The New Neighbor (6 page)

“Oh,” she said, but flatly. It was another moment before her hands resumed their ministrations.

It’s intriguing, isn’t it, that that comment frightened her? I don’t know what that means but I’d like to. At any rate I see now why I’ve taken such an interest in her, from the moment I saw her across the pond: I recognized a mystery.

She had me roll over and went to work on my legs and feet. My thoughts dissolved. I drifted away.

Later I woke to find myself alone in the room. I got down from the table carefully, and dressed, and went out to find her back in the chair she’d chosen earlier, making notes on her form. She stopped when she saw me and closed her folder. “How do you feel?” she asked.

I nodded. I couldn’t manage to speak. She rose and met me where I was. “Let’s sit down.” She put a gentle hand under my elbow and guided me toward the chairs. I could feel her hesitating over which one to plant me in.

“The armchair,” I said, and she eased me down into it, and then, without asking, lifted my feet one at a time and put them on the ottoman. It took me a moment to notice that after I was settled she disappeared. I lifted myself out of the chair a little so that I could look round for her.

She came toward me out of my own kitchen, holding a glass of water. “You should drink this,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Mind?” I accepted the glass. My arm floated it to my mouth.

“Me rummaging in your kitchen.”

“Oh,” I said. “No.” I smiled dreamily at her. “I feel as though you gave me a sedative.”

She smiled. “It can be like that sometimes,” she said. She pulled her chair over and perched on the edge of it, leaning forward with her eyes on me.

“I’m sorry that chair is so uncomfortable,” I said. “Like something from an old schoolhouse.”

“That’s fine,” she said. “How do you feel?”

“I feel wonderful,” I said. I couldn’t help confessing this. “I feel like I’m melting into the chair.”

She nodded, seriously, like a doctor hearing my symptoms. “Nothing feels bruised or achy?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Absolutely nothing.”

“Are you still able to get in and out of a bath?”

Normally I would’ve found this question intrusive. I just said, “I have a rail.”

“Good,” she said. “You might want to take an Epsom salt bath, to keep from being achy later. I was gentle, but since you’re not used to massage . . . And drink lots of water.”

I raised my glass to her and then dutifully drank from it.

“Can I get you some more?” she asked, and because it was so pleasurable to be tended, I let her. Then she went into the guest room to pack up her table. I dozed a little, I think, because the next thing I knew she was touching me on the shoulder. “Are you all right in that chair?” she asked, her voice low like she was trying not to wake me. “Or would you like me to help you up before I go?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind if I don’t get up.” Her table was folded and waiting by the door.

“Not at all,” she said. She straightened and looked at me as if giving me one last chance to speak.

I said, “You do remind me of that friend, you know.”

“I hope that’s good,” she said.

I nodded. I fumbled for my water glass on the side table and took another sip.

She said, “Let me know if you—”

But I interrupted. I blurted, truth be told. “I was in the war.”

She nodded as if this were to be expected. But I hadn’t meant to say that. “Which one?” she asked.

“The second one,” I said. “World War Two. I met my friend in basic training.”

“Basic training?” She looked puzzled, which was gratifying, because from puzzled it’s a quick step to curious.

“We were nurses,” I said. “Army nurses. They put us through basic training, like soldiers, even though in the war we never pitched tents or did close-order drill or any of that. Ours was at Fort Bragg.”

“In North Carolina,” she said.

“Right,” I said. “Her name was Kay.” To my astonishment, my eyes grew watery.

She nodded again, that irritatingly serene acceptance. “Was she killed?”

“No!” I was so startled I nearly shouted. I wiped without grace at my eyes. “No, she wasn’t killed.”

“Oh,” she said. “You lost touch after the war?”

“Yes,” I said, and then suddenly I didn’t want to say any more. I looked into my water glass.

“Where did they send you?” she asked. “After basic training?”

“England,” I said, still watching the water. “Then France, and from there into Austria and Germany.”

“So you were really
in
the war,” she said.

“I really was.” I said this snappishly, I think, because after that she didn’t ask any more questions. She repeated her advice—bathe and hydrate, let the water wash it away—and said her goodbyes. I stopped her after she’d opened the door. “Can you come back tomorrow?” I called.

