Good Neighbors

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  For Clem

  From Believing What You See: Untangling the Maple Street Murders, by Ellis Haverick,

  Hofstra University Press, © 2043

  Fifteen years after the fact, our preoccupation with Maple Street seems quaint. The details aren’t especially gory. The number of casualties holds no candle to the Wall Street Blood Bath, or the Amazon Bombings in Seattle. What happened was horrific, but no worse than any calamity we now hear about five days a week.

  Why, then, is it a national obsession? Why do people dress like its key players on Halloween? The Broadway show, The Wildes vs. Maple Street, has run for more than a decade. During this immersive theater experience, the audience is asked to choose sides in a reenactment, arguing to the literal deathI over who was at fault, and who was innocent. Every year, another media outlet reinvents the facts of what happened on that hot August day; the murderous fever that spread across an American neighborhood. Some blame the heat wave, the first of its kind. Some blame the sinkhole in the collapsed park nearby. Still others blame suburbia itself.

  My theory is this: Maple Street has stuck with us because no one has adequately resolved the mystery. It’s a nightmare in plain sight. We ask ourselves how an upstanding community could conspire toward the murder of an entire family, and we can make no sense of it.

  But what if we’ve overlooked the most obvious explanation? What if the accusations lodged against the Wilde family were true? In other words, what if they had it coming?

  I. It’s role-play theater, the outcomes dependent upon how the game is played.

  THE STRANGERS

  July 4, 2027

  Map of Maple Street as of July 4, 2027

  *116 Wilde Family

  *118 Schroeder Family

  INDEX OF MAPLE STREET’S PERMANENT RESIDENTS AS OF JULY 4, 2027

  100 The Gradys—Lenora (47), Mike (45), Kipp (11), Larry (10)

  102 The Mullers—John (39), Hazel (36), Madeline (4), Emily (6 months)

  104 The Singhs-Kaurs—Sai (47), Nikita (36), Pranav (16), Michelle (14), Sam (13), Sarah (9), John (7)

  106 The Pulleyns—Brenda (38), Dan (37), Wallace (8), Roger (6)

  108 The Lombards—Hank (38), Lucille (38), Mary (2), Whitman (1)

  110 The Hestias—Rich (51), Cat (48), Helen (17), Lainee (14)

  112 The Gluskins—Evan (38), Anna (38), Natalie (6), Judd (4)

  114 The Walshes—Sally (49), Margie (46), Charlie (13)

  116 The Wildes—Arlo (39), Gertie (31), Julia (12), Larry (8)

  118 The Schroeders—Fritz (62), Rhea (53), FJ (19), Shelly (13), Ella (9)

  120 The Benchleys—Robert (78), Kate (74), Peter (39)

  122 The Cheons—Christina (44), Michael (42), Madison (10)

  124 The Harrisons—Timothy (46), Jane (45), Adam (16), Dave (14)

  126 The Pontis—Steven (52), Jill (48), Marco (20), Richard (16)

  128 The Ottomanellis—Dominick (44), Linda (44), Mark (12), Michael (12)

  130 The Atlases—Bethany (37), Fred (30)

  132 The Simpsons—Daniel (33), Ellis (33), Kaylee (2), Michelle (2), Lauren (2)

  134 The Caliers—Louis (49), Eva (42), Hugo (24), Anais (22)

  TOTAL: 72 PEOPLE

  116 Maple Street

  Sunday, July 4

  “Is it a party? Are we invited?” Larry Wilde asked.

  They weren’t invited. Gertie Wilde knew this, but she didn’t want to admit it. So she watched the crowd out her window, counted all the people there.

  Gertie and her family had moved to 116 Maple Street about a year before. They’d bought the place, a fixer-upper, for cheap. They’d meant to renovate. To reshingle the roof and put in new gutters, tear up the deep-pile carpet and nail down bamboo. At the very least, they’d planned to seed grass across the patchwork lawn. But stuff happens. Or doesn’t happen.

  The inside of 116 Maple Street was haphazard, too. As a kid, you might have visited this sort of home on a playdate and intuited the mess as happy, but also chaotic. You had a great time when you slept over. You never worried about the stuff you had to bother with at home: making your bed, hanging your wet towel, carrying your dishes to the sink. Still, you wanted to go home pretty soon after, because even with the laughter, all that mess started to make you nervous. You got the feeling that the management was in over its head.

