“They’ll never go back to eating plain apples if you let them taste it your way,” she said, “and you know it.”
“Because my way tastes better.”
“Your way isn’t healthy.”
“Don’t be so sure yours is.”
Mack was raised by a mother who did everything right, diet-wise—Maggie was reportedly a health food and exercise nut long before it became faddish—“And where did that get her?” Mack asks darkly whenever the subject comes up. “She died of cancer anyway. We might as well eat the way we want to eat. It doesn’t even matter in the end.”
It matters to Allison. She’s the one who was raised by a woman with a death wish who considered white toast with margarine a square meal, and she’s the one who’s responsible for feeding three kids on a daily basis, the one who’s surrounded by health-conscious mothers who wouldn’t dream of putting anything into their children’s mouths that isn’t whole grain, organic, grass-fed, all natural . . .
Some days, she’s tempted to say the hell with it all, serve candy corn for lunch, let the girls skip school, and stay up late watching cartoons. Yes, and on those days, it gives her great satisfaction to imagine the collective gasps of horror such decadence would extract from the perfect playground moms, whose advice—solicited and not—she relies upon to navigate this tricky suburban domestic landscape.
Why do the stakes seem so much higher now than they ever were in her own childhood? Is it due to geography, or generation?
All Allison knows for sure is that she’s not going to botch her child-rearing responsibilities the way her own parents did. But it’s exhausting, this business of trying to be the perfect mother raising perfect children.
She pours another cup of coffee and hands it to Mack. Black and strong—that’s the way he’s always drunk his coffee, not willing to dilute the caffeine jolt he so badly needs most mornings. It’s how she’s learned to drink it as well—and lately, thanks to J.J.’s early mornings, she’s the one who needs the jolt.
Not Mack. Not anymore. In the space of a few weeks, the Dormipram has worked wonders. Mack is falling asleep at night and getting up well-rested in the mornings.
It’s what may be going on in between that has Allison concerned.
But she doesn’t want to bring that up right now. Not with the kids here.
Mack leans against the counter beside her and sips his coffee. “Other than the girls putting on a show, what’s going on today? Besides more rain?” He glances at the dreary scene beyond the window.
“Errands, dance lessons, and then the party over at Randi and Ben’s.” Seeing his expression, she says, “Don’t tell me you forgot about that?”
The Webers throw a bash every year on the Saturday closest to Rosh Hashanah, to celebrate the Jewish New Year with family and friends. They’ve taken it to a whole new level now that they live in a house big enough to easily accommodate hundreds, rather than dozens, of guests, from all walks of life and various religious persuasions.
“I didn’t forget,” Mack tells her. “I just have a lot of work to get done this weekend, and it’s already been an exhausting week. I’m just not up for a huge crowd.”
“I’m not, either,” she admits. “We can always pretend that we’re sick . . .”
“No.”
Right. Mack and his pesky code of ethics.
“It’s crappy weather for a party,” he says, gesturing at the window. “They’re supposed to have it outside. Maybe they’ll cancel.”
“They won’t. I talked to Randi yesterday. The caterers were bringing in heated tents.”
“Terrific. Tents in a monsoon.” He shakes his head. “I think we should just skip it.”
“Randi and Ben are our best friends. They’re family, really. How can we not go?”
“We didn’t last year.”
“That’s because it fell on September eleventh, remember? We were in Florida with the kids.” And if they hadn’t been, there’s still no way they would have attended a party on that fateful date.
“Oh, right.” He falls silent, drinking his coffee, slipping back into the shadows of September 11 memories.
Allison wishes she hadn’t been forced to bring it up. With this year’s tenth anniversary behind him and his sleeping patterns on track for perhaps the first time in his adult life, Mack generally seems to have turned over a new leaf.
She’s the one who’s inexplicably found herself brooding about the past; about the dead: Carrie, Kristina, Jerry Thompson . . .
