Good Neighbors Page 15

  She turned a page. He noticed that there was sand oil underneath her fingernails. Which meant she’d been out with the mob last night, too. For once, his parents had agreed on something. A terrible something.

  “So you think worse things will happen. That must be scary. Is that scary for you?”

  “You’re a piece of shit,” he told her.

  Her expression was dumbfounded.

  * * *

  The mean Markles took the incident with the brick hardest of all.

  Crash!

  Mark whaled his pillow into a Tiffany lamp that shattered against his father, Dominick Ottomanelli’s, bare, swollen feet. Pieces of painted glass specked the floor and his miraculously uncut skin. “Jesus! What’s wrong with you?” Dominick asked.

  Mark dropped his pillow and started laughing. Michael followed. It wasn’t good-humored laughing. It was hysterical, Shelly Schroeder–brand laughing, because they’d sneaked out last night and followed the adults. They’d thought it would be funny. An adventure. Life-and-death, but not really. Life-and-death in Deathcraft, when the creepy things crawl out and you have to hide until morning.

  And then the bricks, and Arlo Wilde’s horrible, low-pitched moan as he’d helped Gertie into the ambulance while she held her fragile baby belly, and the knowledge that it was their fault. They’d known, even when confessing, throwing out the word rape like it meant nothing, that their mother would tell everyone. They’d known this and done it anyway, for a free PlayStation.

  They’d done this. They’d hurt sweet Mrs. Wilde. Maybe they’d murdered her baby, too.

  They’d run back to their house last night before the rest. In the dark of their adjoining rooms, pretending to sleep, Mark had dry-heaved. Michael had put the heel of his hand into his mouth and bitten hard enough to leave a mark that was still angry eighteen hours later. A swollen semicircle of teeth.

  Today they’d traded bedrooms. An old game from preschool that they hadn’t played in years. They’d been answering to the wrong names. It was an effort to be someone else. To run from their very skins, except it didn’t work. As brothers, the new skin they assumed wasn’t much different.

  They directed outward, too. They flung their dirty laundry from closet bins. They took gardening shears to the trampoline and punctured it in six places. They tore up all their mother’s green beans and mint. And now, tracking bitumen through the house, they jammed pillows deep inside their cases and let fly against lamps and books and each other.

  “Clean this up. Money doesn’t grow on trees,” said Dominick, a man of medium build with a giant belly. Bitumen oil crammed the crevices of his ears. The Tiffany lamp lay dead at his feet.

  “Mom cleans,” Mark said.

  “Don’t be gay,” the other said. Michael.

  Together, almost of one mind, they hit their dad too hard with double pillows.

  “You’re such a fat slob,” Mark said, his expression a pained and furious grimace.

  Dominick stepped on blue stained glass; the bulbed eye of a dragonfly. Blood ran along the floor. His eyes watered. Real tears from their giant hulk of a father, with fists like boxing gloves. This wasn’t what they wanted. They wanted to be yelled at. Punished for what they’d done. Set straight and exonerated. They wanted a capable person to take charge of this house, and reverse the terrible thing that had happened first to Shelly, then to Mrs. Wilde, and now to all of them.

  “Come on, Dad! Grab a pillow!” Michael cried. He swung again, this time with his fist, straight at Dominick’s groin.

  They expected him to yell.

  Daintily, he walked backward, feet trailing blood. His voice stayed soft. “Boys. I know it sucks being cooped up, but you’re being too loud. Do something quiet. Play the video game your mother bought you.”

  The Markles smiled sidelong. Finally. It would happen. Finally, this would bring order. Mark pointed at the PlayStation. The thing they’d been bought, for selling out the Wildes. “Too much static. There’s no point,” he said.

  The PlayStation was smashed to wires and plastic. Tiny pieces caught the hard sunlight.

  “Why do you do these things?” Dominick hissed, cheeks wet with tears. Then he shut Mark’s door, leaving them quite alone.

  * * *

  Dominick found his wife, Linda, in the kitchen. She was a round woman who wore overalls and soft, comfortable shoes with open toes.