  Maple Street was a tight-knit, crescent-shaped block that bordered a six-acre park. The people there dressed for work in business casual. They drove practical cars to practical jobs. They were always in a rush, even if it was just to the grocery store or church. They didn’t seem to worry as much about their mortgages. If their parents were sick, or their marriages weren’t happy, they didn’t mention it. They channeled those unsettled feelings, like everything else, into their kids.

  They talked about extracurriculars and sports; which teachers at the local, blue-ribbon public school were brilliant miracle workers, and which ones lacked training via the social-emotional connection. They were obsessed with college. Harvard, in particular.

  The Wildes were different. With their finances out of sorts, Gertie and Arlo didn’t have the bandwidth to obsess over their kids, and even if they’d had the time and mental space, no one had ever taught them about creative learning and emotional intelligence, healthy discipline and consistent boundaries. They wouldn’t have known where to begin.

  The kids, Julia and Larry, made fart sounds in public, and also farted in public. Julia was fast. Their first month on the block, she stole her dad’s cigarettes and taught the neighborhood Rat Pack how to French exhale. Larry was quirky. He didn’t make eye contact and had a flat affect. When he thought the other kids weren’t looking, he stuck his hands down his pants.

  The Wildes knew that they’d been breaking tacit rules ever since arriving on Maple Street. But they didn’t know which rules. For instance, Arlo was a former rocker who smoked late-night Parliaments off his front porch. He didn’t know that in the suburbs, you only smoke in your backyard, especially if you have tattoos and no childhood friends to vouch for you. Otherwise, you look angry, puffing all alone and on display. You vibe violent.

  Then there was Gertie. Before she met Arlo at the Atlantic City Convention Center, where he’d played lead guitar for the in-house band, she’d won thirty-two regional beauty pageants. Like a living Barbie doll, she still conducted herself with that same pageant training: phony smiles, over-bright eyes, stock answers to questions that begged for honesty. The neighbors who’d tried to befriend her had mostly given up, under the misapprehension that there wasn’t anybody home under all that blond. Worse, nobody’d ever told Gertie that mom cleavage isn’t cool. She didn’t know that when she wore her halter tops, painted gold chain-necklaces dangling between her breasts, she might as well have been waving a great banner to the other wives that read: INSECURE FLOOZY WHO WANTS TO STEAL YOUR HUSBAND AND MAKE YOUR KIDS ASHAMED YOU’RE NOT A 5'10", BLOND VIKING WITH PERFECT SKIN.

  That summer of the sinkhole was the hottest on record. Because the center of Long Island was as concave as a red blood cell, there wasn’t any mitigating wind. Just mosquitoes and crickets and living, singing things. The smell was saltwater sifted through too-ripe begonias.

  The Wilde family had just finished dinner (cheese toast washed down with fizzy
water; Trader Joe’s frozen cherries for dessert). They’d heard the sounds of people, but hadn’t noticed anything special until the notes of a Nirvana song carried through their windows.

  I’m not like them, but I can pretend.

  “Is it a party? Are we invited?” eight-year-old Larry asked. He lifted Robot Boy from his lap. Nobody was allowed to call it a doll or he got embarrassed.

  Gertie hoisted herself to the window and pulled back the thin curtains. She was twenty-four weeks pregnant, so everything she did took a few seconds extra, especially in this heat.

  It was seven o’clock exactly, and everybody out there seemed to have gotten the same memo, because they were carrying quinoa salad in Tupperware, or chips and salsa, or a sixer of artisanal beer. Gertie quick-counted: the Caliers-Lombards-Simpsons-Gradys-Gluskins-Mullers-Cheons-Harrisons-Singhs–Kaurs-Pulleyns-Walshes-Hestias-Schroeders-Benchleys-Ottomanellis-Atlases-and-Pontis. Every house on Maple Street was accounted for, except for 116. The Wilde house.

  “If it was a party, Rhea Schroeder would have told me,” Gertie muttered.

