about your client? Margaret?”

Jennifer nods. She pictures Margaret, alone in the lonely woods. Banished, or in hiding. Under an enchantment, maybe of her own design. Her house is so quiet, quieter even than Jennifer’s. The grandfather clock, though it makes a noise, somehow amplifies the silence. In the guest room, two high, ornate twin beds have the grand severity of thrones. The king and queen will see you now. The dresser is squat and unfriendly. The antique mirror watches with haughty disdain. Maybe it’s the silence that brings these things to life. Margaret is the Beast in the castle, before Beauty came along. Or maybe after she was gone.

“I am curious about her,” Jennifer says. “About what happened to her. But I don’t know if I really want to know.”

I
cannot get
the world’s attention. That is what it means to be old. I shout but no one can hear me. I am of no consequence. People imagine I don’t know that, talking to me with their voices that pat pat pat me on the head. Feigned interest, faux concern. As if this fools me. As if you fool me, world. I know you don’t give a shit.

Jennifer has touched my naked skin, seen the inside of my house, rummaged in my medicine cabinet for all I know. She caught me on tape. She wrote me down. No detective could have infiltrated better. I have been investigated. She got me to talk.

And what do I know about her in return? Nothing. Nothing! Except that there is something to know. Of that I’m certain. There is something to know. But all my stratagems for solving her mystery have ended only in exposing my own.

Oh, I would like to see the inside of her house, though I’m not sure what I think it would tell me. Perhaps I’m imagining Bluebeard’s castle or the house in
Psycho
, with its taxidermied animals auguring no good. But I know from my many detective novels that a person in possession of a secret is as likely as anyone to own a television, a coffee table, a couch.

Still—and perhaps I read too many of those novels and should, at this late date, give them up for something more sensible and edifying—still, I keep imagining myself as a detective, and what does a detective want but to be admitted into the house of the suspect? Think of all the little old ladies of mystery land—Miss Marple, and the one played by Angela Lansbury on TV. We look sweet and doddering, but we are wily and clever, and everything you assume about us we use to our advantage. If she would just invite me over. We’ll have a nice chat and then she’ll excuse herself for one reason or another and I’ll notice something—a glint of metal or a corner of a letter peeking out from under the bookcase—and I’ll go investigate. I’ll be drawn into some dark room where there may be clues. But she’ll catch me. She’ll come in and I won’t know it, so engrossed in my clues, and she’ll say, “What are you doing?” or “Lose your way?” in the eerily calm voice of the possible murderer. I’ll stammer out some excuse—oh my! Just an old lady! Confused! I’m too old to flee so I’ll have to rely on my wits to escape her.

I have been
exposed
. And still she doesn’t see me. She doesn’t even recognize me.

I ran into her at the Piggly Wiggly first thing this morning, Jennifer and her little boy, let loose in the aisles though he’s a hazard. It terrifies me to watch him run. He contains infinite possible collisions. I picture him in my house and shudder—everything there is fragile, including me. He was begging his mother for this and that. I watched for a moment without her noticing: he wanted cookies and where she should have said an outright no she was negotiating. Him the world cares about. His needs, his wants, his
feelings
.

She looked up at last and saw me, but she didn’t really see me. She gave me a polite vague smile. There I was a few feet from her, a woman whose naked skin she has touched with her hands, and
she didn’t recognize me
.

Jennifer, I think about you every day.

She was saying my name. She was saying, “I didn’t recognize you for a second. Out of context.” She was pushing her cart closer to mine, telling the little boy over her shoulder to put down the cookies and come on. She said something about having forgotten she was supposed to take snacks to his school. I wasn’t really listening. I was still in the moment when she looked at me and had no idea who I was. What more do I need, to convince me how little I matter?

The rest of the morning I was teary eyed, the world filmy, the pages of my book hard to see. I sit in my armchair and reread Agatha Christie. Behind me the clock ticktocks. It’s a grandfather clock that belonged to my parents, ponderous and loud. Its low and solemn voice counts each hour that passes; how else would I know to mark them off?

