The Neighbors Are Watching (2 page)

“So you’re sorry you had me? That’s what you’re saying?”

And it went on like that for a long, long time. Every day she found herself hating her mother a little bit more and that went to the littlest things: her clothes (matching synthetic old-lady-looking tops and pants, ugly white bras bought on sale), her habits (that one cigarette and that one glass of wine every single night), even the way her mouth moved around the food she ate. Every word out of her mouth became a jabbing needle, every freshly disappointed sigh a scrape against her skin. Then it got to where they just didn’t talk at all, her mother’s disgust getting harder and quieter until it was a thick rock wall between the two of them. It must have
been during those silent angry days and nights when her mother hatched this plan to get rid of her and the baby together. Away, shame and disgrace. Though,
come on
, who even cared about this crap anymore? Who paid attention? Were they such celebrities that it made a damn bit of difference if one single mother raised another single mother?

She supposed she could have fought it—refused to go. But by the time school let out she was more than ready to get the hell out. That she should leave—and show up unannounced on this very doorstep—was the only thing she and her mother had agreed on in months.

She held the hate close, burrowed into it, felt its white-hot points stab the backs of her eyes. She would never forgive her mother, no. There was some comfort in that, even though she could feel the tickle of tears starting then oozing down her face. Damn, she hated that too—the crying.
Stop it
. Stop acting like such a girly-girl.

She looked up and out, desperate for distraction, and two things happened at once. The first was the sudden sound of a piano coming from somewhere down the street, behind one of those open windows. She had taken piano lessons herself a long time ago when her mother still cared about
enriching
her, and so she could tell that this performance had nothing to do with a desire to play and everything to do with the command to practice. She recognized the music too, Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” which could be the most beautiful piece to listen to, but in this case, sounded like a home invasion. The pianist was technically good, but there was no love in the music. He—it was probably a he, she decided—banged the keys as if he were trying to break the piano. And as the music went on, swirling through the hot summer air, anger and frustration swelled, gaining strength with every note. So much for silence.

At the moment her ears had picked up the sound of the piano, her eyes had caught sight of a woman crouching in front of a bush of purple flowers at the end of the street. It took her a second to realize that the woman was not hiding in the bushes but pruning them with a large pair of scissors so brightly colored that she could see their yellow glow all the way
from where she sat. And then, after she’d stared long enough to put all the information together, she realized that the woman (who was wearing what looked like a pink velour tracksuit) was staring at
her
. Her reaction time was slowed by the heat, so it took the baby giving her another hard kick for her to break the stare and look away.

“Sshh,” she said again. “Quit it.” But by then she was talking to herself as much as the baby. She was so uncomfortable again—this was happening more and more frequently—and she had to pee. If somebody didn’t come home soon, that was going to be a big problem because there was only so long she could hold it. She thought about knocking on doors, asking for a bathroom. Hey, welcome to the neighborhood, pregnant girl, come on in and piss in our pot. Sure. Maybe she’d follow the sound of that raging piano. Whoever was playing might be able to understand.

She stood up, looked down the street. Gardening woman stood up too. Wow, there was an ass on her—she could see that even from one, two … seven houses down. Gardening woman looked away. A garage door opened across the street. The noise, a creaking hoist, startled her. A woman in spike heels and a very short white skirt opened the trunk of the car inside the garage and leaned in. She could see the outline of the woman’s red thong underwear through the too-sheer material of her skirt and the tight muscles in the back of her spray-tanned thighs. The woman straightened, slammed the trunk shut, walked around to the driver’s side, and got in. If that bi-atch wasn’t a hooker, she played one on TV. No question. The woman peeled out of her garage so fast she was down the street before the garage door finished closing. Exhaust and noise filled the air, and by the time it settled, the pianist had switched tunes. He was on Mozart’s “Rondo alla Turca” now, murdering it deader than he had the Beethoven.