  Twelve-year-old Julia Wilde lifted a single blond eyebrow. She wasn’t pretty like her mom, and had decided early to contrast this by being funny. “Loooooks like a party. Smellllls like a party…”

  Arlo poked his head next to Gertie’s and together they leaned. He was wearing just a Hanes T-shirt and cutoff Levi’s, his sleeve-inked arms exposed. On the left: Frankenstein’s Monster and Bride. On the right: the Wolf Man and the Mummy.

  Gertie was bad at reaching out. At asking. But he was a warm person who’d always intuited when she needed to be reassured. He kissed the top of her head. “Fun,” he said. “Should we go?”

  “I’m game for a second dinner,” she answered. “Guppy’s growing bones today, I think.”

  “I don’t understand. How is this not a party?” Larry called from behind.

  “Sounnnnds like a party,” Julia said.

  It was a party, Gertie finally admitted. So why hadn’t anybody posted about it on the Maple Street web group? Was Rhea Schroeder mad at her? It was true they’d fallen out of contact lately, but that was because Gertie was exhausted most nights. This third baby was heck on her body. And Rhea’s summer course load was full, plus she had those four kids. It had to be an accident that she hadn’t been invited! Rhea would never intentionally do her wrong.

  She should have expected a Fourth of July party! She should have asked around. For all she knew, the neighbors had come up with the idea only this morning. There hadn’t been time to post about it. Besides, you don’t need a written invitation to a block party…

  Do you?

  Just then, Queen Bee Rhea Schroeder passed by their window. She was overdressed in a fancy Eileen Fisher linen pantsuit; white and stainless.

  “Rhea!” Gertie called through the open window, her voice stage-loud, reverberating all through the street and into the giant park. “Hi, sweetie! How are you?” Then she waved. Big and pageant-winning.

  Rhea looked straight into Gertie’s window—into Gertie’s eyes. The attachment between them felt wrong. Like a plug connected to a faulty socket, sparks flying. For just a moment, Gertie was terrified.

  Rhea turned. “Dom? Steve? Did someone bring chicken or do I need to make a Whole Foods run?” Her voice faded as she walked deeper into the park.

  “That was weird,” Arlo said.

  “She’s spacey. Smart people are like that. She probably didn’t see me,” Gertie answered.

  “Needs to get her eyes checked,” Arlo joked.

  “She sucks chocolate balls. So does her whole family. They’re ball suckers,” Julia said.

  Gertie turned, hands resting on her full belly like a shelf. “That’s terrible to say, Julia. We’re lucky that people like the Schroeders even talk to us. Rhea’s a college professor! You’re not giving little Shelly a hard time, are you? She’s too sensitive for that.”

  “Sensitive? She’s a crazy bitch!” Julia cried.

  “Don’t say that!” Gertie cried back. “The window’s open. They’ll hear!”

  Julia hung her head, revealing strong shoulders mottled with pubescent acne eruptions. “Sorry.”

  “That’s better,” Arlo said. “We can’t be fighting with the All-Americans. You gotta be nice to these people. Make it work. For your own good.”

  “Totally,” Gertie said. “Should we see what the fuss is all about?”

  “No. It’s too hot. Larry and I’d rather sit in the basement and eat paint like sad, neglected babies,” Julia answered. Her normally curly-wild ponytail had gone limp.

  “Lead paint tastes sweet! That’s why babies eat it!” Larry announced.

  “Paint’s not really your option two here,” Arlo answered as Gertie started for the kitchen, where she grabbed a half-eaten bag of Ruffles potato chips to offer the crowd. Then he leaned over the table, his voice soft. It wasn’t threatening, but it wasn’t not threatening. “There’s no option two. Get the fuck up and slap on some smiles.”

  “So, should we go?” Gertie asked.

  “ ’Course!” Arlo answered, his voice soft and nice now that Gertie was back. He opened the front door. The Wilde parents took the lead, then the kids, who followed closely. Maybe it was coincidence, and maybe it wasn’t. But a few feet out, someone switched the music to a song in a minor key. It was “Kennedys in the River,” Arlo’s number-eighteen Billboard hit single from 2012.

  Don’t know what love is.

  Don’t think it matters.

  I got sixty dollars.

  And a dream that won’t shatter.

