Good Neighbors Read online

  Shelly Schroeder. Shelly Schroeder.

  What happened to you?

  Rhea’s mad, witless focus took root in just one person: Gertie Wilde. Still screaming, she staggered in Gertie’s direction. How apt this unity, they thought. The mother of the living child and the mother of the missing one, taking solace. What a perfect convergence from which healing could begin.

  But instead of holding Rhea, Gertie flinched. “I’m so sorry,” Gertie muttered. “But at least…”

  Slap!

  Rhea open-handed Gertie across the face. The sound was final. Cathartic, rendering the terrible unknown of these last horrible eleven days into something concrete. (Shelly Schroeder! Shelly Schroeder!)

  It took a second before the blood. Rhea’s large diamond, turned inward, had snagged a piece of Gertie’s perfect cheek.

  “Jesus Christ! Get the fuck away from my wife!” Arlo barked.

  Gertie braced his tattooed arm and held him back. “It’s okay,” she mewed, her voice small and childlike. Disturbingly reminiscent of baby talk.

  Shaking with violent intent, Arlo took a beat to calm down. Too long.

  Linda Ottomanelli came to Rhea’s side. She clutched Rhea’s hand. “You need to go,” she told Arlo and, by association, the entire Wilde brood.

  The Wildes hunched, self-conscious and shamed. None came to their rescue. None could summon the correct words. And so, they slinked back to 116 with their children, shutting their door behind them.

  Except for Peter Benchley, who rolled back home in disgust, the rest of the neighbors remained. Though they intended only to pay witness, their presence issued validation to Rhea’s slap. They chatted with the rescue crew and consoled the Schroeders and offered licorice to sick Bethany, who gagged at the sight of her dog being zipped and packed as evidence. They remained until their own disquiet calmed. Because it was Rhea they stayed with, and because they were empathetic people, it was Rhea’s side that they saw. What harm did a simple slap do Gertie, the woman whose children had survived?

  Really, it was Arlo who’d scared them more. He’d seemed so angry. So quietly violent. Even Gertie had shrunk in fear beside him.

  Shelly Schroeder.

  What happened to you?

  That night, the neighbors ruminated over the events of the day. They remembered that terrible wail, punctuated by a shocking slap, like an arrow pointing blame. They recalled the shortened, most repeatable version of what Gertie had said: I’m so sorry. They remembered Arlo, shaking with disproportionate rage.

  SHELLY SCHROEDER! SHELLY SCHROEDER! SHELLY SCHROEDER!

  In the dark, unsettled quiet, they would know that there was something deeper to this story, something as yet unrevealed: Sorry for what?

  * * *

  Directed against the wrong person, violence assumes a will of its own. It wants to continue to hurt that person, as if to right the wrong, as if, in some way, to provoke violence in kind, thereby coercing its own legitimacy.

  After all the neighbors went home that night; after Fred Atlas put his sick wife, Bethany, to bed and headed to the Wildes to check in and say, What happened out there was absurd, but was told, Thanks anyway. Nobody’s much in the mood for a visit by Arlo, who’d felt betrayed that his only real friend on Maple Street had not spoken out; after the Ponti men, Sai Singh, and Dominick Ottomanelli conferenced about how they might better have handled the situation, and good thing it hadn’t been Shelly, but it was a dry run upon which they could improve; after Peter Benchley conducted his mirror therapy, then took an extra Oxy to calm his hurting, phantom legs; after Fritz Schroeder muttered something quick and polite about a new scent he was working on, then took the Mercedes out of Maple Street; after screens tuned to static because it was better than nothing were shut down, and every remaining family was tucked in its own fold; after the rescue crew at last gave up, covering the hole with new and thicker wood, hammered by wide and deep rivets, sealing it off for the first time since Shelly had fallen inside, and going home. Long after all these things, Rhea Schroeder’s murk bubbled up.

  Grief was not an emotion Rhea cared to entertain. It was a cockroach that waited until she turned out the lights, scampered in the dark.

  In the light, she was all about blame.

