by Pamela Morsi
Did everybody on Helm Street know him? He must come up here all the time. Erica tried to put the brakes on that thought. He might have lived around here during one of his foster home placements, she suggested to herself. Or maybe...or maybe...
Erica couldn’t think of another excuse. But she was wishing she’d brought binoculars. Tom began to head toward the front door of the house, but the older woman was still talking to him. He slowly but surely kept putting distance between them. Finally he gave her a little wave and climbed the front steps to ring the doorbell. It was loud enough for Erica to hear it all the way down the street. He waited a couple of minutes, cooling his heels on the front porch.
That’s an old female trick, Erica thought to herself. Making them wait was supposed to hone a man’s ardor. Cause him to desire you that much more.
Finally somebody opened the door, but Tom’s body was in the way and Erica couldn’t see who it was. She unhooked her seat belt and quickly climbed over into the passenger seat attempting to get a better look, but to no avail. Then, Tom walked inside and the door closed. Erica sat there.
The old woman who had spoken to Tom in the yard was leisurely making her way back to her own house. Then abruptly she turned down the driveway that divided the two properties.
Erica sat in the minivan.
She began to wish she hadn’t drunk the horchata. And not just because the spill had caused her jeans to adhere uncomfortably to her thighs. She needed to go to the bathroom. But if she left, she might miss Tom’s departure. She might miss the chance to see the woman he was with.
In the wild fear of her own imagination she could picture the scene now: Tom would emerge from the front door, disheveled. Behind him a busty beauty wearing only a see-through negligee and fur mules would hurry after him, loath for him to leave. She’d throw her arms around him for one last passionate kiss. Then Tom would press the woman, this stranger, up against the wall, the way he had done with Erica just three nights ago, and have sex with her right there.
“Stop it!” she demanded of herself aloud.
Under no circumstances would Tom have sex with some strange woman on her front porch.
Erica continued to sit and watch and plan her next move, but she really needed to go to the bathroom. The street had to be one of the most boring in America. A few people came home, parked in their driveways and went into their houses. She saw one more dog walker. And witnessed a package delivery down the block. Nothing was happening, and she had to go to the bathroom.
Erica wondered about her mother and how she had done this very thing. How had she sat in unfamiliar neighborhoods, waiting in silence as she imagined her husband with another woman?
Unpleasantly Erica recalled the incident when she’d first realized that her mother had tapped their phone. Erica had joked about an indiscretion at a party and her mother had cautioned her about it.
“You listened to my private calls!” Erica had accused.
“Believe me, it’s much more of a chore than a pleasure,” her mother answered. “I record it all and browse through it while I’m exercising at the gym.”
“That’s illegal,” Erica challenged.
“I pay for the phone. I can record conversations on it if I want,” Ann Marie said. “I don’t know why you’re so upset. I didn’t deliberately spy on you.”
“Why are you spying on anybody?”
“I’m a wife,” she’d answered. “If I’m not proactive, then I’ll get played.”
Erica crossed her legs and was shaking her foot to distract herself from the need to pee. She wanted to call Letty. She wanted to talk to her sister, share this crappy miserable moment with her, the way they’d shared so many crappy miserable moments in the past. But she didn’t. Letty was against this. If Erica called, her sister would tell her to get out of there.
Perhaps she should leave, Erica thought. She’d found out what she wanted to know. She’d found out where Tom was spending his evenings. What more did she need to know?
She needed to see the woman. She needed to see Tom with her.
The sun was now cutting through the trees in colors of brilliant orange. It would be dark soon, very soon. And unless the lovers had the good sense to turn on the porch light, Tom’s retreat would be completely shadowed.
“Okay, time to make a move,” Erica announced aloud to herself.
She put on her jacket and raised her collar to disguise her profile. She pulled the bill of the baseball cap lower on her face and opened the door of the minivan. She stepped outside and glanced around furtively. No one was observing her. She locked the vehicle and put the keys in her pocket before stealthily crossing the street. Not a soul in sight. In the distance she could hear the sound of traffic, but it was far away and her footfalls on the pavement made almost no noise at all.
As she approached the house, she saw that it was longer than it was wide. From the driveway beside it she could see only one light shining out from a pair of windows. Beneath those windows was a hedge of overgrown nandina. Erica realized immediately that she could hide in the cover of that hedge and peek into those windows.
She hesitated. Was she into window peeping now? She didn’t want to be this person. But she had to know. And she couldn’t wait much longer. She had to go somewhere to pee.
Glancing around once more, she headed down the driveway, carefully keeping to the shadows of the house. She slipped in between the hedge and the house and took her first glance through the window. She saw Tom.
He was sitting at a table with a plate of food in front of him. He was talking, laughing. His fork paused in the air, his conversation directed at someone else in the room. Someone that Erica couldn’t see. She had to move farther down the hedge to be able to get a full view of the room. She took a couple of slow, silent steps in that direction and was surprised to find the old woman she’d seen from the house next door crouched down peeping in the same windows.
The two women, shocked, stared at each other’s faces for only a half an instant. Just long enough for Erica to recognize her. The woman, of course, did not recognize Erica. She began screaming at the top of her lungs.