“Mommy, is there any more Cap’n Crunch?” Hudson asks abruptly.
She blinks. “Sure. Wait—no, that was the last of the box,” she remembers.
“There’s another one in the cupboard.” Mack turns to open it.
“No, there isn’t.”
“Sure there is.” He roots through the contents of the shelf. “I know I saw it last night when I was looking for— Hey, where did it go?”
All right—he just opened the door—quite literally—for Allison to tell him.
She says briskly, “Girls, if you’re done with your cereal, put the bowls in the sink and go get dressed.”
“But I want more,” Hudson protests.
“Mommy’s right, Huddy. There isn’t any more.” Mack turns away from the cupboard, looking perplexed.
“But I want—”
“You can have Cheerios,” Allison interrupts her daughter.
“They’re not even real.”
Out of habit, Cheerios are what Allison calls the toasted oat cereal J.J. was munching—and is now smearing—even though it’s not the brand-name kind in the yellow box she remembers from her own childhood. This is an organic version she dutifully buys at the health food store in town and feeds the kids most mornings.
Hudson shakes her blond head. “Forget it. Come on, Maddy, let’s go write our script.”
“Get dressed first, okay?” Allison reminds them. “We’ve got about an hour before we have to hit the road.”
“Okay,” they say in unison, and Hudson adds, “I’ll make a shopping list for when we go to the store. I’ll put Cap’n Crunch on the top.”
“I’ll help.” Maddy follows her sister to the sink with her milky bowl.
“You can tell me things, but you can’t write them down. I’m doing the writing,” Hudson informs her, and they head out of the kitchen.
As soon as the girls are out of earshot, Allison turns back to Mack, who’s busy making silly faces at a delighted J.J., the missing cereal box apparently forgotten.
Allison hesitates, wondering if she should even bring it up.
Maybe she’s wrong.
But as Mack bends over their son’s high chair tray, she notices the way his stomach rounds the front of his T-shirt, and she knows that she isn’t.
Mack has always been hard and lean, despite the fact that his only workout these days is dashing for commuter trains and scurrying around the city from his office to appointments.
She first noticed a bit of a paunch earlier this week, when she heard him muttering about the dry cleaner shrinking his suit pants and looked up to see him straining to button the pair he had on.
That was a day after she accused the girls of polishing off an entire bag of pretzels—which they denied—and the day before she noticed that a carton of butter pecan ice cream, which the girls would never touch because it has nuts in it, was missing from the freezer.
It had been there that afternoon. She was certain of that, because she was stuck on the phone for over an hour with her book club friend Sheila, who’s in the midst of an infertility crisis. As Sheila talked on and on, Allison found herself wandering around the kitchen, opening the freezer door repeatedly, giving the ice cream a longing gaze, and then forcing herself to satisfy her craving with diet iced tea, an apple, a tub of yogurt, and, of course, the ubiquitous baby carrots.
She’s been on a diet, hindered by the recent spate of unseasonable cold and rain that have kept her cooped up in the house for days now. T
he nasty weather is a grim reminder of the looming blustery season that is always unfairly accompanied by gravy and stuffing, eggnog and frosted cut-outs . . .
But this isn’t about that, or about her. It’s about Mack. And ice cream, pretzels, an entire box of Cap’n Crunch . . . for all she knows, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Food isn’t even the only thing that’s missing.
She can’t find her good chef’s knife—the one with the red handle—and a couple of bowls are gone, too. One, she found tossed in the garbage, along with soggy cereal, yesterday morning. The girls have been known to accidentally toss cutlery, but a bowl?
“Mack,” she says abruptly, “we need to talk.”
“About the sunroom?” he asks in a weary, not-again tone. They’ve been trying to come to an agreement about what should be done with the window treatments.
Tired of waiting for him to put the shades back up, Allison started to do it herself last week, then realized that the old shades look dingy next to the new paint. They’ve been talking about ordering new ones, or perhaps curtains or shutters, but haven’t been able to find the time to agree on what they want, let alone actually go shopping or place an order.
