She Lies Close

by Sharon Doering

  “Chloe! Wyatt, where’s Chlo?”

  I am running toward the side of the house.

  Oh God, if she ran to the front yard! She doesn’t have the no-street-thing down. Oh God.

  “She’s over there, Mom,” Wyatt says, unworried, pointing toward the shed.

  I breathe, Wyatt’s calm voice lulling me back, and turn.

  There she is, smiling beside my daylilies, hedge clippers in her small hands. My heart stops. Sunlight accentuates the blade’s sharpness as she opens and closes the clippers. If those things can cut a small tree, they could easily slice off one of her fingers. Or pierce her neck.

  “Baby,” I say gently, trying not to alarm her or make her run and trip, but my voice cracks. “Baby, you’re helping Momma with gardening. You’re so sweet. Let me get you a shovel so we can dig weeds.” Her eyes sparkle with mischief. It’s likely she’s considering turning this into a game of hedge-clipper tag.

  Every moment feels a millisecond from disaster.

  “A caterpillar! Look, Chlo,” I point to a bush and swipe the clippers from her hands.

  “Where’s a caterpillar?”

  “It was just there,” I lie. “Maybe he crawled under the leaf. Let’s look.”

  Don’t be mad at Wyatt. He’s not your babysitter.

  “Where is it?” As she peeks under leaves, she trips on who-knows-what in the grass. I catch her by the armpit before she falls.

  “Let’s take a popsicle break,” I say, my body already anticipating ten minutes of calm. My children eat popsicles with utmost focus and silence. Like surgeons excising a sticky, pervasive tumor.

  Wyatt mumbles sarcastically. Something about it being early for a popsicle break.

  Letting my guard down, I glance over at Leland Ernest’s house.

  He is standing on his small cement porch, sipping from what appears to be a juice box with a small straw. Head tipped back, he’s gazing up at the sky. No, his eyes are closed.

  I have only seen him a handful of times since I moved in. Unfortunate for bad stereotypes, he looks like he walked straight out of a Flannery O’Connor novel. He is mid-thirties. His skin is the white and doughy shade of someone who stays inside. His belly is soft and stretches his shirt. His hair is straw blond.

  Each time I have seen him, I’ve greeted him in a conservative, but friendly, neighborly way. But that was before I knew.

  He glances toward my house now. His lips release his juice box straw, and he waves at me.

  He was trying to teach her to whistle.

  I picture Leland licking his lips, puckering them, and blowing softly. I picture him watching Ava’s mouth as he instructs her to do the same.

  My belly feels slippery, full of squirming fish, their silvery scales flashing as they whisk. I consider marching over there and telling him I know what he’s done even though I know nothing. I consider giving him the finger.

  “Momma, I want them juice box too.”

  Ignoring his wave, I gaze down at my daughter.

  “What’s wrong, Momma?”

  “Nothing. I’m fine, baby.” I smile and, through my blurry eyes and under bright sunshine, her white-gold hair shimmers like jewels on water.

  These past five days I have told myself, This is not a big deal. He is only a suspect. Don’t let his proximity hold your peace captive. Today I told myself we have had a gentle morning, a good morning, but it is a lie.

  My children are playing twenty feet away from a man suspected of kidnapping a small child.

  She’s been missing five months. Murdering a small child.

  He has had my heart squeezed in his grubby palm the whole morning: while we picked raspberries, while we swung, while I watched Wyatt smile and Chloe giggle.

  Like the bees in my shed, he hovers in the dark composting corner of my mind. His presence is a subtle but frightening vibration, a hum.

  I look over at my neighbor’s house again. His cement slab of a porch is sunny and bare, holding nothing more than a chair and a plastic pot of marigolds. He is nowhere in sight.

  The doorbell rings inside my house.

  6

  PEACE BE WITH YOUR VAGINA

  My ex. Nate.

  If he’d have cheated once, I would have stayed. Five times, he was wiping his ass with my soul.

  He’s wearing green scrubs and his forehead is shiny. It doesn’t matter that he’s glossy from sweat, his healthy glow and career’s importance emanate from him like an aura. Standing on the other side of my dingy screen door, he seems out of place, simulated and artificial.