Erica heard movement inside the house. She turned and ran. No stealth and shadows now. She sprinted up the street as if all the demons of hell were after her. She heard the front door of the woman’s house slam against the siding as it was thrown open. That wasn’t the only door. Porch lights all over the neighborhood were going on, and husbands, fathers, sons and brothers were rushing outside. Erica reached the minivan and fumbled for the keys in her pocket. Frantically she looked back the way she’d come to see that most of the would-be rescuers had rushed toward the sound of the screaming. She did hear somebody holler and saw somebody pointing in her direction.
She got the key into the door lock and got it open. Inside she fumbled for the ignition. Once the engine had turned over, she jerked the transmission into Drive and made a quick, wide U-turn that involved bouncing over the curb. As soon as she was on the road, she accelerated sharply, leaving a strip of rubber on the road and the screech of tires in her wake. Erica’s heart was pounding. She was cursing her stupidity. She was desperately trying to drive slowly and unsuspiciously. After a couple of turns, she realized that she was lost in the subdivision. And somewhere in the last two minutes, she’d peed herself.
Tom was still yawning as he walked into the kitchen the next morning.
“Shower’s empty,” he announced.
“I took a bath last night before I went to bed,” Erica answered without turning to face him.
On the way to the coffeepot, he planted a kiss on the back of her head. “You’re fixing eggs this morning? It really smells good.”
Tom poured the first cup of the day and savored it. The first sip was far and away the best. It just made the mornings start out right.
“Do you want me to put toast in?”
“Sure.”
The bread was already on the counter, and he loaded it into the toaster and pu
shed down the lever. “Sorry I was so late getting in last night,” he said. “You’ll never believe what happened.”
When Erica didn’t respond or comment, he figured it must be a critical moment for the sunny-sides.
“I was at my customer’s house, and apparently she’s got a next-door neighbor who is a busybody and she wanted to know who was visiting, so she decided to peek into the windows.” Tom shook his head as he thought of it. “So while this old gal is looking in, a real Peeping Tom shows up. Unbelievable!” Tom laughed at the memory. “So the woman lets out this bloodcurdling scream. If I was an older guy, I would have had a heart attack.”
The toast popped up and Tom got the butter out of the refrigerator.
“It’s funny now, but it sure wasn’t funny last night,” he said. “For a single woman living alone, the idea of some guy looking in her windows is scary. So we called the police.”
Erica carried a plate of eggs to the table. Tom followed with the toast and seated himself.
“They weren’t able to catch the guy,” Tom continued. “The cops didn’t actually show up for twenty minutes. But they got a description from the crazy lady next door and the other neighbors who saw him driving off. He looked like a teenager with glasses and a ball cap. He was driving a minivan, probably his parents’.”
“Did anybody get the license number?” Erica asked. “No,” Tom answered. “It all happened pretty fast, and he was parked up the street.”
Tom took a bite of his eggs. They were cooked exactly as he liked them. “Mmm, these are great,” he said.
Quint came bouncing in and sat down in front of his own breakfast. “Can I wear the new shirt that Aunt Letty and I made?” he asked. “It’s not a new shirt, really. It’s a shirt I had. But Aunt Letty wrote my name on it in glue and we put glitter on it and it looks so cool. Aunt Letty knows how to do everything, and I love it when she comes to babysit me.” “Eat your eggs,” Erica said, too sharply.
Tom and Quint both glanced up.
“I’ll let you wear the shirt if you stop talking and eat your eggs.”
“Okay,” Quint said quietly. He focused on his plate. After a couple of moments he tentatively asked, “Did I do something, Mom? Are you mad at me?”
Tom was wondering the same thing himself.
“Of course not,” Erica answered more evenly. “I’m not mad at all. I...I have a headache and I need a quiet breakfast.” “Okay,” Quint whispered.
Erica was not a woman who was particularly prone to headaches.
“Do you think you’re coming down with something?” Tom asked. “Should you call in sick today? Stay home?”
“I took an aspirin,” she answered hastily. “I’ll be fine.” They ate the rest of the meal in silence. Quint finished first and hurried to wash up and dress. Tom cleared the table.
“Drink your coffee,” he told Erica. “I can put this stuff in the dishwasher.” It only took him a couple of minutes, but she was not at the table when he got back. He found her in the bathroom, already dressed in her underwear and putting on makeup.
“Are you feeling better?”
“I’m fine,” she assured him. “I just couldn’t take Quint’s chatter this morning.”
Tom stepped behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. He could see both their faces in the mirror, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. Something was wrong, but he didn’t know what. That was the way it was with wives, he’d discovered. There were lots of times that a husband just couldn’t get a handle on what was going on. She might be having her period. Or not having her period. Maybe she didn’t sleep well. Or she was simply annoyed about not having a decent washing machine. It was hard for a husband to know.
He nuzzled her temple with his freshly shaved cheek. “Would it help if I said I love you?”
She did look at him them. There was something strange in her eyes, beautiful but with an intensity that wasn’t typical. Inexplicably the memory of the interior of the Buick flashed in his mind. But the answer was more confusing than the question.
