The Murderer Next Door

by Rafael Yglesias

  Wendy appeared. The fact is her daughter appeared, like a ghost herself, delirious, hair soaked, speaking in a cracked noise from her red throat.

  “Daddy! You’re hurting her!”

  I didn’t see Naomi: I saw her mother, because that’s who summoned her from unconsciousness to rescue me.

  I was almost dead. In fact, I thought my head had burst with blood, flowing out of my eyes.

  There was no room for me in my brain. I was in Ben’s head now, hoping to live on through my killer. I heard his thoughts: She’s almost dead—finish. Just one more squeeze and she’s dead.

  Ben wanted to kill me: he was happy controlling my existence, as happy as I had ever seen him.

  He let go. And disappeared. I saw nothing…still couldn’t breathe.

  Nommy’s voice croaked from somewhere: “She’s bleeding.” It was an old woman’s sound: my mother’s before she died, mine in another twenty years.

  “She’s fighting with me. Get back into bed. She’s okay.”

  He would come back and kill me. I struggled to clear the broken bones in my throat….

  I gasped for air and fell off the couch. I watched my fingers crawl through the artificial grass of the carpet. Blood dripped from my face.

  I crawled away from him, and fool that I am, I kept thinking that I was ruined, that now my ugliness was obvious, all the world could see how selfish and untrustworthy I am.

  I heard Naomi talk and talk and talk in her hoarse voice, delaying Ben from returning to kill me. In the notes of her complaints (“My throat hurts.” “I’m too hot.”) there were warnings: Get out Molly. Save yourself.

  That’s how I know Wendy still lived in her: she couldn’t have understood by herself.

  My legs worked after all. I reached the door, pulled myself up by the knob, opened it, and fell into the hall. A well-dressed couple, Honda dealer and his wife, stopped in their tracks. She gasped. He looked embarrassed.

  Ben returned at that moment. He stayed at the connecting door, ignoring the couple, and stared at me, half-in, half-out.

  “Hurry up,” he told me. “Or I’ll kill you.”

  You know what I said?

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled through my bloody lips.

  REMEMBERING

  OF COURSE I’M BETTER NOW. IS THAT WHAT WORRIED you?

  Perhaps you’ve noticed that I love clichés for their forgotten terrible truths. I have become proof of one of them: Time heals all wounds.

  Ben’s attack on me finished him. Besides the assault charge, which cost him custody of Naomi, a pattern of violence against women was established, and I supplied the coup de grace with my testimony that he had confessed to Wendy’s murder.

  Indirectly the prosecutor made it clear I should forget about the log Ben had told me he used to strike the fatal blow. “Are you sure about the log?” he asked over and over. Eventually, I understood the hint: they had no fragments of wood in her skull to confirm it. I erased the log from my account. I think Ben made up that part for my benefit, anyway. Just another lie from a man for whom lies are truth.

  Remember, I saw into his soul as he strangled me: he liked watching my life depart; he had enjoyed taking Wendy’s.

  I believe that’s why Wendy haunted me until I understood. She knew that I blamed her, in some way, for what had happened, that I was smug and superior about her marriage and her death. She forced me to live her life, to suffer, and then she saved me. I don’t believe Dr. Reynolds’s explanation, his pat answers that I was paying for imagined past sins. Those are Freudian bedtime stories created to soothe Stefan’s feelings.

  Would I have killed Ben? Yes. We are not all the same. I am not good like Wendy. That is why I am alive and she is dead. Had she not haunted me I would have turned my back and claimed there was nothing that could be done. Just about everyone else did.

  No thanks to Ben, Naomi lives with Stefan in our apartment, next door to her sad, former home, which was sold to pay Ben’s lawyers. In a last attempt to hurt me, Ben gave Harriet custody of Naomi. Stefan, however, convinced Harriet to leave Naomi unofficially in his care. Although Ben’s lawyers howled, their challenge to this arrangement was dismissed because of Ben’s status as a convicted murderer. When I asked Stefan (he visits me, in hope, twice a week) how he persuaded Harriet, he explained with a smile of pride at his cleverness. A movie producer wanted to buy the rights to Harriet’s story, or rather the story she invented, a sentimental fiction about her close relationship with Ben from their childhood in Queens to their fascinating Manhattan careers. Stefan convinced Harriet that she owed it to herself to concentrate on this opportunity to explain, among other things, what happened to her brilliant promise as a dancer and that the drudgery (and expense) of raising a little girl would only hold her back. After all my struggles and worries with the legalities, Stefan just talked his way around the rules and got Naomi. Of course, Harriet had one condition: that I not live with Stefan and Naomi until it could be proved to her satisfaction that I had recovered from my psychological problems. Telling me of his triumph Stefan was as proud as a victorious warrior. I was glad for Naomi, but I know his charity is aimed at my heart, not hers. Poor Stefan, he dreams that one day I will overcome Harriet’s disapproval, he and I will reconcile and together supervise Nommy’s life.