  Comfort and nostalgia wash over me because he knows me, intimately. Understands me. He is my best friend.

  The warm and fuzzy feelings don’t stick.

  Desperation emerges and power-washes nostalgia to smithereens. I want to be rescued so bad. Financial woes are elbowing to the frontlines of my brain along with a list of half-broken appliances needing strong hands and patience. I have neither.

  Desperation is as fleeting as nostalgia.

  Anger blooms and strangles desperation until it wilts. We have rules. He broke the rules, coming here unplanned. Kids need consistency, not more confusion. And damn him for tearing our lives apart.

  As if my emotional spectrum is not maddening enough, blood rushes to my center. I miss his fingers skating down my stomach. I miss the rough brush of his jaw stubble against my neck in the morning. I miss his smell: harsh soap and a touch of woodsy aftershave.

  Nate is intelligent, friendly, compassionate, and handsome. All terrible ingredients for fidelity.

  His hair is sandy blond and falls into a casual sweep across his forehead. His eyes are dark and mischievous. A long time ago those eyes lured me and, on so many occasions, his playful eyes got him out of trouble.

  I open the screen and try to smile. “You should have called first.”

  “I know,” he says, his eyes scanning my turtleneck, “but I heard about your ER visit and wanted to make sure you were alright.”

  No need to ask how he heard. He works at St Joe’s. I figured word might get to him.

  “I’m fine. You should have called instead.”

  As if cued, their sneakers stampede the hall behind me. Chloe screams with excitement, “Daddy!”

  “Can I come in?” he says.

  I give him a look—like I have a choice?—and step aside.

  He walks in and catches Chloe, pulling her into a swinging hug.

  “Hi, Dad,” Wyatt says and gives Nate a good hug from the side.

  Nate musses Wyatt’s hair and kisses his forehead. “Hey, Wy.” Nate could be an amazing parent, the best actually, if he wasn’t always at work. GI surgeons occasionally live at the hospital.

  Can’t stay home when I’m trying to save the world one colon at a time. Got to go put my fingers in someone’s belly button.

  That used to be his joke. He’d tickle the kids’ bellies as he said it. The joke used to be tired but good, something to rely upon, but became unbearable when I found out he’d been putting his fingers inside several nurses as well.

  After the superstar greeting is over, Wyatt disappears (TV calling), and Chloe walks up the stairs. Beyond the staircase spindles her little legs and bare feet trek arduously.

  Where did her shoes and socks go? She was just wearing them.

  “Daddy, I’ll hide,” she says. “You come find me.”

  “Sure thing. I’ll count to twenty. Go hide.” To me, he says, “How did it happen and where did it happen and who was with the kids?”

  All his questions are rich with concern, but punctuated with accusation.

  If I answer honestly, I am bound to be found guilty of bad parenting. If I tell him I left the kids home alone for eleven minutes, he’ll be pissed. Which makes me furious. He wouldn’t stand a chance of taking care of them around the clock, so what gives him the right to judge?

  “It’s not a big deal. Valerie was watching them.” It’s only a lie if put into context. “As for my neck, it’s a few scr
atches. The ER doctor—”

  “Erica,” he says. He’s probably fucking her too. Hospitals are big fuckfests. Everyone working nights, already in their pajamas, close-call adrenaline rushes every few hours, limbs brushing against limbs as they squeeze past portable equipment and beds in tight rooms.

  “She said I’d be fine. She gave me the first vaccine.”

  “Can I see?” he says, reaching for the lip of my turtleneck. His finger grazes my skin, and I pull away. I can’t handle his touch. Even after a long night working in a nasty, bacteria-laced hospital, his lingering aftershave and testosterone smell is alluring. His proximity makes my skin tingle with need.

  “I don’t want to redo my bandages. I’m fine.”

  He sighs, staring at my face.

  Worried my eyes will reveal how much I miss his touch, I gaze down.

  Dog hair has rolled itself into balls and taken residence along grimy molding. The oak floor, scratched and faded, is speckled with black, sticky-looking patches. That can’t be gum, can it?

  “Make sure you get the full series of four shots,” he says, condescending. “But let me know the minute you have side effects. Rabies vaccinations can mess with people.”

