The Neighbors Are Watching (17 page)

The diapers forced Joe to think about Diana and the baby. A bitter mixture of remorse and resentment rose up in his chest, burning his throat. He still wasn’t entirely sure whether Diana knew about him and Jessalyn. He couldn’t forget the judgmental look she’d given him that day on the driveway when she’d gone into labor, as if she knew where he’d been and what he’d been doing and was prepared to use it against him. She could have, Joe thought, she’d had plenty of opportunities over the last few weeks. But there was a bit of quid pro quo as well, as far as that went. Before they left for the hospital, he told her to brush her teeth and change her clothes. “You stink of pot smoke,” he told her. “Probably not a great idea to show up at the hospital like that.”

“I wasn’t smoking it,” she said. “I was
in the room with it
is all.”

“Right,” he told her, “of course.”

He’d given her a pass then and hadn’t pressed it. From her perspective that had to count for something. Not that he expected any big gifts next time Father’s Day rolled around.

Joe rubbed his eyes, which were stinging from all the smoke in the air. He felt like he’d tried to do right by Diana, he really did. It wasn’t her fault that Yvonne hadn’t bothered to tell her about her own father until this most inappropriate time and then sent her off to him when she was at her most vulnerable. He understood all of that. And although he never would have raised her the way Yvonne had—had she put
any
limits on Diana at all?—he knew that this too was not Diana’s doing, and he had tried to steer her in the right direction, had tried to … well,
be a father
to her wasn’t quite right. It was too late for him to be a real father to her, and Diana was already predisposed to dislike him, but he had tried to be paternal at least. He had tried to get to know her—as difficult as that was considering the
circumstances and Allison’s unyielding resistance—but she’d gravitated right away to that hopeless Kevin and there wasn’t anything he could have done to pry her away from him once she’d made up her mind that she was in love with him. What idiocy. It was exactly those kinds of bad choices that had gotten her knocked up in the first place. Well, that and poor parenting.

Joe felt bitterness rising in his throat again. He opened the glove compartment and rooted around for an antacid. No luck, though he could have sworn he’d left a roll of Tums in there only last week. Par for the course, Joe thought, because it seemed the world at large was conspiring to make him feel as bad as possible, literally and figuratively. Sure, some of it had to do with his chickens coming home to roost, but
in general
he didn’t deserve the kind of consistently shitty hand fate was dealing him these days.

Take this bullshit with the Werners for a start. Goddamn Dick was so deluded he actually thought Diana was a bad influence on
Kevin
. The man had gone as far as to threaten a restraining order. Against Diana! And of course the real problem was that Dick was a frustrated blowhard with a fat-assed wife who probably never gave him any satisfaction (assuming of course Dick’s dick even worked), and then all of a sudden his reject druggie son starts getting cozy with a beautiful girl who also happened to be African American. That’s what really set Dick off. Joe knew it and Dick knew Joe knew it. This wasn’t about two stupid kids thinking they loved each other; it was about Dick’s racism. That Dick was an equal opportunity bigot didn’t make it any better. Joe cringed when he remembered the misogynistic comments Dick had dropped from time to time about Sam and Gloria. Really mean-spirited, childish stuff. And now that Dick’s Church Lady wife had gotten involved, who knew what kind of venom the Werners were spewing all over town. They couldn’t make trouble for
him—
it was almost impossible to impugn the reputation of a restaurant manager—but they could make things difficult for Allison. She worked at
an elementary school and those overprotective, self-righteous, litigious parents were just looking for an excuse to get angry about something.

And there was that vague threat Dick had made about calling Child Protective Services, although on what grounds Joe couldn’t imagine. Still, a visit from CPS was the last thing any one of them needed. And if there was one thing Joe had learned in his life, it was that you could never underestimate the power of bigotry and stupidity.

And then there was the baby herself. Zoë. Joe had to admit that he liked the name—somehow it suited the tiny little thing. He also wondered about how close that name was to his own and if that had factored into Diana’s decision. He hadn’t been happy at first that she’d named the baby at all because that meant she was going to keep it—that she’d never been serious about the adoption. Then again, Joe hadn’t expected the sharp twinge of emotion he’d felt when he looked at the baby for the first time either.

