The Neighbors Are Watching (35 page)

And if he’d expected some kind of big blow-up about Yvonne staying with them, Allison’s decent if not warm attitude toward her convinced him otherwise. They’d never be buddies, but to both of their credit, they were polite to each other and neither one of them started throwing around accusations about the other’s faults and behavior. Of course, Joe thought, they both had plenty to feel guilty about and maybe that was why neither one of them wanted to throw stones, but guilt didn’t always stop people from lashing out and trying to assign blame elsewhere.

But despite all of this, despite Allison’s even keel, she had become more of a Stepford wife than his own. As he gathered extra diapers and a bottle for Zoë’s next feeding, he wondered if Allison was going to ambush him. If not now, then at some moment that seemed right to her. He didn’t know if he’d be able to wait that long.

Joe lay in bed, breathing quietly. Allison lay on her right side next to him, unmoving but awake. The room had been stuffy earlier and he’d opened the window when he got up to feed and change Zoë. Cool air hit his exposed shoulders and face. It was the first time he could remember feeling a comfortable temperature since last winter. He tried to guess what time it was, but it was impossible to tell. Allison was already under the covers with her eyes closed when he’d come upstairs earlier. The baby woke a couple of hours later and Joe got out of bed before Allison could even make a move. When he came back to bed, she shifted, changed her position, and plumped the pillow under her head.

“We’ll get that baby monitor tomorrow,” he said.

That was hours ago—had to have been. Joe felt like he hadn’t slept at
all, although he must have drifted off at some point. Allison turned onto her left side so that she was facing Joe. Moonlight came in through the open window and spilled on the bed, broke across her face, and glinted off her eyes.

“Allison?”

She sighed in assent. He turned to her slowly, looked right into her. “I miss you,” he said.

“You can’t say that, Joe. It isn’t fair.”

“But it’s true. I’ve been missing you since the day Diana got here. You just went away, Allison. You left me.”

“Is that your excuse, Joe?”

“My excuse?”

She didn’t answer him and Joe could feel her body tensing up beside him. They were teetering on the edge of a knife. He wished he could ask her what she wanted him to do—whether she wanted him to lie about his affair with Jessalyn even though he knew she’d guessed at it, or whether to admit it, try to explain why he’d done it and in doing so probably end their marriage. Because there wasn’t really another way, was there? Maybe she’d stay with him until they found Diana because
they had to find Diana
but after that … After that, it wouldn’t be possible to recover.
Help me
, he wanted to tell her.
Tell me what you want
. But Allison lay still and quiet beside him. The decision was going to be his. She’d let him know if it was the right one.

“I can’t change anything I’ve done in the past,” he said, finally. “If I had it to do over again, don’t you think I would have told you about Yvonne and Diana? God, Allison, if I’d even thought—”

“You’ve told me that already, Joe.”

“But you don’t believe me, Allison. You never have.” He could feel his voice rising and he worked to bring it down. He didn’t want to wake Zoë. “Why do you think I would
hide
it from you?”

“Because you—” Allison cut herself off with a violent sob. Joe hadn’t
even realized that she was crying. He leaned over to her, and then as if moving through water, he reached across and touched her face, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “Allison, Allie, please, what … please tell me.…”

Allison’s whole body seemed to clench and she struggled to speak through her tears. “If-if y-you’d told me,” she said, her chest heaving, “it w-would have been harder.”

“What?” he said. “What would have been harder?”

“I wanted it,” she said and exhaled. “I wanted to have that baby, Joe.”

He stared down at her face in the dark, at the moonlight shining on her tears. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Was it possible that everything Allison had done since Diana had come—everything she had
not
done—was caused by this one thing? He remembered the last time she’d brought it up, the day Diana had arrived. They’d talked about it and he’d assumed she’d moved on. Joe knew Allison had never felt right about the abortion, but he would never have imagined that it had poisoned her to this extent.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I
am
, Allison. I’m sorry for …”—he fought with himself, but only for a split second—“…  everything I’ve ever done to hurt you. I’ve never meant to. Never.”

“All that time, Joe. It’s been so hard, you don’t know. You can’t imagine how I feel and you’ve never tried.”

