Good Neighbors Page 3

  That’s when the accident happened. A totally unforeseen, random event. Through no fault of her own, she wound up with a sprained knee. To this day, it ached in bad weather. The other person got hurt even worse. An accusation was lodged. False, but damning nonetheless. Rhea got demoted, which, in academia, is the same as being fired. And that was that. A stellar career, destroyed.

  Her life got even emptier. No more coffees. No more beers. School and home and school and home. She felt bad about the accident. It was a terrible mistake that her mind wanted badly to undo.

  That’s when fate stepped in. Fritz Schroeder, a German chemistry PhD ten years her senior, moved into her apartment complex. He knocked, asking if she knew how to use the cheap convection ovens provided in each kitchen. Wearing a pink polo shirt with the collar pulled up, his khakis stained at the knees with brown chemical from the lab, he’d looked lonely. Helpless. Something about him was broken.

  “Let’s look it up!” she’d said, because at the time, she hadn’t known how to use an oven, either.

  A boyfriend hadn’t been a part of her plan. She’d always pictured her future as an empty room, clean and bright; filled only with ideas and the long-distance adoration of colleagues. She hadn’t imagined sharing her time with anyone but her dad. Not when she had so much important work to do.

  But plans change. Careers crash and burn. She’d been so lost. Then along came Fritz: a brain in a box with occasional human urges. Unobtrusive but breathing. The perfect choice.

  As a person, he had peccadilloes. He needed his shoes to be arranged in specific directions, and he couldn’t stand tags in his shirts, and he had an earwax buildup problem, except he hated the sensation of Q-tips, so he used steamed washcloths. He ate whatever random items he found in her cabinets, including tuna out of the can with his fingers. It grossed her out so much that she learned to cook. When she bought clothes for herself, she bought new khakis and tagless shirts for him, too. It’s nice to do things for other people, especially when they return the favor with wide-eyed gratitude. Besides, she’d had plenty of peccadilloes of her own. She’d just been better at hiding them.

  About a year into dating, Fritz accepted a high-paying job formulating perfumes at the BeachCo Laboratories in Suffolk County. Sugary-smelling stuff with names like Raspberry Seduction and French Silk for the low-end Duane Reade market. She’d suggested marriage, even though she’d known that it wasn’t right between them. They weren’t close in an emotional way. Didn’t confide in each other or talk about their upbringings. For instance, he had no idea about The Black Hole, or the murk, or the accident that had ruined her career.

  Still, one evening he took her to the top of the Space Needle. Led her to the edge. “Even around people, I always feel separate,” he’d explained without looking her in the eyes. “I’m lonely with you, too.”

  Her gag reflex had triggered. Was he dumping her? Didn’t he know that without him, she had nothing? She’d seen him standing there, looking scared, and it had taken a great effort of self-control not to shove him right off the ledge.

  He took the small, princess-cut ring out of his pocket. “But you take care of me. No one’s ever done that. I’m a limited person. I think this is the best it will get,” he’d said. “And I do love you.”

  “You know?” she’d answered with total surprise. “I think I love you, too.” By then, tourists were watching, clapping. So they’d kissed.

  The wedding was at the justice of the peace. No honeymoon. Just a flight to Long Island. She never got around to unpacking the box that contained the pieces of her unfinished book, because by then, she’d been pregnant with Gretchen.

  In her pre-Fritz life, she’d debated abstruse theory with Ivy League geniuses. Now, she spent her days on Maple Street, alone with babies. These babies often cried. Sometimes she didn’t know why. She didn’t speak baby. It got hard. All that stuff she’d always thought was stupid, destructive female fantasia—stuff like friends and hugging and hot sex—she found herself watching Terminator and Starman and The Abyss, wishing she had it. Wondering what was wrong with her, that she didn’t.

  Fritz spent the time building his career. He only showed up on weekends and when his family visited from Munich. When he and Rhea were together, they cheered soccer games and dropped kids at the mall and paid bills in perfect agreement; partners who know each other like the lines of their own hands. But it was all surface. No laughs, no confidences, no companionship.

  It was so lonely.

