The New Neighbor (15 page)

Smile, Jennifer. Maybe Megan isn’t the safe haven you thought she was. Smile anyway. Maybe the floor sloshes beneath her, but her feet are planted, her grip is firm on your hand. Can you bear it, Jennifer? Complication, imperfection? The possibility that you might be understood? Or would you rather be alone?

T
his morning I
got what I wanted. I resorted to devious measures, but this is nothing that should surprise anyone at this point. I’m not sure why it still, a little, surprises me. A good detective has to be devious. If you’re a good detective, devious is the same as clever, manipulation an admirable skill. We call a flaw a virtue when we like the results. I called her number, and when she answered, I asked her if she had an egg I could borrow. I don’t know why I didn’t think of doing this before. I said I was baking cookies. Though I don’t bake cookies, or anything at all, which of course she couldn’t have known. She said she did have an egg. She said it slowly and as if against her will. I said I’d be right over and hung up before she could change her mind. I thought she might call back to say that she’d bring the egg to me, because I believed—and still believe—that she didn’t want to let anyone inside her house. So when the phone rang as I was gathering my things, and I saw her number on the caller ID, I didn’t answer. I let her think I was already on my way. Slow, perhaps, but unstoppable.

She met me at the door with the egg in her hand. I hadn’t prepared for that eventuality, and for a moment I was sure I was thwarted. I was so disappointed that, I am embarrassed to say, I wanted to weep. I took the egg and thanked her. I shuffled myself in a half circle, pivoting on my cane, and then I happened to look down at the concrete porch and before I could even register the idea it gave me I’d already dropped the egg. “Oh no!” I said. I stared at the egg—its gooey splatter—because I was afraid if I looked up I wouldn’t look sufficiently sheepish. And she’d know.

“Oh, that’s okay,” Jennifer said, her voice motherly with irritation and forgiveness. “I’ve got more.”

“I’m so clumsy,” I said. “My father always said I was clumsy. He used to make me sit down and grip the sides of my chair so I couldn’t fall down or break anything.” This is true, but I have no idea why I told her, or why my voice cracked like that when I did. Perhaps it was this pathetic little moment that compelled her to invite me in.

It’s strange how the petty continues to upset you, even after you’ve been to war. The funny look someone gives you, the invitation you didn’t get, the long line at the post office—these things don’t cease to affect. A human mind is not a still pond into which the world drops an occasional stone. It’s an ocean—waves and currents, the big and the small so mixed together it’s hard to say which is which.
You’re so clumsy.
I can talk about gut-shot soldiers without crying, but I told Jennifer that story and tears sprang to my eyes.

Her house was a mess. It is my nature to pass judgment on a messy home, as it is, for good or ill, my nature to pass judgment on everything. But even a less critical person than I might have been taken aback at the sight of that living room. She escorted me to a chair and left me in it while she went to fetch a paper towel to wipe off the egg that had splashed on my ankle and my shoe. So I was able to study the chaos at my leisure. Let it suffice to say that that child has a great many toys.

It’s a strange little house, like a toy itself, built with haphazard creativity from more than one set. There are only three rooms on the first floor, a doll-size kitchen, a bathroom, an enormous living room. Why make that room so large, the kitchen so minuscule? And then put a huge stone fireplace in the center of it, and an open spiral staircase behind that? I wonder that Jennifer doesn’t worry the boy will fall through the slats on the stairs and crack his head on the stone. Upstairs is a loft. You can see a couch and a TV there, and then what look like bedroom doors on either side of the open space. There’s a deck off the back of the first floor, which I knew, but I’d never seen it from this side. The wall going out to it is all glass, with doors, and through those doors I could see the trees and the pond, and beyond that my own house. From this distance it wasn’t pretty. No visible windows, and the roof is low, all the colors dark as mud. I had the fanciful notion that it was hunkered down there at the edge of the trees like a hunter wearing camouflage.

The little boy was watching me from the loft. The moment I realized it, he shouted, “Mom!” My Lord, it was loud. I felt like someone had clanged cymbals by my ear.

Jennifer emerged with rags, one damp, one dry. “What, Milo?” she called up. Rather pleasantly, for someone who’d just been shouted at.

“Who is that?” he demanded.

