The Woman Next Door

by T. M. Wright

  He went back into the cottage.

  Perhaps, he thought desperately, she had left something: an article of clothing, her purse, a handkerchief, something. He looked. She had left nothing. Even her glorious smell had dissipated.

  He glanced at the clock: 4:45. Christ, they had been together only an hour and a half! An hour and a half now, an hour two weeks from now, perhaps two hours a week later. Christ, what was that? That was nothing. He needed so very much more.

  He picked the clock up, stared at it, watched the tip of the second hand sweep inexorably past the name—Sessions—and then to 1, 2, 3. . . . He gripped the clock tightly, as if able to crush the metal case in his bare hands.

  "Andrea!" he screamed. "Andrea!"

  Marilyn's eyes narrowed to slits, as if in caricature of a suspicious woman. It was all so clear, even in the way he mixed his drink (he was taking too long; he never took more than a few seconds), in the way he kept his back to her, in his falsely animated conversation at dinner—clear that he was hiding something from her.

  "Brett?" She tried to keep her tone even.

  "Yes?" he said. He too, she could hear, was straining for the right tone.

  "I was wondering how your day went," she said.

  Brett smiled nervously. She knew. Or at least she suspected. He forced himself to relax, in fear that she could see, something of his smile even though his back was turned. "It went okay, nothing special."

  "I called your office; you weren't there. I called a couple days ago, too, and your secretary had no idea where you were."

  "Yes, well, today I went out for a few hours to bid a job. I won it, too." He turned, looked at her. "You know the place; it's over on Aberdeen Street. Great big fieldstone house."

  "Uh-huh. When was that?"

  "Oh, I don't know, Marilyn." He tried to sound vaguely annoyed. "Between three and five, I guess. Why the third degree?"

  "I didn't know that's what I was doing."

  "Would you like to see the bid sheet?" He knew he was overplaying his hand now.

  "Why would I want to see the bid sheet, Brett? Are you saying I don't believe you?" She joined him at the bar, grinned oddly at him (it made him instantly uncomfortable) and fixed herself a daiquiri. "Of course I believe you. You've never lied to me about anything. Why should you start now?"

  No, Brett realized, she knew nothing of Andrea; she was only guessing. "Of course I lied to you, Marilyn."

  She stifled a gasp. Go on, her silence told him. A tiny bead of perspiration appeared on her forehead, at the hairline; he watched it for a moment, fascinated, then turned and added more scotch to his drink. You're drinking too much.

  "Yes," he continued. "You got me a pair of pajamas, white with blue stripes. Remember? Christmas seventy-six?"

  She said nothing.

  "I told you how nice they were, how much I liked them." He sipped his drink, grimaced; it was too strong. "Well, I despised them, I really did. It's taken me five years to confess that, but at last I have, and I've gotta tell you, it feels—"

  "Don't be an ass, Brett."

  "I'm merely responding to your suspicions, Marilyn."

  She grinned at him again, and now he was able to define what he had seen in that grin before, what he had seen and—for his own sake, for Greg's sake, for her sake—denied: malevolence. And hatred—uncompromising, unlimited hatred—subtle but unmistakable, like the symptoms of a disease in its first few minutes.

  "Brett, I have no suspicions." And she turned and left the room.

  May 15, 1961

  The babysitter could see that Evelyn Winter was trying hard to control her temper. The babysitter nearly smiled, amused by the woman's self-torment.

  "And so, dear," Evelyn Winter continued, "you can understand why that doll has got to be found. She's lost without it." She paused, then continued: "Of course, I'm not accusing you of anything, dear. It's just that we have looked all over the house." Again a pause. "Well," she went on, her tone suddenly less severe, "if you do find it, you will put it aside, won't you?"

  "Yes, I will," said the babysitter.

  "Good." Mrs. Winter turned, opened the front door. "Have a nice evening, dear." And she left the house.

