The first was Jessalyn beckoning, her short red skirt in high contrast with the white bedding and the tan of her thighs. She moved her hand in a half wave—a come-hither motion that had a snake charmer’s pull. There was the turned-up corner of her lacquered mouth, the same color as her skirt. Not a smile exactly but not a sneer. A little Mona Lisa twist for his pleasure.
Then the first full physical contact; their two bodies crushed together hard in that wave of need. The clothes shed somehow. Her fingers on buttons and zippers. Her hands everywhere. It was Jessalyn who had stripped them both bare. Joe hadn’t done anything himself. They were clothed, then naked. It was effortless and so fast he could barely remember it happening. Joe’s brain moved on to the next frame: the curve of her hip, the give of her body as he pressed himself into it, and her warm breath in his ear. The picture scrambled and sleep tugged at him, pulling him into sated blackness. Joe felt himself giving way. And then Jessalyn moved, her leg peeling away from his and creating a cold spot where their bodies had been joined. He felt the tension in her body now—she was ready to get up, change the venue—and just like that Joe was wide awake and returned unceremoniously to his senses. The contours of the room—soft and dreamlike only moments before—came into sharp hard focus as Joe cleared his throat and raised himself. Jessalyn smiled at him, and something about the smile caught Joe by unpleasant surprise. It took him a second to identify what it was that was troubling him.
The smile was … polite.
It was the kind of smile a person gave you when you stood on line together at Starbucks or caught each other’s eyes on a train, an acknowledgment of the other’s existence and a gesture of wordless, if bland, goodwill. It was not the sort of smile one received or gave after fierce, sweaty, illicit sex. Joe felt the slightest tremor at the base of his spine. He looked away, blinked hard, and turned back to her. Now there was no smile, just a look of wantonness and something else in her expression that Joe took for satisfaction. She licked her smudged lips and smoothed the hair out of her eyes.
“Hey,” she said. “You okay?”
It struck Joe as an odd question, but it didn’t worry him. Not like the shadow of that strange smile. She was holding herself still as if she was waiting for some kind of signal from him that she could get up, or get dressed, or maybe … maybe she wanted more. He ran his hand up the length of her thigh, stopping just short of the professionally waxed V between her legs and letting his fingers linger there. If only he could stay there, he thought. Just there. Forever.
“I’m great,” he said. “I mean, really great.”
“Good,” she said and grabbed his hand, lacing her fingers into his and then, miraculously, guiding those fingers home. “For a minute there you looked kind of worried.” She was talking, Joe thought, talking and rubbing and now making little mmm noises of satisfaction. He was acting in his own porno and this was the part, he thought, where the couple did it again. He lunged, his mouth hungry, but she laughed.
“Baby,” she said. “You think we have time?”
Joe didn’t know if it was because she used the term baby, which nobody had ever called him before and which rang loud and wrong in his ear, but something about her words stopped him.
“No,” he said. “And we shouldn’t. I mean …”
“I know,” she said and instantly the look of desire on her face changed to one of concern. Polite concern. Joe thought again about how he hadn’t planned any of this, but now he wondered if perhaps Jessalyn had. He remembered the moment he’d gotten out of his car that Sunday afternoon after he’d backed into her as she was coming out of her driveway. Had she known it then? Had she seen the two of them here on her tangled sheets on another hot Sunday afternoon no more than a few weeks later? Had he?
No, he hadn’t. Not even when he’d gone over to see her with his insurance information soon after their fender bender. Nor when he’d chatted her up at the block party. It hadn’t occurred to him then that there would ever be more than anything between the two of them other than flirting (had it?). Even later, when he’d dropped by again to give her the rest of the insurance documentation, it hadn’t been for anything more than a bit of company—a bit of attention—just a reason to get away from the crushing female oppression in his own house. And how could he be blamed for that? Because there was nothing Joe could do or say or be to either his wife or his daughter that would remove him from the rank of perpetual asshole, and it had been that way from the moment Diana had arrived.