  Shelly’s fall had been an accident, but accidents have causes. The flimsy slab over a mammoth hole was negligent. She could sue the police department. The sinkhole by rights ought to have been filled long ago. She could sue the town. And why had the children been out there to begin with? Whose bad judgment had they followed? She still remembered the expression on Shelly’s face as she’d run from the crowd of chasing adults. She’d seemed so spooked.

  Was it possible she’d been running from someone? Might her house contain a clue?

  She searched the basement first. She passed the pile of bricks in the laundry room, which had once made up the front walk. She opened the closet full of empty wine bottles, added two more. Fruit flies buzzed, laying eggs in the wet slurry at the glassy bottoms.

  Nothing.

  She stalked the kitchen, slammed dirty plates into the sink where they broke like sand dollars. She tore down the toile drapes because they were ugly. Tacky. Twenty years old. Up the stairs, to her bedroom that she hated, which she shared with a man she only then realized she couldn’t stand. A man who wasn’t home. Because when important things happened, Fritz Schroeder was never there.

  “Stay in your rooms!” she shouted along the hall. Doors shut quietly, no hands visible, as if dispossessed of authors.

  She opened cabinets and closets in Shelly’s room, flinging out all that belonged to her bright, sensitive daughter. The pretty red winter coat; the homemade snow globe with a Sculpey snowman inside; the black knoll of shed braids sawed away with dull safety scissors; the horsehair brush, the goddamned brush.

  She stripped the sheets so they floated, pregnant with old ghosts of the child who’d once slept beneath them. She turned the mattress. She shook every book, unleashing ticket stubs and class notes passed between schoolgirls, emblazoned with hearts, and even one from a boy—Dave Harrison—asking if she’d sneak out to meet him at midnight at 7-Eleven.

  Shelly.

  The bottom drawer of Shelly’s desk was locked. She used a hammer to smash it open. Inside was nothing. An emptiness. She yanked out the drawer, and then all the other drawers. She overturned the entire desk. Something that was stuck to the back tore away. A tin lockbox. Written across green-and-pink-snowflake-patterned masking tape it read: Pain Box.

  She yanked. Couldn’t open it without the key. So she tapped it with the hammer. The frame bent. She stopped. There might be something fragile in there. Something just like Shelly. She took it, along with the other evidence, back down to the main floor. She hid the Pain Box in her office.

  Then she slammed the brush and cut hair in the sink and poured lighter fluid all over, along with the broken dishes beneath. She hoisted the stepping stool and ripped out the ceiling fire alarm as it sounded, tearing batteries loose from their holsters. She poured more lighter fluid until the blaze was deep blue at its roots, the hair perfect, protein-scented kindling. She poured until the bristles turned to ash and the polyurethane melted and the compressed wood went to char. She did this until the sink itself was ruined.

  A proper mess. Stinking and flamboyant. The char was the center, blue and orange and red flaming out, like entering a black hole. She followed with her eyes and with her mind, a kind of unburdening. She was spiriting Shelly to the safety of the other side, a game with time itself.

  All the while, she thought: Someone else was to blame for all that was happening. She had not done this.

  Thursday, July 22

  Shelly Schroeder. Shelly Schroeder.

  What happened to you?

  For the people of Maple Street, the scream and the slap that followed stayed fresh in their minds. I’m sorry, they remembered. Sorry for what?

  A bright girl. Brittle, too, with rough, bully edges—in a family
that large, there’s bound to be one of them. The people of Maple Street agreed she wasn’t a black sheep. She came from too good a family for that. Rhea paid too much attention, helped too much with homework, rallied too much for the PTA. Fritz was too well respected, devoted in his quiet way to supporting his family. No, this was just a phase Shelly would have outgrown by high school, all the more resilient for having expunged it from her system.

  Shelly Schroeder. Shelly Schroeder. Did you have a secret?

  Nikita Kaur asked her son Sam to repeat every detail of the story, one more time.