“No,” she tells Mack, “it’s not about the sunroom. Although—”
“Let’s not get into that now,” he says quickly. “Please.”
“Fine.” She shifts back to the more pressing matter at hand. “Have you ever heard of sleep-eating?”
“Hmm?” Holding his fingers at the sides of his cheeks, he wiggles them at J.J. and sticks out his tongue.
“Sleep-eating. I think you’re doing it.”
Mack turns away from J.J. to face her. “What are you talking about?”
She quickly explains about the missing food, only to have him laugh.
“You think I ate it in my sleep? And then chucked the bowl into the garbage?”
“Yes, I do.”
Before she can elaborate, he shakes his head, still looking amused. “You’re the one who’s on a diet, Al. Are you sure you’re not just—”
“It’s your medicine, Mack,” she cuts in. “The Dormipram. It’s one of the side effects. Didn’t you read the packet that came with it?”
“Not really.” He gratifies a fussing J.J. with another silly finger-waving face.
She shakes her head. Of course he didn’t bother to read the packet. That’s always been her department—the endless investigation into every medication that finds its way into their medicine cabinet.
“Well, I read it, Mack. Look at me. Come on. I’m totally serious here.”
“So you’re saying I’m . . .” He shakes his head incredulously. “I’m, what, sleepwalking into the kitchen at night and bingeing on ice cream?”
“Among other things.” She nods, giving J.J.—fussing loudly now that the clown show has come to an apparent end—a wooden spoon to bang on his tray. Above the commotion, she says, “It makes sense.”
Mack just looks at her, apparently not in agreement.
“You said yourself your suit pants were tight the other day,” she points out.
He immediately glances down at his stomach, then up at her—still not entirely sold, but she can tell he’s starting to believe it’s possible.
“Some medicine causes weight gain, you know,” he tells her. “Years ago, when Carrie was shooting herself up with all that medication trying to get pregnant, she gained a lot of weight. Dr. Hammond—that was our doctor at Riverview Clinic—said that it was from the hormones in the fertility drugs.”
“You’re not taking hormones.”
“I know, but—”
“Look, Mack, it’s true. You can go online and see for yourself—this medicine has a bunch of bizarre side effects. Weight gain isn’t one of them. But sleepwalking, sleep-eating . . . and trust me, it could definitely be worse.”
Over the relentless pounding of J.J.’s wooden spoon, she tells Mack some of the anecdotes she read on the Internet last night when she did her research into the subject. People taking Dormipram have fallen down flights of stairs, made lengthy phone calls, left their homes and had sex with strangers—all in their sleep, without any recollection.
“What do you think?” she asks Mack.
“I can’t even hear myself think!” Mack snatches the spoon from J.J., who immediately cries out in dismay. Ignoring the ruckus, Mack turns back to Allison. “Why didn’t you tell me this before I started taking the stuff?”
Because I’m tired of feeling like I’m overreacting every time a doctor prescribes medicine.
I’m tired of this endless paranoia about drugs—justifiable, or not.
Aloud, she says only, “Because the vast majority of people who take it never have any problems.”
“Great. So I’m one-in-a-million. Next thing you know, I’ll be going next door in the dead of night and crawling into bed with Phyllis Lewis.”
Phyllis, who happens to be a striking brunette, can be quite the flirt, and the image is a little unsettling.
But Allison merely rolls her eyes. “Trust me, if that happens, you’re off Dormipram forever.”
“Are you kidding me? I’m off it forever now.”
“You don’t have to stop taking it.” Allison wets a couple of paper towels at the sink. “You’re doing great on it.”
“Yeah, if I keep doing this great, I’ll be able to fit into a Santa suit without padding by the time Christmas rolls around.”