  The first ten years, she cried a lot. But she kept it a secret, a hidden shame, because she was sure that her lackluster marriage was evidence of her own inadequacy. If she confessed her loneliness to Fritz, he’d know the truth: that she was messed up. He’d divorce her. His lawyer would unearth the accident. Everyone would know why she’d been fired from U-Dub. All of Maple Street. They’d look at her and see right through her. They’d know everything. Unthinkable.

  And so, she dried her eyes. She buried her loneliness so deeply that she lost the knowledge of it. She stopped seeing it.

  The following decade, she transformed herself into everything a suburban wife and mother ought to be. She organized all the block parties and made it her business to befriend every new addition to Maple Street with a basket of chocolate goodies and Fritz’s newest perfume. She volunteered at the kids’ schools and raised funds for iPads and art teachers. She resolved arguments and reported bullies. She sent out annual family Christmas cards with the Schroeders in matching sweaters, adopted class crayfish, and stayed up late most nights with her daughters, because one of them invariably had a crisis.

  She worried about Gretchen’s perfectionism, and Fritz Jr.’s shyness that he used to medicate with food and now he medicated with other things. About Shelly’s instability, and Ella’s stutter, which had since resolved. Four kids is a lot. But she did it well. She raised them popular and healthy and smart. Teachers complimented her. So did neighbors. She dressed like she was supposed to, in Eileen Fisher, and she cooked nutritious foods, and she kept her figure acceptably trim. She looked the part until she felt the part. Until she was the part.

  Once her youngest started grammar school, she picked up work as an adjunct professor, teaching English Composition at Nassau Community College—the only job she’d been able to get after the stain on her record.

  Mostly, these things were enough. But occasionally, the murk unfurled. She’d spy her reflection in a mirror when she was alone, mid-argument with an imaginary enemy (and there was always some jerk she was mad at), or else brushing Shelly’s hair, and think: Who is that angry woman?

  It frightened her.

  When her oldest left for Cornell University last year, she’d taken it hard. She’d been happy for Gretchen, but her brilliant future had made Rhea’s seem that much more dim. What was left, once all the kids were gone away, and she was left with a thirty-year-old dissertation and Fritz Sr., Captain Earwax Extraordinaire? She’d wanted to break her life, just to escape it. Drive her car into the Atlantic Ocean. Take a dump on her boss’s desk. Straddle her clueless husband, who’d never once taken her dancing, and shout: Who cleans their ears with a washcloth? It’s disgusting! She’d wanted to fashion a slingshot and make a target range of Maple Street, just to set herself free of these small, stupid people and their small, stupid worlds.

  It would have happened. She’d been close to breaking, to losing everything. But just like when Fritz moved into her apartment complex: fate intervened. The Wildes moved next door. Rhea couldn’t explain what happened the day she first saw Gertie, except that it was magic. Another outsider. A beautiful misfit. Gertie’d been so impressed by Rhea. You’re so smart and warm, she’d said the first day they’d met. You’re such a success. Rhea’d known then, that if there was anyone on Maple Street to whom she could reveal her true feelings, it was this naïf. One way or another, Gertie Wilde would be her salvation.

  Rhea had courted Gertie with dinner invitations, park barbeques, and introductions to
neighbors. Made their children play together, so that the Rat Pack accepted the new kids on the block. It wasn’t easy to turn local sentiment in Gertie’s favor. The woman’s house wasn’t ever clean or neat. A pinworm outbreak coincided with their arrival, which couldn’t have been a coincidence. The whole block was itching for weeks.

  Worse, her foulmouthed kids ran wild. Larry was a hypersensitive nutbar who carried a doll and walked in circles. Then there was Julia. When they first moved in, she stole a pack of Parliaments from her dad and showed the rest of the kids how to smoke. When her parents caught her, they made her go with them door to door, explaining what had happened to all the Rat Pack parents. Rhea had felt sorry for crying, confused Julia. Why make a kid go through all that? A simple e-mail authored by Gertie stating the facts of the event would have sufficed—if that!

  It’s never a good idea to admit guilt in the suburbs. It’s too concrete. You say the words I’m sorry, and people hold on to it and don’t let go. It’s far better to pave over with vagaries. Obfuscate guilt wherever it exists.

