I’d met Cindy Sutton a few days after we’d moved in. She’d interrupted me in the middle of rewriting a tense scene that was crucial to setting up Book Two to bring me a large welcome package, including a basket full of “healthy snacks for your kids because I’m sure you haven’t had time to figure out where the organic section is in Kroger’s yet.”
I’d taken it from her in semistunned silence, and gotten rid of her by mumbling something about needing to pick my kids up from school. I realized how unsubtle her comment was a few days later when I finally made my way to the grocery store; only someone actively seeking to avoid the organic section could miss it. Later, as I wiped down the twins’ orange fingers with heavy-duty wipes—they’d consumed an entire bag of Cheetos—I’d felt guilty. But everything’s okay in moderation, I told myself, and made them eat an extra serving of vegetables at dinner.
“Because we’re trying to blend in?” I said to Daniel. I’d been the one to suggest we attend, which would not normally have been my thing. But I needed new friends, I’d realized that afternoon after my fruitless conversation with Lee. I needed someone I could vent to when the Heather Stanhopes of the world turned up, without it costing me $650 an hour.
“Did you tell that to them?” Daniel nodded at the twins, who’d insisted on wearing their Halloween costumes to the party. Sam was in full pirate regalia as Jake from Jake and the Neverland Pirates. Melly was Merida from Brave, her bright-red, curly wig giving her several extra inches in height. They hadn’t taken them off since they’d put them on yesterday afternoon to—as admonished by the Welcome Packet—do our trick-or-treating while it was still light out.
Smart neighbors make safe neighbors!
“You know they’re going to wear those costumes until Christmas,” I said.
We were dressed more casually than the twins, me in a pair of dark skinny jeans with a gray cashmere sweater I’d bought when The Book hit #1, Daniel in jeans and a pullover that made his eyes look a startling shade of blue.
“Likely.”
“And blending in has never really been our strong suit.”
“That’s a fact.”
“Am I the only person in the world who hates Halloween?”
“Pretty much.”
I swatted Daniel’s arm. “Well, why’d you marry me, then?”
“Because you were smoking hot. That sloppy ponytail and those librarian glasses . . .”
We’d met during finals my last year of law school when he’d snuck into the law library to study. He was leaving out the sexy sweatpants I was also wearing, ones I hadn’t changed out of in three days.
“Where’d those glasses get to, anyway?” Daniel asked.
“They got lost two moves ago.”
“Pity.”
He leaned in for a kiss, his beard tickling my face.
“Mommy, Mommy, do it, do it!” Melly stopped us before the kiss began, tugging on my hand. Sam wedged in and made a bridge between her and Daniel.
Daniel and I smiled at each other across their costumed heads.
We spoke together. “Ready to swing, kids?”
“Yes!”
We pulled our arms back, and they readied themselves with glee.
“Oh, thank you,” Cindy Sutton said, taking the bottle of Malbec from Daniel with a note of apprehension. Her house was one of two Cape Codders on the street, finished in bleached cedar shingles. Pretty in a faded-cheerleader kind of way, Cindy probably weighed ten pounds more than she was comfortable with, extra weight only a woman would notice. She lowered her voice. “You know this is a nondrinking event, right?”
“Of course, of course,” Daniel said, using his boardroom charm. “This is for after everyone leaves.”
He smiled broadly and gave her a slight nudge, a combination that almost never failed to bring out a flutter in any woman between eighteen and eighty.
Cindy was no exception.
“I’ll just beetle this off to the kitchen, then,” she said, a flush on her cheeks. “Wouldn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea!”
“How could anyone get the wrong idea?” Daniel asked me after she’d left and the twins had scampered off in the direction of the squeals issuing from the basement. “I thought the whole purpose of a block party was that you could walk home safely after drinking one too many?”
“Apparently not.”
“Was this nondrinking aspect in that packet thingy?”
“Maybe?”
“We are never coming to one of these again.”