“Are you going to say it?” Erica asked.
“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Tom stumbled slightly on his own thoughts. “I love you, Erica. I love you. Don’t ever doubt it.”
“I love you, too,” she answered.
The moment was so serious that it felt uncomfortable. In defense Tom stepped back, wrapped a towel around his neck like a silk scarf and burst into song mimicking the low-timbre smoothness of The King.
“Hah-va I told...you—lately that I love you...”
Tom had just managed to put a smile on her face when a small voice called out from the vicinity of the living room.
“I’m ready!”
“Your son awaits,” Tom said.
“Thank goodness. It’s way too early in the morning for Elvis impersonations,” Erica teased.
He swatted his wife playfully on the backside.
They finished dressing. The family headed off to work, to school, to the shop. As he opened up for business and got ready for his day, Tom thought again about how the look in her eyes reminded him of that time in his childhood when he rode in the Buick.
“It was a wedding,” he murmured aloud to himself. He got the new sneakers because he was going to a wedding.
That was probably what it meant, he thought. He’d been on his way to a wedding, and looking at his wife made him think of marriage.
Not all that strange and complicated, he assured himself. He put it out of his mind as he concentrated on the work at hand.
Briscoe and Hector showed up a few minutes early. Gus wandered in about twenty minutes late. When nine o’clock rolled around and Cliff hadn’t showed up, he phoned his cell. No answer.
Maybe he’s late and doesn’t want to have to apologize twice.
A half hour later he was ready to call the home number, when Trish called him.
“Is Cliff there?”
Tom hesitated. He really hated to lie for this guy, even if he was his best friend.
“I guess he’s running late this morning, Trish. Must have got into some traffic going through downtown.”
On the other end of the line she burst into tears. “He didn’t come home last night. I don’t know where he is or what happened. I thought he must be working late again and got too busy to call. But this morning...he didn’t come home at all.”
Tom was momentarily speechless as he warred between which was worse to say to a sobbing wife, Have you checked the hospitals? or Don’t worry, he’s probably shacked up with his girlfriend.
“I woke up this morning and he wasn’t here,” Trish said. “I phoned his cell and no one answered. I phoned and phoned and phoned. I had to keep it together for the kids. I couldn’t afford to fall apart until they were safely at school.” Tom hated the whole idea of her trying valiantly to remain stoic while her cheating husband probably overslept in a cheap motel.
“Let me make some calls, Trish,” he said. “I don’t know where he is, but let me call around. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
Tom hung up the phone and privately cursed Cliff. He flipped through the office Rolodex until he found the parts store. He dialed the number. A woman answered the phone, but it was not the woman he was searching for.
“Hi, this is Tom Bentley at Bentley’s Classic Car Care. Is Stacy in this morning?”
“No, she’s not here today.”
“Is she coming in later?”
“No, she’s taking a few days off for vacation. She should be back at the store on Monday. Can somebody else help?”
“No, no, that’s fine. Thank you.”
Tom hung up and cursed again. He paced a couple of times back and forth in the office and then went out into the shop to talk to Gus and Hector.
“Did Cliff say anything about not being here today?” he asked.
The two men glanced at each other first, shaking their heads.
“He’s been pretty quiet the last week or so,” Gus said. “Not very interes
ted in shooting the bull around here.”
“What about this girlfriend of his, Stacy?” Tom asked, not even bothering to pretend that they didn’t know. “What’s her last name?”
Again they were short on information.
“Call the place where she works,” Gus said.
Tom sighed. “I did, but I didn’t think to ask that question. I guess I’ll call again.”
He went back into the office and re-called the parts store. “This is Tom Bentley again. What is Stacy’s last name?”
The woman replied without hesitation.
“Do you have her home phone number?” Tom asked.
“She’s not there. I told you, she’s on vacation.”
“I could leave a message on her voice mail,” Tom fudged.
“Oh yeah, sure.”
He heard the woman clicking through a couple of screens before she gave him the number. Tom wrote it down and then made a mental note to remind his own employees not to give out personal information on each other.
After ending the call to the parts store, he phoned the number he’d been given, not knowing what he might encounter or what he even had to say. When a man’s voice picked up on the third ring, he decided that honesty had to be the best policy.
“Hi,” he said. “This is Tom Bentley from Bentley’s Classic Car Care. I’m trying to find Stacy.”
There was a hesitation on the end of the line.
“So you’ve lost her, too.”
“Huh?”
“Aren’t you the son of a bitch who’s been screwing my wife for months?”
Tom was momentarily speechless. Had Cliff somehow thrown suspicion on Tom? Was that how he’d been doing it? Was that how he’d been keeping his wife from suspecting anything? Why Trish had been so angry at him?
“No, I’m not,” Tom replied firmly. “I am the boss of the son of a bitch who’s been screwing your wife for months. He didn’t show up for work this morning, and his wife is terrified.”
Stacy’s husband was silent for a moment and then gave a disgusted snort. “Now that figures,” he said. “The creep isn’t even man enough to face his own wife. What Stacy sees in these low-life cowards I’ll never understand.”