The Neighbors Are Watching (36 page)

Joe pointed to the heart and said, “I think that one will do. Since it’s Valentine’s Day.”

“Okay,” she said. “And would you like me to gift wrap that for you?”

“If you have a box,” Joe said, “that would be great.”

“Would you like to look at anything else?”

“No, but …” Joe reached into the box and pulled the cell phone charm free. “I’d like to take this as well.”

Happy for the addition to a sale that was below what she’d hoped for, Jennifer opted not to push for any more. She ran his credit card and Joe was relieved that it went through without a problem. He’d been piling on the debt and not really paying attention to his balances, and even though Allison was back at work, he was getting pretty deep in the hole. There was Zoë and everything she needed and then, of course, Diana. Burying her. The funeral. Death was expensive. You had to balance it out, Joe thought. All the sorrow and misery that went along with it was free after all. And there were endless amounts of it to go around.

Jennifer was finished with him by then and had to be asked twice to leave the cell phone charm out of the gift box. “I’m just going to take this one,” Joe said and slipped it into his pocket. Finally, Joe managed to escape the jewelry department, clutching his small bag. He headed in the direction of men’s suits only to find himself drifting again, this time to the escalators, and going up. He got off on the second floor, not even knowing where he was headed but finding it anyway—the children’s department. He wandered through girls’ and boys’ sections and came at last to the infants’. Fluffy blankets and bibs, hooded towels and tiny socks. He wanted to reach out and touch all of it, run his fingers over the softness and feel soothed, but the last thing he needed was to draw the attention of another aggressive salesperson, who in any case would probably take such behavior the wrong way. So he milled through the baby items with purpose as if he knew exactly where to find what he was looking for. But he didn’t think they even made what he was looking for. Were there black clothes for babies as small as Zoë? It seemed he was going to do everything in his power to avoid buying himself a funeral suit, even if that meant looking for one for Zoë. But she should have something to wear to her mother’s funeral
even if she’d never know that mother. Joe and Allison had started the process to formally adopt Zoë, but none of them—Yvonne included—had caught their breaths enough to discuss what they would tell Zoë about Diana. She wasn’t even five months old, Joe thought. Not even a year. Not even a half. How would they ever be able to tell her—to make her understand?

He saw a rack of miniature dresses and he rifled through them, searching. So many shades of pink and red. Valentine’s Day again, he thought. You were supposed to deck out your girl babies in these predetermined colors of the season so they could learn early the need for fake romance and store-bought sentiment. He felt in his pocket for the cell phone charm and pressed it tightly between his thumb and forefinger. He wanted to punch something. He wanted to see something break. There was nothing black on the rack. It was too late for those black-velvet-and-white-lace Christmas dresses he was sure he’d seen before, and besides, most of the garments here were marked 12 months or 2T, which he knew were too big for little Zoë.

She was small for her age, the pediatrician said, but she didn’t have any problems feeding, and she was healthy, according to the doctor, so it wasn’t cause for concern. She was in the bottom fifth percentile for length and weight, but she wasn’t
off
the chart. You never knew at this stage anyway, the doctor said; they could catch up in a heartbeat. But Allison had taken it very seriously. She’d started looking into all kinds of organic “starter” foods for Zoë, throwing herself into the task with one-pointed dedication. He gave way here to Allison, who had done her research, but he had his own theories about Zoë. Unlike her mother and despite her delicate appearance, Joe knew that Zoë was and would always be a survivor. Look what she’d overcome already—before she’d even been born.

It seemed certain now that Diana had taken at least some drugs before she’d given birth to Zoë, even though if Kevin was to be believed Diana only smoked a little pot and even that not regularly when she was pregnant. But Kevin had made himself very difficult to believe. Joe reminded himself constantly that he was just a kid—and a scared one at that—but if
he’d spent just a little less time worrying about his own ass and a little more about Diana … Joe still didn’t know how much of the truth he’d ever really know. He remembered the day Diana gave birth to Zoë, how he’d had to tell her to go change her clothes and wash off the smell of clinging pot smoke.

