The New Neighbors

by Simon Lelic

  My mother’s hand begins to walk its way down, her fingers working like tiny little legs. Incy-wincy spider, I’m thinking between snivels, which when my mother does it on me never fails to make me giggle. My father isn’t giggling, though. He’s looking at me the way he does when I’m eating and I know I’m making too much mess.

  My mother starts working at the buttons of my father’s pajama top. She seems to be struggling with them, and I’m thinking that maybe they’re stuck and that’s why she’s helping him in the first place. She helps me too, if one of my dresses is inside out or if I’m having trouble with the foot end of my tights. Except my father doesn’t seem to want my mother’s help. He wriggles a shoulder and when that doesn’t work he turns and hits her. Not angrily. The same way he’d swat a mosquito. My mother yelps. She doesn’t fall down but she staggers and her face when she takes her hand away is all wet and blotchy. My father doesn’t appear to notice. He’s looking at me again. He takes a step into my room and without switching on the light he shuts my mother outside on the landing.

  I don’t call out after that when I have nightmares. After that it’s not the nightmares I’m most afraid of.

  —

  I’M SEVEN. I should be happy. I did a dance at school and everyone loved it but halfway through my father got up and walked out. He isn’t waiting outside for the rest of us. When we get there the car is missing from the place we parked it and my mum and sister and I have no choice except to walk. It’s raining so by the time we get home we’re soaked. Also my sister is crying, because normally if we were going that far my mother would have pushed her in the buggy.

  He’s sitting on the sofa in the living room. When my mother sees his face she starts to say something but with a hand-flick he dismisses her from the room. He tells me to come inside and shut the door.

  “I hope you’re proud of yourself,” he says to me.

  “Daddy, I . . .”

  “You looked proud. Up on that stage. Prancing the way you were. Preening.”

  I don’t know what preening means. And prancing, I thought, was something horses did.

  “Fetch your things.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t say what. Fetch your things.”

  “But . . . what things? I mean . . . which things? Daddy I don’t under—”

  “Fetch. Your. Things.”

  He must mean my ballet things. My changing bag. I set it down in the hallway when we came in.

  “Open it,” he tells me when I get back. “Your dress, your shoes, take them out.”

  I don’t have a dress. What I have is a leotard and a skirt but I don’t tell him in case the truth makes him angrier.

  “Where should I . . .”

  I glance around for somewhere to put them and that’s when I notice the scissors. They live in the kitchen usually. Now they’re lying on the coffee table.

  “Use those.”

  I frown. At the scissors, at my ballet costume, at my father.

  “What?”

  My father slams a fist on the coffee table and I’m so startled I drop everything I’m holding.

  “Don’t. Say. What! The scissors. Use them. Start with the ribbons.”

  There are ribbons instead of elastic on my ballet shoes. When my mother first gave them to me they were the part I was thrilled about the most. My father knows this. He was there when I took them from the bag.

  “But . . .”

  His fist impacts once again on the coffee table. The boom this time jostles out my tears.

  “One more word, young lady. If one more word comes out of your mouth before you start cutting, I’m going to use those scissors on you.”

  I should be happy. That’s what I’m thinking as I pick up the scissors. My mother, my teachers, they all promised me that dancing would make me happy. And your father, they said, he’ll be so proud. When I remember that I cut willingly. It’s a struggle in the end to make myself stop.

  —

  I’M NINE. MY jaw is swollen and my father is beside me feeding me soup. It’s Heinz tomato, my favorite, and the taste of it is making me want to hurl.

  “You’re spilling it, Maggie,” my father says. The soup is down my front and on the table and has probably dripped onto the floor.

  “Maggie? You’re spilling it.”

  He keeps saying it and he keeps spooning. There’s no point telling him I can’t open my mouth wide enough or that the spoon—a tablespoon—is too big. He knows about the spoon because he chose it and he knows about my jaw because he was the one who threw the punch. Besides, I think he thinks it’s funny. He’ll keep forcing me to try to eat even when it gets to the point I start to splutter and I have soup bleeding through my nose.

