The Neighbors Are Watching (38 page)

“I love you, Allison.”

“I know,” she whispered. “I know you do.”

Joe closed his eyes and bent his head, his lips pressing into the soft skin of her neck. He could hear Zoë calling out behind them, sweet little sounds like the notes of a song.

S
am knocked lightly on Yvonne’s bedroom door and called her name.

“You can come in, Sam.”

Yvonne was lying on her bed, propped up on pillows, hands folded and resting on her chest as if she’d been praying. It had been a rough morning for her, Sam knew, but her eyes were dry and she didn’t seem like she’d been crying. She looked tired but peaceful, and Sam felt bad that she’d disturbed her.

“Sorry, Yvonne, I didn’t mean to bother you.”

“I’m all right, Sam.”

“I wanted to ask you if you want some tea. Dorothy’s coming over and I’m wondering if you want to join us.”

A look of distaste flitted across Yvonne’s face and quickly disappeared. She didn’t like Dorothy, Sam knew, but she was always polite to her. For her part, Dorothy had been tireless in her efforts to ingratiate herself to Yvonne. It was almost as if Dorothy took personal responsibility for what had happened to Diana, which was totally irrational, but you couldn’t tell someone else how to feel, especially not someone as walled off from her emotions as Dorothy. After that first torrent of information that Dorothy had shared with Sam, she’d tried her best to avoid talking about her past again, even though Sam tried to suggest that she look into therapy or
counseling for herself and for Kevin. No, it wasn’t necessary, Dorothy said, that was all behind her, although she appreciated Sam listening and, please, you won’t say anything, will you?—please tell me you won’t. No, Sam assured her, she wouldn’t breathe a word and she hadn’t—not to anyone.

When the truth came out about Kevin and the Sun kid, Sam could tell that Dorothy was even more afraid that Sam would spill her secret. Sam could only guess at how hellish life was for Dorothy now, but she knew it had to be agonizing. Yvonne might have had more compassion for Dorothy had she known her secrets, but Sam wasn’t sure. Yvonne was far less judgmental than Sam would have been if their roles were reversed, but it would take a saint not to blame Dorothy at least a little for what had happened to Diana. Diana had spent so much time at Dorothy’s house—so much time with Kevin. How could she have been so clueless about what was going on in the next room? Yvonne never said so, but Sam knew that in some small way, she did hold Dorothy accountable. Nor was Dorothy an easy person to like.

If she were being honest, Sam couldn’t say that she
enjoyed
the time she spent with Dorothy, but she never refused her offers of cake, flowers from her garden, or, today, conversation. She’d asked if Sam minded if she came over for a bit—she had something she wanted to tell her and anyway she had some cookies she’d just made.… Of course, Sam had said.

“Dorothy …” Yvonne sighed.

“I know it’s probably something you don’t want to do,” Sam said, “but I thought I’d check with you anyway.”

“It’s okay, I’ll join you,” Yvonne said, sitting up and swinging her legs off the bed. “Be down in a minute.”

In most ways Yvonne was the opposite of Dorothy, Sam thought as she went back downstairs, but in their minimalist conversational styles they were very much alike. Yvonne was slow to speak and careful with her words. It took time to earn her trust. She opened up slowly, deliberately, and without filling the time in between with small talk. Dorothy’s talk, such as it was, was entirely small and punctuated with silences. With both women,
Sam found herself prompting and chattering to fill the conversational pauses. But with Yvonne her patience paid off. The more Yvonne revealed of herself the more Sam liked her and the deeper and more genuine their friendship became.

Sam filled the kettle with water and put it on the stove to boil. She hadn’t yet gotten around to replacing her treasured electric kettle, which was actually Gloria’s electric kettle and had departed with her when she’d moved out. Gloria had taken other things with her too, although not many and nothing that Sam cared much about. But the business with the electric kettle hurt her more than anything that had happened between the two of them—more than the arguing, the cruel words, even the betrayal of Gloria going back to Frank. It was a disproportionate reaction, Sam knew, but also symbolic of their entire relationship. Sam was the tea drinker and connoisseur. Gloria loved her coffee and had only started drinking tea regularly after they moved in together. Now that they were no longer together, she’d probably give it up entirely in favor of her mochas and lattes. So it was a pointed move on Gloria’s part to insist on taking the electric kettle. It was designed to sting and it did. Sam hadn’t wanted it to end that way—hadn’t wanted it to
end
, period—but after Gloria told her that she was moving back in with her ex-husband there wasn’t really any other option.