He hadn’t thought … hadn’t really believed she was into anything more serious.

That was another thing that concerned Allison, although, to Joe’s great relief, she shared it with only him and not Yvonne. Even a limited exposure to drugs in utero could negatively affect a baby, Allison told him. Even a small amount could lead to developmental delays and motor skill problems. And if you didn’t catch these things early, it was too late to change the course. They’d have to keep a very careful eye on Zoë, make sure that if she needed early intervention to address any problems, they could get it for her. If Diana was a regular user …

“I think she’s fine,” Joe had told Allison more than once. It was true, he had no experience dealing with babies or young children, but you didn’t have to be a specialist to see that Zoë was a remarkably calm and alert baby. She did everything she was supposed to do—recognized people, smiled, gurgled, ate, and slept. And although again he couldn’t be sure, Joe sensed that she was also watching them all and forming her own opinions about the people around her. There was a light in Zoë’s eyes that had nothing to do with her being brain damaged from drugs her mother had taken. He allowed, even appreciated, Allison’s concern, but was convinced that they would never have to consider early intervention or neurologists or any other specialists for Zoë.

But then, Joe thought, his opinion plus a dollar would get you a cup of coffee. Somewhere. Diana had been living with him—he’d seen her every day—and he hadn’t known what was going on with her. He would never have guessed that she was so strung out that she would leave her newborn alone and run off in search of a fix. And maybe it hadn’t happened exactly like that. They would probably never know exactly what had
happened and maybe that was a small blessing in the midst of all this horror. But the coroner had enough of Diana left to determine that there
had
been a lethal amount of narcotics in her system. Drugs had killed her, according to the ME’s report, not the kid who had given them to her. Not the kid who had then panicked when she overdosed, wrapped her in garbage bags, driven her out to the edge of the burn area, and buried her body in a shallow grave. Was it better to know this—to accept it as the truth? It was a question of who you were going to blame the most, how the guilt was to be apportioned, where you were going to find room for the anger and grief.

“Can I help you find something?”

Another needy salesperson stood in front of Joe demanding his attention. This one appeared to be in her seventies and seemed to have materialized from nowhere. He wondered why he was getting such personal attention today when he wanted it least. It went beyond the scope of daily ironies and into something else. Perhaps he was the only shopper in the store or perhaps it was so unusual to see a man in the jewelry or infants’ departments that the salespeople just couldn’t resist. But he’d had enough of trying to explain himself or what he was looking for. It wasn’t really fair that he burden this grandmother, but he’d resisted once already and now it was like the urge to throw up after food poisoning—he couldn’t stop himself.

“I need a funeral dress for a baby,” he said. “Can you help me with that?”

The woman’s face blanched and she looked so alarmed that Joe wanted to bite back his words. She started to stammer and he realized that she thought the baby in question was deceased.

“She’s almost five months old,” he said. “About this big.” He held his hands apart the approximate distance of Zoë’s length. “It’s not for
her
funeral,” he added.

“Ohhh.” The saleswoman sighed. Her relief was so intense it was palpable. The air between them seemed to warm up and ripple.

“It’s for her mother’s funeral,” Joe said. “She’s my granddaughter. Her mother was my daughter. That’s who died.” He watched as the woman struggled to keep herself composed, tried to rein in the naked dismay contorting her face, and failed. Joe couldn’t understand why he was being such a prick—or even why he was sharing any of these personal details. It wasn’t making him feel any better. And yet. “So I need something nice for the baby to wear.”

“I’m so … We have …” She lifted her hands as if she were going to wring them. “I’m so very sorry for your loss,” she said. “It must be just …”

“It is,” he said. “Yes.”

“I don’t know whether … what I mean is, we have some spring dresses for babies, but I don’t think that would be right, and I don’t know if … we do have some other, christening-type of dresses that might—”

“Fine,” Joe said. It was his own fault. He could have said nothing. He could have let it be. He let the saleswoman guide him over to the dresses she described—white satin monstrosities that he would never put Zoë in—but he bought one anyway because he felt so bad about what he’d said or the way he’d said it or for just being who he was. And then he added a white satin headband decorated with tiny pink roses to go with it and why not throw in one of those terry-cloth one-piece outfits as well. Yes, the one with the ducks on it, sure. She wrapped everything in tissue paper with great care, taking so much longer than Joe wanted her to, but he was afraid now to say anything at all. When she finally handed him the shopping bag he was almost vibrating with the need to get out of there.

