The Neighbor

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I cheated on Jason for the first time when Ree was eleven months old. I couldn’t take it anymore. The sleepless nights, the exhausting ritual of feeding, tending, diapering, feeding, tending, diapering. I’d already registered for online college courses and it seemed any minute I wasn’t tending a baby, I was writing a paper, researching a subject, trying to recall high school math.

I felt both incredibly drained and unbelievably tense. Edgy, like my skin was on too tight, or my scalp was squeezing my brain. I found myself noticing everything from the silky feel of Ree’s pink baby blanket to the needle-sharp pain of hot shower spray stinging my breasts.

Worse, I could feel the darkness growing inside my head. Until I could smell the cloying scent of decaying roses in every corner of my own home, and I dreaded falling asleep because I knew I’d only bolt awake to the sound of my mother’s voice warbling down the hall, “I know something you don’t know. I know something you don’t know…”

One day, I caught myself at the kitchen sink, scrubbing my hands with a wire-bristled brush. I was trying to erase my own fingerprints, trying to scour the DNA right out of my skin. And it occurred to me that’s what the darkness was-my mother, my own mother, taking root inside my head.

There are some people that just killing once will never be enough.

I told Jason I needed to get away. Twenty-four hours. Maybe a hotel where I could crash for a bit, order room service, catch my breath. I produced a brochure for a downtown spa by the Four Seasons and its menu of treatments. Everything was ridiculously expensive, but I knew Jason wouldn’t deny me, and he didn’t.

He took a Friday and Saturday off, to be with Clarissa.

“Don’t rush home,” he told me. “Take your time. Relax. I understand, Sandy. I do.”

So I went off to a four-hundred-a-night hotel room, where I used my spa money to hit Newbury Street and buy one micro mini suede skirt, black Kate Spade stiletto heels, and a silver sequined halter top that did not permit one to wear a bra. Then I hit the Armani Bar, and worked my way from there.

Remember, I was still only nineteen years old. I recalled all the tricks, and believe me, I know a lot of tricks. Girl like me, in a halter top and stiletto heels. I started the night popular and stayed that way until two in the morning, tossing back shots of Grey Goose in between lap dancing dirty old men and fresh-faced boys from BU.

My skin itched. I could feel it starting to catch fire, the more I drank, the more I danced, the more I wiggled my hips with some stranger’s hands palming my ass, pressing his groin into my strategically spread legs. I wanted to drink all night. I wanted to dance all night.

I wanted to fuck until I couldn’t remember my own name, until I screamed with rage and need. I wanted to fuck until my own head exploded and the darkness finally went away.

I took my time making my final choice for the evening. Not one of the old guys. They were good for buying drinks, but would probably drop dead of a heart attack trying to keep up with a girl like me. I went with one of the young college studs. All hard muscle and raging testosterone and silly, I-can’t-believe-she’s-really-leaving-with-me grin.

I let him take me back to his dorm, where I showed him things you could do while hanging from the underside of a bunk bed. When I was done with him, I fucked his roommate, too. Bachelor number one was too far gone to complain, and his roommate, a geeky nerd with no muscle tone at all, was extremely grateful and useful in his own way.

I left shortly after dawn. I hung my hot pink thong on the doorknob as a little souvenir, then walked to the T stop and caught the subway back to my hotel Doorman ‘bout had a fit when he saw me. Probably thought I was a hooker-or, excuse me, a high-class call girl, which now that I think about it, would’ve been a decent line of work for me. But I already had my room key, so he had no choice but to let me in.

I went up to my room, brushed my teeth, showered, brushed my teeth again, and fell onto the bed. I slept for five hours without moving a muscle. I slept like the dead. And when I woke up, I felt sane for the first time in months.

So I did the sensible thing. I balled up the skirt, the heels, the halter top, and threw them away. I showered yet again, scrubbing at my hands, which smelled of semen and sweat and lime-twisted vodka. Then I smoothed orange-scented lotion over my bruised ribs, my whisker-burned thighs, my bite-marked shoulder And I dressed back into my gray cords and lavender turtleneck and headed home to my husband.

I’ll be good, I told myself, all the way back to Southie. I’ll be good from now on.