She hadn’t spoken to Gloria—hadn’t had any communication with her at all—in weeks. Four weeks to be exact, and Sam dearly hoped that she’d soon be able to stop counting them. The last time, a terse phone conversation, had involved whether or not Gloria had paid her share of their last gas bill.

“I’ll get you the money,” Gloria had snapped. “Whatever it is.”

Sure, Sam thought, she had plenty of access to money now that she’d moved back in with Frank. It seemed impossible—worse than whorish—and she’d told Gloria that before they’d finally called it quits. It was a conversation Sam wished had never happened, but one that had an air of inevitability about it. It was as if their entire relationship had been leading toward that day in December. It was right before Christmas and Sam was
hand-stringing beads to decorate the tree they hadn’t yet bought for their boys who might not even get a chance to see it. Gloria was sitting on the couch, a mug of something steaming between her hands.

“I can’t do this anymore, Sam,” she said.

“What can’t you do?” Sam answered, even though she knew. She’d known all along.

“I thought it would be okay,” Gloria said. “I really thought we could make it work. But I can’t live without my boy anymore. It’s killing me.” Sam waited, her breath held, waiting for the rest of it. It didn’t take long. “I’m not going to be
with
him, Sam. I want you to know that. We’re not going to be together as a couple. I told him.”

“Right,” Sam said, unable to hold back any longer. “You told him. Big talker you are, Gloria. But when it comes to doing …”

“I know you’re hurt, but we don’t … we don’t have to break up. We can still see each other, Sam. We just won’t be living together.”

“Now you’re just insulting me,” Sam said. “But you know what I really don’t understand, Gloria—how can you live with
yourself
if you go back to Frank? Did our whole relationship mean so little to you that you can pretend it never happened? Or are you just planning to be someone other than who you are for the sake of being comfortable?”

“That’s not fair, Sam. It’s not about being comfortable; it’s about being with Justin.”

“But it isn’t and you know it.”

“You can’t say that, Sam, you just can’t.”

“What kind of example do you think you’re going to set for your son by selling yourself out to his father? Huh, Gloria? If it were really about Justin, you’d never even think of doing this.”

It was the last sentence that made Gloria cry and Sam knew she had wounded her deeply. But not, Sam thought, nearly as deeply as Gloria had wounded her.

The one bright if ironic silver lining in all of this was that since her breakup with Gloria, Noah had magically become a rational human being
again and they were beginning the legal process to share custody of Connor. Although she resented what he’d put her through, Sam wouldn’t get drawn into an argument about it all over again. And she refused to discuss Gloria with Noah at all. She didn’t want to know anything about Frank or how the two of them were working out their “arrangement.” It made Sam almost physically ill to think about what kind of manipulations Gloria was subjecting herself to at Frank’s hand. But then, Gloria wasn’t her responsibility anymore. Caring about Gloria, advising her, supporting her,
loving
her had brought nothing but misery to both of them. Sam knew what drove Gloria and could even understand why she’d done some of the things she had. But she was a long way from forgiveness.

Sam folded her arms, leaned back against her countertop, and watched the kettle, daring it to boil. They’d both lied to her, she thought—Gloria
and
Diana—and Sam had been taken in by them all the way. But then, Sam corrected herself, maybe the deception wasn’t all theirs. Sam had imposed on both of them her notions of who she thought they were. This was especially true in Diana’s case. It had never even occurred to Sam that Diana hadn’t told the truth about herself, her mother, or her pregnancy. Sam could still feel the cold waves of shock that had crashed through her as Diana sat right there at her table drinking lemonade and telling her that her unborn baby was the result of a date rape.

Yvonne would have none of that.

“Nobody ever took advantage of Diana,” she said. “She was a strong, strong girl. She was going through a phase. They do that, they all do. She made that baby on purpose.”