  The babysitter reached behind the piles of neatly folded diapers in the child's closet. She put her hand on the doll, clutched it a moment, considering. She withdrew the doll. It was luck, she knew, that Mrs. Winter hadn't found it. If she had, the babysitter would be out of a job now. Those burn holes would not be easy to explain. God, but that had been a stupid thing to do! Where had her head been? Was she crazy —really and truly and positively crazy? She could have burned the whole freakin' house down. The doll could have smoldered for hours, just like her uncle's couch had when he'd dropped a cigar down between the cushion and arm. A couple hours later—whoosh! The couch had just about exploded. Same thing could have happened with the doll, even though she'd soaked it with water. (Her uncle had soaked the arm and cushion of the couch with water, too.)

  If it wasn't so obvious what kind of burns the holes were, she could say that the child had done it—had put the doll too close to the stove, or had gotten hold of some matches. Something. But the holes had been made by a lit cigarette—that was obvious. There would be no questions, only hurt, accusatory, confused looks, then: "I'm sorry, but your services are no longer required here." And that would be the end of this job, probably the end of her babysitting days altogether, because Mrs. Winter would be sure to spread the word: "Watch out for her, she's a firebug."

  So, the doll had to be gotten rid of somehow.

  Buried? Burned? (No, no—don't make the same mistake twice!) Cut up into little pieces and mailed to Cleveland? The babysitter giggled.

  Something had to be done with it. She couldn't hide it in the house; it would be found, eventually. Found and sent to haunt her. (It was such a repulsive doll—it had an ugly flat face, and scary round eyes. Whoever invented Raggedy Ann dolls had to have been a genuine 24-carat sicky. Jesus, that face could give you nightmares! She was doing the kid a favor by getting rid of it.)

  The babysitter glanced across the darkened room at the crib. Apparently, the child was sleeping.

  Cutting the doll up wasn't a bad idea, the babysitter decided. But once she had it cut up, what was she going to do with the pieces? Eat them? Stuff them into her pockets?

  She ran some hot water into the kitchen sink, flicked the disposal on. She winced; it was a noisy damned thing. She turned it off, opened the bread box, took out a slice of white bread, shredded it into the disposal, and turned the disposal on again. Yes—she grinned—it was a little quieter.

  The large pair of pinking shears she found in Evelyn Winter's sewing room were more than adequate. The doll yielded willingly to them—first the hands, then the feet, then the legs. The pieces she cut were uniformly small, so as not to clog the disposal; that would be a disaster. What's this? she imagined the repairman saying. Why, it looks like the pieces of a doll. The babysitter shuddered.

  "Dolly!" she heard. She turned her head, confused. She saw darkness beyond the kitchen, little else. "Dolly!" she heard again, louder.

  She looked toward the source of the sound, saw only darkness. She clutched what remained of the doll in one hand, the scissors in the other; she moved slowly out of the kitchen and into the living room.

  She stopped.

  "My dolly!" she heard.

  And she saw that, somehow, she had forgotten to close the child's bedroom door. It was wide open. And the child, for God's sake, was watching her. Watching her!

  The babysitter glanced at the doll, then at the small whitish form in the dark adjoining room. She swore beneath her breath at her stupidity.

  "My dolly!" she heard again, and saw the small form move slightly. "My dolly, my dolly, my dolly!" The form moved more frantically, and the babysitter realized that the child was bouncing up and down in the crib and pointing desperately at the dismembered doll. "My dolly!"

  The babysitter rushed in
to the child's room, flicked the light on.

  The sudden brightness quieted the child, temporarily. Until she again saw the doll. "My dolly!" she screeched. "My dolly, my—"

  "Shut up!" hissed the babysitter. "Shut up!"

  The child fell silent. She stared wide-eyed, pleadingly, at the doll. Tears started down her cheeks.

  "Your dolly is dead." The babysitter tried to strike a firm but sympathetic tone. "It got sick and your mommy and daddy said to kill it."

  The child looked up from the doll to the babysitter. The pleading, wide-eyed disbelief was still on her face, in her eyes.

  "Your dolly is dead," the babysitter said again. "Your mommy and your daddy—" She stopped, confused, for suddenly, inexplicably—as if resigned to the death of the doll—the child had lain back down.