  At the bottom of the stairs, he sings, “Ready or not, here I come,” and pounds his shoes slowly and loudly upon each stair for ambience.

  I follow him up. “What kind of side effects?”

  “Anything from dizziness and nausea to vertigo to neurological issues. Reflex and sensory changes, spinal infection...”

  But some of those symptoms are normal for me.

  Of course I can’t tell him. If I have health issues making me incompetent, he could take the kids from me. If I seek treatment for mental health issues, he could take the kids from me. If I move the kids next door to a suspected kidnapper, which I accidentally did, he could take the kids from me. Every thought of mine has to be filtered by my internal lawyer before I speak.

  Chloe is naked in the tub. She’s already turned on the water and plugged the drain. The kid is three going on ten. She’ll be asking to use the stovetop by kindergarten. A tiny pink spoon in her hand, she stirs water in a plastic teacup.

  Nate says, “Hey, pumpkin-head, I thought you were going to hide.”

  “I’m taking a bath because I didn’t want to get sand in my bed. I was playing in the sand.” On the narrow ledge of the tub, she lines up plastic teacups and dinosaurs, then fills the cups to the brim with water. All those balancing cups, the floor will be soaked in minutes. I toss down a towel.

  While she plays in the tub, I sit on the toilet lid and I tell him about my run-in with the bats. Leaning against the door, he listens, stone-faced and skeptical as a police officer, as if I’m trying to lie my way out of a ticket.

  “I’m all done,” Chloe says, already climbing out. I wrap her in a towel. She turns back toward the tub. “Look at all the sand. My vagina made the tub all dirty,” except she pronounces vagina bagina.

  It would have been funny and adorable had I not felt wobbly. Instead, my feminist, protective, angry momma kicks in.

  Your vagina did nothing wrong. Nothing is your vagina’s fault. It’s not dirty. It’s healthy and exactly as it should be! It is not the source of any man’s problem. It is part of your body and will let you become a mother if you want. Love your vagina. Peace be with your vagina. Your vagina is full of rainbows and sunshine!

  I say, “You had sand in your diaper and between your toes, didn’t you? And all that sand got rinsed off your skin into the tub, and now your skin feels happy.”

  Chloe ignores my proper explanation and flees, naked and giggling, out of my arms. For a half-second before her feet reach carpet, I worry her wet feet will slip on the ugly vinyl the scrap of bathroom rug couldn’t cover. “Don’t run; you’ll slip,” I call, my voice rising and trembling. I follow them into her room.

  Nate sings “Three Blind Mice,” Chloe’s favorite nursery rhyme. He’s marching and clapping, and she’s naked and jumping on her bed.

  I stand in the doorway, watching them, wishing we could go back to that time when we were a family, whole and unfractured.

  Nate raises the blinds (cordless, of course), and my pulse hitches.

  “Oh no,” I say. “Keep the blinds closed.”

  “Who’s looking? It’s morning. Sun’s out.” He points at the blue sky as if I were an idiot.

  My voice lowers a register. “Please close the blinds.”

  He tilts his head at my request. “Are you taking a higher dose of—”

  “Nate.” Quick and sharp. This is all I have to say. We’ve had this discussion before. No open talk about medications in front of either child.

  Wyatt crosses the hallway into his room, a Goosebumps book in his hand. Chloe continues jumping on the bed, singing, “See how they run.”

  “Close them,” I say, but movement beyond Chloe’s window catches my attention.

  Behind my neighbor’s second-story window, a small hand presses against the glass at the bottom ledge. Above the splayed fingers, brown curls frame a little girl’s face. Her cheeks are soft and round, still holding tight to baby fat. Her lips are slightly parted; she was going to say something, but forgot. Air shimmers before my eyes as if it hangs above an asphalt road on a hot day after a steamroller pressed new oil. I blink. Her fingers are so small. I rub my palms into my eyes and blink again.

  She’s gone. The window glass has a slight ugly green tint, a characteristic of energy-efficient windows. Even if someone had been there, you wouldn’t be able to make out detail through the tint. You’re seeing things. You’ve been here before. You just need sleep.

