Good Neighbors Page 21

  Covered her mouth to silence the gasp.

  The walnut dresser had been overturned and lay on its side. The mirror yanked down and broken atop a pile of days-of-the-week underpants and bathing suits and terry cloth cover-ups. Small fists had punched the walls, leaving knuckle indentations. Rhea? Shelly? FJ? Fritz? Who had done this?

  Jesus, God: Had all of them done this?

  She opened the desk drawers. Empty, their contents spilled out. Looked under the bed and then under the mattress. Nothing but clothes and old schoolwork, an occasional key chain or snow globe or piece of art drawn in charcoal or pastel. She looked in the closet, in the very way back. Nothing there, either.

  She headed for the master bedroom. Rhea’s room. Fritz’s room. Turned the knob. Though she’d seen Rhea and Fritz leave, she was still afraid they’d be here, waiting. Punching walls and guzzling red wine while their children wallowed in hot rooms.

  In the center was a king-sized bed. Either side was sunken from years of weight. She could make out their individual shapes, the duvet covering the mattress. Rhea on the right, Fritz on the left, two full feet of space between them. Their furniture was spare.

  She walked inside. The air was stagnant and human. It smelled like sweat.

  Her bare feet crossed the blue Persian rug. It felt frightening in here. In this whole house. And it always looked so nice on the outside. She opened Rhea’s nightstand. Nothing but old books. No small letters written by children, swearing eternal love. No jewelry or antihistamines. Not even a vibrator. She opened Fritz’s nightstand. Just a rosary in its case that smelled like cheap perfume. At the foot of the nightstand, slippers pointing straight out.

  She opened their dresser drawers. Nothing unusual. Nothing, even, of interest.

  She started for their shared bathroom and as she walked, the bedroom door opened wider. Someone turned on the light.

  From Interviews from the Edge: A Maple Street Story, by Maggie Fitzsimmons,

  Soma Institute Press, © 2036

  “I remember hearing about a girl down a sinkhole, but it was just a blip [on my radar]. I didn’t know they were talking about my sister… I get all this flack for not coming home, but my mom didn’t even tell me Shelly’d gone missing until a few days after the memorial service. She didn’t want me home. I was in the summer program. She wanted me to ace my courses so I could graduate early like she’d done. That was my job. Nothing else mattered… My mom was a decent person. She never hit. It was always hugs… She raised us alone. My dad wasn’t around. She was always a little more intense when it came to Shelly and you could probably make the argument that she invented problems with her so she could fix them, though I never saw it that way at the time. It just seemed like she cared. I guess things changed after I left. Even now, it’s hard to hear this stuff about her. To me, all it proves is how sick she was, and how hard she tried to protect us from ever seeing it.” —Gretchen Schroeder

  Nassau Community College

  Saturday, July 31

  The English Department. Summer school midterm grades were due, plus there was some kind of faculty meeting about the new staff starting in the fall. Through everything, Rhea had kept working. It kept her sane. Work was the only place where the murk didn’t unfurl.

  But even that was changing, because she didn’t remember what had happened over the last hour she’d been sitting here, thinking about a girl on a bathroom floor, and the final, confusing scenes of The Black Hole (Did the bright center of that singularity lead to time travel? Heaven? Hell?), and how much she wished Gertie and her whole family dead.

  A knock at her door. The chair of her department arrived, looking chagrined. Which was strange. Usually, he looked like Sneezy or Dopey.

  “Hi, Allen!” she said. Allen was forty-two and a graduate of some crappy southern school that everyone was always calling the Harvard of the South.

  “May I speak with you?” Allen asked.

  She winced as she moved her legs out of the way. Her knee was really swollen. She’d been picking at it, moving the cap around, and now the scarring inside had torn. She gestured at the extra chair’s emptiness. “My desk is your oyster.”

  He nodded, flustered and breathing too fast. “Funny. Listen. I’ve got a problem.” He opened a file folder over her desk and pulled out something that looked familiar. She blushed before she even saw it, remembering somehow, even though she no longer remembered the act itself.