  "Dolly," she whispered. "Dolly." And she was asleep.

  Chapter 22

  Where would he deliver it? Brett wondered. To what address? And would Andrea understand it?

  Dearest Andrea,

  I am facing something that I realize now I've refused to face most of my adult life: I'm not a happy man. It's not that I'm unhappy; I'm not—at least not actively so. I don't go around weeping (much, sometimes, as I wish I could). I feel dull. Bored. Except when I'm with you. Jesus, what do I say—thanks for showing me what real happiness is? That's like-saying thanks for giving me my life back. Because that's precisely what you've done. I know that sounds corny, but I feel corny. And it feels great.

  What do I say about Marilyn? I can't honestly say that our life together has ended, because we never had a life together. We live in the same monster house and occasionally we fuck each other. That sounds crass, I know, but our marriage is crass. It's an abomination.

  Am I going to leave her? Am I even going to tell her about us? I want to, I ache to, but I've come to realize something else: I'm one of the world's greatest cowards. Because although it is an abomination that Marilyn and I have become, it is also something I've grown used to, a kind of security—like the man who's been in prison for twenty years. That prison has become his home, and leaving it would take superhuman courage. That's what I am—a prisoner—and I know it. And it occurs to me just now, as I write, that maybe you haven't done me such a great service after all. Because you've made me realize what I am—the cringing, pathetic thing that I am—and I don't know if I have the courage to face it. Because there is such comfort and security in being that thing and not knowing it, in living it day after day after day and thinking, every once in a while, God, but time is really moving by. Where's it going? Where am I going? Do I say thank you for showing me the cripple that I am?

  Yes. Thank you. Because now I know why I've been running so fast and getting nowhere.

  Brett

  He folded the letter neatly and put it in his coat pocket. About two miles south. If you weren't looking for the house you'd miss it.

  He put the car in gear. Soon he saw his own cottage coming up on the right. He slowed the car slightly; such unbelievably, good memories were attached to that little place now. Sweet to replace the sour, he thought.

  The name Ferraro on the old rural mailbox would have escaped him entirely had he not been looking in its direction, fascinated by a motionless white-tailed deer knee-deep in snow near the tree line, about twenty feet from the road.

  He brought the car to an abrupt stop. Andrea had said two miles, and he had gone barely a mile. He turned in the seat, looked through the car's rear window, and found that if he squinted, he could dimly see his cottage's roof line not even a half-mile off. So, this driveway was probably not Andrea's; it probably led to a relative's house, an aunt's or an uncle's. Around the lake, it wasn't unusual to find members of the same large family living within a couple miles of one another.

  He was out of the car without thinking, driven by the impulse to know, to be certain. He pulled the mailbox open, peered in, ran his hand around inside it. It was empty. "Damn it." His gaze fell on the long, snow-covered driveway. He'd never get the car up it, he knew. And he couldn't even be certain there was a house at the end of it; he couldn't see one. Only the new snow (from a recent storm), a small stand of maples and oaks to the left, a rusted barbed-wire fence to the right (a faded No Trespassing sign hung from it), and, still motionless a hundred feet north, the white-tailed deer.

  Brett felt a quick chill.

  The deer bolted. In a moment it was gone.

  Brett started up the driveway.

  I am possessed, he thought. I am possessed totally.

  His feet had numbed only minutes after he started up the driveway. He wore no boots, only highly polished black oxfords.

  Possessed, both by Andrea and by Marilyn—Andrea as my lover, Marilyn as my jailer.

  His tweed coat offered little protection against the steady, bitter wind that pushed up from the lake (a sadistic wind, he remembered; a killer wind). And he was breathing through his mouth now from the effort of wading through the deep snow.

  Damn my cowardice! It was an easy thing to damn, he realized; a much harder thing to conquer.

  His lungs ached from the cold. The air seemed slightly rarified here. He glanced about. The driveway was on a steep incline; the house—which he couldn't yet see—was apparently near the top of a high ridge that overlooked the lake.