  As part of my therapy I work at the shelter with Larry and Maggie and all the other freaks. I rent a room from Pauline, the woman who runs it. She disagrees with Stefan’s vision of my future. She has suggested that after I’m cured—they speak of cures here—I ought to take the money from Naomi Perlman’s estate, still held in escrow, and open a shelter in Maine. I’m willing, except that living so far from New York would deprive me of my one remaining joy, which I must ask you not to talk about to anyone. I am afraid my psychiatrist might think it bad and stop me.

  I have Fridays off and my private therapy is in the morning. After the session I drive into the city (not in that Volvo, I couldn’t bear to use it anymore) and park across the street from the gray Riverside School.

  I follow Naomi and the woman Stefan has hired to help him on their walk home.

  Naomi is taller and more beautiful than ever. It hurts to watch her and not be able to speak to her or touch her. It hurts too much.

  Last week, on a beautiful spring day, I couldn’t bear the separation anymore. I followed them into Washington Square Park. Naomi’s caretaker sat on one of the benches and read the newspaper while Naomi went off to the swings and solemnly began a swooping ride up and down

  I had promised my psychiatrist and Pauline and Stefan that I wouldn’t make any attempt to speak to Naomi until they felt she was ready, but I was ready that day.

  I entered the enclosed children’s playground and sneaked behind the benches (I didn’t know if the caretaker could recognize me) on my way into the swing area.

  Naomi spotted me when I was only a few feet off. She stuck out her feet to brake herself and opened her mouth to shout a greeting.

  I put a finger to my lips to silence her and gestured that she should keep going. There are benches right behind the swings; I sat down a few feet away from her slot so that an onlooker would believe I was attached to one of the other swinging children.

  “I’m not supposed to talk to you.” I spoke into the wind of her movements, not in a whisper, but in the low tones of conspiracy.

  “Why?” Her voice was still clear and loud and brave.

  “I don’t really know. They think it’ll bother us. Make us upset.”

  “That’s crazy,” she decided.

  “I love you,” I told her.

  “I know,” she said softly.

  “I just wanted to tell you because I haven’t been around, and I didn’t want you think that I didn’t want to see you.”

  “I love you,” she answered. The words caught in her throat; she slowed her pendulum and stared at me with her wide sad eyes.

  Her caretaker looked up from her paper and seemed to notice me. Anyway, she peered i
n our direction.

  “Keep swinging high,” I told Naomi.

  She pumped and gained velocity.

  “You look all better,” she said.

  That made my tears come. “Thank you,” I mumbled, and tried to swallow and brush them away.

  “Will you come home soon?” she asked.

  “I’m going to try. Is everything okay with you?”

  Tears filled her eyes but did not spill. She nodded.

  “Stefan’s a good man.”

  She nodded an eager yes, her blue eyes wavering from the tears that wouldn’t let go and escape down her smooth white cheeks. “He’d make a good daddy,” she told me, echoing her mother’s old nagging.

  “I have to go.” I was nervous. Her caretaker had glanced our way again.

  “When will I see you?”

  “Keep coming to the park.”

  She nodded. Her lips were pressed together as if she were holding something back besides the tears.

  “What is it, Nommy? Is there something you want to tell me? Are they treating you okay? Is she nice?” I indicated her caretaker.

  Naomi nodded again, but her lips quaked. She slowed her pace on the swing, almost stopped. “They don’t…” She choked and didn’t continue.

  “What?” I had gotten to my feet. Her caretaker was folding her newspaper and seemed to be about to rise. “Hurry. I have to go.”

  “They don’t…” Again she didn’t finish.

  The hopefulness I had felt talking to her sagged: I suspected she wanted to complain about the prohibition against visiting her father in prison. I didn’t want her to see Ben either, but if she resented it I had to know. “Tell me quickly,” I urged her. “I’ve got to go.”

  “They don’t talk about my mommy.” She stammered it out and at last her tears flowed: “I’m going to forget her….”

  She wanted to remember the heroine of her life, not the villain: she was good.

  “We’ll talk about your mommy,” I promised. I took a risk and hugged her hard—but quickly. “We’ll remember,” I whispered, and ran.

  So far no one has said anything about my transgression. I’m going to sneak off again next week so you mustn’t tell either. You can’t blame me for needing to see her. Someday—I believe it now—she and I will be together. Someday I will explain everything to her.

  Someday, like young Naomi, I will be good. Now, more than anything, I want to be good.

  A BIOGRAPHY OF RAFAEL YGLESIAS

  Rafael Yglesias (b. 1954) is a master American storyteller whose career began with the publication of his first novel at seventeen. Through four decades of writing, Yglesias has produced numerous highly acclaimed novels and screenplays, and his fiction is distinguished by its clear-eyed realism and keen insight into human behavior. His books range in style and scope from novels of ideas, psychological thrillers, and biting satires, to self-portraits and portraits of New York society.

