The Neighbors Are Watching (13 page)

“You want a beer or something?” Jessalyn was standing over him in her bra and skirt, sliding her feet into her high-heeled mules. How had she managed to get dressed that quickly? Joe had the sudden paranoid thought that Allison had set this whole thing up. When was the last time she’d gone out on a Sunday? Certainly not since Diana had been living with them.
But today of all days she was dressed before noon, relatively sober, and headed out “shopping,” not to return until “dinnertime.” He hadn’t thought about it too much then, except maybe to allow himself the faintest glimmer of hope that she was going to pull herself together, but now he wondered if it was to purposely leave him alone so that he’d go over to Jessalyn’s house as soon as Diana lugged herself over to the Werners’ (as regular an event as the sunrise). And that was exactly what he had done. And maybe Allison was back already and waiting for him to come home coated with the unmistakable smell of sex, which could penetrate even the strongest of vodka fumes so that she could pound the final nail into the coffin that housed their dead marriage.

But no, that was ridiculous. He hadn’t been here that long and he would have heard Allison’s car if she’d come home. It wasn’t as if the house were that far away. He was overreacting. But it was also the beginning of what Joe knew would turn into the long slow burn of panicky guilt.

“I’m okay, thanks,” he said, finally pulling himself up and picking up his clothes, which were not in a pile on the floor as he would have thought, but semifolded and draped over the arm of the white overstuffed chair in Jessalyn’s bedroom. “I should probably get home.”

“You sure?” She smiled, brilliant and sweet, and rubbed his back a little as he stepped into his shorts. She was stunning, Joe thought, and not nearly as dumb or flighty as she made herself out to be. She grazed his lips with hers—not really a kiss, but more than enough to get him aroused all over again. “Seems like you could use it,” she said.

“I probably could,” Joe said.
Because it takes balls to fool around with a woman who lives on your own street
, he added silently.
Definitely enough to make a person thirsty
. “I’m going to go, Jessalyn,” he said.

“Hey,” she said, running her hand up his arm and squeezing his shoulder, “call me Jess, would you? Jessalyn feels so formal, you know?”

“Okay.”

Jessalyn gave out a little sigh. She looked confused or undecided. Joe couldn’t tell which and he suspected she didn’t know either. It was another
slightly off expression to match the polite smile as if she felt the need to display the appropriate emotion at the appropriate time. He couldn’t shake the feeling that everything about her was just a little bit staged or manufactured as if there was always a camera rolling to catch her reactions. But maybe he was just too old. At forty-eight he had missed growing up in a reality-show culture where people were always the stars of their own shows and every stupid thought and action was considered worthy of an audience. Jessalyn—only in her twenties—had even been on one of those shows. For a second it made the age gap between them seem like a canyon. But then Joe decided it actually made her more endearing. That don’t-know-any-better narcissism gave her a weird kind of innocence and he found it very appealing.

“Look, Joe,” she said, “I don’t know what this is, but …” She sighed again—a little puff of air between them. “I know you’re not the kind of guy who just …”

“We don’t have to talk about this,” he said, and then laughed in spite of himself. “At least, not yet.”

“I just wanted you to know that I’m okay with, you know, whatever you want to do.”

“What do you mean, Jess?”

“I mean, you lead, Joe. You’ve got … I know what you’ve got, is what I’m saying.”

She was looking at him not politely now, but with real understanding and sympathy. He hadn’t noticed before now just how blue her eyes were. Or how lovely. And then he thought he could fall in love with this girl if he let himself. It wasn’t an unpleasant notion. Joe knew he was on a precipice. He had a glimpse—fleeting but unmistakable—of what was in store: furtive meetings, jealousies, a great deal of sex, whispered endearments, maybe even love. If Joe did nothing, if he just let it happen, it would become a runaway train and he would be powerless to do anything but just let it run right over him.

“Thank you, Jess,” he said. “I mean it.”

“You’re okay, then?”

“Of course I’m okay.”