They were in the hospital. Joe had checked Diana in and stayed in the waiting room while she was in labor. She’d told him he could go—that she’d call him when she needed a ride home—but Joe saw that for the fake bravado it was and told her of course he was going to stay. He happened to be off work that day anyway and she should have someone there. She hadn’t called her mother. And Kevin was nowhere to be seen, fortunately. He identified himself to the nurse as Diana’s father and was very relieved when nobody asked him to stay in the delivery room. He called Allison, who still wasn’t home, and left a message telling her what was going on. It hadn’t taken as long as he’d thought. He’d heard all kinds of horror stories of labor going on for days and nights, but a few hours after they’d checked in, during which time Joe read several magazines cover to cover and watched an entire news cycle on the waiting room television, a big square-bodied nurse came out to tell Joe that Diana had delivered a girl and that both mother and baby were fine. Then the nurse smiled and added, “Your daughter’s a pretty tough cookie, you know that? Not one
complaint out of her the whole time. She did a great job. You should tell her.” Joe couldn’t tell if the comment was a compliment or a reproach. She told Joe that Diana and the baby were being moved to another floor and he could go see them both in a few minutes. “Congratulations, Grandpa,” she said. Joe gave her a quizzical look. Diana and the baby weren’t supposed to be together. Even he knew a new mother shouldn’t bond with a baby she meant to give up for adoption. That’s when he realized there wasn’t going to be an adoption—and that maybe Diana had known that all along.

He still hadn’t decided what he was going to say to her when he went downstairs to her room or even what his attitude should be. It was going to complicate things if she insisted on keeping the baby, but one way or another she had to go home. They all knew that baby or no, Diana wasn’t going to be happy living with him and Allison, even if Allison would allow such a thing to happen. That part of the plan was rock solid and Diana knew it. As far as he could tell she’d barely spoken to her mother since she’d arrived—if at all. But they were going to have to patch it up—especially if Diana was planning to keep the baby. That was what he was thinking when he walked into the room, and what went out of his head almost immediately after he saw Diana, exhausted and limp in her bed, holding on to the tiny swaddled bundle as if someone would rip it from her at any moment.

“Are you okay?” he asked her. Diana nodded, too tired to speak. Joe pulled a chair up next to the bed. “The nurse said you did great,” he offered. Diana didn’t smile. There were dark circles under her eyes and her face seemed drained of blood. She turned a little in the bed so that she could tip the bundle toward Joe.

“This is Zoë,” she said, peeling back the edge of the receiving blanket. Joe looked at the miniature red mouth and curly lashed eyes shut tight against a bright new world. You could see the shape of the nose already, he thought, the nose all three of them shared. He had the same shock of recognition as when he’d first seen himself in Diana—the obviousness of kin.
He felt a strong protective urge—a need to shelter both of them—and a not entirely comfortable tenderness toward this little brand-new being. “Her name means
life,
” Diana said. The word stirred a strange mix of emotions in Joe, and he felt his throat tightening. He wondered how different all of their lives would have been if he had made a different choice all those years ago. If he’d stayed with Yvonne—even married her. But he still believed, even now looking at this child—these children—that none of it had been his choice to make. And once again a woman was making a choice that would decide his own fate without him having any say in it at all. So he’d made the one choice that was irrevocably his and had plunged into a full-scale affair with Jessalyn. And this, Joe thought, was how it had come to be four weeks later and still nothing had been resolved with Diana, Zoë, or Allison.

Although the thought of it increased the acid in his gorge, Joe realized he was going to have to schedule a family discussion. They were all going to have to sit down and talk about the Werners, Kevin, Yvonne, and getting Diana back home. And then, after that, he was going to have to have a real conversation with Allison about their marriage. Where Jessalyn fit into all of this he didn’t know. He was just so tired of feeling bad about everything. At least with Jessalyn he had a chance to feel good, if only for a few moments.

