Thy Neighbor Read online

“It’s his day with Daddy. They’re having pizza and playing miniature golf.”

  “And you don’t go?”

  “I go separate. On another day.”

  I was desperate to change the subject.

  “Separate-ly,” I corrected. “You go separate-ly.”

  “That’s what I said. Why are you repeating?”

  Not that way, Nicky. Not that way. She’s normal. Remember?

  “Never mind,” I said.

  Was she? Normal? Was this normal? Who knew? Just move. Move on. Move the conversation on. Distract her. Help her. But how? I don’t know. I don’t know. What the fuck do you say to little girls?

  “What do you do on your day?” I said, lamely.

  But she was having none of it.

  “Stuff.”

  “Like what stuff?”

  She chewed the nail on her thumb. Looked at it, dissatisfied.

  “Just stuff.”

  She dropped the hand limply into her lap. I was losing her.

  “Miriam, does your Daddy know about Dave?”

  Her face darkened.

  “No. He said never to tell.”

  “Dave said?”

  “Yeah. Dave said.”

  “Tell what exactly?” I asked. “That he and your mother are seeing each other?”

  She shifted uncomfortably in the chair.

  “Nothing. Forget it. Sorry.”

  I took her by her forearms, too roughly.

  “Miriam, look at me. Don’t be sorry for telling someone if you think something is wrong.”

  She squirmed away from my grasp and fixed her eyes once more on the floor.

  “I’m not telling someone.”

  She looked at me reproachfully.

  “I’m telling you.”

  “Okay.” I sighed, sitting back on the footstool. I felt like some predatory shoe salesman. Don’t touch.

  “But why me?” I said, finally. “Why did you choose me?”

  She started to answer, then stopped herself. Then started again.

  “I don’t know,” she mumbled at last.

  She toyed with the cutoff fringe on her shorts, tugging at it where the loose threads were longest and winding it around her finger.

  “I . . .”

  She closed her eyes tightly and grimaced, as if that would make the mistake disappear.

  “You what?”

  She hesitated again, censoring.

  “You said— You . . . Oh . . . it doesn’t matter.”

  “It does. What?”

  “You chose me. You did,” she blurted. “Why don’t you remember?”

  She fell back heavily against the chair.

  I felt my scalp prickle and go cold.

  “What are you talking about, Miriam? What do you mean I chose you? How? When?”

  She shook her head violently.

  She would say no more.

  I looked away again out the window just in time to see a very pissed-off Dorris making her way up the drive. She was wearing a loud silk flower-print bathrobe and leopard mules with black feather tufts on the toes. She was striding angrily, as fast as she could in that attire. She turned sharply onto the walk, cutting the corner of the lawn. She stumbled and swore.

  I turned back to Miriam. She was still shaking her head, more slowly now.

  The doorbell went.

  Miriam started.

  “Oh, God. It’s him?”

  “No, no.” I touched her hand. “It’s your mother.”

  She pulled away and curled into a ball, pressing herself desperately into the deepest cup of the chair.

  “I’m not here. Okay? I’m not here,” she cried.

  “Miriam, I can’t lie to your mother about where you are. She’ll worry.”

  “She won’t. She’ll just be mad. She’ll yell. You don’t know.”

  “It’s the same. She’ll be mad because she’s worried. That’s all. C’mon. I’ll calm her down, okay?”

  “She’ll take me back there with him. Nick, I don’t want to go. I want to stay here with you. Let me stay here with you. I’ll be good.”

  What the hell did that mean? I’ll be good?

  “You haven’t been bad, sweetheart,” I said. “Don’t worry. Everything’s fine.”

  The doorbell went again. Three quick times.

  Bing-buh-bing-bing.

  She’s hopping mad, I thought. This is going to blow. Hard.

  I turned to make my way toward the door.

  “Please, Nick,” Miriam bawled from behind me.

  “It’s cool, kid,” I shot back over my shoulder. “I’ll deal with it. Relax.”

  I opened the door slowly, stern-faced but calm and vaguely condescending. That seemed the right tone for Dorris, who was dressed like a bayou whore but had the glare of a prison camp commandant.

  “Is Miriam in there?” she barked.

  No hello. No sorry. No beg your pardon.

  The gall of the woman. Honestly.

  “She’s your kid,” I spat. “You tell me. Is she?”

  “I’m betting on it,” she snapped.

  She shifted her weight and adjusted the belt on her robe, cinching it tighter and pulling the flap closed over her cleavage.

  “Oh, really? And why’s that?” I said, genuinely surprised.

  “Oh, I don’t know, because she seems to be under the impression that you’re God or something. Where do you think she got that idea?”

  “What?” Had she really just said what I’d thought she’d said?

  “I have no idea. What are you talking about?”

  “Look, you freak, if she’s in there, you’ve got exactly three seconds to turn her over before I yell rape.”

  Without thinking, or thinking to stop myself, I said, “As if anyone would believe you.”

  “I’m not talking about me, fuckface,” she crowed. “I’m talking about her, and you can bet my word’ll be more believable than yours.”

  Whoa. Where was all this shit coming from? What had I said the other night? What had I done?

  Nothing. Fucking nothing.