Now there was something else in the air too—the faintest whiff of cigarette smoke. She held her breath. Ever since the baby, cigarette smoke made her sick to her stomach, which could be a bit of a problem in Las Vegas, but she hadn’t expected to find it here, in San Diego, where apparently you weren’t allowed to smoke anywhere. Good thing weed didn’t have
the same effect. She knew that was weird—weed smoke was still smoke—but it was true. She could be standing in the middle of a weed bonfire and it wouldn’t bother her in the slightest. Quite the opposite. In fact, she could really use a nice weed bonfire right about now or even just a goddamned hit. She wondered if the Montanas were weed smokers and if there was a stash somewhere she might raid. She’d have to look around when—or if—she finally got inside. They’d have
something
, even if it wasn’t weed. Everybody had something.

The wafting cigarette smoke hit her nostrils again and her stomach gave a slight lurch. She turned her head, looking for the source, and found it halfway down the street. A skinny woman with short black hair stood at the edge of her driveway, leaning against her mailbox, puffing on a smoke like her life depended on it. Maybe she could feel the weight of a stare at her back because she turned, registered, and smiled, waving the cigarette-holding hand as a greeting. As a response, she waved her own hands in front of her face as if to get rid of the smoke, which was rude, but whatever, because it was also rude to stand and smoke on people. Why didn’t the woman go do that in her own house where she couldn’t pollute other people’s air?

She hated people who smoked.

No, she didn’t hate people who smoked. She hated her mother. Who smoked one goddamned cigarette—just one—every goddamned day.

Her bladder was totally full now and threatening to burst. She was sweating again and feeling anxious—heart racing. She was seized by something close to panic—maybe it
was
panic—feeling hemmed in suddenly by this street with its garage doors and crazy piano and whores and weird women. The air felt sharp and hot in her nose. Her head pounded. The baby kicked in a flurry like it was trying to get out. Or get away.

I don’t want to be here
.

Suddenly, it all felt like a huge mistake. If she could … If she could she would call her mother this very minute.
Come and get me
. But that bridge had been burned. And she’d been the one who’d torched it. It was
then—visions of flaming bridges in her head and her fingers curling around the cell phone in her pocket—that the car drove onto the street and turned into the driveway where she was standing.

So. They were home.

There were a few seconds where nobody did anything. The woman—passenger—and the man—driver—didn’t get out of the car, just turned the car off and sat there. They stared at her through the windshield, this stranger in their driveway, and she stared back at them. The cooling engine ticked. Just as it was all starting to feel really, really weird, they both got out simultaneously, slamming their doors behind them.

She could see him now, the white guy she’d never met who was about to get the biggest surprise of his life. For some reason—maybe it was the guilty look in his eyes and the turned-down corner of his mouth—it seemed like he might already know. Like maybe he’d been waiting for this moment.

Not so with the blond, ponytailed tight-ass who had to be his wife.
She
was looking like she wondered what kind of hurricane blew this trash onto her doorstep and what was it going to take to get rid of it. She saw the wife look from her, to her suitcase, to her belly, and to her husband, her blue eyes darting like they had no place to settle, and she had just one thought.
Bitch
. The baby kicked and her bladder screamed with the urge to pee. Damn.

He came up to her, close, and looked right down into her eyes. He was taller than she’d thought he would be. And better looking.

“Hi,” he said. “Who are you? Can I help you with something?”

“Are you Joe Montana?” she asked.

“Yes, I am.”

And then there was a second where it all threatened to fall apart, where she could taste the tears and fear at the back of her throat, and she had to bite her lip and press her fingernails into her palms just to keep from breaking down and crying. But she pulled it in and got it straight. She cleared her throat once and said, “I’m Diana Jones. I’m your daughter.”

A
llison lay corpse-still, her back to her husband, unblinking eyes staring at the broken squares of moonlight on the carpet. The window was wide open, but the bedroom felt hot and stifling. The lemon-tinged scent of eucalyptus leaves was heavy in the air, coating her sinuses. Thoughts ran thick and furious inside her head, pulsing through her unmoving body, throbbing between her legs. Two impulses fought for control, both so strong they made her throat constrict. She wanted to kill him—just reach over and choke him until his breath was gone—and she wanted to climb on top of him and screw him senseless. She understood the murderous urge. After what he’d done, who could blame her? But the craving for sex surprised and shamed her. Her cheeks flushed with heat in the dark and she struggled to control her breathing. She didn’t want him to feel any movement coming from her side of the bed. She could tell by the light sound of his breathing that he was still awake. Her desire for physical contact was so powerful she knew that if he touched her—just one touch—she’d give in immediately.