She took his hand and led him out of the bedroom, down the hall, and to the top of the stairs. It occurred to him for the first time that Jessalyn’s bedroom—or at least the room they’d just been in—was not the master bedroom. All the houses on the street had the same basic floor plan, Joe knew, and when she’d taken him upstairs earlier he’d had a disconcerting moment when he felt as if he was heading to the bedroom in his own house. All of that had vanished the minute she’d pulled him past the master bedroom and into the smaller one at the end of the hall. But now he wondered why she hadn’t used the larger room.

“Do you have an office here?” he asked her. “I didn’t think you worked at home.”

Jessalyn bristled. “I don’t,” she said quickly. “Or, I guess, sometimes I do have f-friends come over for, you know, like … facials? Or, um, waxings?” She turned to him, her face flushed. “I’m not really supposed to do that at home,” she said. “Well, I mean, I am, I have a license and everything, but I’m not supposed to use the products.… I’m an aesthetician. I told you that, right? Anyway, why do you ask?”

“I just … no reason. I was just wondering about … the other bedroom. It’s bigger, isn’t it?”

Jessalyn’s blue eyes grew icy and hard, and for a moment she looked much older than she was. “I know what people say about me on this street, Joe. I’m not an idiot.”

“What?” Joe was genuinely baffled.
Now
what had he done? “I never said you were an idiot, Jess.”

She looked away from him. He could see the muscles of her jaw working, the long fair line of her neck, the soft blond hair caught behind her ear. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Of course you didn’t.” She kissed him. “Go ahead,” she said. “I just have to visit the … restroom. I’ll be down in a minute.”

“No problem,” Joe said. “I have to get back. I’ll just let myself out, okay?”

“Okay, Joe.” She stood there for a moment, her head tilted slightly to one side, and then turned around and disappeared into the bathroom.

Joe’s paranoia returned in a sweaty rush. Now he
had
to get out of her house and back to his own as quickly and as invisibly as possible. He checked his clothing for stray strands of blond hair, brushing imaginary evidence off his shoulders. His hands needed washing. Everything needed washing. He jogged down the stairs, his to-do list for the rest of the day crystallizing into one item: a hot shower. So intent was he on closing the distance between himself and his own bathroom that he kept his head down as he shut her front door and strode back to his house. He didn’t look up in fact until it was almost too late to avoid plowing into Diana, who was standing—a pregnant stone statue—in the middle of their driveway.

Joe felt every second of his life compressed into the look that passed between them. Every mistake he’d ever made—every small wrong he’d ever committed—was reflected in the dark glass of her eyes. Perspiration crawled down his back.

He couldn’t look away from her and he couldn’t speak.

“I need a ride to the hospital,” she said. “I think I’m in labor.”

D
orothy sat with her right leg over her left and her hands in her lap. But then, worried that this pose might look too casual and not anxious or pained enough, she uncrossed her legs and rested her hands on her knees. She furrowed her brow and squinted against the fluorescent light in the waiting room. And then, for good measure, she rubbed her eyes, her temples, and the back of her neck. She stole a glance to see if either of the girls at the reception desk was watching her, but one was busy with the headset blinking at her ear and the other was talking to an elderly woman about the best time to schedule a flu shot.

Dorothy wondered how long she would have to wait. This had been a sick call, not a regularly scheduled visit, and sometimes the wait times varied depending on where you were in the queue or how sick you were. But Dorothy was sure that she’d managed to convey an impressive constellation of symptoms when she’d called reception earlier. She’d fallen, she explained, and had twisted something in her back. And when she’d landed, she thought she’d heard a kind of pop. It was silly; she never should have been on the ladder in the first place because she’d been having dizzy spells from her sinuses, which had also been flaring up. It had really hurt her at the time, but she hadn’t done anything about it, hoping it would just go away.
But now she was having terrible back pain and headaches as well. Also, she was having trouble sleeping, probably from the pain. Anyway, she thought it best if she came to see Dr. Smithfield at this point: Did the doctor have any openings today? The receptionist told Dorothy that Dr. Smithfield was on vacation, but that Dr. Fakoor had an opening at 3:00
PM
if Dorothy wanted to come in then. If it had been any other time, any other circumstance, Dorothy would have waited rather than see a doctor with a name like Fakoor. But these were extraordinary circumstances and Dorothy was forced to go outside her comfort zone. She thanked the receptionist and took the appointment without even asking if Dr. Fakoor was male or female.

