The New Neighbor (25 page)

They walk out that way, the boys in front of Jennifer and Megan clinging to her hand behind. Past the delicate, spectacular formations and the signs that point out what they resemble: bacon, steak and potatoes, an angel’s wing. “Weird, ain’t it,” says a man in front of Jennifer. She wishes she could come down here alone, pause and gaze up, stare a long, long time. But they have to keep moving. Past the Dragon’s Foot, past the Mirror Pool. Behind her Megan lets out the long slow breaths of someone wrestling with panic. “This is our last stop before the elevator,” the guide says at last, and as he goes on talking Jennifer feels a sudden sharp pang, a longing to dash back inside, to hear again that rushing water in the dark, to gaze into the Mirror Pool. But she can’t do that, because Milo and Ben are in front of her, and Megan holds on to her hand.

From the elevator they’re led up steps to a tower, from which there is a strangely unpretty, if expansive, view. At the first opportunity Megan hugs her. “Thank you,” she says. And then for good measure Megan hugs both the boys. “Thank you,” she says to each of them, and they look at each other with puzzled smiles and ask for what, and she says for being so good.

After the tower is the gift shop, where a long-haired boy behind a counter pulls out a bright red Ruby Falls folder holding the photo taken at the beginning of the tour. There they are, Megan, Jennifer, Milo, Ben—an eight-by-ten on the right side of the folder, a sheet of wallets on the left. “Twenty dollars for the big one,” the boy says. “Thirty for all of it, plus you get this!” He holds up a small cheap frame that says
RUBY FALLS.

Megan leans over the photos without touching them. “Cute,” she says. “Let us think about it.” She walks away, telling the kids to come on, and the boy shrugs, knowing that means no. He moves to put the folder on a stack of other abandoned ones.

“Wait,” Jennifer says. “I’ll take all of them, and the frame.” She catches up to Megan and the boys and says, “I couldn’t resist.”

Megan laughs. She puts her arm around Jennifer’s shoulders and squeezes, leans her head against Jennifer’s so their temples touch. “Sucker,” she says affectionately. “You have to give me one.”

They drive home with the sun low in the sky. The water in the lake is a dull silver now, but the clouds are gorgeous, voluminous, dark and white, lit from behind. Megan rides in the passenger seat with her head tilted back, gazing out the window. “Michelangelo clouds,” she says. “Beautiful.”

I
’ve had too
much activity today, I think. I had one of my dizzy spells. It went on and on, even after I sat down. I gripped the seat of the chair like my father used to tell me to.
You’re so clumsy you’ll fall off.
Yes, Papa, you’re right. When you’re young you get sick and you know there’ll be an end to it, but when you’re old you know a time is coming when you won’t get better. I’ll get dizzy and I’ll get dizzy, and then I’ll fly off the merry-go-round. I’m getting metaphorical, Papa. I mean I’ll die.

Today is my father’s birthday. He lived to be eighty-seven, which seemed so old to me then, and yet is younger than I am now. I am older than he was when he died. I am so old.

What I wanted was for Jennifer to offer to drive me down the Mountain to Murfreesboro, to see his grave, but she didn’t. She wouldn’t. I couldn’t get her to. When she was here a few days ago, I mentioned the birthday, and my habit of visiting his grave on it. At the time I tried not to admit to myself why I was telling her this—though why? Why am I still trying to hide myself from myself? Clearly the old are not immune to self-delusion. I didn’t want to ask her directly, so instead I talked at length about my uncertainty that I should be trusted that long behind the wheel, hoping she would arrive at the idea on her own. Maybe she wasn’t really listening. At any rate she didn’t take the hint. So my plan was to ask her directly, after our morning appointment.

But first thing this morning, the phone rang, and when I answered, it was Jennifer. “I’m so sorry,” she said, “but I need to cancel today.”

“You can’t,” I said.

Silence.

“Our appointment’s in less than an hour,” I said. “I’ve been planning on it.”

“Something came up,” she said. “I’m sorry, Margaret.” She said it like she meant it, but so what if she’s sorry? What do I care if she’s
sorry
?

“What came up?” I asked.

“Milo’s school has a teacher in-service day,” she said. “This is all my fault, I’m sorry—I’d forgotten. I only just remembered.”