“I am so sorry,” she whispered, touching his hand lightly with hers. There were tears shining in her eyes.

“Thank you,” he said.

She blinked and the tears fell and that, finally, was Joe’s undoing. He turned and half-ran to the escalator and then pushed past people to jog his way down, out through the men’s department without so much as looking at a suit, raced past the storefronts and food court and open-air vendors to
his car, threw his shopping bags inside, and peeled out of the parking lot. He drove north, avoiding the freeway, taking Torrey Pines Road instead, passing the hospital where Zoë was born, the greenery and biotech firms lining the road, and breaking through at last to the ocean.

There were plenty of empty parking spaces at the beach on this mild February morning, so Joe took the first one he could after turning off the road. He got out of the car in such a hurry, he almost tripped and fell on the rocks that he had to scramble down to get to the sand. Once at the bottom he slowed his step a little, walking the short distance to the water’s edge. He stood there for a moment, the marine air stinging his eyes, his body trembling or shivering, he couldn’t tell, and then he bent down and took off his shoes and socks. He walked in a little farther, let the water wash his feet. The sound of white crashing waves filled his head with welcome noise. He hadn’t been here on the beach for what seemed a lifetime. He lived three miles from the shoreline and saw the Pacific sparkling from the big Luna Piena patio every day, and yet he managed to avoid the beach most of the time. Every time he realized that and found his way to the surf he wondered why that was.

At first, when he’d suggested cremation, he’d thought that he’d like to scatter Diana’s ashes here. In the short time he’d known her, Diana hadn’t shown very much interest in the ocean, but he had some kind of poetic notion about her being born near the sea, then moving to the desert, and coming back to rest in the water. He wanted to think that Diana would have appreciated the sentiment—maybe even agreed with it—but the truth was that he didn’t know what Diana had thought or felt about anything. And now he never would, no matter what anyone said about her. They all had their thoughts about who Diana was—Kevin did, and Sam and even Yvonne, who should have known her better than anyone. In a way, they all had greater claims to her than he did, but they hadn’t understood her any better than he. And what tortured Joe even more was that if he had known, if he had even
suspected …
maybe he could have saved her.

Why
? The question sliced at his brain again.

Why hadn’t the kid gone for help
? He was scared, yes, of course, and guilty for supplying her with drugs—supplying half the fucking neighborhood, it turned out—and in a panic, but that didn’t explain the rest of it; it didn’t explain how he’d
disposed
of her or that he’d kept his mouth shut for almost three months, saying nothing
—nothing
—until they found that phone and he was forced to come out with it. The kid had sat in Joe’s house as calm as a summer day, kindly translating for his mother, the picture of respect, all the while knowing exactly what had happened to Diana. What kind of ice-blooded freak could do that? When he thought of Diana scared and slipping into unconsciousness
—dying
—and having that person be the last face she ever saw, Joe wanted to tear him apart with his bare hands.

His brain raging, Joe suddenly remembered something Diana had said. The memory came at him clear and complete like a video clip embedded in his brain. She was sitting at the dining room table with a glass of iced tea, balancing it on her giant belly beneath which Zoë squirmed. It was the hottest part of the day, midafternoon, and she was holding her hair away from her neck. Joe was getting ready to leave for work, already counting covers and assigning waiter stations in his head.

“Doesn’t that noise bother you?” Diana asked him.

“I don’t hear anything,” Joe said.

“Really? That piano? You can’t hear it?”

Joe strained and then as if trying to pick out one color from a mosaic, like the tests they gave you at the DMV, he managed to separate out the sound of a piano from all the other ambient noise coming in from the open windows. “I guess,” he said. “It’s not very loud.”