Neighborly

by Ellie Monago

  After I do my pump, I hesitate over the bathroom sink. I’ve never had to discard my milk before. It’s a precious thing, a gift for my daughter, and I’ve contaminated it. For what? To please my new friends? What am I, sixteen?

  I take some aspirin and get into the shower. With Doug this angry, there’s no way he’s building me a desk today. I hear him moving around the kitchen, making eggs and bacon, based on the smells. I feel a wave of nausea.

  I’m so tired that I go upstairs and pull the covers over my head. That’s where I am when I hear Sadie wake up. I force myself out of bed, but my joints feel creaky. It’s like I’ve aged fifty years in one night. Never again, I swear.

  “Don’t bother!” I hear Doug yell, and not kindly, either.

  “I want to see her!” I yell back. If he’s this upset after one night of my going out, I can’t imagine how he would react to my pitching the idea of an open marriage.

  I can hear him talking to her, his voice light and teasing, and then they appear. She’s in a fresh diaper and a short-sleeve onesie, and I reach out my arms, tears in my eyes. There’s nothing greater than this joy.

  I drink her in—wrong word choice after last night—I breathe her in, that’s it, and let the sweet smell of her envelop me. Oh, I love this girl. In this moment, I love nothing more than being her mommy.

  Doug has stepped away, and he’s watching from the doorway again. I want us to get past whatever this is. We’re family. I hold out my hand, inviting him into the circle for a cuddle, but he just shakes his head.

  I nuzzle Sadie, my wet hair plastered to her beautiful cheek. I close my eyes and just let time pass, savoring like a rich and delicious meal. Then I hear Doug’s voice, loud and startling, right next to the bed: “We should get moving.”

  He looks like a glowering giant standing there at my side. He’d moved so silently and stealthily that I hadn’t even heard him cross the floorboards.

  “Where do we have to go?” I ask him.

  “You know my theory about hangovers.” He’s unsmiling.

  I remember him pulling me from the bed early in our relationship after we’d both tied one on the night before. I’d groaned theatrically, and he laughingly said, “Hangovers are a sports injury. You get beaned by a baseball and what do you do?” I’d never played a sport in my life, never been a part of any team, so he answered his own question: “You walk it off.”

  I’ve never been part of any team, that is, until this one. I wish he’d stop glaring at me like that, like Bart did to Raquel the day of the block party.

  “What do you do?” he asks me now, like it’s a pop quiz.

  “You walk it off.” I know it’s the right answer, and I hope it’ll have an open sesame–type effect where his broad, handsome face breaks into a smile, but he turns from me and begins to tickle Sadie.

  She melts for him. “See,” he says, “Sadie knows the remedy.”

  “Well,” I say, “let’s hope she doesn’t need it.”

  “Someday, she’ll need it. Let’s not kid ourselves.”

  I gaze at a laughing Sadie and say softly, “I want to kid myself.”

  “I need to get out of the house. I’ve been cooped up all night. Are you with us or not?” It’s an invitation, at least, though it’s tinged with that same anger.

  “Can we walk slow?” I say.

  “We could take the bikes.”

  He’s not kidding. He’s needling.

  I remind myself that the bikes are not a divorceable offense. Ditto his behavior right now. He’ll get over whatever’s bothering him, and I’ll get over the way he’s acting. This will all blow over.

  Doug pushes the stroller, and I trudge along beside them, sunglasses on.

  “We’re headed that way,” Doug says.

  I give him a quick reproving glance. I agreed to a walk; I never agreed to a destination. I certainly never agreed to a Sunday stroll on Main Street where we’d see everyone out and about. It feels like he’s punishing me. But my own body is already doing the work for him. I can’t ever remember a hangover like this.

  No matter how much I drank back in the day—and sometimes I drank a lot—I never felt that peculiar sequence from last night: the extreme highs and lows, the paranoia, the hallucinations, the near-paralysis, and finally, the blackout. Back when I was craving a dose of true oblivion, I took whatever people handed me. LSD. Ecstasy. One time, something called Special K. That was the closest to what I experienced last night.