I knew this was a lie. If she’d had a reason that good she would’ve led with it. How many times in my life have I known someone was lying and said nothing? How many times have I lied and watched the other person feign belief? We say nothing, we say nothing. Life would be unbearable without lies.

“Is that so,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. Her voice was cool and crisp, impenetrable. She’d make no effort to persuade me. She is a good liar. She doesn’t care if you believe her.

I look forward to her visits. They are what I look forward to.
Forlorn
is not the wrong word for how I felt. This is the second time she’s canceled on me. Does she fail to understand what a cruelty it is?

“Also,” she said, “I wanted to tell you I think we should put the history project on hold for a while.”

“What?” I said. “Why?”

“I’m starting to book other clients, and I don’t think I’ll be able to give it my full attention.”

“That makes no sense. Why book other clients when I’m paying you to come here?”

There was a brief silence, and then she said, “To make a living as a massage therapist, I need to have a good-sized client base.”

“But I’m paying you to come here.”

“And I still will. For massage.”

“This makes no sense, Jennifer.”

“Margaret, I’m sorry. Milo’s calling me. I’ll see you on Wednesday at the usual time?”

I put on my sweetest, most genteel voice and said, “Of course.” Then I hung up and sat there trembling. I was supposed to tell her the end of the story today, but she’s bottled me up, and the feeling is unbearable. I can tell it to her anyway, when she comes here. I can insist. But it wouldn’t be the same to blurt it out lying on the table or afterward when she’s hustling out the door. I need her to be listening. I need to see in her face what she thinks of what I’ve done. Otherwise what is the point?

I drove to her house when my appointment was supposed to be. Just to see if she was there. I had in my head that if she wasn’t there it would prove she was lying, though I realize now that’s nonsense, as she could’ve taken the boy to the playground or the grocery store. It’s impossible to be inconspicuous coming up her long gravel drive, so I planned my excuses. I took an egg from the carton and made a paper-towel nest for it inside a Tupperware container. It took me some time to decide how best to transport that single egg. If she was there, I planned to say I was replacing the egg she loaned me. She’d just think it was some antiquated politeness. In my day, and so forth. Being old has so few advantages. One must take them where one can.

She wasn’t there. No car in the drive. At that moment, I still believed this proved she’d lied, and I sat there taking in that knowledge. I was angry but tears pricked at my eyes. I’d told her what happened to Kay—something I’d never told anyone, not anyone. I suppose I’d thought she might say it wasn’t my fault, she might absolve me after all these years. But she said I’d lied about what happened to Kay, in the aggrieved tone of the betrayed, and then she said I should just change the story. And now she’d rejected me. I can’t change the story, Jennifer! Don’t you think I would if I could? I can’t, I can’t, and you can’t either.

I got out of the car. I was at her house, and she wasn’t. What detective would fail to seize such an opportunity?

Of course, I had no idea whether she locked her door. Most people here don’t, or anyway that’s the local lore. It’s the kind of place you don’t have to lock your doors, they say with satisfaction. Unlike Nashville, that crime-ridden flatland, that alien planet. Unlike the rest of the world. Sometimes up here on this mountain it can feel like there is no rest of the world. All those other places we’ve been are just dreams we had, as life would seem like a dream from the pretty claustrophobia of heaven.

I can’t believe in heaven. Even now, as death grows ever harder to unimagine.

Her door was unlocked. She must have heard the same conversations. Inside, the house was much as I had seen it before—disastrous. Not the home of someone who expects to invite anyone inside. But you never know when someone might appear at your door—a neighbor, the UPS man. You must always be presentable. That’s what my mother taught me. You must always be ready to conceal.

I’m not interested in anything that belongs to the little boy. I looked for a space that was Jennifer’s alone, which proved annoyingly difficult to find. Even her bedroom showed signs of the child’s habitation—a tiny knight on the pillow, a discarded superhero shirt on the floor. A pair of his pajamas beside the bed, inside out, led me to wonder if she lets him sleep with her—something my parents certainly would never have allowed. All this bonding they do these days. As if what’s between a parent and a child would vanish without snuggling and trips to the zoo. I can attest that one is sufficiently bonded without those things, one is sufficiently stuck.

