“I can’t change anything I’ve done in the past,” he said, finally. “If I had it to do over again, don’t you think I would have told you about Yvonne and Diana? God, Allison, if I’d even thought—”
“You’ve told me that already, Joe.”
“But you don’t believe me, Allison. You never have.” He could feel his voice rising and he worked to bring it down. He didn’t want to wake Zoë. “Why do you think I would hide it from you?”
“Because you—” Allison cut herself off with a violent sob. Joe hadn’t even realized that she was crying. He leaned over to her, and then as if moving through water, he reached across and touched her face, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “Allison, Allie, please, what … please tell me.…”
Allison’s whole body seemed to clench and she struggled to speak through her tears. “If-if y-you’d told me,” she said, her chest heaving, “it w-would have been harder.”
“What?” he said. “What would have been harder?”
“I wanted it,” she said and exhaled. “I wanted to have that baby, Joe.”
He stared down at her face in the dark, at the moonlight shining on her tears. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Was it possible that everything Allison had done since Diana had come—everything she had not done—was caused by this one thing? He remembered the last time she’d brought it up, the day Diana had arrived. They’d talked about it and he’d assumed she’d moved on. Joe knew Allison had never felt right about the abortion, but he would never have imagined that it had poisoned her to this extent.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I am, Allison. I’m sorry for …”—he fought with himself, but only for a split second—“… everything I’ve ever done to hurt you. I’ve never meant to. Never.”
“All that time, Joe. It’s been so hard, you don’t know. You can’t imagine how I feel and you’ve never tried.”
“I didn’t know,” he said. He stroked the hair off her face and she let him. It felt so good to be touching her again. He hadn’t realized how desperately he needed it. “I’ve done so many things wrong, Allison. I know that now. I’ve fucked up horribly. With you and … with Diana. I wish I could go back in time. I can’t. I’m sorry, Allison. I’m so sorry. But all I can do is go forward. Allison, you have to forgive me. Please forgive me.”
She didn’t say anything for so long Joe was sure she was forming a way to tell him that she could never forgive him his sins—especially the ones he hadn’t admitted to—and wanted a divorce. Which was why he was so surprised when she finally spoke.
“I didn’t leave her by herself,” she said. “I wouldn’t have done that. It wouldn’t have mattered how much I’d had to drink. I was sure Diana was in there with her.”
“I know,” he said, but truthfully he didn’t. He’d never been sure about that but his own guilt had prevented him from exploiting hers.
“No you don’t,” she said, reading his mind. “But I am telling you, Joe, and you have to believe me.”
“I do,” he said. “But Allison …” He sighed, moved a little closer to her. Their bodies were touching now. The heat of her skin made his heart beat faster. “Can we … are we going to make it through this?” It wasn’t what he had wanted to ask her and he cursed the words as soon as they left his mouth.
“Do we have to decide that right now?” she said. “Joe, I …”
But Joe didn’t let her finish. He had stopped thinking. He drew her to him and kissed her on the mouth, softly at first then hard with need. She let him, yielding and then clutching at him, pulling him in. He leaned into her, his hands finding all the places on her body that he knew so well and had gone so long without, his desire so quick and intense he was almost choking on it. Just before he gave in to it, before he lost himself in her, a sliver of thought stung him. She was saving it up—her resentment, her knowledge of his affair, all of it to use later. It was there for a sharp flashing second and then it was gone. He thought, Maybe she loves me again, and after that there was only sensation and release.
When he woke up it was still dark. He and Allison were still locked together. It could have been two hours later or ten minutes, he couldn’t tell. Zoë was asleep and there was no dawn in the sky. He stroked Allison’s arm and she sighed; she was also awake.
“Allison,” he said so softly he could barely hear it himself, “do you think she’s still alive?”