  I’ve stopped in the middle of the pavement, and Doug is asking me, with more irritation than concern, what’s going on. I tell him that I have to go home. “I feel sick,” I say, and his face darkens.

  “Of course you do,” he says shortly. “Well, Sadie’s going to Main Street with me.”

  I don’t feel like I can really argue, when clearly he’s in better shape to take care of Sadie than I am, but I’m sorry to see them go. Doug doesn’t so much as cast a glance over his shoulder to make sure I’m OK.

  We haven’t even done a full revolution around the block, so I get home quickly.

  Inside, I open my laptop. Special K is also known as ketamine. It can be used as a roofie. A date-rape drug.

  Andie and I were standing at the bar for a while, talking. Could a stranger have slipped me something?

  It’s all crazy. Every bit of it. The notes, the openness, the neighborhood, the roofie. None of it seems real. None of it seems possible. And yet, I know that the spreadsheet is real. So it’s possible that I was drugged, by a stranger or a neighbor, maybe by whoever’s been writing me notes.

  I’m sweating. My fingers tremble as I scroll down. Just reading the list of side effects jars my memory a little. Not all the way. That’s because one of the major side effects is amnesia.

  The other side effects are hallucinations, agitation before euphoria, and confusion. Muscle rigidity, that was the telltale one. Andie had to help me to the bathroom because I couldn’t move. And finally, sedation. Doug had to carry me inside. Vomiting. Lots of vomiting, apparently.

  I feel faint. Not one of the symptoms.

  Please come home, I text Doug.

  He ignores it for several minutes. Then, Why?

  I need you. Please. I’m begging you to come home.

  Another long minute passes. Fine.

  It’s fifteen minutes before he’s pushing open the front door, and I can’t help feeling that he took the longest way back. He takes his time settling Sadie on her activity mat, tickling and cooing at her, before he sits down on the love seat next to me.

  Wordlessly, I show him the website.

  He reads and then peers back up at me skeptically. “You think someone drugged you?”

  I give him the evidence for each side effect. “I felt something like this once before, when I took Special K.”

  “When you took Special K?” He looks at me incredulously. “You’re jumping to conclusions. You don’t know how your body reacts to alcohol after a long period of abstinence. You don’t know how it metabolizes alcohol after having a baby. And let’s face it, you’re not the most reliable reporter lately.”

  Not being believed by someone you love. This is all so terribly familiar. Don’t abandon me, Doug. Believe me. “What does that mean?”

  “With how much stress you’ve been under, between the move and the notes. It can make you perceive things differently than they actually are. Plus, Andie said those were incredibly strong drinks, and you had, what, three of them? Four? Plus a shot. After more than a year of—”

  “More than a year of not drinking, I know!” I’m shouting, even though we don’t shout in this marriage. Sadie looks over in surprise but not fear.

  Even so, Doug snatches her up off the mat, like he doesn’t want her near me, like I might be contagious. He’s taking her upstairs, taking her away.

  “What about muscle rigidity?” I say, trying to make my voice reasonable. Our house is so small that you don’t really need to raise your voice to be heard. “You don’t ge
t muscle rigidity from alcohol.”

  He turns around at the top of our steps. “Do you think you might have imagined the muscle rigidity once you saw the list? It’s the power of suggestion.”

  “No! I felt it! I couldn’t move last night, Doug.”

  “The mind can invent things after the fact. There’s a term for it, something like confabulation.”

  “That’s for Alzheimer’s patients!” But my protest has lost a bit of its conviction. I’m remembering my Layton hallucination.

  “Not only. It happens to people who are a little compromised mentally.” Now he doesn’t seem angry exactly. There’s some mix of pity and fear, like he’s afraid for me. Sadie is watching the two of us; she’s looking to us for cues as to how to feel. Doug and I need to stop this conversation, for her sake. For all of our sakes. “You have to admit you haven’t been yourself lately. Not since becoming a mother.”

  It’s the first time he’s said it like that, so bluntly, and I feel too hurt to say anything back.

  “I’m sorry, Kat, I don’t mean it in a bad way, but . . .” He indicates Sadie. “I need to take care of her now, OK? We’ll talk later.”

  He’s already said more than enough.

