Bystanders

by Tara Laskowski

  ***

  Myra was cleaning dishes when she saw the neighbor come outside with her baby. She wiped her hands, picked up Eva from her swing and walked outside with the pretense of getting the mail. She waved at the neighbor casually, and when she smiled back, Myra crossed the street to talk.

  “Hi, I’m Myra,” she said.

  “Right. I’m Elly,” the woman said, stretching out a free hand. “How are things going with the baby?”

  “Oh, we’re doing well. How about you?”

  “Great. I mean, it’s hard, but we’re doing pretty well. Liam might be teething now, I’m not sure. You know. Always something new.”

  Myra nodded. “Well, that’s good.” She felt nervous, like she was on a first date. “I just wanted to tell you that the other night I think our video monitor signals got crossed. You have one, right? I woke up in the middle of the night and saw another baby and it scared the hell out of me, as you can imagine.” Myra laughed, shifted Eva in her arms. “I wasn’t sure if that was happening on your end, but I just wanted to make you aware.”

  “Oh wow, really?” Elly looked slightly ill at ease. “Oh, that’s so weird. No, I haven’t noticed that.” She blinked. “How did you know it was us?”

  Now Myra felt a little odd. “Oh, maybe it wasn’t. I just assumed, since he’s around the same age. Airplane pictures in his bedroom.”

  Elly laughed. “Yeah. Wow! That’s so weird! I’ll have to see if we can change the channel or something.”

  “I mean, I’ve read about this happening, so I guess it’s not that uncommon. But I just wanted to let you know so you don’t get freaked out if it happens on your end.”

  They chatted for a few more minutes, and then Elly said she had a doctor’s appointment and they parted. “Oh,” Myra said, turning back, “I just wanted to say that I’m home, you know, if you ever need anything or wanted to go for coffee or something.” She blushed a little then, hoping she didn’t sound too desperate. “I mean, just let me know. I know you have guests visiting now, but maybe after they leave.”

  Elly looked puzzled. “We don’t have people visiting.”

  “Oh, I thought you had a little boy there.” Myra fumbled with her hair.

  The woman shook her head. “Nope. Just us. That’s about all we can handle now. My mom was here for a few days and I basically had to kick her out. Drove me nuts.” She paused, pulled out her car keys. “But yeah, that would be great. Coffee or something. Just let me know.”

  ***

  Myra saw the little boy again that night. He was standing in the doorway this time, watching the sleeping baby. He kept putting his hands together slowly, like he was clapping but not making any noise.

  This time she woke up Corey, shook him, and jabbed at the monitor. “Look at this. Look. That’s a little boy, right?”

  Corey rubbed his eyes and pulled on his glasses with a big sigh. He sat up and took the monitor from her. Then he glared at her. “It’s Eva.”

  Myra grabbed the monitor back from him and nearly started to cry. “Maybe the signals only cross in certain parts of the house.”

  Corey sighed, fell back on the bed, and pulled the covers up. “I have a 7:00 a.m. meeting, Myra. Seven a.m.”

  “There’s a boy in that room, Corey. I’m telling you.”

  “So what?”

  “So she told me she didn’t have a little boy, that they didn’t have anyone staying over.”

  “Maybe you heard wrong,” he said, his voice muffled under the sheet.

  “I didn’t hear wrong, Corey,” she said, her voice high and desperate. She was on the verge of tears. It was the same emotional craze she felt in those first few weeks, always on edge, tense, feeling like she was not going to make it through the next hour, the night, the days and months ahead.

  “Well, Jesus, Myra, what do you think it is? Do you think they’ve kidnapped him and are holding him secretly? He doesn’t look like he’s being abused, does he? You need to go back to sleep. You don’t function well without sleep.”

  Well, I would function a lot better if you helped out more, she wanted to say, but she held her tongue knowing that would get her nowhere. Hands shaking, she went back to the guest room and flung herself on the bed. When she looked at the monitor again, Eva was lying on her side, her arms tugged loose from her swaddle.