  “Open wide,” he says. I feel the metal of the spoon scraping against the enamel of my teeth.

  My mother, with her back turned, is very slowly washing up saucepans.

  My sister is seated just across from me. She has a bowl of soup too. She’s allowed to feed herself, though, and the tablecloth where she is seated is spotless. She isn’t looking at me but I can tell she’s watching.

  —

  I’M TWELVE, MAYBE eleven. My father looks up from behind his desk and sees me staring at him from the doorway of his office. I’d turn and hurry away except my father holds up a finger. I only paused in the first place because I was so astonished to see him counting so much money.

  “Daddy . . .”

  The finger again. Quicker, sharper.

  The money is in stacks. I can’t tell what notes they are but even if they’re only fivers you could probably buy a car with the amount my father has in front of him. Two cars and two chauffeurs to drive them.

  “Daddy, I’m sorry, the door was open, I . . .”

  I’m not helping myself. It’s like a reflex, though. There must be something I can say to him, I’ve often thought. Some magical combination of words that, uttered at the right moment, will work like a spell. They’ll stop him in his tracks. His grimace will fade and his fist will fall and whatever evil enchantment it is that has a hold of him will give way to a light that comes on behind his eyes. Yet all I can ever come up with is some lame-arsed version of I’m sorry. I’m sorry, however you say it, is no abracadabra. You’d think by now I would have learned.

  He stacks the stacks and carries the pile to his little safe. He keys the code (six digits, my birthday, which must be like a joke), slots the money inside, then pulls out a battered metal box. Shutting the safe before he turns, he carries the metal box back to his desk.

  “Come inside. Close the door.”

  I hesitate and then do as he says. I don’t want to but disobeying, I know, will only make things worse.

  “Daddy, I . . .”

  “Sit down.”

  There is a chair on the door side of the desk—a chair for visitors—and I park myself cautiously on the edge of the seat.

  “Were you spying, Maggie?”

  I’m shaking my head before he’s even finished formulating the question. “No, Daddy, I swear! I just . . . I didn’t . . .”

  That finger again. Instantly it renders me mute.

  “Do you know what they used to do to spies in this country?”

  Silently, slowly, I shake my head. It’s a trap, I can feel it, but I’m powerless to escape.

  My father moves the box so it is squarely in front of him. It is a rusty, pitted thing, like something dug up from the bottom of the garden. My father, though, treats it as though it is something precious—something that requires as much care in its handling as my mother would afford her finest china.

  “During the war,” he says, “if someone was convicted of spying, they would be executed.” He peers across at me. “They would be shot, Maggie.”

  He raises the lid of the rusty box. It hinges toward me, blocking my view. My
father reaches in and when he shows me what is inside I hear myself gasp.

  “This was my grandfather’s. He used to claim he’d used it to kill six Germans.” My father smiles slightly—in mockery or admiration, I can’t tell. “It’s an Enfield,” he tells me. “Number two, mark one, star. Single action to allow the bearer to fire quickly.”

  He turns the revolver over in his hands, treating it with even more reverence than he did its metal case. I watch it weaving in his grip, then blink and see he’s offering me the handle.

  “Take it.”

  Involuntarily my head starts to shake. “No, I . . . I don’t want to.”

  “Take it,” he repeats. “Hold it.”

  Once again he leaves no space for argument. I reach out and take the gun with both hands and still they sink floorward as my father relinquishes the weapon’s weight.

  “Point it,” my father says.

  I’m staring at the gun in my hands. It’s cold, black and deadly heavy.

  “Point it,” my father repeats. “Not that way,” he says, when I raise the shaking barrel toward the window. “Turn it around. Point the gun toward yourself.”

  “What? But . . .”

  “Don’t make me tell you again, Maggie. You know I don’t like to repeat myself.”