He ran his hands through his hair and moved to the edge of the bed. He was light-headed—almost dizzy. And then the guilt hit hard and suddenly. He could see Allison in his mind’s eye, her face aging with submerged anger, her eyes filled with constant accusation. Her progression from quiet hurt to silent scorn had been so quick. He’d tried talking to her, tried leaving her alone. He’d tried being angry—the best defense being a good offense—but that hadn’t worked either. He’d even floated the idea of going to see a marriage counselor, although the very thought of it gave him indigestion. But Allison had shut him down there too. “What would be the point?” she’d asked him. “Why should we share our dirty laundry with someone else?”
“What is it about our laundry that’s so dirty, Allison?” he’d asked. “Can you even tell me?”
“I think you know the answer to that question, Joe.”
“I’d like to hear your version. That’s why I’m asking.”
Allison didn’t bother to answer that one in words. She lifted the glass to her lips and that was response enough. At least she’d laid off the booze a little the last couple of weeks, saving her slide into drunkenness until after 5:00 PM. He supposed there was some small mercy in that. And at least she was a quiet drunk. Of course, it didn’t make up for the fact that she’d taken a leave from work for no good reason. Exactly the wrong time, Joe thought, to be taking time off, because they needed that second income. It was her way, Joe supposed, of making sure that neither Diana nor her baby stayed with them one second longer than necessary. Of course, he’d just let Allison do it, let her put in for a leave from teaching with hardly an argument. She’d counted on that, Joe realized, sure that he’d be too guilty to protest. Well, now he was.
“You want a beer or something?” Jessalyn was standing over him in her bra and skirt, sliding her feet into her high-heeled mules. How had she managed to get dressed that quickly? Joe had the sudden paranoid thought that Allison had set this whole thing up. When was the last time she’d gone out on a Sunday? Certainly not since Diana had been living with them. But today of all days she was dressed before noon, relatively sober, and headed out “shopping,” not to return until “dinnertime.” He hadn’t thought about it too much then, except maybe to allow himself the faintest glimmer of hope that she was going to pull herself together, but now he wondered if it was to purposely leave him alone so that he’d go over to Jessalyn’s house as soon as Diana lugged herself over to the Werners’ (as regular an event as the sunrise). And that was exactly what he had done. And maybe Allison was back already and waiting for him to come home coated with the unmistakable smell of sex, which could penetrate even the strongest of vodka fumes so that she could pound the final nail into the coffin that housed their dead marriage.
But no, that was ridiculous. He hadn’t been here that long and he would have heard Allison’s car if she’d come home. It wasn’t as if the house were that far away. He was overreacting. But it was also the beginning of what Joe knew would turn into the long slow burn of panicky guilt.
“I’m okay, thanks,” he said, finally pulling himself up and picking up his clothes, which were not in a pile on the floor as he would have thought, but semifolded and draped over the arm of the white overstuffed chair in Jessalyn’s bedroom. “I should probably get home.”
“You sure?” She smiled, brilliant and sweet, and rubbed his back a little as he stepped into his shorts. She was stunning, Joe thought, and not nearly as dumb or flighty as she made herself out to be.
She grazed his lips with hers—not really a kiss, but more than enough to get him aroused all over again. “Seems like you could use it,” she said.
“I probably could,” Joe said. Because it takes balls to fool around with a woman who lives on your own street, he added silently. Definitely enough to make a person thirsty. “I’m going to go, Jessalyn,” he said.
“Hey,” she said, running her hand up his arm and squeezing his shoulder, “call me Jess, would you? Jessalyn feels so formal, you know?”
“Okay.”
Jessalyn gave out a little sigh. She looked confused or undecided. Joe couldn’t tell which and he suspected she didn’t know either. It was another slightly off expression to match the polite smile as if she felt the need to display the appropriate emotion at the appropriate time. He couldn’t shake the feeling that everything about her was just a little bit staged or manufactured as if there was always a camera rolling to catch her reactions. But maybe he was just too old. At forty-eight he had missed growing up in a reality-show culture where people were always the stars of their own shows and every stupid thought and action was considered worthy of an audience. Jessalyn—only in her twenties—had even been on one of those shows. For a second it made the age gap between them seem like a canyon. But then Joe decided it actually made her more endearing. That don’t-know-any-better narcissism gave her a weird kind of innocence and he found it very appealing.