  ***

  She googled “monitor signals crossing” and came up with nothing much to help. She found an article from a mother praising the new baby monitor technology that prevents that problem, and had the urge to email her. She found a lawsuit a man filed claiming his neighbor was watching his wife breastfeed their baby. She found advertisements, ratings, but nothing that told her how to fix the issue.

  She just wanted things to be normal. She didn’t like to feel out of place, to not be in control, to not understand. She didn’t like the clutter that suddenly took over their house—swings that Eva didn’t like, toys she didn’t play with, burp cloths and bibs and bottles and nipples and blankets. So many blankets. Myra could not walk through a room in their house without tripping on something, stepping over something, bumping into something. That alone was enough to drive someone mad.

  So the boy was just another unexplainable, irritating, and frightening piece of clutter in Myra’s life. What was the issue? Was the monitor not working properly? Who was the boy? Was it another neighbor besides Elly who also happened to have airplanes in their son’s room? Airplanes were a common theme, all over Baby’s R Us. All the rage, really. That was an explanation, maybe, but it didn’t make Myra feel much better. She was watching some other family, some unknown family around the corner or down the block. And they were probably watching her.

  And yet the alternatives were even worse: Elly was lying, for one, and why would she do that? Or even worse, Myra was hallucinating the whole thing, making it up in her mind, freaking herself out, and if Corey found out, what would he do?

  ***

  Just after Eva turned three months, Corey announced he had an out-of-town work conference he had to go to. Two nights alone with the baby—two full days and nights with no help whatsoever. “You have to tell them you can’t do it,” Myra told him. “You have to tell them. I’m sure they will understand.”

  “I can’t,” he said, not meeting her eyes. Myra realized how much she’d grown to hate him these days for doing this to her. For being so damn distant and not even caring about it.

  “You can’t? What do you mean you can’t? You mean you won’t,” Myra said. “Is Ann Marie going, too?”

  “Call your mom or someone. I’m sure you can find someone to come stay and help out.”

  “So she is. Well that’s just great.”

  “It’s work, Myra. Work. Our living, remember?” He sharpened the end of each word like a knife.

  Right, she remembered. Back when she first found out about the baby, eager, gleeful really, to give her two weeks notice at the office. And the looks her work friends gave her, are you sure you want to stay at home, words she chalked up to jealousy. They were envious of her new life—no longer would she be chained to an 8:00 to 4:30 work day, a half-hour lunch break, those endless dreary meetings.

  She didn’t know it would be like this. Corey taking the promotion that would force him to work longer days, to supervise Ann Marie and her short skirts and chirpy laugh. Myra’s days were so long, and no one to talk to but herself. Call your mom or someone, Corey said, but she didn’t want to call anyone. She didn’t want anyone else taking up her time, seeing how she wandered around the house, unsure what to do, how to be a mom.

  The first night Corey was gone, Eva sensed something was different and cried for two hours before falling to sleep past 10:00 p.m. Myra didn’t even bother to put on pajamas, she just tossed herself across the bed and fell asleep on top of the duvet. When she woke up, she was disoriented. It was dark. She heard a humming
of some kind coming from the monitor and when she picked it up she saw those airplane pictures above the crib, that sleeping, quiet good kid that wasn’t hers.

  “Oh for fuck’s sake,” she said aloud, her own voice somehow comforting in the dark. “For fuck’s sake. Aren’t you ever awake? Can’t you cry or something? Throw a fit? Something?”

  The screen went white for a few seconds, and she heard a noise, like a laugh or a cough. Then the room again, and the little boy she’d seen before standing in the middle of the room, looking at the baby. He’s going to wake him up, she thought, and Myra felt this dread, this sense of foreboding, danger. Fear. She didn’t want that little boy in the room with the baby.