  I obey his instructions—what choice do I have?—and my father watches me, satisfied.

  “Now put the barrel in your mouth.”

  I shake my head now and I realize I’m crying. He can’t mean it. Surely he can’t possibly mean it. I was only passing. I didn’t even mean to look in!

  “Put. The barrel in. Your mouth.”

  “Daddy, I’m sorry, I really am, I won’t ever spy on you again, I promise, I mean I wasn’t even, I didn’t mean to, I just . . .”

  He says nothing. He just waits. And still crying, my nose running, I learn the taste of cold steel.

  “Now pull the trigger.”

  I’m so afraid I feel about to pass out. I’m sobbing now, as quietly as I can, but still I can hear myself snivel. My vision blurs as my eyes fill with tears. The gun barrel only rests on my front teeth but even so it seems somehow to fill my throat and it’s all I can do to stop myself gagging.

  “Don’t worry, Maggie. It isn’t loaded. At least . . . I don’t think it is.”

  I feel saliva flee down my chin. I want to beg, to plead with him, but I know nothing I say will alter what happens next. And all of a sudden I feel a sense of relief, a warmness that builds from my belly. This could be over. One way or another. All I need to do is what I’ve been told to, and everything—the pain, the fear, the humiliation, everything—it could all be over before my next heartbeat.

  I have to squeeze with both thumbs, with both eyes, to get the trigger to shift. I feel resistance before it starts to move, until gradually there’s a sense of momentum: movement it’s too late to stop. The hammer cocks, the barrel rotates . . . and the pistol emits an empty click.

  The gun is whisked from my hand before I can drop it. I’m sobbing openly now, almost wailing, whether in relief or disappointment I don’t know. I’m aware I’ve wet myself. I can feel warmth in rivulets down my ankle and dampness building in my sock. And my father’s voice, coming to me an inch from my ear and simultaneously from a thousand miles away.

  “Clean yourself up,” he says. “Then scrub the carpet. And next time keep those busy little eyes of yours out of my office.”

  —

  I’M THIRTEEN. FOR weeks now, months, I’ve been telling myself to go. But what if he catches me before I can get away? What if he’s waiting? Watching? What if he follows? What if I tell someone but they don’t believe me or I run but there’s nowhere to hide? What if it’s safer if I stay where I am? What if, instead of running, I change? What if my father does? What if all I need to do is give him the chance? Or what if this is just the way it is, everywhere, and there is nowhere to go, nowhere safe, or any safer than the bed I’m lying in now?

  What if what if what if . . .

  —

  I’M FIFTEEN, JUST turned, and I think I’m free. I’m at a party, with people I mistakenly believe are my friends.

  I’ve tried cocaine tonight and I liked it and now someone’s given me acid. I like this less. Not at all, in fact. There’s something on me and I’m trying to get it off but it’s as fixed and unshakable as a shadow.

  “Someone?” I say and I hear laughing.

  “Seriously,” I say and they laugh some more.

  It’s a lot of voices at first but then it’s one and I don’t know anyone who laughs like that. And something’s definitely on me, gripping me around the fleshy part of my arm.

  That laughter. It’s his laughter. His hand that’s gripping my arm.

  “Guys?” I say. “Get him off me!”

  Please, I want to add but now I’m swaying and there are groans as something bubbles from my mouth.

  “Gross,” someone answers, finally, and then the laughter is back, farther away.

  “Just leave her,” someone says, and I guess they do, because I wake up alone a thousand hours later, my mouth stuck open in a silent scream and my hair glued to the carpet by my own puke.

  —

  I’M NINETEEN AND I’m fucking some guy. I only know his first name and I don’t even know if that’s real. He told me his name is Charlie but to me he looks more like a Chris. An arsehole basically. I’ve never met a Chris who wasn’t an absolute dick.

  This one, though—he’s pretty. Literally, like a girl. And I’m not into girls (I know I’m not because I’ve tried) but blokes who look like girls, they’re a different matter. Make of that what you will.