She found his hand and took it in her own. It felt like an absolution, but not an answer. “There’s something I should tell you,” she said. “Something you should know.”
february 2008
chapter 21
Joe stood in the jewelry department of Macy’s staring at rings and bracelets but not really seeing any of them. Choosing something—anything—seemed suddenly an insurmountable task even though he’d felt fine on the drive over and even as he’d traversed the length of the mall, passing the dolphin fountain and the Russian woman hawking cell phone and iPod covers. In fact he’d made it all the way to these glass cases before he came to a crashing halt and felt himself glaze over. He didn’t know why he’d chosen to come to this corner of the store anyway. He needed to be in the men’s department looking for a black suit. But when he’d gotten there he’d walked right through the shirt racks and tie tables and past the colognes and toward the pink and red heart displays of the jewelry department as if propelled. And now that he was here it was like he was trapped in amber.
“Can I help you find something, sir?” A middle-age woman in an unflattering red suit and tortoiseshell glasses smiled at him, tilting forward a little so that her midsection grazed the edge of the case. “Are you looking for something for Valentine’s Day?” She flicked her eyes toward his left hand, looking for a wedding ring and finding it. “Something for your wife?”
Something for my wife for Valentine’s Day, Joe thought, and something for me to wear to my daughter’s funeral. He wondered what kind of reaction he’d get from this woman—Jennifer was her name, it was there on her brass-effect name tag—if he repeated that to her. And then he felt bad for even entertaining the notion of speaking his thoughts out loud. It wasn’t her fault after all. Why fuck up someone else’s day just because yours was terminal.
“Yes,” he managed to get out and hoped that his voice didn’t sound as strained as it felt. “My wife.”
“Are you looking for something formal or maybe a little more playful?”
Playful? For a moment, as he struggled to understand what might constitute a “playful” piece of jewelry, Joe thought he’d lost his ability to interpret social nuances. He decided her question must be a new way of asking him how much he wanted to spend and so gave her what he thought was the safest answer.
“How about something in between?” he said.
“We have some beautiful heart pendants right over here,” she said. “We have them in white or yellow gold and these have diamonds as well. You can’t go wrong with diamonds, can you?”
“No,” Joe said, “you can’t.” He didn’t want to look at pendants with Jennifer, he didn’t want to have to talk about whether Allison preferred yellow or white gold, and he certainly didn’t have money to buy anything with diamonds, but Joe needed the distraction. It was obviously why he was here at this counter to begin with and not trying on pants and jackets. So he allowed himself to be directed to another case where Jennifer pointed obligingly to a number of sparkling necklaces laid out for maximum effect on black velvet.
He couldn’t stop the thoughts of Diana that followed.
They wouldn’t see Diana laid out like that in a velvet box. What was left of her body was better left unseen by everyone who had known her and especially those who had loved her. There had been a debate, albeit a short and painful one, about whether or not to have her remains cremated. Joe had thought that would be best for many reasons, most of which he didn’t choose to share with Yvonne. But Yvonne was adamant from the start. After all that had happened to her daughter, Yvonne felt she deserved
the respect of a proper burial and a place to rest.
Joe couldn’t argue with that, nor did he want to.
So they’d picked plots and caskets, arranged for services. But no, he thought, that wasn’t exactly right because they hadn’t done it; Allison had taken over together with Yvonne. Suggesting cremation had been Joe’s main contribution, and after that he’d just gone along. Because since they’d found her, he’d been mostly in this state—hazy and swimming through the details of his life as if he were underwater. He kept finding himself in the middle of tasks that he didn’t remember starting or conversations in which he’d lost the thread. Focusing was a struggle. His reactions and words seemed to be on some kind of time delay, even though internally his mind was whirring. Like right now. These necklaces lying still on their velvet beds were killing him. He had to look away, had to move, but it took a supreme effort.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “These aren’t really her style, you know?”
“Well,” Jennifer answered, “we have some others without hearts. Or would you rather look at rings? Or maybe earrings?”
There were too many choices, too many decisions Joe had to make. She was looking at him now with something like concern on her face. Or was that just polite anticipation? There were so many things Joe couldn’t read anymore. Those horrible thoughts just kept intruding, flooding him with waves of guilt and sadness.