But I already knew that I’d do it again.

The truth is, it’s not so hard to live a lie.

I greeted my husband with a kiss on the cheek. Jason returned the peck and inquired politely about my weekend.

“I feel much better now,” I told him honestly.

“I’m glad,” he said, and I understood, just by looking into his dark eyes, that he knew exactly what I had done. But I didn’t say another word, and neither did he. That is all part of how you live a lie-you don’t acknowledge it. You let it remain like an elephant, standing in the middle of the room.

I went upstairs. Unpacked my bag. Picked up my daughter and rocked with her tucked against my chest. And I discovered, whore or no whore, adulteress or not an adulteress, my daughter felt exactly the same, smelled exactly the same, loved me exactly the same, as I sat there, reading her Runaway Bunny and kissing her softly on top of the head.

I spent the next week dressing and undressing only when I was alone, as a form of courtesy. Jason spent the next week hunched over the computer until the odd hours of the morning, obviously avoiding me.

Sometime around the seventh or eighth night, once the bite marks had healed and I was still waking up to an empty bed, I decided this had gone on long enough. I loved Jason. I really did. And I believed he loved me. He really did. He was just never going to have sex with me. The irony of all ironies. The one man who finally showed me respect, compassion, and understanding was the one man who didn’t want my body at all. But love is still love, right? And according to The Beatles, isn’t that all we’ll ever need?

I put on my bathrobe and crept downstairs to ask my husband to come back to bed. I found him, as usual, hunched over the family computer.

I noticed that his cheeks were flushed, his eyes overbright. He had, spread out in front of him, all kinds of financial papers, including an online application for a credit card.

“Get the fuck out of here,” he told me sharply, and given his tone of voice, I did exactly as he asked.

Four hours later, we sat side by side at the kitchen bar, both eating bowls of cereal, Ree cooing away in the automatic swing, and neither of us saying a word.

He chewed. I chewed. Then he reached over and, very slowly, took my hand. We were okay again, just like that. Until the next time I had to disappear into a hotel room, I supposed. Until the next time he needed to disappear into the computer.

I wonder if the darkness grew inside his head. I wonder if he ever smelled decaying roses and cursed the color of his eyes or the feel of his own skin. But I didn’t ask him. I would never ask him.

First rule of lying, remember? You never acknowledge it.

And it occurred to me, over a bowl of soggy cereal, that I could live like this. Compartmentalized. There, but separate. Together, but alone. Loving, but isolated. This is how I had been living most of my life, after all. In a household where my mother might appear in the middle of the night to do unspeakable things with a hairbrush. Then hours later, we’d sit across from one another sharing a platter of buttermilk biscuits for breakfast.

My mother had prepared me well for this life.

I glanced over at my husband, crunching away on Cheerios. I wondered who had prepared him.

The Boston Police Department’s press conference started at 9:03 A.M. And Jason knew the second it ended, because his cell phone rang.

He hadn’t watched the briefing. Once he’d wiped his daughter’s tears and fed one very demanding Mr. Smith, he’d loaded both his daughter and the cat into Sandy’s Volvo. Mr. Smith had sprawled out in a sunny spot and gone immediately to sleep, the rare cat who actually liked car rides. Ree, in turn, sat in her booster seat, clutching Lil’ Bunny to her chest while she stared at Mr. Smith as if she were willing him to stay put.

Jason drove. Mostly because he needed to move. He felt as if he were on the open plains of Kansas, watching a twister touch down and helpless to get out of its path. He could only watch the sky darken, feel the first whip of hurricane-force winds against his face.

The cops had held a press conference. The media machine was now slowly but surely roaring to life. There was nothing he could do about it. There was nothing anyone could do.

His phone rang again. He eyed his screen, feeling his sense of fatalism swell.

Using the rearview mirror, he glanced at his daughter again, the serious look on her face as she tried to find happiness in watching her cat sleep when what she wanted most in the world was to hug her mother.

He flipped the phone open and held it to his ear.

“Hello, Greg.”

“Holy shit,” the senior news editor of the Boston Daily exploded in his ear. “Why didn’t you tell us, Jason? Hell, we’re like family. We woulda understood.”