After a while I called Lucy. Lucy is a doctor, which gives us plenty to talk about. She’s in general practice. She could’ve gone into a luxury-car specialty, but she was already married by then, and knew she wanted a family, and so that is what she chose. Her husband is a decent man, I guess. He does something with computers. I don’t know what exactly, but truthfully I don’t really care. He matters to me chiefly as he advances or impedes my access to her.

“What if I buy you a ticket?” I said to Lucy when she answered the phone. “Will you come see me then?”

There was a slight pause. “That’s sweet of you,” she said. She sounded a little stiff, and it occurs to me now that perhaps I offended her, assuming her hesitation was financial.

“I’ll spring for first class,” I said, and she laughed.

“It’s not really an issue of money,” she said. “It’s an issue of time.”

“You could come for a weekend.”

“I could. But the kids are in all kinds of activities now, so leaving Austin alone with them really complicates his life, and you know I often have to round on Saturdays, so being away takes some planning.”

“Maybe you’d just rather not come,” I said. “Your life is very important.” This time I knew I’d offended her. Even if I hadn’t heard it in the silence, or the careful control in her voice when she spoke again, I knew because I’d done it on purpose.

“That’s not the case,” she said.

“Those children won’t thank you for dancing attendance on them, you know,” I said. “Applauding everything they do. What are you teaching them?”

“Margaret,” she said, and then she seemed at a loss.

“Life is not soccer games and trophies,” I said. “Life is an uphill battle against idiocy and despair.”

“Margaret,” she said. “I will look at my schedule and get back to you.”

“I won’t be around much longer,” I said to her. “There are whispers. Don’t talk to me about time.”

She said I’d hear from her soon, but who knows. She hung up unhappy with me, I know it, and that wasn’t my original intent, though it seemed to become my intent over the course of the call. I should call back and apologize but I haven’t, and I won’t.

My parents taught me that the world is unfair. These parents now, including my Lucy—what they try to teach is the opposite. We like to share, etc. A lifetime of disappointment awaits their children. My parents used to whip us with switches when we were bad, switches we’d have to select ourselves from the yard. Across the street was a boy named Jimmy. He and I were always getting in scuffles. My mother told me that if a fight kicked up between us, I needed to come straight home. The next time it happened I tried to obey her, but his father held my arm asking what had happened, what we were fighting about, insistent even though I kept saying, “I need to go home, I need to go home.” It was a weekend and both my parents were there. Though my father was not the daily disciplinarian, not the maker of rules, if he was home you could be sure he would go to great lengths to enforce my mother’s.

When the man finally released me, I went home to find both my parents in the parlor. Not all the details are clear in my memory—how did they know I’d been fighting with Jimmy? Somehow they knew. My mother said, “I told you to come straight home,” and my father said, “Why didn’t you do what your mother told you?” I explained, but my father said I needed a whipping anyway. He said if they whipped me, then Jimmy’s parents would feel compelled to whip him. I saw my mother’s hesitation, but my father ruled our house, and she took me in the bathroom and hit my bare legs with a switch. At first I refused to cry, but then I thought that I’d better go ahead so she’d stop, so I did and she did.

My father wanted his victory. He cared about that more than he cared about causing his own child unjustifiable pain. My mother, my lovely mother—she knew he was wrong but whipped me anyway.

Tell that story to your children. That, my dears, is the world.

J
ennifer is trying
to remember all the names. Erica, Juliana, Leigh Anne. Jodi, Nicole, Susan. These are the people at Megan’s party, what Megan called her “girls’ night in”; she says hello to them one by one. Megan’s friend Amanda—appointed Jennifer’s guide while Megan tends to hors d’oeuvres in the kitchen—dutifully introduces her. Samantha. Shivika. Terry, who hugs her. “I’m a hugger,” Terry says in her ear.

“Okay,” Jennifer says, startled, patting the other woman’s back.

“You should have told her that before you hugged her, Terry,” Amanda says.

“That’s true.” Terry pulls back and gives her a look of playful apology. “I should warn, then hug.”

“But you’d lose the element of surprise,” Jennifer says. The other women laugh. They laugh! Jennifer made a joke. Is it possible she might enjoy this party, which she’s been dreading for days and days?