  The woman had turned her children’s home into a bordello, and she was going to claim the moral high ground with me?

  Nuh-unh.

  “I wouldn’t try to play the outraged mother if I were you, Dorris. Have you checked a mirror lately? You look like the cook in a meth lab.”

  “Right,” she hissed, turning on her kitten heel. “You are so fucked, you pathetic, twisted, infantile prick.”

  She was halfway down the walk before she spun around again.

  “I’ll be back with the cops in five. Then we’ll see who believes.”

  “Oh, cool it, Dorris,” I blurted. “She’s here. Unharmed. All in one piece, no thanks to you and Dave. Come in and see for yourself.”

  She shot me a look about the Dave comment, but decided not to contest.

  “You scared the hell out of her,” I hissed, “you fucking slag. Can’t you at least put her in day care while you ply your trade?”

  Miriam had appeared behind me, grasping at the belt loops of my jeans.

  Dorris stepped close enough for me to smell the vodka and the sex on her breath. Her face had runnels of sweat on the brow and upper lip and along the trace of sideburns by her ears. She’d dyed them an alarming shade of copper, which only made them stand out more noticeably against the deep-lined mahogany of her cheeks.

  She leaned in closer still, close enough to kiss me, and hissed:

  “F-U, Nick Walsh. This is not over.”

  She flushed and pushed me aside, pawing for Miriam as if she were a fork that had fallen down the sink and lodged itself in the disp
osal.

  “Come on, missy. That’s quite enough excitement for one day. We’re going home.”

  “Nooooo,” Miriam wailed. “I won’t go. I won’t.”

  She pressed herself against my legs and wrapped herself around, arms and legs crossed and locked.

  “Oh, yes, you will, little lady,” grunted Dorris through gritted teeth.

  She peeled savagely at Miriam’s fingers one by one, then tried for the twined ankles instead, but to no avail. The kid was latched like a poultice.

  Dorris bellowed and huffed with frustration, her halitosis souring thickly around us. I turned my head away in disgust, leaving myself open for the strike, which came as swiftly and surreptitiously as the low blow always does.

  Bam!

  She hiked her knee into my balls.

  I felt my throat close and my breathing stop, the familiar jolt, like pulling the panic brake on a train, the lock before the long, hideous screeching of wheels.

  As I buckled and face-planted to the stoop, she pulled Miriam, shrieking, by her hair, and force-somersaulted her over my back and down the steps before I could even inhale.

  I watched them go, pushing and tearing at each other, my eyes bulged and glazed, frozen as everything else.

  Wait it out. Wait it out.

  The waves of nausea came and came again, then the trembling, the adrenal haul through the bloodstream, juddering the limbs.

  Everything was sideways, but I could see that they were in their driveway now. Dorris had a firm hold on Miriam, an upright full nelson with Miriam’s arms pinned back butterfly, Dorris’s hands locked at the back of Miriam’s neck, and Miriam’s feet limp atop Dorris’s own, marching forward by force.

  The front door opened and Dave appeared briefly in a pair of candy apple red briefs that, even from that distance, I could see were too shiny to be cotton. He stepped out of the way to let Dorris and her cargo pass, and the light caught the bulge of his codpiece.

  Yep. Vinyl for sure.

  Big as you please in the doorway with a ten-year-old in tow.

  He glanced in my direction and laughed, then slammed the door behind them. The glass storm door rattled in its frame.

  No mercy, my friend. Just wait. He could laugh at that when the time came. I was gonna hurt him till you couldn’t even recognize his face.

  Meanwhile, motor control was coming back. Slowly.

  I was flexing my hands, then my arms, then my legs—still on my side—then on my back, flat against the stoop, staring up at the narrow panels of the aluminum siding, row after row under the eaves.

  If I had a cent I’d have that redone, I thought. It’s been—what?—fifteen years? More?

  Seventeen. Yeah. Seventeen for sure.

  I remembered Mom telling me about it. I was in my senior year at prep, I think, and we were having one of our Sunday phone calls. How’s it going? How’s school? How was your week? They were having the siding done, she was telling me, and it was going well. Normally I wouldn’t have remembered a detail like that, but it was around the time when Mom was getting really friendly with Robin Bloom. Every week I heard a story. The parrot story or a sleepover story or something to do with that kid.

  She was everywhere, like a gravitational force that everyone bowed to and bended toward, often without even realizing it. And it wasn’t just the neighbors, Gruber, and my mom. It was everyone.

  I guess that’s why I remembered this particular story so well, because I remember thinking at the time that it was just weird, the power that kid had over people. Even total strangers.

  People like the guys putting up the aluminum siding. Gruff tradesmen, you’d think. Thermos and lunch pail kinda guys who’d have spent their breaks smoking and swearing and ogling the likes of Dorris Katz, if she’d been here then, or someone’s teenage daughter walking the dog.

  But fuck me if Robin didn’t charm the pants off one of them. He practically fell in love with her, from the sound of it. Mom said this guy took a scrap piece of aluminum, cut it to size, and made a bracelet out of it. Worked on it every chance he got for a week. Spray painted it with moons and stars and shades of the night sky, and presented it to Robin, ceremoniously on bended knee, like a troubadour.