“Yes,” he said, “maybe earrings.”
She guided him away from the dead necklaces and over to another display. Joe watched helplessly as she pointed at this pair and that, babbling on about hearts and birthstones and specials that were going on for a limited time only. What season was his wife, she wanted to know.
“Season?”
“You know, is she a fall or a winter or a …”
It was a mistake coming here, but now it was too late to undo it so Joe channeled all his energy into trying to remember what kind of jewelry he had bought Allison in their previous life together so that he could find something now to match it. From some recess in his memory he managed to pull out a ghost of Valentine’s Day past and recall that long ago he’d given Allison a charm bracelet and promised to add charms to it every time there was a special occasion to be commemorated. He hadn’t gotten very far; there was a golden apple for when she started one school year and a tiny house when they’d moved into their place and there was probably one other that he couldn’t remember. He hadn’t seen that bracelet in forever, but she had to still have it somewhere.
“Do you have any charms?” he said. “Like, for a bracelet?”
“Well … we don’t really have that many. If you wanted something custom, you’d have to look—”
“Just a heart or something,” he said. “Make it easy.”
Again, they walked the same half square between displays but this time the box she brought out was lined with white satin. Joe was starting to feel light-headed and nauseated. Inside, there was a brushed gold heart, a key, a palm tree, and a crown. And there, in the corner, was a tiny gold cell phone. In a flash, Diana was in his head again. They’d never have found her without that cell phone. They’d have spent the rest of their lives wondering. Everyone said that not knowing was worse even than finding her dead the way they had. It had happened to other missing girls, other families who never found out what had happened to their daughters and who had their lives slowly corroded by false hope. It was better to have closure, they said, even this way, with this outcome. And they wouldn’t have had it, their lives forever caught in the what-if, but for the cell phone, abandoned and half-buried just like Diana, that their new neighbors had found in their garage.
Joe pointed to the heart and said, “I think that one will do. Since it’s Valentine’s Day.”
“Okay,” she said. “And would you like me to gift wrap that for you?”
“If you have a box,” Joe said, “that would be great.”
“Would you like to look at anything else?”
“No, but …” Joe reached into the box and pulled the cell phone charm free. “I’d like to take this as well.”
Happy for the addition to a sale that was below what she’d hoped for, Jennifer opted not to push for any more. She ran his credit card and Joe was relieved that it went through without a problem. He’d been piling on the debt and not really paying attention to his balances, and even though Allison was back at work, he was getting pretty deep in the hole. There was Zoë and everything she needed and then, of course, Diana. Burying her. The funeral. Death was expensive. You had to balance it out, Joe thought. All the sorrow and misery that went along with it was free after all. And there were endless amounts of it to go around.
Jennifer was finished with him by then and had to be asked twice to leave the cell phone charm out of the gift box. “I’m just going to take this one,” Joe said and slipped it into his pocket. Finally, Joe managed to escape the jewelry department, clutching his small bag. He headed in the direction of men’s suits only to find himself drifting again, this time to the escalators, and going up. He got off on the second floor, not even knowing where he was headed but finding it anyway—the children’s department. He wandered through girls’ and boys’ sections and came at last to the infants’. Fluffy blankets and bibs, hooded towels and tiny socks. He wanted to reach out and touch all of it, run his fingers over the softness and feel soothed, but the last thing he needed was to draw the attention of another aggressive salesperson, who in any case would probably take such behavior the wrong way. So he milled through the baby items with purpose as if he knew exactly where to find what he was looking for. But he didn’t think they even made what he was looking for. Were there black clothes for babies as small as Zoë? It seemed he was going to do everything in his power to avoid buying himself a funeral suit, even if that meant looking for one for Zoë. But she should have something to wear to her mother’s funeral even if she’d never know that mother. Joe and Allison had started the process to formally adopt Zoë, but none of them—Yvonne included—had caught their breaths enough to discuss what they would tell Zoë about Diana. She wasn’t even five months old, Joe thought. Not even a year. Not even a half. How would they ever be able to tell her—to make her understand?