“Look, Joe,” she said, “I don’t know what this is, but …” She sighed again—a little puff of air between them. “I know you’re not the kind of guy who just …”
“We don’t have to talk about this,” he said, and then laughed in spite of himself. “At least, not yet.”
“I just wanted you to know that I’m okay with, you know, whatever you want to do.”
“What do you mean, Jess?”
“I mean, you lead, Joe. You’ve got … I know what you’ve got, is what I’m saying.”
She was looking at him not politely now, but with real understanding and sympathy. He hadn’t noticed before now just how blue her eyes were. Or how lovely. And then he thought he could fall in love with this girl if he let himself. It wasn’t an unpleasant notion. Joe knew he was on a precipice. He had a glimpse—fleeting but unmistakable—of what was in store: furtive meetings, jealousies, a great deal of sex, whispered endearments, maybe even love. If Joe did nothing, if he just let it happen, it would become a runaway train and he would be powerless to do anything but just let it run right over him.
“Thank you, Jess,” he said. “I mean it.”
“You’re okay, then?”
“Of course I’m okay.”
She took his hand and led him out of the bedroom, down the hall, and to the top of the stairs. It occurred to him for the first time that Jessalyn’s bedroom—or at least the room they’d just been in—was not the master bedroom. All the houses on the street had the same basic floor plan, Joe knew, and when she’d taken him upstairs earlier he’d had a disconcerting moment when he felt as if he was heading to the bedroom in his own house. All of that had vanished the minute she’d pulled him past the master bedroom and into the smaller one at the end of the hall. But now he wondered why she hadn’t used the larger room.
“Do you have an office here?” he asked her. “I didn’t think you worked at home.”
Jessalyn bristled. “I don’t,” she said quickly. “Or, I guess, sometimes I do have f-friends come over for, you know, like … facials? Or, um, waxings?” She turned to him, her face flushed. “I’m not really supposed to do that at home,” she said. “Well, I mean, I am, I have a license and everything, but I’m not supposed to use the products.… I’m an aesthetician. I told you that, right? Anyway, why do you ask?”
“I just … no reason. I was just wondering about … the other bedroom. It’s bigger, isn’t it?”
Jessalyn’s blue eyes grew icy and hard, and for a moment she looked much older than she was. “I know what people say about me on this street, Joe. I’m not an idiot.”
“What?” Joe was genuinely baffled. Now what had he done? “I never said you were an idiot, Jess.”
She looked away from him. He could see the muscles of her jaw working, the long fair line of her neck, the soft blond hair caught behind her ear. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Of course you didn’t.” She kissed him. “Go ahead,” she said. “I just have to visit the … restroom. I’ll be down in a minute.”
“No problem,” Joe said. “I have to get back. I’ll just let myself out, okay?”
“Okay, Joe.” She stood there for a moment, her head tilted slightly to one side, and then turned around and disappeared into the bathroom.
Joe’s paranoia returned in a sweaty rush. Now he had to get out of her house and back to his own as quickly and as invisibly as possible. He checked his clothing for stray strands of blond hair, brushing imaginary evidence off his shoulders. His hands needed washing. Everything needed washing. He jogged down the stairs, his to-do list for the rest of the day crystallizing into one item: a hot shower. So intent was he on closing the distance between himself and his own bathroom that he kept his head down as he shut her front door and strode back to his house. He didn’t look up in fact until it was almost too late to avoid plowing into Diana, who was standing—a pregnant stone statue—in the middle of their driveway.
Joe felt every second of his life compressed into the look that passed between them. Every mistake he’d ever made—every small wrong he’d ever committed—was reflected in the dark glass of her eyes. Perspiration crawled down his back.