Joe inched closer to the pump. He could see now that small flecks of ash were collecting on his windshield. All at once the frenzy penetrated his skin. He felt a clutch of panic in his gut. They’d never been evacuated this far west, but it looked as if this time it was actually going to happen. Joe started thinking about what he needed to take out of the house and where they were all going to go if an evacuation was called for. Allison had always taken care of emergency plans before. He didn’t even know where she kept the lockbox with all their important documents. He picked up his phone again. Had it already happened? Is that why she’d called? He pressed 1 and waited impatiently for the voice mail cues to finish. The first message was very weird—just his name and then nothing but the distant sound of the
television in the background before she hung up. The second message made Joe both angry and fearful. Allison sounded like she’d lost her mind. Where the hell did she think she was going? She hadn’t even mentioned Diana or Zoë. Clearly, she was just leaving them there to fend for themselves. Joe was sick to death of her bullshit. Why had he let her get away with it all this time? And now they were in the middle of a crisis and he was going to have to deal with it all himself. He wouldn’t even have the luxury of bitching her out when he got home. Frantic to get out of this line and back to his house, Joe attempted to squeeze out of his space without getting his gas, but he was forced to wait. When he made it to the pump at last, his hands were shaking so badly he spilled gas all over them.

He was sweating and coughing by the time he finally pulled onto Fuller Court. The street looked awful, full of downed branches and leaves blowing around. It was going to be hell to clean up when this was all over. The sun was unable to break through the smoke, but it was hot and everything was suffused with a burnt orange glow. There were no signs of life on the street and that was, in its way, even more troubling than the scene at the gas station. Joe pulled into the garage and closed it behind him before he got out of his car.

The goddamn door from the garage into the house was locked and Joe spent several futile minutes trying to find the right key on his chain, which also held all the keys to the restaurant. He pounded on the door but nobody answered. Of course not. Frustrated to the point of mindlessness, Joe grabbed the closest thing he could find to a battering ram, a long-abandoned baseball bat, and ran it into the door at full speed until he splintered the cheap thing and it swung open. He’d successfully broken into his own house.

He could smell smoke and burnt coffee and could tell, without even going upstairs, that he was the only person in the house. Allison’s phone and keys were gone. Diana’s door was open and her room was empty so obviously she’d taken Zoë and abandoned the house as well. Joe looked behind him at the broken door and felt embarrassed. He’d done something
to his shoulder with that stupid macho gesture and now it throbbed with pain. He pulled out his phone and dialed Allison’s number. It went straight to voice mail.

“You’d better call me, Allison,” he said into the phone. He didn’t add “or else,” but he hoped it was obvious enough from his tone. Then he dialed Diana’s cell phone, but it too went straight to voice mail. “Diana, it’s Joe. Call me when you get this.” He clicked off and stood there for a moment, suddenly overwhelmed by the complexity and weight of both his immediate and long-term situations. He needed a break.

He dialed his phone again. It rang only once before she picked up.

“Hey, Joe,” she said.

“Hey,” he answered. “Where are you?”

“I’m still here.”

“Good,” he said. “I’m coming back.”

“I
don’t care how hysterical they are on the news,” Dick said. He was sitting at the dining room table, staring intently at his laptop. “I don’t see any reason to leave my house and go running around looking for some overpriced hotel room—even if we could find one at this point—and throw away a whole lot of money for nothing.”

“But they’re saying we’re in a mandatory evacuation zone,” Dorothy said. She stood in front of the television, watching as it cut back and forth across the county. There were too many images—it was all starting to blur into one big ball of flame. There were so many different fires in San Diego that the news couldn’t even begin to cover those burning in Los Angeles County, one of which was busy consuming some gazillion-dollar mansions in Malibu. Even the major networks and CNN were covering the story and had crews all over the place.

Dorothy was nervous and had been since yesterday evening when it had become too smoky to leave a window open for even a moment without everything getting covered with soot. But the fires still seemed far away, removed enough as to be unreal. She wondered if it would take seeing actual flames for her to feel a sense of real danger and decided that maybe she’d gotten so used to seeing catastrophes on a small television screen that they all seemed manageable and contained. All you had to do was turn off
the television and everything stopped. Dorothy didn’t have any real-world experience with natural disasters; that was the problem.