There were only three other people in the waiting room, a man and two women, and none of them seemed visibly ill. Dorothy tried to observe them without making eye contact but it was difficult. Nobody, it seemed, was interested in reading magazines today. She just wanted to get through this as quickly as possible, obtain a prescription or hopefully two, and get home undetected. Not that home would offer any peace—home was the reason she was here today, after all—but at least it offered familiarity. Dorothy’s things were at home: her casserole dishes, her gardening tools, her photo albums—items she could look at and touch and reassure herself that the external structure of her life was still firmly in place. It felt strange to even think it, but these days Dorothy had greater faith in such inanimate objects than in people. Objects—things like dishwashers, cars, and televisions that one counted on to get one through the day—sometimes didn’t work correctly and sometimes they just broke, but they never disappointed you or, worse, betrayed your trust in who they were. And in this case she was thinking about Kevin, a person who had emerged from her own body and yet might as well have come directly from Mars for all he acknowledged that and for all she knew him.

But Dorothy had known him once. She was sure of that.

Kevin had been a very sensitive baby, sweet but never completely happy. The littlest things could make him cry. It began when he was an
infant when merely substituting squash for bananas was enough to set him off weeping like his small world was coming to an end. Later, if he couldn’t find the right piece for a puzzle or figure out how to keep his toy trains on their tracks, his eyes would fill with frustrated tears and he’d start bawling. He never hurled his toys, Dorothy remembered, or threw tantrums in an attempt to destroy the things that were causing him grief, but he was constantly—bitterly—disappointed when they did. When he started school, friends were difficult for him too. The loyalty he expected from his fellow kindergartners involved allegiance to him above all else. Kevin expected his friends to sit with him at lunchtime and play the games that he wanted to play during recess. He directed all the activities during playdates, creating his own rules and giving specific directions as to how his toys were to be handled. Games were also a problem, especially at school. “Kevin gets very upset if he doesn’t win,” Dorothy heard from more than one teacher. “Perhaps you could practice some of these games at home so he can improve those social skills.”

“But who doesn’t want to win?” That was always Dick’s response when Dorothy told him (because most often, Dorothy attended those parent-teacher conferences alone). “If he didn’t want to win, he’d be a quitter or a pussy. I’d be more concerned if he
didn’t
get upset.” Dick’s biggest fear, of course, was that Kevin would turn out to be a pussy. He didn’t buy into Dorothy’s theory that Kevin was just a little too sensitive and would grow out of it. Sensitive equaled queer and Dick wouldn’t have any part of that.

Response and comfort fell to Dorothy, and for a long time, Kevin did come to her with his woes. The two of them forged a sort of alliance and an unspoken understanding about when it was all right to cry (in front of Dorothy if the two of them were alone) and when it wasn’t (in front of Dick, ever).

Dorothy couldn’t remember exactly when Kevin had stopped reacting to his hurts by turning on the waterworks, but she knew it was later than even she would have liked. Then there came a point when he stopped
talking to her at all. He must have been about twelve or thirteen, Dorothy guessed, when all he did when he came home from school was head straight to his room. And that, Dorothy realized, was where he had been until now.

Dick hadn’t made much of an effort to disguise his disappointment with how Kevin was turning out. When Kevin was born, Dick had so hoped his son would play a sport—any sport—and become a champion. Dick tried everything from soccer to Pee Wee football but nothing took. Kevin hated all of it and never kept that a secret. When Dick insisted that he give it more time, Kevin made sure that he got injured every time he played. After a broken collarbone and ankle, a dislocated shoulder, and two concussions, it was evident that it was time to ease off or risk Kevin doing permanent damage to his body. Dorothy didn’t think Dick ever really forgave Kevin for that, although he’d never admit it. Still, it might not have been so bad if Kevin had shown an aptitude for anything. But he had never been a scholar and sometime around middle school his grades went from mediocre to bad. Dorothy hadn’t seen a report card for a while, but she suspected that he was barely passing his classes. He didn’t even show an interest in driving. That might have been the last straw for Dick, Dorothy thought. Aside from sports, driving, preferably fast cars, was probably Dick’s main indicator of maleness. What red-blooded man or boy didn’t want to get behind the wheel and floor it as soon as he was able?