The Neighbors Are Watching (32 page)

“Okay,” Joe said.

“I think I’ll put her upstairs,” Allison said. “In the crib. It might get loud down here. We’ll just … We can go check on her.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” he said. He was still holding the cups. Still staring at her.

“You know, we should get a baby monitor. We really need one.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I can pick one up tomorrow.”

“Or I can.”

“Okay.”

Allison climbed the stairs softly, careful not to jostle. The crib was between the bed and the closet, necessitating a sideways turn to get around. Allison lay the baby down on her back and adjusted her blankets so that she was all wrapped up burrito-style. She let her hand linger on Zoë for a moment, feeling the rise and fall of her chest, making sure that her breathing felt regular. She thought about the notion that the number of breaths you were meant to draw in your lifetime was predetermined when you were born and wondered how many had been allotted to this child.

Downstairs, the doorbell rang. She heard Joe open the door and then the muffled sound of voices, male and female. She couldn’t tell who it was. She lingered a moment longer with the baby. She wasn’t in a hurry to see the people downstairs—to talk to them and ingratiate herself while they regarded her with suspicion and derision. It was almost funny, Allison
thought, of all the people in this neighborhood—on this block
—she
was the one who everyone now looked down on. Not Dorothy or Dick, who had done a pathetic job raising their only child; not Sam and Gloria, who had
lost
custody of their children; not even Jessalyn Martin, the neighborhood slut. Of course, Allison had no proof of her neighbors’ opinion of her because nobody had said anything to her face, but she knew. She could tell. In her absence, Joe, with his missing daughter and AWOL wife, had become the object of everyone’s sympathy while she’d become the villain. Well, not everyone’s—Dick Werner was still as big an asshole as ever, even if he no longer seemed as if he wanted to do Joe bodily harm. But the others …

Allison left the bedroom door open and walked out to the landing. She hesitated at the top of the stairs, that urge for a drink pressing into her consciousness again, and took one deep breath, then another. After the third, Allison reminded herself that the whole focused breathing thing was nonsense. All it did was make her dizzy. And it wasn’t going to make a single minute of the next couple of hours any easier.

When she got downstairs, Joe was standing at the dining room table with Sam and Gloria, although none of them were eating or drinking or even looking as if they might. Sam and Gloria were both dressed entirely in black: a button-down shirt and slacks for Sam and a fitted T-shirt and yoga pants for Gloria. They looked as if they’d come to a wake, albeit a casual one, and Allison found it distasteful. Beyond that, Allison, who hadn’t seen the two of them together in some time, was startled by the change in their appearances. Sam, who had been pretty thin to begin with, had lost too much weight and looked gaunt and brittle. There were hollows under her sharp cheekbones and dark half moons under her eyes. Gloria had gone in the other direction. She’d been in great shape and really well toned the last time Allison had noticed but now looked big and chunky. The tight T-shirt she was wearing only served to highlight a new roll of flesh at the top of her hips, and her too-short, unstylish haircut emphasized the puffiness in her
face. In inches, she wasn’t that much taller than Sam, but she appeared so much larger that it almost seemed as if she were casting a shadow over the other woman. The only place they matched, Allison thought, was in their expressions. Both of them looked completely miserable.

“Hi, Sam, Gloria,” Allison said. “Thanks for coming. Can I get you some coffee or tea?”

Sam smiled and said she was fine, but Gloria asked for coffee. “I’ll get it, Allison,” Joe said and disappeared into the kitchen.

Sam regarded Allison warily as one might a pit bull. Allison did a quick search of her memory to figure out specifically what she might have done or said to Sam to warrant that look, but came up empty. “How’s the baby?” Sam asked. “Everything okay? Do you need anything?”

Allison struggled to keep from frowning. Joe had told her how helpful Sam had been while she was gone—how often she’d taken care of Zoë. How she had
rescued
Zoë for that matter after Allison had
abandoned
her to an empty house in the middle of a natural disaster. He hadn’t said that last part out loud of course, but the subtext was always there and it was deafening. Allison could imagine what Joe might have said to Sam about her or about their marriage in her absence, but she would never really know for sure. She wouldn’t have thought Joe capable of gossip, but then she’d never have predicted his illegitimate daughter showing up either.