“At least you’ll be well-rested,” she quips, wiping the soggy cereal off J.J.’s hands as he wails and wriggles against the straps of his chair.
“Nope. I’m done. That’s it. I’m going to flush that stuff down the toilet.”
“Don’t do that. Maybe now that you’re aware of what you’re doing, it won’t happen anymore. Give it another chance. Okay?”
Mack frowns, but says nothing.
Lifting her fussy son out of his high chair, Allison says, “I’ve got to get moving. I’ll change him and then the girls and I have to go.”
“You’re not taking J.J. with you?”
She stops and looks back at him. “I wasn’t going to. Why?”
Why? Mack echoes silently, as their son flails his arms and legs, trying to launch himself from his mother’s arms.
“You’re going to be home, right?” Allison isn’t about to bend on this. It’s been a long week trapped indoors with the human octopus, and she needs a break.
“I am, but I have work to do, and you know how he is when you’re not around.”
“He’s like that even when I am around. Anyway, he’ll go down for a nap.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
Poised to tell her husband he’ll just have to deal, then, Allison bites back the words when she sees the dark look in Mack’s eye.
Dammit, dammit, dammit.
Things were going so well, and she had to go and ruin everything. Now he’s going to stop taking his medicine, stop sleeping, and it’ll be back to grumpy, overtired, overworked Mack.
For all she knows, he’s not even sleep-eating. After all, it’s really just a guess.
But then, if he didn’t eat the missing food, who did?
Maybe she was mistaken about it . . .
No. You found the empty wrappings and cartons and a bowl in the garbage, and crumbs and sticky smears on the counter . . .
The only other explanation would be that some intruder had crept into the house in the night and helped himself to their food.
The idea is so much more benign than the late night intruder—the Nightwatcher—who’s haunted her for all these years that it almost seems laughable.
Almost.
To Allison, there’s really no humor in the thought of a stranger creeping around the house while everyone is sleeping. None at all.
The experience a few weeks ago with Chuck and Cora Nowak was exhilarating, but over much too quickly. Still convinced that the most fitting punishment for the others responsible for killing Jerry will be to l
ose the people they love most, Jamie now understands that the task isn’t meant to merely be accomplished. It must also be savored.
That means getting to know both Rocky Manzillo and Allison MacKenna very well. Getting to know their household routines, their habits, their families. Getting to know what matters most in their world—and then taking it all away.
The only way to do that is to watch them, listen to them. And that, of course, requires the proper surveillance equipment—not at all hard for Jamie to acquire or install, thanks to all those years in prison with gloating inmates willing to teach the tricks of the trade.
And so, on a rainy September afternoon, correctly guessing there was nobody home in Rocky Manzillo’s Bronx row house, Jamie had broken a basement window and stolen from room to silent, deserted room installing tiny cameras and microphones. The job was done in a matter of minutes.
It was all for nothing, though. Since that day, Jamie has occasionally caught Rocky coming home alone in the wee hours to sleep until dawn, shower, and leave again. But for the most part, the house has remained empty and still.
Things have been much more interesting at the large suburban house where Allison lives with her husband and their three little children—happily ever after, Jamie realized in disgust, watching her push her daughters on their fancy wooden swing set one breezy afternoon about a week ago.
The house was unlocked, of course, and why wouldn’t it be? The area couldn’t be safer, a far cry from Jamie’s neighborhood back in Albany, and Rocky’s in the Bronx. Allison would have no reason to imagine that anyone would ever want to sneak into her house while she was right there in her own backyard.
Once inside, Jamie was tempted to linger, but didn’t dare. Not any longer than it took to set up the tiny cameras and voice recorders, keeping an eye on the family out the window the whole time.
Allison had a baby balanced on her hip and took turns pushing the swings, first one and then the other, with the hand that wasn’t clasping the baby. The little girls were giggling, kicking their legs as they arced through the air. It was obvious, watching them, that they hadn’t a care in the world.
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