  Charlie/Chris, he’s not being rough exactly but he’s too eager. When he kisses me it’s more like he’s sucking, and his hands are greedy like a child’s. They pinch like a child’s would too, bruising me, and he’s deaf to what I’m trying to tell him with mine. I can’t get away because he’s lying on me, pinning me, his hips pursuing me as I try to pull back. There’s no rhythm to what’s he’s doing. If sex at its best is like music, Charlie’s the brass section falling down the stairs.

  “Stop.”

  My hands are on his chest now, pushing. And I don’t know if I imagine it but he makes this noise then, his lips fat and wet near my ear. Shhh. A comforting sound, or one that’s supposed to be.

  I push harder.

  “Stop,” I insist. “Don’t.”

  But I’m weak. Powerless. Charlie keeps thrusting, more urgently now, and it hurts, it physically hurts, and I want to shout out but I can’t find the breath, can’t keep hold of it long enough against Charlie’s shoving to turn it into words.

  I’m weeping as he comes. Silently, each tear a little acid drip of shame. As soon as he withdraws I press him backward and I roll until I’m sitting, my legs over the side of the couch and my hair a curtain around my face.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Charlie says. I can see him from the corner of my eye and he’s sweating as he snarls. He doesn’t look so pretty anymore. I can’t believe I ever thought he did.

  “That wasn’t rape,” he says. “Don’t you dare try and claim that was fucking rape.”

  I shake my head, as much a shudder. “Just go,” I say. Quietly but I know he hears.

  “You wanted it. You were practically begging for it. No way was that ever fucking rape!”

  “Just go!” I scream, spinning, and it doesn’t take him long because his shoes are still on and his jeans are down around his ankles. “Slag,” he spits as a thank-you-for-having-me and doesn’t slam the door, I suspect, only because he’s thinking ahead now, about what it will sound like, about what the neighbors will say if anyone asks and they have the impression he left in a hurry.

  And I’m alone again. As alone as I’ll ever be. My father laughing across my shoulder. Still winning.

/>   —

  I’M TWENTY-FOUR AND I’m together with Jack. Finally, committed, together. And that place I worried I’d never find? A safe place? This is it. My father can’t get to me here. He’s trapped outside now, on the periphery. And I can keep him there. So long as I’m with Jack there’s nothing my father can do to hurt me.

  It’s what I tell myself.

  It’s what I come to believe.

  —

  AND NOW JACK’S gone.

  I’m twenty-eight and I’m four, seven, nine, twelve and all those other ages all over again. I’m lost. Alone. Weak. Beaten. I’m all the things my father made me. I’m what you get when you add minus numbers, a figure less than the sum of her parts.

  And I’m not ready. I thought I could be. I thought I would be. But without Jack . . . I just don’t think I can handle this on my own. I forgot how strong Jack made me, what I was like before. But it’s all coming back to me. I’ve come full circle, back to how I was at the beginning. It’s like the lights have gone out and all I can do now is sit and wait, as my father draws closer through the dark.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  JACK

  “HOW COULD YOU not tell us?”

  This from my mother. So far my father has barely said a word. He’s still taking it all in, I think. Trying to. His expression is as inscrutable to me as ever, and it’s always been a thing for my old man never to appear ruffled, but I’m fairly sure if something’s going to break him, this will. At the moment, though, he’s sitting rigid in his fixed-to-the-floor plastic chair, as though he were part of the furnishings, too. We’ve pretty much got the room to ourselves, but it’s like he’s trying to avoid attracting attention. He’s always claimed he doesn’t give a toot what other people think of him (he uses that exact phrase as well: give a toot), but I’ve always sort of known that was bullshit. I admired it anyway, adopted it as a mantra for myself, but as with so many of my father’s standards, it’s one I’ve failed to live up to.

  “This has been coming . . . how long did you say? How is it you never thought to tell us?”