“Come on, babe.”
“Okay, then, next time I’m bringing a flask.”
“That’s the spirit.”
I searched the room for a familiar face, feeling that same anxiety I always did in a room full of strangers. Daniel was a born salesman; alcohol or no, he would make three lifelong friends by the time the cling film was taken off the crudité platter. But me? Before the twins stole me away from the world, I was a failed lawyer who hadn’t found anything to replace what I always thought would be my career. I drifted from job to job, never settling at one thing for more than six months. When I’d gotten pregnant, I was actually working for a temp agency, and that’s how my life felt—temporary.
“Julie?”
I blinked a few times and hoped I hadn’t been talking out loud. I did that occasionally when I was thinking out a scene. When you live up in your head all day, sometimes it’s hard to distinguish what’s real from what’s imagined.
“Oh, hi, John,” I said. He was wearing a dark-blue V-necked sweater and a pair of comfortable-looking cords. He looked different out of his running clothes. Older, perhaps, though not in a bad way. Distinguished. There were laugh lines around his eyes, and a five o’clock shadow across his chin.
I felt a prickle on the back of my neck. No wonder I was running in the other direction.
“You look like you could use this,” he said, handing me a blue Solo cup full of pink punch.
“Thanks. It is dry in here.”
“This might help with that.”
I took a sip and nearly started choking. The punch was heavily spiked with something.
“Am I tasting rum?” I asked.
“Spiced vodka.”
“Ah.”
“I should’ve asked first. You do drink, don’t you?”
I wondered, briefly, if he’d been reading up on me. My supposed stint in rehab was one of the many rumors circulating about me, even though I’d stopped adding vodka to my orange juice before it became public or a real problem. Though I had to monitor myself, I felt safe enough having a drink or two at a party.
“God, yes,” I said to John. “Sorry, I’m feeling spacey today. It’s been a weird one.”
“Cindy and her no-drinking policy probably don’t help.”
“How did that happen?”
“It may have had something to do with someone—I’m not saying who, mind you—ending up in a kiddie pool a few years ago at one of these shindigs.”
“Oh, well, then.”
I caught Daniel’s eye across the room and waved him over. I introduced him to John, and Daniel cast me an amused look. He’s notoriously unjealous, which is mostly a good thing, but sometimes provokes me.
“Take this,” I said to Daniel, handing him my cup. “You and John are of one mind.”
Daniel took a healthy swallow.
“Ah, my good man.” He took another. “My good man.”
“Apparently, John’s the reason these parties are nonalcoholic.”
“Who, me?”
“It was totally him,” a woman said, joining us. She was either a young-looking forty-five or an old-looking thirty-five, which might have made her forty, but I doubted it somehow. “I’m Hanna. This miscreant’s wife.”
She had the same nearly white-blonde hair and pale-blue eyes as her son, Chris, and that tall, athletic look I’d never achieve, even if I ran a marathon every week. I felt a spark of envy, then dismissed it.
We said our How-do-you-dos
while Daniel drained the remainder of my drink.
“Hey,” I said, when he handed my cup back empty, “that was mine.”
“Oops,” Hanna said, laughing. “Don’t worry. John’s got more where that came from.”
John stole a glance over his shoulder, then started to pull a flask from his pocket. He was stopped by a bloodcurdling scream emanating from the basement.
“Melly,” Daniel and I said together, and started to run.
Good Neighbors Make Safe Neighbors
John
Eleven months ago
Right up until the screaming started, the November block party was the usual dull affair.
When the parties started years ago, they’d taken place in summer. Humid nights laced with beer and barbecue. The air thick with the smell of charcoal and meat. The men would gather in the backyard, slapping at the mosquitoes nibbling on our necks. Our wives would shoo the kids inside to add a layer of “safe” bug repellant to the inch-thick sunscreen they already wore. Steaks would be charred. Vegetable skewers would be blackened. The ice in the cooler would melt the labels off the twelve-packs of beers we’d lugged down the street on our shoulders.