I couldn’t see her from my position in the chair, but I felt her hesitation. After a moment she said, “Tomorrow?”

“Yes. Would you, please?”

She said she would. I’m embarrassed by how much I’m looking forward to it. It’s evening now, and she was here in the morning, but the effects have not worn off. How nice it is to go a few hours without pain. And tomorrow she will come again.

J
ennifer goes to
Megan’s house for the playdate, despite her preference for a neutral site. The original plan had been to meet at the fire pole playground, but it’s raining, and Megan offered up her home like it was nothing. Jennifer hopes that this playdate doesn’t go well. She doesn’t want to have to reciprocate.

They are sitting on Megan’s couch, the boys doing God-knows-what upstairs, with excited chatter and occasional thunks and thuds. “What do you think that was?” Jennifer asks, for the second time. She’s going to have to resist the urge to pose this question every time they make a noise.

Some parents would shrug and say, “Who knows?” Once upon a time Jennifer would have. Megan smiles sympathetically and says in a confiding tone, “I’m not allowed to go see.” She settles back into the couch, tucking her legs up beside her carefully, so as not to spill her mug of peppermint tea. “It’s my own rule. It’s so easy to hover, when you only have one.”

Jennifer nods. She, too, is holding a mug of tea, nearly full. Megan handed it to her moments ago, after a prolonged period in which she studied photos in the living room while Megan made the tea in the kitchen, calling out chatty remarks from time to time. Jennifer knew she should go in and offer to help, or at least talk companionably, instead of just calling back, “Oh, really?” through the doorway. But she hadn’t been able to resist delaying this full-on conversational engagement. She’d imagined that time spent with Megan would be time spent distracted by the children. She hadn’t meant to go to the other woman’s house, hadn’t realized there would be an upstairs playroom, didn’t want to be in this position of intimacy on the couch, blowing on her tea.

“We’re having a
lot
of discussions about whether to have another one,” Megan says. “Of course being a sociologist I have to read all the studies—pros and cons of being an only child. Sebastian just says, if we want one we should have one. But it’s not as simple as
want
, is it? It’s about what’s best. What’s best for Ben, especially. Only children get more attention of course, and there are so many benefits to that, and all the old notions about how they’re cripplingly self-centered—well, the studies show those are mostly untrue. But on the other hand siblings are important. I don’t want to deprive him of what has the potential to be one of life’s most important relationships. And he’ll have these old parents, with no one to help him take care of them, no one who really understands what his childhood was like.”

“I’m an only child,” Jennifer says.

“Oh!” Megan offers a wincing smile. “Did I just suggest you’re cripplingly self-centered?”

“No, you said that’s untrue.”

“Well, you’re an excellent resource. Only child with an only child. You know it from both sides.”

“I guess so,” Jennifer says. In truth Milo is not an only child. Even if she wanted to explain this—which she doesn’t—she wouldn’t, because she doesn’t want to say Zoe’s name aloud. She has a superstitious feeling that to say her name would conjure her. “I think I agree with . . . Sebastian? It’s about whether you want another.”

“Sebastian’s my husband.”

“I figured that.”

“I don’t plan children with other men.” Megan grins. “Actually this whole place is a free-love commune. That’s why you came here, right?”

Jennifer doesn’t know what to say. She isn’t good at banter. She musters an uncertain smile.

Megan sighs. “Really the opposite is true. It’s kind of a traditional place. Coats and ties. Nuclear families. Guardian angels.”

“Angels?”

“Yes, the Sewanee angels. You tap the roof of your car when you leave the Domain to take your angel with you, then when you go back through the gates you tap the roof again to release it.”

“What’s the Domain?”

“All the land the university owns. I thought it was a funny name when I got here—so dramatic—but now I don’t think twice.” She cocks her head. “Is
it
the right pronoun for an angel?”

“I don’t know much about angels.”

“What did people do before cars? Tap the roof of their carriages? Smack their horse?” Megan touches her lightly on the shoulder. “But I’m making it sound like I don’t like it here and I do.”

Jennifer nods. She sips her tea and Megan does, too, and now Jennifer really should think of something to say. She comes up with: “What does your husband do?”