Down the hall from the bedrooms is a small room, barely bigger than a closet, that seems to serve as Jennifer’s study. Desk, computer, bookcase, two-drawer filing cabinet, in which papers have been dumped rather than filed. Also in the filing cabinet: photos of Jennifer with a baby and a teenage girl on the beach; a stopped watch; a screwdriver; an assortment of paper clips; the wheel of a toy car; an empty glasses case; a smiling Lego head; a little card of the sort that comes with flowers.
You are all that matters.

On the back of the photo it said:
Me, Milo, and Zoe
, and the date.

Zoe, who called the police on her own mother, who marked her mother as a murderer, who pinned a letter to her mother’s chest. Imagine if she is wrong. Imagine if she is right. When I looked up
Jennifer Carrasco
on the Internet and found those articles, I felt a hard-boiled unsurprise. It turns out I am a detective after all. These detectives—they always uncover the same transgressions. A murder, a theft. Another woman’s husband, another man’s wife. We cheat, we steal, we lie, we kill. The list of sins is short. We all do the same bad things.

You are all that matters.
Was it from the dead man, her husband? No one has ever said such a thing to me. Perhaps you would keep a card like that even if you murdered the one who wrote it.

Listen, Jennifer, I know what it’s like. I know what it’s like to have a madwoman in the attic of your memory. The thing you can’t let out. The thing you must pretend isn’t there, even when you hear the knocking.

Did you know that pressure on the brain swells it until it pushes its way out the bottom of the skull? That’s called herniating. The pressure can come from a depressed skull fracture. Maybe a piece of shrapnel flew through the air and caught you in the head. Different kinds of ordnances cause different injuries. A shell, for instance, causes percussive injuries, because the body gets thrown, and if it gets thrown hard enough, that’s one way it stops being the person and becomes the body.

We all become the body eventually. I know that.

Sitting in Jennifer’s chair at Jennifer’s desk, I imagined she was dead and I’d come to clean out her house. I often imagine this scenario, except I am the dead one, my house the one being cleaned. A silent interrogation, the examination of my things. What will they think of me?

When my parents died, I was the one who cleaned out their house. My sister came from North Carolina to “help” for three days, but her help consisted mostly of letting me know which things she wanted, then sneaking off to have various items appraised. She cared only about a certain kind of value. She had her eyes on the prize. I got lost in the rest of it—the evidence of their strange and secret lives. An entire dresser drawer full of my mother’s ring boxes: black cardboard; clear, cut like crystal, imprinted with something in Korean; red velvet, worn bare in patches, with a snap-open lid. When I found this last one, I thought I remembered it, presented by my father at a formal dinner party on one of their anniversaries. In one of my mother’s jewelry boxes, I found the ring I remembered belonging in it—platinum with diamonds in a style that had survived to become vintage. “An apology ring,” I once heard my mother call it.

Why had she kept all those ring boxes? Had my father given her all of them? Were there that many apologies?

His drawers, his desk, contained no such mysteries. Everything was organized, spare, neatly arranged, as though in anticipation of my snooping. Unrevealing, I’d say, except in the sense that it’s revealing to want to go unknown.

I’m not saying my sister got everything of value. I’m no dummy. I got it appraised, too, all of it. We split things fifty-fifty. Hers she sold, mine I live with. As I write I’m wearing my mother’s apology ring. It used to fit, but now it slips around my finger, too heavy and too loose. As soon as I was back home in Nashville, I threw out all the ring boxes.

I imagine if Jennifer were dead, Zoe going through her things, she would want what I want—an answer, evidence, an end to uncertainty. When she went to the police about her mother, did she just believe her guilty? Or did she know? What I really wanted to find was a journal like this one. If Jennifer keeps one, it’s well hidden. It wasn’t in the desk. It wasn’t beside her bed. This is as close as I came: in the middle desk drawer, beneath a scatter of scrap paper, was a pad of sticky notes with
Zoe
and a phone number written on the top one. Below that, a lightly drawn question mark, over which Jennifer had put an
X
.

Here is a catalog of my precious objects:

The letters I wrote from the war, and my mother’s replies