  Yglesias was born and raised in Washington Heights, a working-class neighborhood in northern Manhattan. Both his parents were writers. His father, Jose, was the son of Cuban and Spanish parents and wrote articles for the New Yorker, the New York Times, and the Daily Worker, as well as novels. His mother, Helen, was the daughter of Yiddish-speaking Russian and Polish immigrants and worked as literary editor of the Nation. Rafael was educated mainly at public schools, but the Yglesiases did send him to the prestigious Horace Mann School for three years. Inspired by his parents’ burgeoning literary careers, Rafael left school in the tenth grade in order to finish his first book. The largely autobiographical Hide Fox, and All After (1972) is the story of a bright young student who drops out of private school against his parents’ wishes to pursue his artistic ambitions.

  Many of Yglesias’s subsequent novels would also draw heavily from his own life experiences. Yglesias wrote The Work Is Innocent (1976), a novel that candidly examines the pressures of youthful literary success, in his early twenties. Hot Properties (1986) follows the up-and-down fortunes of young literary upstarts drawn to New York’s entertainment and media worlds. In 1977, Yglesias married artist Margaret Joskow and the couple had two sons: Matthew, now a renowned political pundit and blogger, and Nicholas, a science-fiction writer. Yglesias’s experiences as a parent in Manhattan would help shape Only Children (1988), a novel about wealthy and ambitious new parents in the city. Margaret would later battle cancer, which she died from in 2004. Yglesias chronicled their relationship in the loving, honest, and unsparing A Happy Marriage (2009).

  After marrying Joskow, Ylgesias took nearly a decade away from writing novels to dedicate himself to family life. During this break from book-writing, Yglesias began producing screenplays. He would eventually have great success adapting his novel Fearless (1992), a story of trauma and recovery, into a critically acclaimed motion picture starring Jeff Bridges and Rosie Perez. Other notable screenplays and adaptations include From Hell, Les Misérables, and Death and the Maiden. He has collaborated with such directors as Roman Polanski and the Hughes brothers.

  A lifelong New Yorker, Yglesias’s eye for city life—ambition, privilege, class struggle, and the clash of cultures—informs much of his work. Psychiatrists and psychoanalysts are often primary characters in Yglesias’s narratives, and titles such as The Murderer Next Door (1991) and Dr. Neruda’s Cure for Evil (1998) draw heavily on the intellectual traditions of psychology.

  Yglesias lives in New York’s Upper East Side.

  Yglesias with Tamar Cole, his half-sister from his mother’s first marriage, around 1955. He was raised with Tamar and his half-brother, Lewis.

  Yglesias sits atop his half-brother Lewis Cole’s shoulders around 1956. As adults, Yglesias and Cole worked together writing screenplays for ten years. All of them were sold, but none were ultimately made.

  Yglesias at age ten, in a car with his mother in his father’s hometown of Ybor City in Tampa, Florida. Around this time, Yglesias lived in Spain for a year, an experience that proved formative in his young life.

  Georgia Yglesias, Rafael’s paternal grandmother, is shown here relaxing in Central Park with Rafael and his father. Yglesias’s relationship with his grandmother was an important part of his childhood.

  Pages from a travel book that Yglesias and his mother wrote together, dated from Paris in early October 1964. Though his mother did most of the writing, Yglesias considers this to be the first thing he ever wrote.

  Yglesias typed and signed this letter in 1969, just months before beginning work on his first novel, Hide Fox, and All After (1972). The letter references Yglesias’s decision to drop out of school and begin writing fulltime, a biographical detail that is paralleled in Hide Fox.

  A photo of Yglesias taken by his late wife, Margaret, in the early 1970s, the first summer they were together as a couple.

  Yglesias with his parents at their summer house in Maine.

  Yglesias and Cole on the front steps of Yglesias’s parents’ house in Maine in 1976, a short time before they began their decade-long writing collaboration.

  Yglesias and film producer Paula Weinstein on the set of Fearless, a movie based on his book of the same name. The film, which starred Jeff Bridges, Isabella Rossellini, and Rosie Perez, was adapted for the screen by Yglesias and was hailed by critics upon its release in 1993.

  Margaret and Yglesias with their two children, Matthew and Nicholas, shown here on a very happy vacation on Eleuthera, an island in the Bahamas, around Christmas of 1993.

  Yglesias and Matthew in an outtake from Jerry Bauer’s 1996 photo shoot with Yglesias before the publication of Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil. Matthew had come home from school in the midst of the shoot.

  Yglesias and Margaret with their sons Matthew and Nicholas in September of 2003. After Margaret’s two-year battle with bladder cancer, she and Yglesias had to break the news that doctors considered her condition terminal. Margaret died in June of 2004.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment o
f the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  copyright © 1990 by Rafael Yglesias

  cover design by Jonathan Sainsbury

  ISBN: 978-1-4532-0512-9

  This edition published in 2010 by Open Road Integrated Media

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  New York, NY 10014

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