“I didn’t know,” he said. He stroked the hair off her face and she let him. It felt so good to be touching her again. He hadn’t realized how desperately he needed it. “I’ve done so many things wrong, Allison. I know that now. I’ve fucked up horribly. With you and … with Diana. I wish I could go back in time. I can’t. I’m sorry, Allison. I’m so sorry. But all I can do is go forward. Allison, you have to forgive me. Please forgive me.”

She didn’t say anything for so long Joe was sure she was forming a way to tell him that she could never forgive him his sins—especially the ones he hadn’t admitted to—and wanted a divorce. Which was why he was so surprised when she finally spoke.

“I didn’t leave her by herself,” she said. “I wouldn’t have done that. It wouldn’t have mattered how much I’d had to drink. I was sure Diana was in there with her.”

“I know,” he said, but truthfully he didn’t. He’d never been sure about that but his own guilt had prevented him from exploiting hers.

“No you don’t,” she said, reading his mind. “But I am telling you, Joe, and you have to believe me.”

“I do,” he said. “But Allison …” He sighed, moved a little closer to her. Their bodies were touching now. The heat of her skin made his heart beat faster. “Can we … are we going to make it through this?” It wasn’t what he had wanted to ask her and he cursed the words as soon as they left his mouth.

“Do we have to decide that right now?” she said. “Joe, I …”

But Joe didn’t let her finish. He had stopped thinking. He drew her to him and kissed her on the mouth, softly at first then hard with need. She let him, yielding and then clutching at him, pulling him in. He leaned into her, his hands finding all the places on her body that he knew so well and had gone so long without, his desire so quick and intense he was almost choking on it. Just before he gave in to it, before he lost himself in her, a sliver of thought stung him. She was saving it up—her resentment, her knowledge of his affair, all of it to use later. It was there for a sharp flashing second and then it was gone. He thought,
Maybe she loves me again
, and after that there was only sensation and release.

When he woke up it was still dark. He and Allison were still locked together. It could have been two hours later or ten minutes, he couldn’t tell. Zoë was asleep and there was no dawn in the sky. He stroked Allison’s arm and she sighed; she was also awake.

“Allison,” he said so softly he could barely hear it himself, “do you think she’s still alive?”

She found his hand and took it in her own. It felt like an absolution, but not an answer. “There’s something I should tell you,” she said. “Something you should know.”

J
oe stood in the jewelry department of Macy’s staring at rings and bracelets but not really seeing any of them. Choosing something—anything—seemed suddenly an insurmountable task even though he’d felt fine on the drive over and even as he’d traversed the length of the mall, passing the dolphin fountain and the Russian woman hawking cell phone and iPod covers. In fact he’d made it all the way to these glass cases before he came to a crashing halt and felt himself glaze over. He didn’t know why he’d chosen to come to this corner of the store anyway. He needed to be in the men’s department looking for a black suit. But when he’d gotten there he’d walked right through the shirt racks and tie tables and past the colognes and toward the pink and red heart displays of the jewelry department as if propelled. And now that he was here it was like he was trapped in amber.

“Can I help you find something, sir?” A middle-age woman in an unflattering red suit and tortoiseshell glasses smiled at him, tilting forward a little so that her midsection grazed the edge of the case. “Are you looking for something for Valentine’s Day?” She flicked her eyes toward his left hand, looking for a wedding ring and finding it. “Something for your wife?”

Something for my wife for Valentine’s Day
, Joe thought,
and something
for me to wear to my daughter’s funeral
. He wondered what kind of reaction he’d get from this woman—Jennifer was her name, it was there on her brass-effect name tag—if he repeated that to her. And then he felt bad for even entertaining the notion of speaking his thoughts out loud. It wasn’t her fault after all. Why fuck up someone else’s day just because yours was terminal.

“Yes,” he managed to get out and hoped that his voice didn’t sound as strained as it felt. “My wife.”

“Are you looking for something formal or maybe a little more playful?”

Playful? For a moment, as he struggled to understand what might constitute a “playful” piece of jewelry, Joe thought he’d lost his ability to interpret social nuances. He decided her question must be a new way of asking him how much he wanted to spend and so gave her what he thought was the safest answer.