  “I can’t take them,” he said. “They’re monsters.”

  Normally, she defended them. Talked about the nanny on TV, who claimed it was super important to be your kid’s advocate and best friend. This time, she burst into tears. “They’ve been so bad today!”

  He made his way to her slowly, like if he took long enough, he’d figure out what to say. Behind, he left a trail of blood. Linda patted the seat beside her. Without air-conditioning, the heat was thick and miserable. She took one foot at a time, running her fingers along them, scouting for three tiny shards, which she pulled.

  “Remember their Penguins teacher? She always talked about how well behaved they were. She called them her angels…,” Linda said. “She said Mark was a leader. She said Michael was an artist. Special, she called them.”

  “I don’t remember. Which preschool?”

  “Cathedral… I got a call from their camp last week. The director used the word cruel. She said they’re cruel to other children. How is this happening? Who’s teaching them this?”

  “We give them so much. They can’t even say thank you,” Dominick answered. She dabbed his feet. The cuts were shallow but his muscles ached. Though he didn’t do the heavy lifting anymore, he still worked long hours managing construction sites. She squeezed his arches and at first it hurt more. But then the pain ran out like juice from a lemon.

  “They won’t even help me in the garden.”

  He looked around. This house had been a mess for a long time. Nice things, teak tables, antique chairs. But because of its child inhabitants, it was falling apart. He felt ashamed to admit that. A personal failure.

  “The video games?” he asked.

  She kept rubbing. “I used to think it was Dave Harrison. I mean, really. A house divided. That child’s a mess. Or Charlie. Say what you want; two moms isn’t normal. But I don’t know. This stuff about Arlo.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “There’s been so many clues. The fad diets, those cheap Parliaments. I don’t think those boobs of Gertie’s are real and she flaunts them so shamelessly. Even when he’s happy, Arlo yells. They have no boundaries. We thought it ended there. We gave them credit they didn’t earn. But now it’s clear Arlo hurt Shelly. We know that. Rhea would never lie about something this important. She’s too precise a person.”

  “I can see that.”

  “What we did last night was the right thing.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll bet my mint that she’s not even hurt. It’s impossible those bricks actually hit her.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that. You’re right. She probably wasn’t hit at all.”

  “We had to, Dom. Arlo did a terrible thing right under our noses.”

  “Yeah. I hate thinking it.”

  “That’s how it happens, because we fail to imagine the worst.”

  Upstairs, the kids hooted. Something smashed. The guttural shouts they made didn’t quite seem human, but like the kids from Pinocchio who stay too long on Pleasure Island.

  “You think he interfered with them,” Dominick said at last. “In our house. During some dinner.” It was the fear he’d had from the start—from the first time he’d heard this story. No, even before then. From the first day they’d moved in, all tattooed and cheap, bringing their misery through the barricades of suburbia, infecting everyone. It was why he hadn’t screamed at the twins just now, even though they’d earned it. Because they might be the victims. Because he’d let them down, and this behavior they were exhibiting came from pain. Something terrible the Wildes had done.

  “Yes,” s
he answered. “I believe he did.”

  And just like that, Dominick believed it, too.

  A PARTICIPANT OF THE INTERACTIVE BROADWAY SHOW THE WILDES VS. MAPLE STREET, REGARDING HIS CHOICE TO PLAY RHEA SCHROEDER, THE MOST POPULAR CHARACTER

  “Rhea’s my hero. She’s like Iago [from Othello], the poison whisperer. If you read that play, you can totally tell Desdemona never cheated. The scarf was planted evidence. Othello knew that. He wasn’t a meathead; he was a tactical military commander. Besides, why murder a woman just for cheating? He murdered Desdemona because he could. She threatened him in some way he couldn’t stand to confront. That’s Maple Street. They were scared of the Wildes… The Maple Street shootings happened about three years before the Great Collapse. I remember those days. You could feel it coming. You kind of knew the banks and farms and pretty much everything were about to fail. It’s a perfect metaphor—a hole that keeps getting wider, and you can try to ignore it, but one day you’re going to get swallowed. Those people were about to lose their jobs and their homes. They were about to become the Wildes.