  Crazy.

  But that was Robin all over, I guess. This precious, beautiful, sweet fairy-tale girl that men and women fetishized and fell for. Flop. Flop. Flop. All the way down the line, like daisies under her feet.

  And there I was, too, lying under the overhang, all Gumby on my back, my crotch in a knot, thinking of Robin Bloom seventeen years after the fact and wondering: Whatever happened to that bracelet?

  Did Mrs. Bloom still have it enshrined somewhere in a Lucite case along with all the other heirlooms of Robin’s loss? Or the ones she could bear to keep?

  Maybe one of these days I’d ask her. Just go over, ring the bell, and say, “Hey, I’ve been thinking . . .”

  Thinking what?

  About what a jewel your granddaughter must have been? Oh, and sorry for your loss?

  Is there a decency interval on condolence? Is this unseemly after so long?

  I beg your pardon, if so.

  Finally, I sat up. I’d stopped shaking and the nausea was gone.

  Not a sign from across the street. You’d have thought the house was empty for all you could hear or tell of what was going on in there.

  A terrible silence.

  It made me think of those stories on the news now and again, the kind of thing you can’t forget and that gives you the willies when you’re just walking down a quiet suburban street. Like the story about that Austrian guy who had kept his daughter prisoner in the family basement for more than twenty years, raping her all that time, and had had seven kids by her, three of whom had never seen the light of day. Never. Meanwhile, the guy’s wife was living with him upstairs purporting not to know a thing.

  That ruined a restless early morning stroll for me every time. I’d be out walking off the booze before bed just as the sun was coming up, and instead of thinking what I might have once thought (once when?), or let’s say what a normal person would think—something like, “Oh, isn’t it lovely to walk through a quiet place where people probably leave their doors unlocked and let their kids play unsupervised”—I’d be wondering instead if there was some girl who’d been missing for twenty years holed up in a basement being gored daily and bearing a brood of inbreds to a monster.

  And then I’d wonder, how many horrible things are going on right now in any one of these houses? How many quiet crimes are being committed? And not by marauding bands of escaped cons or cat-burgling sex offenders registered on a website, but by family members, who, as the statistics are always reminding us, are far more likely to bring about your demise than a stranger, and are in a far better position to do so without arousing suspicion. Without arousing any kind of response whatsoever. Without making a sound.

  Who was ever going to know?

  Who would ever even conceive?

  Well, I would, for one.

  And maybe I was the only one.

  But I could know what was going on, and what’s more, I could do something about it.

  Hell, I could be the self-styled superhero of the behind-closed-doors, the savior of the stay-at-home, the supreme violator of privacy who violates for the private good, for the individual good, because he knows that privacy itself is a violation, or could be.

  Maybe I could help Miriam after all. I didn’t have to guess at what was going on in that house. I could head down to the basement and see for myself, right there on the monitors. Live.

  Was this a cause I heard calling? Was this a mission for the unholy? A turnaround for the—what had Dorris called me?—the twisted?

  Why, yes, I believe it was.

  Whoa.

  Hang on.<
br />
  Wait. Wait. Wait.

  Pull back for just one second here, and think.

  Help Miriam?

  Well, now let’s consider that a bit more closely, shall we?

  Before you get too overzealous and prosecutorial there, Nicky boy, and start installing a hotline for the police commissioner, hadn’t you better remember what Dorris said? What Miriam herself said?

  Oh, you’re confused. Not getting it, I see. Okay, then. Well, let’s review. Dorris said what? That Miriam thought you were God or something. Was that it? Interesting choice of words, considering. Don’t you think? And Miriam had said something about choosing. You chose her. She definitely said that. Remember now?

  Right.

  So?

  So, do the math. What does that add up to, smart guy? Still not getting it? Okay. Let’s put it this way: What if, purely for the sake of argument, we allowed that you did somehow miraculously turn your atrocious peeping hobby into a superpower that could redeem your rotten soul and, in the process, save the American people from the scourge of their right to privacy? Let’s say we granted that particular if for just a moment here. And let’s call a spade what it is while we’re at it, shall we? It’s a pretty fucking enormous and lethargic if to begin with. But let’s just say you did it. You became tinker tailor savior spy. Then what?

  Well, in keeping with our theme here, I’d say you ought to be a tad worried about what you’ll find when you finish all that snooping, wouldn’t you?

  I mean, what if the perp, the real badass behind it all, the guy on tape for all to see and slam the gavel on—guilty!—the really death-penalty-deserving scum of plain-Jane Middle America is, in fact, you?

  What if you’re the one sticking your schlong in Miriam’s sticky bits and telling her not to tell? What if you chose her, just like she said? What then, wonder boy? What then? Will you turn the tapes on yourself? I’m just asking, ’cuz before you rush out and buy that cape and tights, you’d better know what you intend.

  No recordings of that, huh?

  Can’t tape the doings when you’re in the picture, right? But what if someone else could? What if someone else is watching the red record light while they’re watching you?

  Hoist, anyone?

  Petard, perhaps?

  Now there’s one of Daddy’s quotables for you. Or was it Mom’s?