“He’s a photographer. Weddings and babies, mostly. He has a studio in Chattanooga.”

Jennifer points at a framed picture on the side table, Megan with baby Ben. “Did he take that?”

Megan turns to look. “He did. He’s so good at portraiture. But he also does art photography. Not so much lately, which is a shame.” She jumps to her feet. “Come on, I’ll give you a tour.”

Sebastian’s photos are of city streets—startling in the nature-centric context of Sewanee. They’re black-and-white images of urban blight, hand-tinted in incongruous bright colors, an ancient neon sign on a closed-up theater rendered a bright salmon pink, the boarded window below it turned new-leaf green. Megan walks her down a hallway hung with his work, pointing out this and that. Jennifer makes murmuring sounds of interest and praise, but at the end of the tour Megan looks at her with a clear expectation of something more, and asks, “Isn’t he good? He was going to stack these in the attic but I insisted we hang them here.”

“They’re great,” Jennifer says, though what does she know about art? She doesn’t know if they’re good; she’s not even sure she likes them. They make a garish beauty of the ugly. Maybe sometimes you should just let ugly be.

“I know,” Megan says, studying the one at the end of the hall like she’s never seen it before. “He’s still taking them, but he doesn’t really show me. He says it’s just a hobby now.” She leads Jennifer back to the living room. Over her shoulder she says, “I think once you’re a photographer you never leave your camera at home. Even if you leave your camera at home. You can’t help seeing the world in shots. If you don’t take the picture when you see it you
abandoned
something.”

“Is that something you study?” Jennifer asks.

Megan turns, looking puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“What people’s jobs say about them.” Why is Jennifer asking for details? As if Megan were someone she’s trying to get to know.

Megan gives her a surprised, appreciative smile, like Jennifer’s smarter than she thought. “You’re right, I talk about that a lot. No, I write about sports and gender, or at least that’s the book I’m writing now. My tenure book, I hope. What do you do? I haven’t asked.”

“I’m a massage therapist.”

“Oh!” Megan’s eyebrows shoot up with interest. “And what does that say about you?”

“I—”

“Or maybe that’s a hard question to answer.”

“I’m not good at talking about myself.”

“Well, that’s a kind of answer,” Megan says. “You don’t have to talk to give a massage.”

“No,” Jennifer says. “Though sometimes the client wants to talk.”

“Really? Whenever I’ve gotten a massage I’ve just tranced out.”

“Some people are like that. But some people—” She hesitates, sorry to have turned the conversation toward herself. “Sometimes when you work a knot, you trigger something.”

“What do you mean?”

“Emotion lives in the body,” Jennifer says. “A sore place can be anger or grief.”

“And you can intuit that?”

“Sometimes.” She thinks of the moment of contact with Margaret, the resistance under her skin, the longing that pulsed against it. Something about the old lady—her anger? Her grief?—makes Jennifer turn the memory aside.

Megan thrusts her arm out, and Jennifer instinctively steps back. “I’m not trying to hit you!” Megan laughs. “I want to see what you can intuit about me. I’m really sore right here.” She runs a finger up and down her right forearm.

“Ah,” Jennifer says. “You type too much.”

“Is that all?” Megan makes a playful expression of disappointment. “How boring.”

Her arm is still out. “I’m not a fortune-teller,” Jennifer says. But then she puts her hand on Megan’s arm. She presses her thumb along it. “You are really tense here.” In fact Megan’s tendon is so tight Jennifer’s thumb slips off it, and Jennifer senses that the tension there radiates throughout Megan’s entire body, as if Megan, who seems so easy with herself, is actually permanently braced against a blow. “Are you stressed about something?”

“Oh,” Megan says lightly. “Always.” She steps back, pulling her arm from Jennifer’s grasp, like she’s the one reluctant for intimacy.

But maybe Jennifer misread that reluctance, as five minutes later Megan is relating a morning phone call with her mother, apparently a critical and controlling person who never lets Megan get a word in edgewise. As she talks, Megan gets a sharp edge of anger and frustration in her voice and then, trying to pull back, accuses herself of overreacting, of being too sensitive. “My mother just wants the best for me,” she says. “But it would be nice if she found it possible to believe I might be the one who knows what that is.”