  “This is Miguel Santos’s paper. He came to me yesterday…”

  “He malingered, then. He missed class. He told me he was sick,” Rhea said.

  “Did you nickname him Speedy Gonzales?”

  Rhea’s face went red. Last week, she’d done this. He’d laughed. So had the whole class. “What kind of jerk do I look like?”

  “Okay. That’s a no. I’m glad. And this red. All this red.” He lifted the paper. Panted harder. “What is this?”

  “I got carried away, Allen. I’m sorry. I’ll go talk to him.” In the moment she said it, she meant it. She really did.

  “I think it’s better you step out. I can have someone cover your classes until the fall. You’re back too soon.” He said this in a rush, and she understood that these were the exact words he’d planned to say upon entering. He was set in them, the way people tend to get set and stuck in the positions they take.

  Rhea pursed her lips. Chewed on the flesh of them, then spoke. “I need this job. I have to put on pants and brush my hair like a person to come here. I’m the best teacher you have! Don’t take this away from me!”

  “It’s not my choice.”

  Rhea’s eyes watered. “One kid. I messed up with one kid.”

  “No.”

  “Who else?”

  Allen fanned out two more papers behind the first, both more red with corrections than white. It was as if she’d spilled wine on them. The names were Debra Lucano and Tom Mijares, which meant nothing to her. “If they have a problem, they should come to me,” she said. “They shouldn’t be rewarded for going behind my back.”

  Allen tapped Debra’s paper. “This is good. You gave it a D.”

  “Oh, you’re an expert?”

  “She’s shown all the indicators for the point system. Subject is thesis, backed up with annotated text evidence.”

  “And content means nothing? She quoted Bertrand Russell! Who does that? We’re America. We have Noam Chomsky. It’s my class, Allen! Why can’t you back me up? I work so hard here. But the first kid to go crying and making up stories, you take their side?”

  Allen squeezed the bridge of his nose. Looked honestly saddened. “I’ve never understood you.”

  “We have coffee every semester. You’ve had plenty of time for million-dollar questions. Yes, my dad died of cirrhosis and I never knew until after the funeral that he drank. It was a secret. In his orange juice. In his milk. In his Coke can. In his coffee thermos that never left his side. Nobody knew. He never even kept beer in the fridge. No liquor cabinet. He was so sly. He raised me. We spent all our time together. I know every piece of science fiction in the canon by heart, especially The Black Hole. I have something called an attachment disorder. Read a book once in a while and you’d have figured that out.”

  Rhea stopped talking. The room seemed to ripple, like barbeque heat rushing through summer wind. Had she just spoken such terrible things out loud? Her mouth felt as if it had done so. But she couldn’t have! There was no way. She braced herself, blinked the ripple away, and looked to Allen for a reaction.

  His expression showed surprise. An insight into Rhea he hadn’t expected. It reminded her of Aileen Bloom’s smugness, all those years ago. And of Gertie, that day she’d tried to confess. And of Shelly, always watching the things no one else saw. Aside from her dad, Shelly was the only person she’d ever watched The Black Hole with. The only person to whom she’d ever explained, tears in her eyes, why the movie was so important.

  Allen blushed because he was one of those polite, southern guys who were
especially deferential to women. A pussy, in other words. “I’m so sorry you’re going through all this. I had no idea.”

  “Oh, please. You think you got out unscathed? Look at you. Never played a sport in your life, which can’t have made your Big Southern Daddy happy. Oldest brother and Mommy’s hero, right? She probably filled out your college applications. Would have followed you around for the rest of your life if you hadn’t married MaryJane. Except MaryJane’s a lot of work. Gotta rub her feet every time she gets her period. One kid between you and it’s too much for her.”

  Allen’s eyes watered as if she’d struck him. “That’s out of line.”

  His voice expressed true pain. She could hear it, and it brought her back to a saner place. “Oh, God, Allen—” she started. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

  “You don’t belong here,” he interrupted. “You hate it. You act like you’re smarter than the rest of us. You probably are. It’s not a fit.”

  “I’m upset. You have to know that. Please don’t fire me. There’s no place else.”

  “This conversation is at a close.”