“It’s been a trying time,” Jason said automatically, feeling the words come out by rote as they had before, so long ago. Wanna be on the front page? All it will cost you is your life. Or maybe your child’s. Or maybe your wife’s.

“What’s the deal here, Jason? And I’m not talking editor to reporter. You know I wouldn’t do that to you.” Another lie. There would be many lies in the days to come. “I’m talking as a member of your journalistic family, the guy who’s seen the photos of your family and knows how much you love them. Are you doin’ all right?”

“I’m taking it one day at a time,” Jason recited evenly.

“Any word? Gotta say, the police were pretty damn vague.”

“We are hoping the public can provide clues,” Jason filled in dutifully.

“And your daughter? Clarissa? How’s she holding up? Need any help, buddy?”

“Thank you for your offer. We are taking it one day at a time.”

“Jason… Jason, my man.”

“I won’t be able to work tonight, Greg.”

“Of course not! Holy crap, of course we understand. You need to take a week off, maybe a leave of absence. You name it, we’re there for you, man.” Just don’t forget about us, right, buddy? Front-page scoop, the inside skinny straight from the husband’s mouth to our front page, right, buddy?

“Thank you for your understanding.”

“We’re there for you, Jason. You name it, you got it. We believe in you, man. Why, the thought of you doing anything to harm Sandra…”

“Thank you for your understanding.” Jason hung up the phone.

“Who’s that?” Ree demanded from the back seat.

“Daddy’s former boss,” Jason said, and meant it.

The BPD’s headquarters was a glass-and-granite monstrosity that had been plopped down in the middle of the housing projects of Roxbury. The hope had been that the overwhelming police presence would help jumpstart the gentrification process of this particular inner-city. Mostly, it made both workers and visitors to the building fear for their lives.

Jason eyed his parking options with much trepidation. He did not expect to come out to find his Volvo intact. And honestly, he worried for the cat. Mr. Smith had obviously spent the past thirty-six hours using up at least one of his nine lives. Who knew how many the cat had left?

“We shouldn’t be here, Daddy,” Ree said when she climbed out of the back of the car, clutching her bunny. The parking lot featured a lot of broken asphalt, framed by concrete barriers. Interior decorating by way of Beirut.

Jason thought about it, then reached inside the car for his notebook and Ree’s red Crayola marker. He tore out two sheets of paper and wrote in big block letters: QUARANTINED: Rabid Cat. Warning. Do Not Touch.

He placed one sheet of paper on the front of the car and one on the back. Then he looked in at Mr. Smith, who opened one lazy golden eye, yawned, and went back to sleep.

“Be a good rabid cat,” Jason murmured, then took Ree firmly by the hand and headed for the crosswalk.

As they neared the giant glass building, his footsteps slowed. He couldn’t help himself. He looked down at Ree’s hand, tucked securely in his own, and it seemed like the past five years had been both too fast and too slow. He wanted to call it all back. He wanted to pull every single moment and hold them close because the tornado was coming. The twister was coming, and he couldn’t get out of the way.

He remembered the very first time his daughter had grabbed his finger, only one hour old, her impossibly tiny hand wrapping with determination around his ridiculously large index finger. He remembered those same fingers a year later, receiving their first burn when she grabbed the candle on her birthday cupcake before he or Sandy could warn her that it was hot. And he remembered one afternoon, when he’d thought she was napping, he’d gone online and read too many sad stories about sad children, and he had started to cry, hunched over at the kitchen table. Suddenly, there had been Ree, her little two-year-old hands upon his face, wiping away his tears.

“No sad, Daddy,” she’d whispered to him calmly. “No sad.”

And the sight of his tears on his daughter’s little fingers had almost made him weep all over again.

He wanted to speak to her now. He wanted to tell her he loved her. He wanted to tell her to trust him, he would keep her safe. He would figure this out. Somehow, he would make the world be right again.

He wanted to thank her for four beautiful years, for being the best little girl in the world. For being the sun on his face and the glow in his smile and the love of his life.

They hit the glass doors, her fingers twitching nervously in his hand as the police headquarters loomed.

Jason looked down at his daughter.

In the end he told her none of those things. Instead, he gave her the best advice he could.

“Be brave,” he said, and opened the door.