“Her name is Ms. Riley,” Jennifer said. “She lives across the pond.”

“Ms. Riley?” he repeated suspiciously.

“Come down and say hello,” his mother said. She knelt in front of me and began to wipe the egg off my shoe with the briskly dutiful air of a paid caretaker. Frankly, it embarrassed me.

“I can do that,” I said.

“I’m done.” She pulled herself up to her feet. The movement looked effortful, but still it was more than I could have managed. I bet she imagines she’s getting old.

The child had somehow appeared behind her. I’d been too flustered by Jennifer at my feet to hear him clatter down the stairs. I thought he might hide behind her and peek out at me, as I’ve known small children to do, but he’s a bold little thing. He came right up close and studied me.

“Hi, Milo,” I said.

“Hi,” he said. Then he looked at his mother. “I didn’t know she’d be so old!” He said this cheerfully. No insult implied.

So I laughed, at the comment, at the look of embarrassment on Jennifer’s face. “Your mother should have warned you,” I said.

“Milo,” Jennifer reproved him, but he looked at her with incomprehension and said, “What?” Then suddenly he cried out, “Zoom!” and dashed in a circle from living room to kitchen to living room and then back up the stairs. This time I heard the clatter.

“Sorry,” Jennifer said, dropping into the chair next to mine. The rags she let fall to the floor. I wondered how long they’d stay there.

“He speaks only the truth,” I said. “It’s a wonder he’s not terrified of me.”

“There’s no reason he should be,” she said forcefully.

I felt an argumentative urge to disagree. I don’t know why. You’d think I’d know everything about myself by now, but every now and then I’m brought up short by the opposite realization. At any rate I felt almost angry at her. “My grandniece gave me a book for my birthday,” I said. “Pictures of old ladies. Stuff about how beautiful they were. Maybe it’s because I’m old, but I don’t think old age is beautiful. I think they look awful.”

She didn’t answer. I could see from a sidelong glance that she looked pensive. I like about her that she doesn’t speak when she’s not sure what to say. I like about her that she didn’t say,
Oh, no, you’re beautiful
, or some other painful and condescending thing. I’m too old for insincerity.

“Do you see your grandniece often?” she asked. It felt sudden, and I was a little startled.

“No,” I said. “Not often. I have two, but I only like the one.”

“I have the feeling you don’t like many people.”

“Oh,
people
. I used to like them. It may be hard to imagine now, but I used to like to throw a dinner party.”

“Not me. I hate parties of all kinds.” She said this with a weird anger in her voice.

“Well, don’t worry, I won’t make you go to one.”

She didn’t answer. She pressed a thumb and finger against her forehead, like people do when they have a headache.

“I used to be awash in friends,” I said to her silence. “I used to date. I made delicious desserts, especially strawberry-rhubarb pie. And coffee cake. I made a good coffee cake.”

She nodded, though I don’t think she was listening.

“I was a good cook. I could have made a good little housewife, if anybody’d cared to employ me.” It’s odd, I know, but I felt defensive after I said this, like she’d been the one to suggest no one had ever wanted to marry me. So I said, “I almost got married. I wanted to.”

“I know,” she said, in a neutral tone. I went on talking.

“His name was Lloyd,” I said. “He died. He died in the war.”

“You told me about him.”

“I did?”

“It’s on the tape.” Then, as if realizing she’d been rude, she said, “I’m sorry to be abrupt. I’m not feeling very well.”

“It was a long time ago,” I said sharply. I was annoyed that I’d repeated myself, trying for the umpteenth time to draw some reaction from her. I went there for a glimpse behind the curtain, and there I was again, pulling it back on myself. “I don’t think about it now.” She was silent again, and I said, “Some things happen and some things don’t. It hardly matters at my age which is which.” Silence. Oh, she is good at silence. I wanted to get her to talk, so I told her what all mothers like to hear: “Your son is a cute little boy.”

She smiled. She couldn’t help herself. “He’s my reward,” she said.

“Your reward?”

“Maybe that’s a bad way to put it.”

“Put it however you like. I have no stake in it.”

“In what?”

I waved one hand. “In children. In how people talk about having children. Why would I judge? What do I know about it? I never had any. Never even approached having any.” I wondered if she would ask if I’d wanted to have children, as people sometimes do, with a pity in their voice that I find presumptuous, because they assume the answer will be yes, and they’re preemptively sad for me.