  Rhea started crying for real. Genuine tears, not fake ones to rile up the neighbors. She wiped her eyes and her hands came back small, like Shelly’s hands. With wide nail beds, like Shelly’s nails, and the reminder made her so sad she could have cut them right off.

  “Don’t do this,” Rhea said. “I need this place.”

  “Rhea… I feel for you. My heart goes out to you. You and your family have been in all of our thoughts and prayers. But even outside these circumstances, you’re teaching semiotics to remedial teenagers when they haven’t nailed down subject is thesis.”

  “I’ll do better. I’ll be better,” she said, and now she pressed her hands together, begging him. “This is the only thing I have left. I can’t stay on Maple Street. It’s a tomb. She haunts me. She’s everywhere.”

  “You need to leave,” he said.

  Allen remained and she understood that he meant leave right now. She packed up her tiny cubicle-sized office. Eyes red, she started out. By rights, she ought to be this man’s boss. The whole school ought to be bowing. Begging her for nuggets of brilliant wisdom. She turned back. Limped to the desk on that useless, betraying knee. She spit. It landed on the top red paper. Speedy’s.

  “Rhea!” Allen cried out, prissy and shocked.

  The spit spread and turned red. Such a crazy thing to do. Obscene and uncivilized. She meant to say: Sorry. Forgive me. We’ll talk in the fall and I’ll be ready, Allen. But that wasn’t what came out. “Look what you made me do,” she said.

  The rest was a blank. She skidded out of the parking lot, flooring it, to the only place left. To Maple Street.

  118 Maple Street

  Saturday, July 31

  Amidst the chaos of 118 Maple Street was the oasis of Rhea and Fritz’s strangely perfect bedroom that smelled of cheap perfume. Everything in order. Not a coffee ring on a nightstand; not a bra hanging from a doorknob. It felt like looking into the clean and wealthy adult life she was supposed to be living. Or the imagined Martha Stewart pretense of what adult life looked like.

  No sign of Shelly’s evidence.

  The door creaked open. An overhead light turned on. Gertie had no place to hide. She was caught.

  “Ella?” she asked. The girl walked slowly into the room. She had to be nine years old by now. Not so little. That wonder age, where stuffed animals and sexy hip-hop strutting coexist. Where Santa is real but the tooth fairy isn’t. She looked nothing like her big sister. She was round and broad-chested. Small brown eyes and mousy brown hair. She wore a pretty green dress with cut-out shoulders that cinched at the waist.

  “Could you help me?” Ella asked.

  Gertie held her belly. “How?”

  Ella walked out. Gertie waited in the bright light, then followed. She stayed on tiptoe as they passed naked FJ’s room, then crept back down the stairs. Gertie in bare feet, the child in cute water sandals. Gertie followed her into the open kitchen, and then to the tiny room off that kitchen. It had a door, and was not much bigger than a closet.

  Ella waited outside. Gertie looked in. It was a wreck. Shredded papers were stacked by inches on the floor. The walls were painted with red Sharpie. Fuck You! someone had carved (With a letter opener? A knife?) into the small wooden desk. There were no windows here.

  Rhea’s office.

  “What are we doing?” Gertie asked.

  Ella just stood there. She had a plain face, phlegmatic. And Gertie understood that this expression concealed a very real rage. This house was like that. It concealed. And then in corners, things burst out.

  “Are you going to tell your mother you saw me?”

  Ella picked a key from her dress pocket and held it out. “There’s a box in the bottom drawer. It’s Shelly’s. I want you to show me what’s inside. I’m the only one with the key. I took it to make Shelly mad. I used to take things from her.”

  Gertie walked over. Her belly was too big to sit at the desk to check, so she pushed the chair aside. Opened the bottom drawer. A lockbox. On it was written: Pain Box.

  Gertie felt a rush of relief.

  She pulled it out, noticed the papers underneath. Printed-up newspaper articles. The one on top read, “In Aftermath of Hungarian Pastry Shop Accident, Little Jessica Suffers Aneurysm.” The picture was of a girl who looked just like Shelly. Long, black hair. Fair skin and eyes. High cheekbones. About the same age, too. But the paper was dated 2005.