He couldn’t look away from her and he couldn’t speak.
“I need a ride to the hospital,” she said. “I think I’m in labor.”
october 2007
chapter 9
Dorothy sat with her right leg over her left and her hands in her lap. But then, worried that this pose might look too casual and not anxious or pained enough, she uncrossed her legs and rested her hands on her knees. She furrowed her brow and squinted against the fluorescent light in the waiting room. And then, for good measure, she rubbed her eyes, her temples, and the back of her neck. She stole a glance to see if either of the girls at the reception desk was watching her, but one was busy with the headset blinking at her ear and the other was talking to an elderly woman about the best time to schedule a flu shot.
Dorothy wondered how long she would have to wait. This had been a sick call, not a regularly scheduled visit, and sometimes the wait times varied depending on where you were in the queue or how sick you were. But Dorothy was sure that she’d managed to convey an impressive constellation of symptoms when she’d called reception earlier. She’d fallen, she explained, and had twisted something in her back. And when she’d landed, she thought she’d heard a kind of pop. It was silly; she never should have been on the ladder in the first place because she’d been having dizzy spells from her sinuses, which had also been flaring up. It had really hurt her at the time, but she hadn’t done anything about it, hoping it would just go away. But now she was having terrible back pain and headaches as well. Also, she was having trouble sleeping, probably from the pain. Anyway, she thought it best if she came to see Dr. Smithfield at this point: Did the doctor have any openings today? The receptionist told Dorothy that Dr. Smithfield was on vacation, but that Dr. Fakoor had an opening at 3:00 PM if Dorothy wanted to come in then. If it had been any other time, any other circumstance, Dorothy would have waited rather than see a doctor with a name like Fakoor. But these were extraordinary circumstances and Dorothy was forced to go outside her comfort zone. She thanked the receptionist and took the appointment without even asking if Dr. Fakoor was male or female.
There were only three other people in the waiting room, a man and two women, and none of them seemed visibly ill. Dorothy tried to observe them without making eye contact but it was difficult. Nobody, it seemed, was interested in reading magazines today. She just wanted to get through this as quickly as possible, obtain a prescription or ho
pefully two, and get home undetected. Not that home would offer any peace—home was the reason she was here today, after all—but at least it offered familiarity. Dorothy’s things were at home: her casserole dishes, her gardening tools, her photo albums—items she could look at and touch and reassure herself that the external structure of her life was still firmly in place. It felt strange to even think it, but these days Dorothy had greater faith in such inanimate objects than in people. Objects—things like dishwashers, cars, and televisions that one counted on to get one through the day—sometimes didn’t work correctly and sometimes they just broke, but they never disappointed you or, worse, betrayed your trust in who they were. And in this case she was thinking about Kevin, a person who had emerged from her own body and yet might as well have come directly from Mars for all he acknowledged that and for all she knew him.
But Dorothy had known him once. She was sure of that.
Kevin had been a very sensitive baby, sweet but never completely happy. The littlest things could make him cry. It began when he was an infant when merely substituting squash for bananas was enough to set him off weeping like his small world was coming to an end. Later, if he couldn’t find the right piece for a puzzle or figure out how to keep his toy trains on their tracks, his eyes would fill with frustrated tears and he’d start bawling. He never hurled his toys, Dorothy remembered, or threw tantrums in an attempt to destroy the things that were causing him grief, but he was constantly—bitterly—disappointed when they did. When he started school, friends were difficult for him too. The loyalty he expected from his fellow kindergartners involved allegiance to him above all else. Kevin expected his friends to sit with him at lunchtime and play the games that he wanted to play during recess. He directed all the activities during playdates, creating his own rules and giving specific directions as to how his toys were to be handled. Games were also a problem, especially at school. “Kevin gets very upset if he doesn’t win,” Dorothy heard from more than one teacher. “Perhaps you could practice some of these games at home so he can improve those social skills.”
The Neighbors Are Watching Page 10