He saw a rack of miniature dresses and he rifled through them, searching. So many shades of pink and red. Valentine’s Day again, he thought. You were supposed to deck out your girl babies in these predetermined colors of the season so they could learn early the need for fake romance and store-bought sentiment. He felt in his pocket for the cell phone charm and pressed it tightly between his thumb and forefinger. He wanted to punch something. He wanted to see something break. There was nothing black on the rack. It was too late for those black-velvet-and-white-lace Christmas dresses he was sure he’d seen before, and besides, most of the garments here were marked 12 months or 2T, which he knew were too big for little Zoë.
She was small for her age, the pediatrician said, but she didn’t have any problems feeding, and she was healthy, according to the doctor, so it wasn’t cause for concern. She was in the bottom fifth percentile for length and weight, but she wasn’t off the chart. You never knew at this stage anyway, the doctor said; they could catch up in a heartbeat. But Allison had taken it very seriously. She’d started looking into all kinds of organic “starter” foods for Zoë, throwing herself into the task with one-pointed dedication. He gave way here to Allison, who had done her research, but he had his own theories about Zoë. Unlike her mother and despite her delicate appearance, Joe knew that Zoë was and would always be a survivor. Look what she’d overcome already—before she’d even been born.
It seemed certain now that Diana had taken at least some drugs before she’d given birth to Zoë, even though if Kevin was to be believed Diana only smoked a little pot and even that not regularly when she was pregnant. But Kevin had made himself very difficult to believe. Joe reminded himself constantly that he was just a kid—and a scared one at that—but if he’d spent just
a little less time worrying about his own ass and a little more about Diana … Joe still didn’t know how much of the truth he’d ever really know. He remembered the day Diana gave birth to Zoë, how he’d had to tell her to go change her clothes and wash off the smell of clinging pot smoke.
He hadn’t thought … hadn’t really believed she was into anything more serious.
That was another thing that concerned Allison, although, to Joe’s great relief, she shared it with only him and not Yvonne. Even a limited exposure to drugs in utero could negatively affect a baby, Allison told him. Even a small amount could lead to developmental delays and motor skill problems. And if you didn’t catch these things early, it was too late to change the course. They’d have to keep a very careful eye on Zoë, make sure that if she needed early intervention to address any problems, they could get it for her. If Diana was a regular user …
“I think she’s fine,” Joe had told Allison more than once. It was true, he had no experience dealing with babies or young children, but you didn’t have to be a specialist to see that Zoë was a remarkably calm and alert baby. She did everything she was supposed to do—recognized people, smiled, gurgled, ate, and slept. And although again he couldn’t be sure, Joe sensed that she was also watching them all and forming her own opinions about the people around her. There was a light in Zoë’s eyes that had nothing to do with her being brain damaged from drugs her mother had taken. He allowed, even appreciated, Allison’s concern, but was convinced that they would never have to consider early intervention or neurologists or any other specialists for Zoë.
But then, Joe thought, his opinion plus a dollar would get you a cup of coffee. Somewhere. Diana had been living with him—he’d seen her every day—and he hadn’t known what was going on with her. He would never have guessed that she was so strung out that she would leave her newborn alone and run off in search of a fix. And maybe it hadn’t happened exactly like that. They would probably never know exactly what had happened and maybe that was a small blessing in the midst of all this horror. But the coroner had enough of Diana left to determine that there had been a lethal amount of narcotics in her system. Drugs had killed her, according to the ME’s report, not the kid who had given them to her. Not the kid who had then panicked when she overdosed, wrapped her in garbage bags, driven her out to the edge of the burn area, and buried her body in a shallow grave. Was it better to know this—to accept it as the truth? It was a question of who you were going to blame the most, how the guilt was to be apportioned, where you were going to find room for the anger and grief.
The Neighbors Are Watching Page 28