  Gertie pointed. “Do you know who this is?”

  Ella shook her head. “Shelly?”

  Gertie shut the drawer. “Looks like her, doesn’t it?”

  Ella placed the key on the desk. “Will you show me what’s inside?”

  “You’re sure?” Gertie asked.

  The girl’s eyes watered. “Please show me.”

  Gertie opened. It took a while because it was bent at the top, the lock inside it twisted. She had to jiggle it to unclench the spring. It popped open. It was empty except for a set of blue silk hair ribbons and a phone.

  “What is it?” Ella asked.

  “I don’t know,” Gertie answered. “We have to charge it to find out. Do you think I can take it home with me?”

  “Shelly’s my sister. Did you know that? Lots of people don’t know because we don’t look the same.”

  “Yeah, honey. I know.”

  “Will you show me what’s in it if I let you have it?”

  “I will, sweetheart.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes.” Gertie closed the box, put the phone in her pocket. Then she bent down to eye level. “Are you okay, honey? Why aren’t you at camp?”

  “I need to be close for when she climbs out. I watched all the Buffys. Even season six. So we can play like she used to want. I’ll be Dawn and she can be Buffy. Because I’m her sister. Her real sister, not like Julia. Julia’s not her real sister.”

  “That sounds so nice, honey. Was there anything else Shelly was keeping? Secrets?”

  “There was only that. Know why she called it her Pain Box?” Ella asked. “Because she was always hurting. I hurt her by telling on her. I won’t tell on her anymore. When she climbs out.”

  “No. You’ll be a wonderful sister. Are you going to tell that I was here?”

  Ella shook her head. So calm. So odd. Like a miniature adult. “Shelly wouldn’t like it. Did you know she wanted to live with you?”

  Gertie squeezed the lockbox to her chest, her voice rough. “That would have been nice,” she said, as a car rushed past the kitchen window. Rhea’s car.

  Hempstead Turnpike

  Saturday, July 31

  Rhea’s vision turned spotty. Her heart pounded so hard that she could feel her pulse in her eyes. Everything flashed, just like the ending of the movie The Black Hole. She was going to faint. She pulled to the side of the road.

  She’d done something. A bad thing.

  She’d spit. So ugly. So base. But som
ething else. She’d talked about her dad. Allen had no business knowing anything about her saint of a dad! She’d said that because of her dad, she had something wrong with her. That she was damaged. She wasn’t damaged! She was the perfect outcome of a perfect family!

  Cars passed around her, slow, even though she’d left them plenty of room.

  Why was her heart beating so hard?

  Attachment disorder? It was true that she’d never been close to other people. Not after her dad, and even then, that closeness had been a kind of lie (the orange juice, the milk, the swerving car, The Black Hole). In all the years she’d been raised by him, lived in his house, she’d never once had a friend over, or laughed like the people on TV. She’d only laughed later, with Gertie. She’d always assumed the media lied. That no one was really close to anyone. And they weren’t, were they?

  This myth of love was manufactured. People pretend to have things in common because they’re afraid of being alone. She wasn’t like that. She’d always been honest. Brave. It’s lonely that way, but at least she’d been true to herself.

  Another car passed. Another too-wide berth with quick, polite honking. So passive-aggressive. It occurred to her that normal people don’t kick down bathroom doors. They don’t spit in rage. They don’t hit their children with brushes. They don’t frame their best friends’ husbands for rape.

  … But maybe they did.

  Her heart wouldn’t slow down. The weight of this was unbearable. An impossibly heavy murk, accumulated for so many years that everything behind her, every memory, was contaminated. It unfurled now, sucking her into its infinitely dense mouth, reaching into her future and dissolving her there, too. Forever unclean.

  Rhea began to pant. Her heart convulsed in her chest. She’d done so many bad things. Knowing this was a physical pain. Car lights flashed all around her, disorienting. The blind spots in her vision got bigger.

  Cars passed and she hated them for noticing. Hated the drivers for peering out, to see if something was wrong.