It was one of Yvonne’s more hopeful moments, before they’d found Diana, when there still existed the possibility that she had disappeared on purpose too. Bits and pieces about Diana fell from Yvonne like a broken jigsaw puzzle. There were physical artifacts: photos of her as a chubby toddler eating ice cream naked in the tub, the art projects she’d done for school complete with scattered glitter and rainbows, composition books, stories she’d written, childish poems, a sixth-grade essay on equality that had won
her a hundred-dollar prize. Then, later, there were Yvonne’s quiet and ashamed recollections of their last three years, which Yvonne told in short, impressionistic bursts. “Fourteen was the year,” Yvonne said. “I couldn’t do anything right after that. I was the wicked witch on my wicked broom.”

Sam would open a bottle of red wine and they’d sit on the small back patio together in the dark, each of them having one cigarette and one glass, and Yvonne would remember. “Maybe she blamed me for her lack of a father,” Yvonne said. “For a while she was even angry at me because Joe was white. It didn’t matter, though. She needed me to be the villain.”

“I never believed you were as bad as all that,” Sam said, although she had been as guilty as anyone of prejudging Yvonne based on Diana’s descriptions of her.

“I wasn’t bad in the way she thought I was,” Yvonne said. Sam saw the pain on her face, working its way into every pore of her being and taking up permanent residence in her eyes. “But I failed her,” Yvonne said. “I did what I thought was right, but that is not enough. Mothers don’t get a free pass for not knowing.”

Sam started to make a soothing noise, trying to offer a word of comfort. She knew about being a mother, knew the standard you were held to and knew how impossible it was to attain. But Yvonne didn’t even let Sam open her mouth. “There is no absolution,” she said. “And I won’t ask for any.”

The day Allison came over, she’d been sitting with Yvonne, keeping her company while she prepared a packet of reference letters and résumés so she could get on with her new life in California. They had been waiting for news, anything, any sign at all, every day. But within those days there were always moments, five minutes, a half hour, when waiting was temporarily suspended and everyday activities took over. Sam and Yvonne had been in the middle of one of those moments when Allison rang the doorbell.

Allison was holding Zoë on her hip and when Sam saw her face she knew exactly why she’d come.

“Allison?”

“Is she here, Sam?”

Sam wanted to tell her to stop, that this wasn’t the way, that they should get together and figure out a way to do it, but she just nodded and held the door open. Allison walked straight over to Yvonne and didn’t even say hello. She just put the baby in Yvonne’s lap.
No, not like that
, Sam thought, but by then it wasn’t Allison or Yvonne she was thinking about but Diana. Yvonne knew it too. She lifted Zoë, so quiet, not a murmur from her, and started stroking her head. She didn’t cry, not then. The baby, so much like her mother in miniature, was all that kept Yvonne from breaking apart. Sam would never have imagined Allison capable of knowing that, would never have given her credit for possessing the insight or sensitivity.

Sometimes it was still possible to be surprised by the goodness in people. Sometimes there were still moments of grace.

The kettle was whistling, blurry steam filling the air. Sam wiped her eyes and turned off the heat. Zoë, at least, was going to have something that Diana didn’t—a community. There was hardly a person left on the street who wasn’t invested somehow in that baby’s well-being. Even the Mitchells, whose boys and whose toys Connor had taken to immediately, felt connected and a part of Zoë’s life. If only that could make up for what had happened to Diana.

Sam got as far as preparing the teapot with several spoonfuls of Assam when the doorbell rang and there was Dorothy holding a plate of perfectly round oatmeal-raisin cookies, a sheaf of papers, and a box of store-brand English Breakfast teabags.

“You said something about tea,” Dorothy said, “but I didn’t know what kind you wanted so I just brought these. I hope that’s okay.”

“I have plenty of tea, Dorothy, not to worry. The cookies look great, though.”

“I’ll just leave these here, then,” Dorothy went on. “I don’t really drink much tea. I mean, today of course, I’d love some tea, but usually, you know …”

Sam let her carry on, familiar by now with Dorothy’s need for patter. She even managed to hold up her end of the conversation while not really listening to it, laying out cups and saucers, putting sugar cubes on a plate. It was starting to look like a tea party, she thought, the kind that little girls had with their dolls. The baby was fine, yes, getting so big. Sam took the cups to the table. Kevin was doing much better, thank you. He really seemed to be getting himself together and had even started talking about college, although his grades were a problem at this point. It wasn’t easy. Not that he had anything coming to him. He knew that. They all knew that. They all felt so bad about what happened. Sam poured hot water into the teapot, let it steep. Yvonne was doing okay. It was difficult, of course. She’d be down to join them in a moment.