I don’t recall when the block parties became monthly. Hanna would. But I do recall when they became deadly—boring, that is.
Two summers ago. Brad Thurgood and I had drunk a few too many. It was inhumanely hot. Work had been a constant press of stress. I didn’t know Brad had promised his wife, Susan, that he’d stop drinking. Or that she’d threatened to leave him if he didn’t. Sure, Brad drank hard on social occasions. But he was a jovial drunk. As I’d learn later, that was a public facade. Behind closed doors, his joviality turned to nastiness.
We all wear masks. The challenge is keeping them in place.
After dinner and dessert, Brad and I retreated to two lounge chairs around the inflatable kiddie pool with a six-pack. Susan had charged out of the house an hour earlier, her lips white with fury. He’d shrugged and cracked a beer. Told an off-color joke. I admit, I was enjoying the evening despite the drama. Hanna had also left with the kids, tired from a long day in court. She’d encouraged me to stay. But after I’d tripped over a loose paving stone and tumbled into the kiddie pool, even I was ready to acknowledge it was time to call it a night.
I’d sloshed up the street in my still sodden clothes, passing Susan and Brad’s house. She was stacking his dresser drawers on the sidewalk. Things didn’t look good for Brad. I should’ve escorted him home, but he’d waved me off. Feeling the anger emanating from Susan, I was glad I’d stayed out of it.
The hangover the next day was painful. I was swearing to myself that I’d take it easier next time when Hanna bounced on the end of the bed—deliberately—to tell me an e-mail had already gone around informing the street of the policy change.
“Our block parties have policies now?” I said, wishing she’d stop acting like the mattress was a rocking chair.
“You can’t really be surprised. You’ve met Cindy, right?”
“Why do we put up with her?”
“Oh, come on. She means well. Besides, she does a lot of good for the neighborhood. You know she does.”
“I guess.” I turned over. I felt as if I was at sea. “Why don’t they just ban me—us—from attending?”
“No way you’re getting off that easy.”
“I’ll have to try harder next time, I guess.”
“Not too much harder, I hope. Brad’s out for good, I hear.”
I told her about the drawers I’d seen Susan placing outside.
“That’ll never be us, right?” she asked, frowning. She was dressed in her yoga clothes, an outfit that should’ve been asexual, but wasn’t on Hanna. She took staying in shape as seriously as she did everything else. I admired the results.
“No way,” I said. “Why don’t you come over here?”
“And do what? Punish you for your transgressions?”
“You could torture me a little.”
She laughed, but I knew that laugh. That laugh said yes.
“I have to take Becky to soccer in forty minutes.”
“Better lock that door quick, then.”
Two years later, standing in Cindy’s living room, I smiled to myself, caught in the sense memory of that morning with Hanna. Then my smile dropped as I thought about the conversation Hanna and I were going to have to have when the party was over. When I was going to have to tell her I’d been laid off from the IT department at Procter & Gamble after nearly eleven years.
It wasn’t personal, they’d said the day before. They were doing another round of cuts. Six hundred jobs this time. Some calculus of time and age and level of responsibility had spat out my name. I was a good employee, not an amazing one.
In some sense I wasn’t surprised. That didn’t help the goddamn sting, though.
I should’ve told Hanna straight away, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I needed to sit with the information for a bit. And then, earlier that day, I’d meant to tell her when she got home. But she’d had a good day in court, and was keyed up the way she is when she’s put a witness in their place. She was chattering around the house, trying to work out her excess energy. Collecting the glasses that seemed to multiply across our house. Stowing them in the dishwasher. She’d given me a kiss, her tongue darting in and out of my mouth quickly. She made a face as she reminded me about the block party. I raised the possibility of skipping it, but Hanna said she wanted to go.
That’s when I went in search of the flask.