  “I don’t blame Rhea. I mean, Maple Street could have ignored her—told her to go take a nap or pop a Prozac or whatever. But they didn’t. They whispered the poison right back.

  “Did you read her dissertation? It’s like Freud meets Frankenstein. She was totally delusional. So, no. I don’t blame her for what she did. I blame the people who knew better. I blame the people of Maple Street.” —Evan Kaufmann, Menlo Park, California

  118 Maple Street

  Monday, July 26

  Ding-Dong!

  Rhea Schroeder put down the brush she’d been using to clean the sticky crevices of her fingernails.

  Ding-Dong!

  “Don’t come out of your rooms,” she warned as she rushed on one good knee, one aching knee, out of the bathroom and down the steps to the hall. She scanned the floors for oil. Clean of evidence. No trace left. She swung open the door.

  “Detective Bianchi, hi!” she said. A smile, under the circumstances, would be overkill. “Did they find my Shelly?”

  “I’m sorry, no.”

  This was the second police visit today. The first had come just after dawn, and she’d met them on the porch. Told them everybody else was asleep and played the my kid’s missing and probably dead so show some respect card. Now she leaned, so Bianchi couldn’t see inside.

  “Is it something about Arlo Wilde?” she asked. “I thought after I made that complaint that something would happen. But nothing’s happened!”

  “I’m on it,” Bianchi answered. “He’s under full investigation.”

  Rhea pointed at the house next door—the torn Slip ’N Slide, the broken window. Their car was parked but the Wildes weren’t home. Seeing all that, she felt real pity. Look at the mess they’d brought upon themselves with their bad choices. “I hate to think people can do such things. Arlo… I trusted that man. I trusted Gertie, too.”

  “May I come in?” Bianchi asked. “I know your family was sleeping this morning, but I really do need to talk.”

  She’d been through this before. Back at U-Dub, they’d investigated. The police first, then the university, then her department. She knew she had to answer yes. Anything else brings them back with a search warrant.

  “Of course!” She backed up and showed him into the dining room with its missing drapes. It smelled in 118 Maple Street of heat and wine. Fermented and human. The maid had stopped coming after having to clean the wrecked house last week—to bleach the sink and sweep all the broken shards. She’d quit via text: Sorry Missus! I move to Peru. God Bless you!!!

  “Have a seat!” she said, pointing at the chair, which she just then realized was still stained with a ribbon of Shelly’s menstrual blood.

  She led the detective around to the other side so he didn’t notice.

  “Please excuse the mess.” Her voice and diction were more demure than usual. More housewifely. She located this persona easily—it was the same one she used with the PTA and Linda Ottomanelli. Invoking it made explaining herself to stupid people more tolerable.

  “Your house is very nice.”

  Bianchi was of medium build, average height, with a middle-aged paunch, and he was invisible in the way all middle-aged people with unlucky genes are invisible. He had a gentle manner, too, shrinking deeper into his mid-priced suit to set her at ease.

  But he was looking everywhere, at everything.

  “What happened there?” he asked, nodding at her knee, which she’d wrapped in an Ace bandage for the first time in years.

  “Oh, I had an accident a long time ago. With all the stress, it’s been acting up. I just need a cortisone shot. So, coffee? Tea? It’s almost five… Shall we be intrepid? How ’bout a beer!”

  “Just your son,” Bianchi answered. His hair was so fair you couldn’t discern whether it was gray or simply blond. “I’d like to speak to you together.”

  “Oh. FJ’s too broken up. He just can’t. But I’m happy to clear up whatever.”

  He smiled. Even his smile was bland. “If not here, I’ll need you and FJ at the police station first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Tomorrow? Oh, sure,” Rhea answered. “He can drive himself over… So, what is it?” she asked, feeling an alive kind of nervous, like the time she’d defended her dissertation. She’d mattered back then. They’d clung to her every word.

  “Where were you last night?” he asked.

  “How do you mean?”

  “A felony assault occurred on your block. Someone threw two bricks through the Wildes’ window. Where were you and the rest of your family last night?”