  Arlo blushed. Hearing his own music was a complicated thing. His family knew this. As a result, Larry and Julia walked slower, like their feet had short shackles between them. Gertie held a smile tight as a zipper. One step after the other, they arrived at Sterling Park.

  Sai Singh and Nikita Kaur glanced up from the barbeque. OxyContin-addled Iraq War veteran Peter Benchley ran his fingers along the tender edges of his residual limbs. The gang of kids, self-named the Rat Pack, stopped jumping on the big trampoline someone had wheeled to the center of the park. Shouting something too distant to hear, Shelly Schroeder pointed straight at Julia.

  The vibe wasn’t hostile. After all her pageant training, Gertie was good at reading a room and she knew that. But something had changed since the last barbeque, on Memorial Day, because the vibe wasn’t welcoming, either.

  She tried to catch Rhea’s eye but Rhea was busy talking to Linda Ottomanelli. There were people everywhere, any of whom she could have approached, but during her time on Maple Street, Gertie’d only ever felt comfortable with Rhea.

  You’re heavy under me

  and above.

  Crying in cemeteries

  like it’s love.

  Arlo’s song kept going. Shoulders hunched, the Wildes played captive to a low-class history they couldn’t hide from:

  I see my dad in you

  all sweat and junk.

  Baby, run away with me.

  We’ll shake these blues.

  At last, Fred Atlas and his sickly wife, Bethany, picked their slow way through the crowd to greet them. “Dude! You made it!” Fred called as he clapped Arlo on the back. Then they went in for the bro hug. Bethany offered Gertie a winsome smile, her body brittle as a straw man’s. The Atlases’ dog, a rescue German shepherd named Ralph, nudged the whole group of them, trying to keep them safe and in the pack.

  “You’re the fijizzle, Fred. You, too, Bethany,” Arlo answered. Then he and Fred took orders and went to the drinks table.

  Over by the kids, Dave Harrison disconnected from the Rat Pack. He slid off the trampoline and jogged to Julia and Larry, handing each a sparkler. They lit them and Julia wrote shart in the air while Larry made circles.

  “Can I have a burger?” Gertie asked Linda Ottomanelli. On the table were mini American flags on toothpicks, which people had stabbed into their sesame seed buns.

  Linda took a second, eyes focused on
the burgers, even though it was clear she’d heard. Gertie waited, still and tall. Wondered if she should have worn a shawl over her low-cut dress. But pregnancy was the only time her boobs got to be D cups. It was fun to show them off.

  “Cheese or plain?” Linda asked at last.

  “Plain? You’re such a trooper to cook in this heat.”

  “I can’t help it. I love making people happy. I’m just that kind of person. It could be a hundred and fifty degrees and I’d still do this. It’s my nature. I’m too nice.”

  “I noticed that about you,” Gertie offered, which wasn’t true. She’d never noticed much of anything about Linda Ottomanelli, except that she was the kind of woman who wore a fanny pack to the grocery store and who got her politics from the social network. She got the rest of her opinions from Rhea Schroeder, whose word she treated like gospel.

  Linda sighed like a martyr. “You must be hungry. I was always hungry when I was pregnant. I mean, I was carrying twins! But maybe you’re not hungry, because you’re so skinny. I hate you for being so skinny! How are you so skinny? You’re like an alien!”

  Gertie bit into the burger. Juice ran down her chin and then her cleavage. “I’m just medium skinny if you don’t count the baby. I used to be really skinny, but it’s too hard. You can’t eat bread.”

  Linda’s grin flickered.

  “One time, I cut out carbs and dairy together, plus I did high-intensity interval training. You could do that if you wanted. I still have some of the books.”

  “Thanks,” Linda said.

  Over by the trampoline, Julia and Larry started jumping with the rest of the Rat Pack kids, and at the drinks table, Arlo was telling a story to a whole bunch of guys. Something about the clerk at the 7-Eleven who made everybody late for their trains because he was so bad at making change. “I just gave up. I said, ‘Take it, ya rich bastard!’ ” Arlo drawled, then popped his Parliament Light into the corner of his mouth and made an air fist. His voice was louder than everybody else’s, and they were standing back to get away from the smoke, even Fred.