Tommy always liked a party.

“Leigh Anne!” Amanda calls, waving the woman over. Amanda wants the scoop from Leigh Anne about the meeting of some committee, and Terry asks things like, “What did Karen say?” and from this Jennifer deduces that the three of them must be colleagues. Professors, she assumes. Terry turns to her at one point and says, “Sorry, this is so boring.” But Leigh Anne is saying, “And I promise you, you will not believe what he said next . . . ,” and Terry can’t resist diving back in. Jennifer doesn’t blame her. They all care very much about whatever they’re discussing. They’re all completely absorbed.

Jennifer stands on the other side of the looking glass, where she always ends up, where she’s always been, and what she’d really like to know is, is she cursed or did she do it to herself, and is there a difference? Either way, she believes she understands something these women do not. The ordinary is a mask worn by the awful. What we accept as normal is a play in which we’ve all agreed to take part. They don’t know it’s a play, or they willfully forget. She can’t forget. She just keeps watching, bemused by their commitment to the performance, forgetting to say her lines. Why can’t she change this about herself, as easily as she changed her name? Stack the past away like boxes in the attic. Be one of these women, remake herself in their image—be cheerfully annoyed with the preschool teachers, discuss the last book she read. Lighten up.

“There you are!” Megan cries, appearing before her wearing a pinkish glow. She pulls Jennifer a little farther from the other women. Her smile is larger than usual, her gestures more expansive, and from this Jennifer deduces that she is drunk. That she is a happy drunk. That before too long she’ll be saying things to Jennifer like, “You know what I like about you?” On her face that drunken-epiphany expression, stupid and profound.

It’s true that these thoughts have an edge. There’s no help for that, resistant as she is to drunkenness as charming innocence. But she thinks the thoughts with affection, nevertheless. She’s fond of Megan. Of course she is. She gives Megan a hug. Which, frankly, surprises her as much as it seems to surprise Megan.

Megan says, “Whoosh!” as though Jennifer squeezed her tight, and then squeezes Jennifer tight, and plants a loud kiss right by her ear. She pulls away to look Jennifer in the eye, trying for serious. “I’m a little drunk,” she says.

Terry must have given her the hugging idea. Jennifer thinks it’s been some time since another adult hugged her, and it must have been nice to be hugged. When an adult and a child embrace, one hugs and one holds on. She’d forgotten that those are different things.

“Are
you
drunk?” Megan asks.

Jennifer shakes her head.

“Oh! That’s right. You don’t drink,” Megan whispers. “You told me that.” She takes hold of Jennifer’s sleeve and swings her arm gently from side to side. “Are you going to have fun?”

“You mean without drinking?”

“That. And in general.”

“I am,” Jennifer says. “I swear.”

Megan gives her another serious look. “People will like you, you know.”

Jennifer wants to look away. There’s a tingle in her cheeks like she might blush. She tries to hold Megan’s gaze, but she just can’t do it.

“Sometimes people find it hard here,” Megan says. “It’s just so small, and everybody knows everybody, and I think sometimes when you arrive it’s like the party got started without you and everyone already has all their inside jokes.” There’s an edge to Megan’s voice, some remembered hurt. “But it’s really a welcoming place,” she says, earnestly, almost pleadingly. “At heart it is. If you want to you can belong here.”

Jennifer doesn’t know what to say. What she feels is
seen
. How does Megan know that she’s wondering if she can belong? If she should? How can Megan see that she wants to? Does she know how it terrifies her? The wanting to.

Megan, bless her, doesn’t require an answer. She releases Jennifer from eye contact, aiming a shy smile at the floor. “I really am drunk.” She laughs a little breathlessly.

“Hey, y’all,” a voice says beside them, and Amanda is back, with two other women in tow. So far she seems to be the sardonic one. There’s a brassy one, and an intellectual one, and an uptight one, and an empathetic one, who reacted with too much sadness when she asked about Jennifer’s husband and Jennifer had to say he died. Jennifer will avoid this last one. Amanda she likes. She thinks they could be friends. Amanda says something wry about a TV show, and Jennifer laughs, and Megan beams at them both like a proud matchmaker.