  “Goodness! We were home!” Rhea cried. “Snug as bugs. In rugs!”

  Bianchi didn’t take his eyes away. Just waited to see if she’d say more. The room got distant like when you stand up too fast, and she knew that he didn’t believe her. She also knew that because of her circumstances, she had his sympathy. Sometimes, that’s enough.

  “Is it possible that any of you left the house while the rest were sleeping?”

  She pretended to think. “No? It’s an old house. It creaks. I’m a light sleeper.”

  “Did you hear anything? Music playing? Or a window breaking?”

  “No.”

  Bianchi pointed at the naked windows—she’d torn down the toile drapes and now they were landfill. “I see you’re suffering from a brownout like the rest of the block. No air-conditioning. Your windows are open. How did you sleep, though?”

  “Was it noisy? I have no idea! Will she be okay?”

  “Who?”

  “Gertie Wilde.” Just saying her name made Rhea’s heart beat faster.

  Bianchi didn’t answer, and she had the feeling he thought he’d caught her out. Which he hadn’t.

  “That’s right, isn’t it? That’s what they said this morning. Gertie was hurt?” He kept looking at her, fixated. A thrill built up inside Rhea, scary and good. And it wasn’t because she wanted Gertie or her baby dead. She didn’t even want Arlo jailed. She just wanted them to understand what they’d done. She wanted them to feel so bad about hurting poor Shelly that they couldn’t stand to live. That they killed themselves. Julia, too. And even Larry. Their heavy deaths would pull a pocket out of time. This pocket would gather all the murk and bead into oblivion, washing clean all that remained.

  “Yes, it was Mrs. Wilde.”

  “Is the baby going to live?”

  “I have a witness. He says a man of your son Fritz’s build threw the bricks.”

  Terror. A delicious candy bath of it. “FJ? You mean my son, FJ? Or my husband, Fritz?”

  “Your son.”

  “I don’t think that’s likely. I mean, he’s got a ride to Hofstra! He wouldn’t blow it for something like that… It’s just not possible! And I certainly wasn’t up in the middle of the night, playing with bricks. We don’t even have bricks! Our house is a Tudor!”

  “Why do you think my witness believes he saw you and your son?” />
  Rhea let out breath, affected sorrow. Whisper-talked. “Do you know he’s a drug addict?”

  “I’m aware he has a medical condition.”

  “You might check with the pharmacy on that. Most people’s legs don’t still hurt a decade after the amputation… It can’t have been easy to see the rest of Maple Street grow up and move away while he’s been stuck. His poor parents have gotten frail. Has it occurred to you that what he saw wasn’t what he thinks? I mean, it’s strange Arlo’s song was played. What was it? ‘Achy Breaky Heart’?”

  “ ‘Wasted.’ ” He had that same expression, like he’d caught her in a lie. But he wasn’t smart enough for that. No one was.

  “Oh, I don’t know that one. Well, it’s strange, isn’t it? It makes me wonder if it was his fans. You know how people get about celebrity.”

  “How do they get?”

  Rhea shrugged as if to say: Look what happened to my poor child. I should know best of all: this world’s a crazy place!

  Bianchi grinned a tiny grin. “I’ll leave you. Thanks for your time.”

  “That’s it? You sure I can’t help with anything else?”

  “You and FJ can come by tomorrow.”

  “We most certainly will! We feel very badly about the Wildes. Really—an awful thing. But I have to admit, we’re filled up right now. We’re just so sad about Shelly it’s hard to think about anything else. If it’s all right by you, could you respect that? Give us peace unless you have news of her?”

  He looked at her. In her eyes. Calm and piercing. “We’ll find her.”

  “What do you mean? Do you have a lead?”

  “Peter Benchley,” he said.

  “Hm?”

  “I never named him, but you knew he was the witness who spoke out against your son.”

  Rhea shrugged. Their eyes stayed locked. Tense. She was afraid she’d look guilty if she looked away. “People talk on this block. Good or ill, we’re all in one another’s business. I hear everything.”