“How about something in between?” he said.

“We have some beautiful heart pendants right over here,” she said. “We have them in white or yellow gold and these have diamonds as well. You can’t go wrong with diamonds, can you?”

“No,” Joe said, “you can’t.” He didn’t want to look at pendants with Jennifer, he didn’t want to have to talk about whether Allison preferred yellow or white gold, and he certainly didn’t have money to buy anything with diamonds, but Joe needed the distraction. It was obviously why he was here at this counter to begin with and not trying on pants and jackets. So he allowed himself to be directed to another case where Jennifer pointed obligingly to a number of sparkling necklaces laid out for maximum effect on black velvet.

He couldn’t stop the thoughts of Diana that followed.

They wouldn’t see Diana laid out like that in a velvet box. What was left of her body was better left unseen by everyone who had known her and especially those who had loved her. There had been a debate, albeit a short and painful one, about whether or not to have her remains cremated. Joe
had thought that would be best for many reasons, most of which he didn’t choose to share with Yvonne. But Yvonne was adamant from the start. After all that had happened to her daughter, Yvonne felt she deserved the respect of a proper burial and a place to rest.

Joe couldn’t argue with that, nor did he want to.

So they’d picked plots and caskets, arranged for services. But no, he thought, that wasn’t exactly right because
they
hadn’t done it; Allison had taken over together with Yvonne. Suggesting cremation had been Joe’s main contribution, and after that he’d just gone along. Because since they’d found her, he’d been mostly in this state—hazy and swimming through the details of his life as if he were underwater. He kept finding himself in the middle of tasks that he didn’t remember starting or conversations in which he’d lost the thread. Focusing was a struggle. His reactions and words seemed to be on some kind of time delay, even though internally his mind was whirring. Like right now. These necklaces lying still on their velvet beds were killing him. He had to look away, had to move, but it took a supreme effort.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “These aren’t really her style, you know?”

“Well,” Jennifer answered, “we have some others without hearts. Or would you rather look at rings? Or maybe earrings?”

There were too many choices, too many decisions Joe had to make. She was looking at him now with something like concern on her face. Or was that just polite anticipation? There were so many things Joe couldn’t read anymore. Those horrible thoughts just kept intruding, flooding him with waves of guilt and sadness.

“Yes,” he said, “maybe earrings.”

She guided him away from the dead necklaces and over to another display. Joe watched helplessly as she pointed at this pair and that, babbling on about hearts and birthstones and specials that were going on for a limited time only. What season was his wife, she wanted to know.

“Season?”

“You know, is she a fall or a winter or a …”

It was a mistake coming here, but now it was too late to undo it so Joe channeled all his energy into trying to remember what kind of jewelry he had bought Allison in their previous life together so that he could find something now to match it. From some recess in his memory he managed to pull out a ghost of Valentine’s Day past and recall that long ago he’d given Allison a charm bracelet and promised to add charms to it every time there was a special occasion to be commemorated. He hadn’t gotten very far; there was a golden apple for when she started one school year and a tiny house when they’d moved into their place and there was probably one other that he couldn’t remember. He hadn’t seen that bracelet in forever, but she had to still have it somewhere.

“Do you have any charms?” he said. “Like, for a bracelet?”

“Well … we don’t really have that many. If you wanted something custom, you’d have to look—”

“Just a heart or something,” he said. “Make it easy.”

Again, they walked the same half square between displays but this time the box she brought out was lined with white satin. Joe was starting to feel light-headed and nauseated. Inside, there was a brushed gold heart, a key, a palm tree, and a crown. And there, in the corner, was a tiny gold cell phone. In a flash, Diana was in his head again. They’d never have found her without that cell phone. They’d have spent the rest of their lives wondering. Everyone said that not knowing was worse even than finding her dead the way they had. It had happened to other missing girls, other families who never found out what had happened to their daughters and who had their lives slowly corroded by false hope. It was better to have closure, they said, even this way, with this outcome. And they wouldn’t have had it, their lives forever caught in the what-if, but for the cell phone, abandoned and half-buried just like Diana, that their new neighbors had found in their garage.