  Nate lowers the blinds and softens his tone. “You seem anxious, Grace. Everything OK?”

  Skin along my back and shoulders tingles. Heat is coming off me. Why, yes! Everything is dandy since you fucked a handful of nurses and I moved into this crumbling house next door to a possible child killer and several times a day I feel the floor drop an inch away from me and now I’m seeing things. Everything is fabulous, dear.

  I smile. “Everything’s fine.”

  7

  FERRET OUT THE ASSHOLE

  Even though unpacked boxes still linger in corners—as if I’m expecting them to eventually cave and unpack themselves—I seriously consider selling my house. After Nate leaves, I dig out my financial statements and punch numbers into a calculator.

  It doesn’t take long for me to realize I can’t do it.

  My mortgage is underwater or upside down or fucked sideways. Whatever derogatory name bankers use for crummy mortgages as they stare condescendingly down their noses, that is my mortgage. The housing market has dipped since I bought. I have accrued debt from the divorce. I swear my lawyer charges me if I even think about calling her. Also, I make a hair above minimum wage. Money-wise, caring for people’s most beloved cargo, stimulating these small children’s brains, teaching them manners and kindness and important life-coping skills, ranks just above dropping a wire basket of frozen French fries into boiling oil.

  Yes, my ex is a surgeon. But the student debt he amassed is massive, and his salary has chipped it to a smaller, yet still nauseating size. Three more years of student loan purgatory and he will be free; birthed, wet and shiny, into upper class. To my shaky mind, three years sounds like eternity, abstract and useless.

  I have no financial safety net. My two living relatives are working stiffs.

  Mom is sixty-seven, works as a receptionist in a cancer screening center, and has far less money saved than she’d ever envisioned. My father’s Alzheimer’s and lung cancer combo lasted too long, required too much at-home care, and ate away at their retirement at the steady, persistent pace cancer ate away at his innards and Alzheimer’s at his memory.

  My older sister works as a night auditor at a Holiday Inn to support her out-of-work-electrician husband and their four kids. She has been doing the zero-interest-rate-for-the-first-six-months credit card musical chairs game for years. At my mom�
��s house on Easter, she joked about holes in her underwear. I mailed her underwear and socks on her birthday as a joke, and when she called to thank me, she laugh-cried.

  Even if I had enough money to sell, how could I do that to the next family?

  I am furious at the guy who sold me this house and have considered (several times in the middle of the night) hiring a PI to track him down. I have fantasized about spray-painting “soulless” on the front door of his new house.

  Tony Durtato, the roofer.

  I met Tony’s three teenage daughters: thirteen, sixteen, and seventeen. If he moved to get away from the freak next door, how had he sold this house to me, a woman with a daughter?

  Tony met Chloe. I held her on my hip, her sleepy head on my shoulder, a pacifier in her mouth, her security blanket cushioning her soft baby cheek. While we stood on his back deck and gazed at the swing set he’d built, he touched Chloe’s little socked foot with the thick, callused knuckle of his forefinger, smiling and seeming to take in the moment. “I miss that stage,” he said.

  “So,” I said, trying to sound casual, “are you moving because of a job change?”

  “No,” he said, still smiling at Chloe’s sock.

  “Why are you moving?” I said, upbeat, airy, eyebrows lifted.

  He looked down at the deck, his eyes drifting to my right. I followed his gaze to a greasy stain he probably wished he’d covered with a pot of flowers. “Change of scenery,” he said, his eyes lifting to me and Chloe. “We bought a house that has a little more space. My younger ones have always shared a room.” His answer made sense and didn’t seem rehearsed. Wanting more space was a good answer.

  How could he have allowed me to think I was lucky, getting this house for such a great deal, when there’s a copperhead den steps away?

  Because he was out of his mind. Desperate. Not thinking.

  The spray paint job is nothing more than vengeful daydreaming. I don’t have money to ferret out the asshole.

  Doesn’t matter. Your neighbor is not dangerous.

  In high-profile cases like child kidnappings, there are probably two or three dozen suspects. Leland Ernest gave a Happy Meal toy to a girl who later went missing. Untimely generosity and kindness were his crimes.