  He remembered something new: comments Shelly had made about Arlo Wilde. Nikita asked him to repeat these. She had her husband, Sai, listen. Sai, knowing that his son was both eager to please and easy to influence, said it was probably nothing. Still, Nikita had Sam repeat it to Cat Hestia, and then the Ponti men, who reacted with shocked outrage. It’s outlandish, Sally Walsh said, though when she went home and relayed the story to her wife, Margie, they agreed that it added up. Even if Julia’s story was true, and they’d been racing each other to the far edge of the park, Shelly was far too smart to use a dangerous slab for a shortcut. What if Julia was lying, to protect someone? Perhaps something had driven those girls. Perhaps… they’d been running from Arlo.

  The Hestias asked their daughter Lainee, who corroborated and also embellished Sam’s story. Lainee wasn’t malicious, just immature. Sheltered her whole life, she lacked the ability to extrapolate that her story might get Arlo Wilde into serious trouble.

  Mrs. Jane Harrison asked Dave to corroborate: Did Shelly tell you kids that Arlo Wilde was bothering her? Mouth agape in disappointment (how could his mother make such a reckless suggestion?), Dave said: It was a crazy lie Shelly made up like she always used to make things up, because she was batshit. Then he ran away to punch some pillows, not because he was mad at his mom—she’d done so much dumb stuff that his fists would fall off if he punched something every time that happened—but because he’d talked about Shelly in the past tense. And he owed it to Shelly, his first kiss, and the only one he’d ever kept a secret, to believe until the end.

  At last, Nikita forced Sam to repeat the story to Linda Ottomanelli. By this time, Sam had become reluctant. He did so haltingly, with tears.

  Upon hearing this news, Linda Ottomanelli took it upon herself. She was obliged, as Rhea’s best friend (and a little threatened, that it was Nikita who’d unearthed this inside poop). She decided to distill this hurtful hearsay—this gossip—and locate the truth. She went to the Roosevelt Field mall and bought the latest PlayStation. Promised the boys they could have it, so long as they tried their best to remember. Then she asked them the same question she’d asked a dozen times before, only this time, she gave them Sam Singh and Lainee Hestia’s version first. Then she asked: What happened?

  The boys corroborated the story. But because they had a cruel streak, they added something, too. She said he’d done it to her, Mark said. I think that morning. That’s why she was bleeding. It wasn’t period. I think that’s why she was so mad. Yeah, Michael added. She called him a rapist. She was screaming all about how he raped her. She was scared he was gonna come after her.

  Weeping with fear and confusion and sadness and even gratitude that her own children seemed healthy and unscathed (or was it possible they’d been tainted, too?), Linda rewarded them with the game system, then walked straight to Rhea’s house, breathless and terrified and feeling just a little bit of the German word that means delight in the tragedy of another.

  Rhea thought about Shelly’s body, which still might be found. She thought about the dog, perfectly preserved. She listened to Linda’s story; let it sink and fill her, like crawling along the bottom of a wine-dark sea, and opening wide.

  * * *

  Fourteen days into the search, representatives from the police department rang the Schroeder bell. Heads heavy, they informed Rhea (Fritz was at work) that they’d been unable to pass a final tidal tunnel; the last possible place that Shelly’s body might be. They’d need several days to shore it before they could resume their search, and even then, the tunnel might be too narrow to traverse. They would have to send for small divers trained specifically for such tasks. Unless Shelly’s body had gotten into the sewer system, this was the last place she could have drifted.

  In situations like this, the waiting tended to be more excruciating than the answer. They believed that Rhea ought to schedule a memorial service. It was time to stop hoping.

  Slowly, because her knee had been acting up, Rhea came forward. Shook hands and thanked them for coming. She’d already prepared a list of funeral directors, blown up a seventh-grade class photo. It wasn’t that she’d hoped for this. Not that. But she’d prepared.

  Maple Street watched this interaction through their windows. They witnessed, so she would not have to go through it alone.

  Saturday, July 24

  Sheened in sweat, the people of Maple Street sat up. They bathed and powdered and perfumed and then sweat through, their skin a fragrant crust. They dressed in black. They put out dark suits and muted dresses for their children. The Walshes came out early. After that, the Hestias, then the Pontis: Steven, Jill, Marco, and Richard. Quarrelsome Tim and Jane Harrison demanded that their children choose which parent to ride with. Elder brother Adam picked his mother. Younger Dave opted out. He stayed in his hot box of a bedroom, wishing the PlayStation’s connection worked, so he could lose himself into Deathcraft, and forget this whole, terrible thing. The divided house, of course. Not Shelly, whose death was still too raw for him to believe.