“She’s doing fine,” Allison said. “I just fed her. She’s asleep upstairs.”

“Is she eating well and everything?”

“Seems to be.” Allison heard irritation creeping into her voice and worked to remove it. “And she’s sleeping well.”

“That’s good. She’s probably due for her shots, isn’t she? Do you have a pediatrician for her? I can recommend one. You know, it’s so important that they get the shots on time. So many parents—”

“Sam?” Gloria sidled up to Sam and cut her off, her hand on Sam’s shoulder. Allison noticed that she was squeezing it just a little, even though her face remained impassive. Sam sighed and moved out from under her
hand. It was a call and response with no words at all—the kind couples were so good at. The kind she and Joe hadn’t done for so long.

Joe appeared with the coffeepot and filled a mug for Gloria. “Sam?” he said. “Allison?”

Sam and Allison both shook their heads. Joe filled a mug with coffee for himself and set the pot down on the table. Gloria took a noisy gulp and reached across the table for a cookie. There followed a period of seconds—it couldn’t have been a whole minute, Allison thought—that defined the phrase
awkward silence
. It was the type of moment that made one wish for a distraction on the order of gunfire. Or an earthquake.

“So what have you heard new, Joe?” Sam asked, finally. “Anything from Garcia or Williams? Have they had any response to that piece on the news?”

Allison felt her entire body tense up. It made her uncomfortable that Sam referred by name to the detectives who were handling Diana’s case. It signified a familiarity beyond what was necessary, Allison thought. Of course, as the person who had found Zoë alone and alerted everyone to Diana’s absence, Sam was de facto involved up to her eyeballs. It had been Sam’s idea to push for the “missing girl” news story, even though the detectives that Sam was so chummy with had suggested it first. Sam had come up with the sympathetic angle—Diana was not just another wayward teenager but a new mom with a precious little baby who had disappeared from a nice neighborhood during one of the worst disasters in county history. Here was her father, grave and composed, general manager of an extremely popular local restaurant and a familiar figure in the community. And here was her attractive mother, distressed and pleading with anyone who had any information to please share it. And here was the neighborhood: quiet, decent, a lovely place with caring, supportive neighbors like Sam and Dorothy. It was altogether a stunning piece of fiction, Allison thought. The only thing accurate about it was that Diana was missing. Allison had been left out of that entire spot. Not that she wanted any part of it, but her
exclusion seemed to highlight the negative if not accusatory attitude of everyone around her. And why the hell
was
Sam so friendly with Detectives Garcia and Williams? Paranoid fear crawled through Allison and she longed again for the blur of alcohol.

“There’s nothing really new,” Joe said. “It’s harder, I guess, because she didn’t really know anyone here. Her ‘known acquaintances’ were pretty limited. But they are still working on it. Detective Garcia assured me that they won’t give up on it. On
her.
”

“He seems like a good guy,” Sam said.

Allison looked up as Sam was finishing this sentence and caught Gloria’s eyes. She looked as rattled by this conversation as Allison did.

“But I was going to wait for everyone else to get here,” Joe said, “and then I’ll go over everything. What they’re doing.”

“Who else is coming?” Gloria asked.

“I asked everyone,” Allison said, clearing the sudden frog in her throat. “Sorry, I mean, I asked
Dorothy
to ask everyone. She’s got the good contacts, so I figured she’d be able to get people rounded up.” That sounded wrong, Allison thought, like it was some kind of rodeo. She hadn’t meant it to sound like that. She avoided eye contact with Sam.

“How’s Yvonne doing?” Sam asked. Gloria rolled her eyes—Allison saw it plainly—and reached for a crescent roll. There was something really off about these two, Allison thought. Something beyond just a quarrel or a bad day.

“I’m going to make myself some tea,” Allison said, avoiding the Yvonne question completely. “I’ll be right back. Maybe you all want to go sit down in the living room? It might be a little more comfortable.” Let Joe take over for a minute, she thought. Let him fill Sam in on Yvonne’s well being. Why she even wanted to know was an irritation to Allison. Was there any part of her life Sam
hadn’t
crawled into?