“I can’t imagine that,” she said instead. Not with compassion—you poor old dear—but with wonder. Wonder I don’t mind. Who doesn’t feel some wonder at the sight of a life so utterly unlike her own? Proof that something else was possible.

“You haven’t explained what you meant by
reward
.”

She pressed her fingers to her head again. “For surviving,” she said.

I felt a flicker of excitement. Here was something real. She’d said it with the weariness of truth. I kept my voice level. “Surviving what?”

“Everything that went wrong.”

It wasn’t enough, it wasn’t enough, but it was more than I’d ever gotten. I waited. A good detective knows when to let the silence do its work. Who knows what she might’ve told me if Milo hadn’t reappeared, bringing with him an enormous amount of noise. It’s rather like being shelled—the approach of a small rambunctious child. You hear the noise growing closer, and then there it is, louder than anything, rocking the world. He emitted some sort of strange roaring, growling sound—I’m not sure what it was supposed to be. His idea of intimidation. He had a big dark blanket flung over him like a hooded cape. He stopped roaring and looked at us, hands on hips. His little face within the shadow of his cape was lowered into a glower. “I am Dark Flame,” he said.

“Dark Flame?” Jennifer repeated. Her whole demeanor changed when the child came in the room. She leaned toward him. She smiled. “Are you good or evil?”

“I’m morally ambiguous.”

Jennifer concealed her smile behind her hand. “We’ve been discussing that concept,” she said to me. “Because of a character in a book.”

Children are frightening, aren’t they? He really did look like a treacherous creature, a little caped goblin, a devil child. He looked like something that might ruin your life. His mother asked, “Are you magic?”

He growled again, swirling his cape. “I have the power to break hearts.”

Jennifer laughed, genuine and involuntary.

“Please don’t break mine,” I said.

“I can’t break
your
heart.” He dropped his blanket and giggled, a little boy again. He thought I was teasing him. “You’re
old
.”

“Milo,” Jennifer warned.

“It’s all right,” I said. “I am old. I’ve outgrown heartbreak. Right, Milo?”

But he wasn’t listening anymore. He’d zoomed away, his parable delivered. You can outgrow heartbreak only when you don’t love anyone anymore, and maybe not even then. That’s the thought I had, except it came to me like this: Nobody loves me. Nobody will ever love me again. Those two sentences rang in my head, crisp and clear. Like they were a revelation, though they shouldn’t have been. My throat closed as if I would choke. As if I stood at the edge of the pond, pockets full of stones.

My hand was resting on the top of my cane, which I’d held on to, even sitting down, as though I might be asked to leave at any moment. I tell you this because of what happened next: Jennifer reached over and put her hand on mine. I nearly jumped, I was so startled. When was the last time someone had touched me without expecting payment? When was the last time someone had shown me a kindness, any kindness at all, that wasn’t
dutiful
? Why did she do it? Because I told her about Lloyd, forgetting I’d already told her about Lloyd? Or had my voice wobbled on the word
heartbreak
? Why do I ask these questions? Why does it matter to me
why
?

Here came Milo again, back for his blanket cape. Jennifer took away her hand. “Hello, Dark Flame,” I said, trying to play along.

“My name is not Dark Flame!” he shouted.

This despite the blanket back on his head. “Well, how was I supposed to know?”

“So who are you?” Jennifer asked, with a sweetness that was perhaps supposed to counteract my lack thereof. “Are you Mr. Ninja?”

“Mr. Ninja?” he repeated incredulously. “No!”

I said, “Are you Milo Young?”

He looked at me with narrowed eyes. “That is not my name.”

“What is it then?” I smiled at Jennifer in what I hoped was complicit delighted amusement at the antics of her child. But she wasn’t looking at me.

“Milo Carrasco!” he shouted. “Milo Carrasco!” He dragged the “o” out into a wolf’s howl, and ran away trailing blanket and howl behind him.

“I was expecting something more dramatic,” I said. “Child of Chaos. Wolf Boy.” But then I looked at Jennifer, who was staring in the direction he’d gone.

I’ve performed a lot of triage. I would’ve pegged her as gut shot, if she’d come in on a stretcher with that look on her face.