  He wondered, suddenly, if his cowardice doomed him.

  The snow, he noticed, was harder and crustier halfway down. He decided that meant something; and wondered what it meant. He shoved his hands into his coat pockets—his soft leather gloves offered no warmth at all. A moment later his foot caught on a particularly hard crust and he fell slowly, almost in the pantomime of a fall, face forward into the snow. He thrust his hands through the several, successively harder layers of snow until he found the surface of the driveway itself, then pushed himself to his feet. "For Christ's sake!" he muttered. He brushed himself off. He saw that a wind-driven snowfall had begun.

  Am I doomed to living my life out as a coward, a prisoner? Do I value my security so highly that I'm willing to give my life up to it? He found that he despised his thoughts; they were painful. They could so easily and quickly lead to change, upheaval. And was that fair?

  The snowflakes were tiny, pellet-like, and when they hit the exposed area at the back of his neck, they stung. He tried to hitch his coat up so that his neck was protected, but found that it made him lose some of his balance in the layers of snow. He stopped, scanned the hillside. Nothing. Just where was this house?

  Was it fair to Greg, whom he hardly knew? And even to Marilyn? His mind reeled at that. Did he still have some feeling for her? Was he actually concerned that she might be hurt if he left her? Was his presence in her life required? Did she—

  "Goddamnit!" A violent chill went through him as the strong wind bit through his coat. He felt suddenly naked, exposed, mortal.

  He looked back at the car. It was barely visible through the gathering storm, and it was at a greater distance than he'd supposed. That comforted him a little; it also frightened him, because it meant that he was beginning to lose track of himself, was letting his thoughts overwhelm him. And now—at this moment, in this place—that was a stupid and dangerous thing to do.

  He plodded forward.

  Moments later he saw the house.

  Christine sighed and put the brush on the palette. She studied the beginnings of her new painting critically, decisively. At best, she told herself, it was pleasant and amateurish. Most importantly, it did absolutely nothing for her. God, how it annoyed her when she was unable to do truly good work, when the best she could do was this . . . pleasantness. But she was tired. And that was as good an excuse as any.

  Tim came up behind her. "Very nice," he said. "I don't think it'll set the art world on fire, but it is nice."

  She turned a little, took a mock swipe at him with the brush. "You can't tell me," she said, "that there haven't been days when all your camera could focus on was flowers and dirty children and blind beggars."r />
  "Some people make quite a handsome living with that kind of photography, Christine. Don't knock it."

  "I'm sure they do."

  "In fact, some very eminent—"

  "Tim, I'm not up to another artistic discussion. I'd just like to relax and finish this . . . this thing as quickly as possible. Okay?"

  "Okay." He made a show of sounding hurt. "I've got some work to do upstairs, anyway." He turned, started for his studio. "Oh," he called, "don't cut off your ear while I'm gone."

  "Bastard," she said playfully. She glanced out the window. She felt thankful that the "record-breaking winter storm" had made it necessary for Tim to come home early.

  Brett pressed his thumb hard against the doorbell. He listened. He could hear nothing above the sounds of the storm. He stepped back from the door, "Andrea!" he screamed, and noted that his voice sounded weak, ineffectual. "Andrea!" He looked right, then left. The storm obliterated everything ten feet to either side. He could see only that the house was a faded blue in color, two stories tall, a frame house much like what the Hausers had lived in. And something about it—he couldn't quite determine what—disturbed him. Something in the slant of the wall, in the color of the paint.

  He stepped back to the door, put his face to it, felt the cold, scarred wood scrape against his cheek. "Andrea," he said, his tone merely conversational. "Andrea, it's me. I need you, Andrea." You're losing touch, Brett.

  "Andrea, please. . . ."

  And the door, swung open.

  Tim picked the brush up from Christine's lap. He cringed a little at the blob of yellow paint on her jeans. She'd be angry with herself for that. She'd say what a stupid and clumsy thing it was to do, that from now on he'd have to keep a close watch over her.

  "Tim?" Her eyes fluttered open. She saw the paint smear. "Damn it!"