It was a relic from the days when I was attending a bachelor party every other month. But getting fired when you’re forty-five seemed like as good an excuse as any to put it back into use.
Hanna laughed that laugh when she saw me filling it.
Yes.
We’d had a few pulls from it on the short walk over. Becky was spending the night at a friend’s house—her first sleepover since she’d broken her leg the month before. She was getting the cast off in a few weeks. In the meantime, it had so many overlapping drawings on it that it reminded me of a sleeve of tattoos. We’d have to find a way to keep it for her.
Chris had uncharacteristically darted ahead of us on the way to the Suttons’. He’d quickly disappeared into the basement. I’d given a generous pour from the flask into our punch when Cindy’s back was turned. And I was happy to have an excuse to talk to Julie again in a way no one could reproach. Nothing to see here, folks. Just two new neighbors getting to know each other.
Wasn’t that the whole purpose of these parties?
Daniel seemed like a good guy. A man after my own mind, as Julie said. This was the person I should be getting to know, I told myself. Maybe tomorrow, after I confessed to Hanna, I’d cross the street and ask Daniel if he could come out and play.
So, a standard evening, all in all.
But secret alcohol or no, the party was straight up dull till the screaming started.
Hanna and I followed Julie and Daniel down the stairs to the basement. The kids were supposed to be under the supervision of Cindy and Paul’s oldest daughter, Ashley. I hoped she was more attentive to babysitting than she was on the soccer field.
We found a frozen tableau. Toys scattered everywhere. More kids than I could count. The cushions pulled from the couch to form some kind of fort. The air felt sticky and smelled of buttery popcorn. Ashley was standing next to Julie, looking stricken. They were surprisingly alike. Both petite and curved. Long brown hair that fell in a wave past their shoulders. Julie was holding her wailing daughter to her chest. The bright-red wig of her Halloween costume was clenched tightly in the little girl’s pudgy hands.
The other twin, the boy, was standing with his fists at the ready. There were a couple of boys surrounding him. Another girl was lying on the floor, crying.
“What’s going on down here?” Cindy asked a bit breathlessly, landing with a thunk behind me.
Julie’s son took a swipe at one of the boys, making light contact.
“You, you stop that immediately!” Cindy said.
“Sam!” Julie said.
Cindy put her hand on Sam’s shoulder. He swung around, looking ready to take her on as well.
“Sam!” Daniel said. “Hands by your sides.”
Sam dropped his hands as two red spots formed on his cheeks. Daniel picked him up. He clung to Daniel’s neck as he stood next to Julie. They were each holding a child on the opposite side like two parentheses.
“Theys was hurting Melly!” Sam said, then starting sobbing, his fists shaking against Daniel’s chest. “She didn’t do nothing.”
The other children reacted like an angry mob.
“Not true!”
“She did!”
“Her fault!”
The children’s voices tumbled over one another’s. As the volume increased, I could feel the headache starting right behind my eyes. The flask felt like an unfortunate weight in my pocket.
Cindy spent the next several minutes trying to find out what had happened, but it was virtually impossible. All that seemed clear was that Melly had been in the middle of it. Child after child turned and pointed their finger at her like they were identifying an accused on the stand.
“Daniel,” Julie said, after the third girl had done this, loudly enough to be heard over the din.
He must have understood something in her tone. They made their way in unison to the stairs.
“You can’t just leave like this,” Cindy said. “Not until we know what happened.”
Julie turned on her heel at the bottom of the steps. “My daughter’s upset and I’m taking her home. You want to play detective to a bunch of unreliable witnesses, you go right ahead.”
“She’s quite something, isn’t she?” Hanna said as we walked home later. Once again, Chris had gone on ahead of us. He was slouching up the street with his hands in his pockets. It turned out he’d been downstairs with Ashley. They’d been tangled together on the couch watching television, keeping half an eye on the kids. I hadn’t known anything was going on with them, but Hanna didn’t seem surprised.
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