He’d done it before. Those nights when they’d had some minor argument and had gone to bed in silence, he’d wait ten, maybe fifteen, minutes and then shift so slightly toward her, his hand moving over to caress the curve of her hip. His fingers would rest there, light, until he felt the tremor
of consent under her skin and then he’d roll over, his body falling heavy into hers. It was an agreement they had: He offered and she accepted.

Sometimes, after they’d made love, Allison was sure that their little spats were a form of foreplay. But before, in those few minutes when the space between their bodies was cold and impenetrable, she always felt a sharp bite of fear that he wouldn’t reach out—that they’d stay like that forever.

Of course, this time was different. Even he, as thick-skinned as he often was, wouldn’t make such a move now, not under these circumstances. The stupid little things they’d found to argue about before had now been made permanently irrelevant. Their entire marriage had twisted into a question mark and nothing would ever be the same or all right again. She thought of that big-bellied girl downstairs and felt acid burning her throat. She didn’t know what was worse—the betrayal, the lies, or the secrets. Just the same, she couldn’t take the chance that he’d move over, that he’d try to fix it somehow with his body. She’d lie here like this until dawn if she had to.

She couldn’t see the clock but knew it was about three in the morning—the blackest, bleakest part of night. On still summer nights like this, when most of the neighbors turned off their air conditioners and opened their windows, you could hear anything you wanted and much of what you didn’t—cats yowling, the clink of late-night party wineglasses, and sometimes the menacing rustle of coyotes coming down from the dry hills surrounding the neighborhood. The relentless press of housing development through every empty space over the last ten years had brought those wild dogs ever nearer; a reminder, along with the influx of black crows, of how far civilization was encroaching on the wild.

Now, Allison heard the slow crunch of gravel followed by the sound of a car door opening. No doubt it was coming from one of the many rotating vehicles in Jessalyn’s driveway. There’d been a steady stream of late-night visitors to that house since Jessalyn had moved in six months ago, which
revealed something about the nature of the callers—all men as far as Allison had been able to tell. Very few of them stayed longer than an hour or two, which revealed something else. The car started promptly, and Allison heard it pulling away.

Allison had spoken to Jessalyn maybe three or four times at most when they were both picking up their mail or pulling into their driveways at the same time. Somehow, even though Allison had tried to keep those encounters as short as possible (something about Jessalyn just repelled Allison), she had still managed to learn that Jessalyn had been on a reality contest show and that she’d lost (“Those shows are all fixed,” Jessalyn had told her at the time). She also knew that Jessalyn was “starting over,” although she couldn’t have been older than twenty-five, was “back in school to get my degree,” although Allison had no idea in what, and that she worked in a Del Mar day spa, although she hadn’t explained what she did there. Jessalyn’s eyes were overly made-up and always glassy—maybe that was what Allison didn’t like about her—probably from drugs, which she probably got from Kevin Werner.

Allison could actually hear him now, several houses down, listening to some awful death metal band, the sharp tinny shrieks reaching her ears on wafts of air. She could see him in her mind’s eye, pockmarked, surly, and black-clad. The kid was a walking billboard for disaffected youth and just one more reason to hate teenagers. Allison didn’t know how anyone managed to teach at the high school level. Her own third graders were bad enough—they already had entitled attitudes and challenged anyone who had the temerity to knock their all-important
self-esteem
. But … no, you couldn’t blame the kids yet. At that age, it was still the parents. The parents were responsible for all of it. She couldn’t understand how Dick and Dorothy Werner maintained their holier-than-thou attitude considering they’d raised that kid, Kevin. Just naming a kid Kevin was asking for trouble. Allison knew from experience that the Kevins in her class were always going to be troublemakers.