  She wished she had the neighbors’ cell phone numbers. She might’ve called them, warned them, no matter how stupid it sounded. “You have a little boy in your baby’s room.” But then again, it wasn’t the neighbors across the street. It couldn’t be. They didn’t have another child.

  The boy turned and looked up at the monitor. He smiled, cocked his head in the way that most little kids do to melt your heart. But for Myra, it sent a shiver through her core. She felt hot, scared—that raw terror like the time she left her niece Samantha browsing in a jewelry store in the mall and then couldn’t find her. The boy was staring at the camera, staring at Myra, she thought, his eyes glowing green in the infrared. Then he laughed. A high giggle that seemed to echo, and came closer, lunging at the camera. Myra screamed. The monitor screen went fuzzy, and then the digital words NO SIGNAL printed in red. Through the wall, Eva’s cries. The baby was fine, just startled from Myra’s scream. She held her anyway, rocking her back and forth, trying to calm herself down more than the baby.

  They’re messing with me, she thought. She peered out the blinds in the baby’s room, looking across the street at their house. It was dark, no sign of life. Their garden flag flapped in the wind.

  Myra poured herself a glass of red wine and sat at the kitchen table in the dark. It was so quiet for once that she could hear the ticking of the wall clock. She drank the wine too fast. It had been so long since she’d had anything to drink. She’d wanted it, oh how she’d wanted it—read many articles online while pregnant about how a glass of wine here and there was no harm—but Corey was very adamant about it. And after the baby came, and Myra was trying breastfeeding, Corey still worried about the effects of any alcohol on Eva. Even now, he frowned on it, telling her it would just add to her depression.

  But he was away. So screw him.

  She poured herself another glass, slightly larger this time, and wandered into the hallway, peering through the front door’s glass to the street outside. The neighbors’ house was still dark. Buzzed from the wine, Myra wanted to turn on the baby monitor, even as a feeling of dread seeped through her. She wanted to know and yet didn’t.

  Myra carried a third glass of wine upstairs with her. She read for a while, keeping the bedroom door open so she could hear Eva if she started crying. Around 2:00 a.m. Eva did wake and Myra went into the baby’s room and swaddled her arms in a blanket so she wouldn’t startle herself. While waiting for her to settle, Myra peeked out at the house across the street and was surprised to find it lit up, lights on downstairs and up.

  Despite herself, she went and turned on the monitor, but for once the thing was working and showed Eva’s room. Myra walked around with it, feeling like some sad sort of spy, hoping for a signal to cross.

  She found it, in all places, in Eva’s room.

  Myra sat down in the glider and watched as Elly across the street paced back and forth, trying to soothe an obviously upset son. She turned the volume down so not to wake Eva, but it was clear that the neighbor’s baby was wailing and that Elly and her husband had no idea how to calm him.

  Serves you right, Myra thought, and then grew ashamed of herself. Who was she to be gleeful about someone else’s suffering? And yet, she couldn’t help herself to feel relieved that she wasn’t the only one having a tough time, that those perfect people across the street got their share of crap nights. She was beginning to think they had a bionic baby over there.

  Elly paced back and forth, and Myra could see the dark circles under her eyes in the unflattering lens of the camera.

  They finally got their son back to sleep. Turned off the lights. Closed the door. Myra saw all the lights in their house turn off, one by one. She imagined them settling in, pressing their faces to pillows, one ear tuned to any noise, any cry, coming from the other room. Eventually they would fall asleep, though. Myra should be sleeping, too. She knew with that same pitted dread in her stomach that Eva would be up in an hour or so, crying that pitiful lamb-like wail. Relentless.

  Myra started to turn off the monitor when she saw movement in Liam’s room. Something in the corner, behind the bookcase. And then, as if a spider was crawling down her back, she felt shivers. The boy. Standing up, stretching, like he’d been taking a nap back there. Or hiding.

  She watched with horror. He walked over, peered down at the sleeping baby. Then up at Myra. Smiling. Waving. Then he rocked backwards, holding on to the crib railing for support, and pushed himself up. She saw him sling his body into the crib. There was a loud noise, a horrible, scary cackle, and then her monitor went blank, black and white static like an old television.