  The Atlases did not attend, as Bethany had spent the night throwing up. The Singh-Kaur family departed in their Honda Pilot, each kid bopping in headphones to music on separate screens. Peter Benchley didn’t go, but watched from his attic perch. Dominick and Linda Ottomanelli knocked on 118’s front door, and the Schroeder and Ottomanelli families collected on the porch. The adults, having seen too many movies, wore sunglasses and knocked back shots of whiskey. Then they headed for their cars, so they could caravan.

  They passed the Wilde house on their way. FJ picked up a quartz rock, two inches thick. The cloudy white kind that only sparkles when broken. He threw with a strong running back’s arm. It ricocheted against the front door and landed back at his feet.

  Everyone stayed still for a moment. Shocked.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Rhea said at last. “It’s broad daylight.”

  The front door opened. Pregnant Gertie stood inside the screen, Arlo beside her.

  Rhea picked up that same rock. Wiped away the dirt and bitumen, and put it in her purse like an idea that needed warming to hatch.

  * * *

  The Wildes watched the last car leave for Shelly’s memorial service. Excluded, again. And now somehow blamed. “Let’s do it here,” Arlo said, thinking of the life his pop had lived, and all the funerals they’d had for his street friends. Not the church kind or the coffin kind—the junkie kind. “Everybody get something important—something that means what you feel about Shelly. Bring it back to me.”

  Nobody moved.

  “Just get something that reminds you of her, that you wouldn’t mind parting from.”

  First Larry left for the stairs, then Julia. Gertie stayed. He acted braver than he felt and kissed her hard; slapped her ass. A firm and just-the-right-side-of-sexy tap. “Git! Git yer special thing!”

  They reconvened back in the hall. “Okay,” Arlo said as he opened his Montecristo cigar box. It smelled sweet. “I’ll go first.” He placed his Hohner 64 in the box. He was sorry to part with it—it had been a gift from Danny Lasson back when the band had been solid. But it was also the harmonica he’d always lent to Shelly on sleepovers. The last song he, Julia, and Shelly had worked on had been “Werewolves of London.”

  Next went Larry.

  “Are you sure?” Gertie asked. “You won’t get it back.”

  Larry nodded. “She was bad sometimes but she shouldn’t be alone…�
�� He dropped his Robot Boy, which he’d washed with Trader Joe’s shampoo, into the box.

  Gertie followed. She unclasped her pearl pendant. Her stepmother, Cheerie (Call me Cherry, honey!), had kept all her crowns and trophies, so except for her wedding ring, it was the only piece of real jewelry she owned. She’d planned to give it to Julia one day. “You don’t think it’s wasteful?” she asked Arlo as she held it over the box.

  “No,” he answered.

  Gertie clutched the pearl tight. One last squeeze. Then she let go. After so many years of working to acquire the pieces of their life that surrounded them, it felt good to surrender a thing.

  Everybody looked down. These items were such pretty offerings, their intent so personal and specific, that they were no longer sorry to miss Shelly’s service. She’d slept over at their house scores of times. They’d only known her via this crescent, and for them, this was the better place to honor her.

  At last, they turned to Julia, whose hands were empty. The right was still tender, blue stitches half dissolved. A dog, the emergency room doctor had told them, without any doubt.

  “I don’t have anything important,” Julia said. “I wish it was me in that sinkhole.”

  “I don’t,” Larry said.

  Julia’s face crumbled. “It’s my fault. I could’ve saved her!”

  “You couldn’t,” Gertie said.

  “I could!”

  Arlo smiled bittersweet—impressed by the depth of his daughter’s empathy, sorry she’d had to plumb it this way. “It was an accident.”

  “You don’t understand! She wanted to live with us. She begged me!”

  “Oh, Julia,” Gertie said. “Why would she want that?”

  “She wasn’t happy.”

  “Well, her mom wouldn’t have gone along with that.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Sweetie. I know she’s been acting out, but Rhea’s a good mom. All those kids are college bound.”