  CHAPTER 16

  100% CONFIDENTIAL

  CHECK AS MANY BOXES AS APPLY:

  WOULD YOU AND/OR YOUR PARTNER ALLOW KISSING WITH A NEIGHBOR?

  TOUCHING ABOVE THE WAIST?

  DIGITAL PENETRATION?

  ORAL SEX?

  INTERCOURSE?

  ANAL SEX?

  THREESOMES?

  FOURSOMES?

  MORE-SOMES?

  DO YOU WANT TO WATCH WHILE YOUR PARTNER HAS SEX?

  DO YOU WANT HIM/HER TO WATCH YOU?

  ARE YOU BISEXUAL OR BICURIOUS?

  DO YOU LIKE (OR WANT TO TRY) ROLE-PLAYING?

  WOULD YOU PARTICIPATE IN BDSM? DOM OR SUB?

  IF YOU’VE NEVER TRIED IT, WOULD YOU LIKE TO, WITH AN EXPERIENCED, RESPECTFUL PARTNER? OR WITH A FELLOW NOVICE?

  DO YOU HAVE ANY QUIRKS OR FETISHES? (PLEASE DESCRIBE)

  HOW IMPORTANT ARE ORGASMS? (NOT AT ALL, SOMEWHAT, VERY, OR ESSENTIAL)

  WOULD YOU WANT TO ALLOW PEOPLE INTO YOUR HOME AND BED?

  WOULD YOU NEED TO MEET ELSEWHERE?

  ARE YOU OK WITH YOUR TRYSTS AND LOVERS BEING PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE, OR SPREADSHEET ONLY?

  I can’t let myself think about the spreadsheet. Or about Tennyson’s preferences e-mail, or about my conduct at girls’ night. It’s all just noise. I need to focus on what’s real, on Sadie.

  Mondays are already a challenge. Usually I’m like a drug addict in withdrawal, I miss Doug that potently. (Don’t think about drugs, either.) On Mondays, I bump up hardest against the reality that as much as I love Sadie, I don’t always like being with her. Not alone. She’s different when Doug is here. It could be that I’m different when Doug is here. I have someone to spot me, like when a gymnast attempts a tricky dismount, and knowing that relieves the tightness in my chest.

  When Sadie and I are alone, I’m a little bit afraid of her, with her moods and caprices. She fusses when she’s bored or displeased, when she doesn’t have enough attention or the right kind. She’s like a tiny empress: off with my head. Sometimes it escalates to a red-faced, screaming tantrum. My love makes me a hostage to her moods.

  Right now, she’s sitting in her car seat outside the shower. She can see me through the glass, though I hope that she’ll play with the toy in her lap instead. No such luck today. I turn the water on, and she begins to whimper almost immediately, a warning whistle before the full-force gale.

  I keep up a running monologue. It’s our thing. Usually, I tell her happy things we’re going to do. I tell stories about a little girl named Sadie and all the adventures she’s going to have, the people she’ll meet. Oh, the places she’ll go.

  “We’re going to Mommy and Me soon,” I say, in that upward lilting voice that she likes. “Just as soon as your mommy can get herself together. Not today, but soon. There will be musical instruments. You’ll have your own tambourine, maybe . . .”

  Sadie calms a little, long enough for me to get my hair washed. Then she’s fussing again. Screw the conditioner.

  I soap up quickly and decide not to shave my legs. I’m not going anywhere today. There’s always tomorrow. “There’s always tomorrow,” I tell her.

  I feel another bout of nausea. By now, it’s not a hangover. It’s that Tennyson’s e-mail brought back my flirtatious behavior at the last girls’ night. I vaguely remember the dancing, the crush and the brush of bodies around me. I’m so embarrassed to have cast myself in that light, even if it is the very behavior the women were encouraging. They must think I’m going to opt in, after that display.