  She gasped, her fingers to her throat. Shook the monitor. Turned it on and off. Out the window, she could see no lights being turned back on. No sign of life, no sign of anything at all. Oh god oh god, Myra said. Her head felt thick, foggy, from the wine and she suddenly hated herself, hated everything she did, every choice she ever made. She started crying. Should she go over there? Make sure everything is okay? What if that boy…

  And then the monitor screen came back. And the baby was still in his crib, still sleeping, like he’d been when his parents had put him down, and the little airplane model was spinning steadily like it always had, round and round and round.

  ***

  “It’s not depression really,” Myra was telling her doctor, fumbling with the white tissue paper she was sitting on in the exam room. “I just need something, I don’t know, to calm down a little. I feel so nervous.”

  She was aware she was not making eye contact. She was worried about sounding crazy. She didn’t want to have to go talk to anyone. It had taken all she had to call for this appointment, to come in.

  Just something to take the edge off.

  She hadn’t had more than two hours of sleep since the wine night.

  “Did you try making lists?” The doctor asked while she looked in Myra’s ears. She always looked at her ears, and Myra never knew why. “Lists saved me when I first had my son. Made me feel more in control, having written out the things I wanted to accomplish.”

  “No, no, I haven’t…”

  “Try that. And don’t make them too ambitious either,” she said, snapping closed her folder and tapping it on the desk. “Even if there are only two things on it—just try it.” She smiled, pursed her lips. “If not, come back to me and we’ll talk about taking something.”

  ***

  Things I Can’t Tell Corey

  He works too late.

  I have dreams that I break Eva’s fingers trying to get her shirt on.

  Eva has fallen off the bed twice when I wasn’t looking.

  I hate him.

  I want him to show me his cell phone text messages.

  The tortellini pasta dish he likes so much is not low-fat.

  The red tie he bought on sale is ugly.

  The Boy is going to kill the neighbor’s child and I don’t know what to do about it.

  ***

  Corey was reading the newspaper when Myra came downstairs. He looked up, smiled at her. “Where’s the monitor?”

  “I don’t use it anymore,” Myra said, sitting in the chair across from him. It had taken her almost an hour to put Eva down and she was
tired. She picked up the section of the paper with the crossword puzzle in it.

  “Why? How are we going to know if she’s awake?”

  “We’ll hear her,” Myra said, not looking up at him.

  He sighed.

  “What?” she asked, annoyed.

  “Nothing. It’s just…well, you seem very…something.”

  “That’s articulate of you.”

  “See? Like that? Are you mad about something?”

  She laughed. “No, I’m super happy. I’ve started making lists.”

  ***

  When Myra was ten years old, a girl at school told her there were ghosts everywhere. “They watch you when you get dressed and when you pee and stuff,” she said on the playground, giggling, running away to snicker with her other friends. Myra still remembered that, years later, sometimes found herself wondering as she pulled on her hosiery or yanked out a tampon—was there a crowd of ghost people laughing behind her?

  The ghost boy—for that was what he was, that was what he had to be—was not a friendly one. She felt as though she had to warn Elly, but she wasn’t sure how. She had started taking notes on the times she saw him and what he was doing. She still felt his presence even after she stopped using the monitor and it bothered her, woke her up at night, sweaty and disoriented. He wanted her to turn the monitor back on.

  On the way back from errands one afternoon, Myra saw Elly getting out of her car and she knew it was a sign. She parked next to her and got out with purpose, pulling Eva out of her car seat and holding her tight against her chest.

  “Well hello there, neighbor,” Elly said, cheerful, her cheeks red from the cold. “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?”

  “It is, but I hear it’s supposed to get cold soon,” Myra said. “Helps you get your thoughts clear, though.”

  “I love this kind of weather—sunny, cold, crisp. Good skiing weather.”