In the kitchen, while she took extra time locating the precise tea she was looking for (the one with valerian root for relaxation) and preparing it,
Allison wondered when Sam had had time to get to know Yvonne well enough to ask after her now that she was gone. Joe had waited too long to tell her that she was here at all, but Yvonne hadn’t been in San Diego that long before Allison came home—not really all that much time to get to know the neighbors with any level of intimacy. And Yvonne, like her daughter, wasn’t the easiest person in the world to talk to or get to know—even allowing for the odd and uncomfortable circumstances of their meeting.

Allison had expected all kinds of emotions upon meeting Yvonne—the woman whom Joe had loved, the woman who’d had his child—most of which had been roiling around in her brain since Diana had arrived. She expected to be angry at Yvonne, however irrational that was, for shredding her life by foisting Diana on them without any warning. Allison had spent many nights silently condemning Yvonne for sending her pregnant teenager to live with a father she didn’t know, and thought that these feelings too would surface when she saw Yvonne. And she expected to feel some kind of rivalry with this woman from Joe’s past. But beyond all of that, and perhaps what frightened Allison the most, was that she expected to feel jealousy—corrosive, soul-destroying jealousy.

Bits and pieces of all these feelings surfaced throughout the time they spent together, but none of them were present when she met Yvonne for the first time. What struck Allison at that moment and what lingered still was how fundamentally different they were. Allison was stunned to think that they could ever have coexisted in the same man’s universe.

There were the obvious physical differences, of course, striking in and of themselves. Allison was blond and petite, a classic WASP with a conservative, good-quality wardrobe and a nice figure, but there was nothing overtly sensual about her body. She looked younger than she was. She was pretty. At the right angle and with good makeup, she was very pretty.

Yvonne was tall with lush curves, high cheekbones, and large liquid eyes that reflected a gorgeously tragic expression. Her skin, darker and
richer than Diana’s, was smooth and completely unlined. She moved as if she were walking through water, languorous and weightless. She could have been arrestingly beautiful had she not been doing her best to hide it. The only makeup she wore was an orange lipstick completely unsuited to her coloring, and she kept her hair pulled back and fastened in a severe knot at the back of her head. Her clothes were cheap and designed for women much older and heavier than she was. It was as if she was embarrassed about her own looks, as if she were purposely aging herself. Allison didn’t understand it.

From the moment Joe had introduced the two of them—his own expression a tangle of apprehension and pleading—Allison felt as if just standing next to Yvonne diminished her, made her seem two-dimensional. When they began talking, planning, organizing the mundane details of their days and then discussing Diana and slowly exchanging more personal information, Allison began to feel less like a cardboard cutout around Yvonne. But she never shook the sense that Yvonne was as unlike her as another woman could be. They weren’t even opposites because opposites would have implied a yin and yang, something complementary, something in common. It was beyond Allison’s ken how Joe could have chosen both of them to love, no matter how many years had passed between his leaving Yvonne and meeting her. It didn’t make sense to Allison. But they were polite to each other. Once or twice they even came close to having a real conversation. That was as much as Allison could ask for—and more, it seemed, than Joe had expected.

“I appreciate it,” he’d told her one night, apropos of nothing and quickly as if he might live to regret his words.

“Appreciate?”

“You—with Yvonne. I appreciate it. You, I mean. I know this isn’t easy.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“She doesn’t show it, but this is hell for her.” He looked at Allison, saw that he was overselling his point. “So, thanks,” he finished. Allison didn’t
ask him what it was he thought she was doing for Yvonne or if he thought that they were becoming friends. If he even wanted them to become friends.

Now Allison wondered if Yvonne had managed to forge some kind of connection with Sam, something deeper than she might ever expect to have with Allison. But where would she have found the time?

When she reentered the living room with her tea, Allison saw that Dorothy had arrived with Kevin. Dick was conspicuously absent. There was a hum in the room now, several people talking at once, and it seemed crowded. Joe was at the table cutting a Bundt cake and putting the slices on paper plates. Dorothy had brought a cake. Of course she had.