  It might have been the power of suggestion, that we’d just been talking about freedom and indulging your fantasies, or if I was dosed with ketamine, that has a sexualizing effect. Or it might have been something that lives inside me all the time being unleashed, and that scares me the most. No matter what Dr. Morrison wanted to believe and wanted me to believe, I liked being seductive with Layton. Once, I told her I felt I’d seduced him, and it was the sharpest she ever sounded with me when she said, “No! Children are not capable of seduction. That is an adult skill.” Is it awful to admit that I felt in that moment that she was the one taking my power away, not Layton? If he’s entirely responsible, if I’m nothing but a victim . . .

  Stay busy, that’s all I can do.

  The regulars have bombarded me with texts. With the exception of Yolanda, they all want to know if I’ve talked to Doug, which way I’m leaning, if they can answer any questions for me. But at least I haven’t had any new notes today.

  As I comb out my hair in front of the mirror, I continue, determined to stave off further displeasure. “So we can’t go anywhere today, but tomorrow, in the morning, on a beautiful sunshiny morning, we’ll go to the library for story hour. They’ll read Mother Goose or Frozen or, if I’m lucky, The Giving Tree . . .” Sadie punctuates my sentences with gurgles and various happy noises. The empress is pleased, for the moment.

  Doug could never have me on a string like this. Sadie’s helplessness, her dependency, her potential to make me look (and feel) thoroughly incompetent—they grant her control.

  Is that what Doug meant when he said I’m so different since having Sadie? It clearly wasn’t a compliment. But then, he’d been angry that whole day.

  I can’t talk to Doug about openness, not when he already finds me so—what was his word?—unreliable. I’ve considered not telling him about openness at all, just going straight to Tennyson and opting out, but he’ll find out at some point. Someone will let it slip, and that would be yet another wedge between us.

  There’s already so much that I can never let slip because I need to stay unblemished, untainted, in Doug’s eyes. If he knew about the past, he’d draw all sorts of conclusions about our sex life, and everything else.

  So I can’t face Doug, and I’m not ready to face the women, either. I just want to retract my head like a turtle’s and let a day or two go by. Then I’ll be ready to leave the house again. I can figure out the least rejecting way to decline, so there’s the least social fallout. Maybe Andie can help me with that.

  I can feel that Sadie’s getting antsy. Something’s not right. I run through the checklist, and it’s nothing I can detect. I thought I’d somehow diverted it, that the winds had died down, but no, the hurricane is coming.

  I stoop down and pick her up, the towel wrapped around me, the moisturizer forgotten, but Sadie’s too far gone. My tolerance is nil. I could dissolve into tears at any moment, which isn’t something I want to do in front of my child. It could give her the impression the world is a scary place and yes, that’s true sometimes, but it’s too soon for her to know it. My job is to keep that information from her for as long as possible. That’s what this house was supposed to be about, this neighborhood. The AV was supposed to make me—and us—conventional in the best se
nse.

  I’ve utterly screwed up. My life is a disaster and, by extension, Sadie’s will be, too. We live among people who have sex with each other’s mates, who might even roofie the newcomer. We’re in deep, deep shit.

  I can’t hold it back. I’m crying. Dancing around with Sadie and crying, while she releases that angry wail of hers. I know, baby. We could have just found another house, another neighborhood, one within our means, but no, it had to be the AV.

  I’m still in my towel and Sadie’s still in the throes of an inconsolable tantrum when the doorbell rings. I’m worried about how long Sadie’s face has been red, afraid that she’ll burst a blood vessel at this rate. There’s nothing I can do. She’s never wanted my boobs, and she doesn’t want the bottle with my milk, either. Not even the pacifier will do.

  This is the problem with trying to avoid your neighbors. They see the car out front; they know I’m home. No, they know I’m home because you can hear Sadie crying a block away.

  “You’re blowing my cover,” I say into Sadie’s hair as we bob some more. I should just put her down. It’s not like she’s deriving any comfort from being in my arms. But putting her in the crib seems like a form of abandonment in her hour of need. Think how much worse she’d be if I weren’t holding her.

  I actually can’t imagine how her cries could get any louder. She is royally pissed off at me. Maybe a little space would do us good. She’ll start to miss me.

  Now the knocking has started, a syncopation that’s making me batty. I don’t even understand the mind-set of someone who wouldn’t just leave. Clearly, I’ve got my hands full. Do the women need fresh meat that badly?