  The sight of all the Wildes in their doorways had added more melodrama than necessary. The neighbors, feeling the social pressure to react, to prove their fitness as parents, matched that melodrama. Dumb Linda took her twins to the doctor to check for lung damage. The Hestias wondered if they should report the Wildes to Child Protective Services. The Walshes enrolled Charlie in a health course called Our Bodies: Our Responsibility. Cat Hestia had stood in that doorway and cried, explaining that she wasn’t mad at Julia, just disappointed. Because she’d hoped this day would never come. Toxic cigarettes! They have arsenic!

  None of them seemed to understand that this had nothing to do with smoking. Julia had stolen those cigarettes to win the Rat Pack over. A bid toward friendship. She’d misjudged her audience. This wasn’t deep Brooklyn. Cool for these kids meant gifted programs and Suzuki lessons. The only people who smoked Parliaments anymore were ex-cons, hookers, and apparently, the new neighbors in 116. What she’d misapprehended, and what the Wilde parents had also missed, was that it wasn’t the health hazards that bothered the people of Maple Street. If that were the case, they wouldn’t be Slip ’N Sliding right now. It was the fact that smoking is so totally low class.

  Despite all that, Rhea had stuck by Gertie Wilde until, one by one, the rest of Maple Street capitulated. It was nice, doing something for someone else, especially someone as beautiful as Gertie. There’s a kind of reflective glow, when you have a friend like that. When you stand close, you can see yourself in their perfect eyes.

  At least once a month, they’d drunk wine on Rhea’s enclosed porch, cracking jokes about poop, the wacky stuff kids say!, and helpless husbands whose moods turn crabby unless they get their weekly blowies. This latter part, Rhea just pretended. She accepted Fritz’s infrequent appeals for missionary-style sex, but even in their dating days, their mouths had rarely played a part, not even to kiss.

  Rhea’s attentions were rewarded. Eventually, Gertie let down her guard. Tears in her eyes, voice low, she’d confessed the thing that haunted her most: The first, I was just thirteen. He ran the pageant and my stepmom said I had to, so I could win rent money. He told me he loved me after, but I knew it wasn’t true. After that, I never said no. I kept thinking every time was a new chance to make the first time right. I’d turn it around and make one of them love me. Be nice to me and take care of me. So I wouldn’t have to live with my stepmom. But that never happened. Not until Arlo. I’m so grateful to him.

  When she finished her confession, Gertie’d visibly deflated, her burden lightened. Rhea had understood then why people need friends. They need to be seen and known, and accepted nonetheless. Oh, how she’d craved that unburdening. How she’d feared it, too.

  They built so much trust between them that one night, amidst the distant catcalls of children gone savage, Rhea took a sloppy risk, and told her own truth: Fritz boom-booms me. It hurts and I’ve never once liked it… Do you like it? I never expected this to be my life. Did you expect this, Gertie? Do you like it? I can tell that you don’t. I wanted to be your friend from the second I saw you. I’m not beautiful like you, but I’m special on the inside. I know about black holes. I can tell you want to run away. I do, too. We can give each other courage… Shelly can’t keep her hair neat. It goads me. I’d like to talk about it with you, because I know you like Shelly. I know you like me. I know you won’t judge. Sometimes I imagine I’m a giant. I squeeze my whole family into pulp. I wish them dead just so I can be free. I can’t leave them. I’m their mother. I’m not allowed to leave them. So I hate them. Isn’t that awful? God, aren’t I a monster?

  She stopped talking once she’d noticed Gertie’s teary-eyed horror. “Don’t talk like that. You’ll break your own house.”

  There’d been more words after that. Pleasantries and a changed subject. Rhea didn’t remember. The event compressed into murk and sank down inside her, a smeared oblivion of rage.

  Soon after that night, Gertie announced her pregnancy. The doctor told her she had to stop drinking front-porch Malbec, so they hung out a lot less. She got busier with work and the kids and she’d played it off like coincidence, but Rhea had known the truth: she’d shown her true self, and Gertie wanted no part of it.

  Retaliation was necessary. Rhea stopped waving at Gertie when she saw her, stopped returning her texts. When that didn’t make her feel any better, when oblivious Gertie didn’t even notice her coldness at the Memorial Day barbeque, she bit harder. She told people about Arlo’s heroin problem. How that was the reason for the tattoos covering both his arms. He was trying to hide the scars. She told about Gertie and all those men. Practically a hooker. She told everything, to anybody who’d listen.

  The more she told those stories, the more the past kaleidoscoped. She reevaluated every interaction she’d ever had with Gertie and her family, every judgment she’d ever cast.

  For instance, Arlo yelled. His voice boomed. You could see Larry, who was sound-sensitive, shrink inside himself when that happened. But Arlo never checked himself. He just kept shouting, like he didn’t care that he was hurting his own kid. What was even more alarming, Gertie had all kinds of rules. Unless it was baking hot, Julia couldn’t wear short sleeves and shorts together because they revealed too much skin. No bikinis, ever. If she changed clothes on playdates, she had to do it in the bathroom. She couldn’t walk to the bus stop by herself, or even with Shelly. A grown-up had to accompany. Why was she so nervous? What did she know about sexual threats on Maple Street that no one else knew?

  In other words, why was Larry always jerking himself?

  Here’s a story: One time, Rhea, Fritz, and the kids were at the Wildes’ for dinner. It was its usual mess. Greasy dishes and thumbprints on the wineglasses. So Rhea’d washed while Arlo had cut vegetables, and Gertie had poached eggs. Even Fritz had helped out; for maybe the first time ever, he’d set the table. Until then, she’d never have guessed he knew how!

  They’d all had so much fun and felt so close. On their way out the door, saying their good-byes, Arlo had leaned into Rhea, hugging her a beat too long. “Thanks for being so good to Gertie,” he’d said, and then he’d kissed her cheek but gotten the corner of her lips, too. Dazed, she’d looked to Gertie to see if her friend was jealous, only Gertie’d acted like it was nothing.

  At the time, Rhea’d felt flattered. But later she’d wondered: Had Arlo been hitting on her? And if a wife can ignore something like that, what else can she ignore?

  She’d related her observations to Linda Ottomanelli, who, most likely, had spread it around to the rest of the neighbors. And then, last week, she’d been planning the barbeque, and she’d known that if Gertie and her family showed up, that the neighbors might ask questions, compare stories. If Gertie found out about the rumors Rhea had spread, she might get mad enough to retaliate. Spill beans she had no business spilling. So she’d eliminated the problem, and excluded the Wildes.

  The exclusion didn’t feel cruel.
It felt like self-preservation. And if the murk had unfurled again, more rage-filled than ever, at least she’d found the proper target against whom to direct it.

  * * *

  F, Rhea wrote along the top of the final paper. It argued that heroin should be legal, since it would garner more tax revenue to fight the immigrant crisis.

  “Mom?” a voice asked. Thirteen-year-old Shelly stood in the kitchen, just at the edge of Rhea’s alcove office, calling in. No one but Rhea was allowed in here. It was her solitary place.

  “Yeah?” Rhea asked.

  “Can I go outside with the Rat Pack?” Shelly was wearing her hair in a long braid down her back that ended at her hips. The edges were snarled. Even with a bottle of conditioner, tonight’s brushing session would be a long one. “They’ve got this yellow thing. They’re sliding on it.”

  “It’s a Slip ’N Slide. They’re from my day. I think they stopped making them ’cause kids crash and get paralyzed,” Rhea answered.

  “Oh. Can I go? I won’t get paralyzed.”

  “You’ll get cancer, which is worse. You know why that sinkhole happened? Because people like the Wildes don’t pay taxes.”

  Shelly mumbled something under her breath. Presumably it was contrary. The girl was a disturbing cocktail of meekness and fury, uneven since birth, in ways that kept Rhea awake nights with worry.

  “Your trouble is that you sympathize with everybody. But not everybody deserves it. Now help me out and set the table,” Rhea said as she made a pile of her papers and set them aside.

  Shelly’s eyes got full. “She was my best friend.”

  “We’ve been through this. It’s not Julia. It’s her parents.”

  “You should trust me, Mom.”

  “I do trust you. I don’t trust them. I’ve told you this. I don’t like repeating it. I don’t ever want you in that house, especially not sleeping over. Gertie and Arlo are strange. I don’t like the way he looks at me. Do you understand what I’m saying?”