My Life Next Door

by Huntley Fitzpatrick

  Part of me wants to giggle hysterically. But Mr. Lennox’s large brown eyes, magnified by his glasses, radiate sincerity and concern.

  “Do I need to Have Words with Someone?” he asks. “Is there something you need to Get off Your Chest?”

  If you only knew.

  For a moment, the words crowd into my mouth. My mother nearly killed the father of the boy I love and now I’ve broken his heart and I can’t tell anyone. My best friend hates me for something she did and I can’t fix it. I don’t know who my own mother is anymore and I don’t recognize myself and everything is terrible.

  I imagine pouring all those words out to Mr. Lennox, who was flustered by not knowing the right hour for a lumber delivery. There’s no way.

  “It’s nothing about the job. I just can’t stay here.”

  He nods. “I accept your resignation with Great Regret.”

  I thank him. As I turn to go, he calls, “Ms. Reed!”

  “Hm?”

  “I do hope you will continue to swim. You may keep the key. Our Arrangement for your training stands.”

  Recognizing this for the gift it is, I say, “Thank you.” And leave before I can say more.

  With no schedule, no babysitting or breakfast shift or lifeguard gig, days and nights bleed into one another. I can’t settle down during nights and spend them roaming the house restlessly or watching Lifetime movies, where everyone is worse off than I am.

  Why don’t I call my sister?

  The answer is, of course, that I do. Of course I do. She knows this situation from the inside out, knows Mom, me. Knows it all. But here’s what happens when I call:

  Straight to voicemail. My sister’s husky voice, her deep-from-the-belly laugh, so familiar and so far away. “Got me. Or not, really. You know what to do. Talk to me! I may even call you back.” My imagining: Tracy out on beach, bright blue eyes squinting against the sun, having that carefree summer she told Mom she’d earned, phone in Flip’s pocket, or switched to off, because what was the big deal. Their perfect summer. I open my mouth to say something, but snap the phone shut.

  The strangest part? Mom used to notice if I had a nearly invisible stain on my shirt, or hadn’t conditioned my hair enough, or if my morning routine deviated in some miniscule way: “You always have a smoothie before work, Samantha. Why are you having toast? I’ve read that a change in a teenager’s routine could be a red flag for a drug habit.” But now? Clouds of pot smoke could be unfurling under my door and that probably wouldn’t stop the blizzard of Post-it notes that are her primary form of communication these days.

  Please pick up my silk suit at the dry cleaner. Toile chair in study has stain, apply OxiClean. Will be out very late tonight; turn on alarm when you go to bed.

  I’ve quit all my jobs and become a recluse. And my mother doesn’t seem to notice.

  “Sweetheart! Good timing,” Mom says jovially as I drag myself into the kitchen in response to her Yoo-hoo, Samantha, I need you. “I was just showing this nice man how I make my lemonade. Kurt, did you say your name was?” Mom asks the man seated at our kitchen island after waving cheerfully at me with the lemon zester.

  “Carl,” he responds. I know him. He’s Mr. Agnoli, who takes the photographs for the Stony Bay Bugle. He always photographed the winning swim teams. Now he’s in our kitchen, looking starstruck by Mom.

  “We thought a quick piece about the state senator at home would be great along with pictures of her making lemonade. A metaphor for what she can do for the state,” Mr. Agnoli tells me.

  Mom turns around and checks the sugar/water mixture melting on the stove, enlightening Mr. Agnoli about how it’s the added lemon zest that really does the trick.

  “I’m going back upstairs,” I say, and do so. Maybe if I can just sleep for a hundred years, I’ll wake up in a better story.

  I’m jolted awake by Mom jerking on my arm. “You can’t doze the day away, sweetheart. I’ve got plans.”

  Everything about her looks the same as always: her smoothly uptwisted chignon, her faultless makeup, her calm blue eyes. I’m in a backward version of the way I felt after Jase spent the night. When big things happen to you—shouldn’t they show on your face? Not on Mom’s, though.

  “I took the whole day off.” She’s rubbing my back now. “I’ve been so busy, neglecting you, I know. I thought maybe we could go get facials, maybe—”

  “Facials?”

  She pulls back a little at the sound of my voice, then continues in the same lulling tone, “Remember how we used to do that, the first day of summer vacation? It was a tradition and I skipped right over it this year. I thought I could make it up to you, we could go out to lunch afterward—”

  I sit up abruptly. “Do you really think that’s how it works? I’m not the one you need to make it up to.”

  She walks over to the window overlooking the Garretts’ lawn. “Stop this. It’s not doing any good.”

  “Maybe if I could understand why not, Mom.” I haul myself out of bed and stand next to her at the window, looking down on the Garretts’ house, the toys in the yard, the inflatables floating in the pool, the Mustang.

  Her jaw tightens. “The truth? Fine. I never enjoyed it when you and Tracy were small. I’m not like that woman over there—” She gestures out the window in the direction of the Garretts’. “I’m not some broodmare. I wanted children, sure. I was an only child growing up, I was always lonely. When I met your father with his big family, I thought…But I hated the mess and the smells and the constant distractions. As it turned out, he’d had enough of all that growing up too. So he took off to be a boy again, and left me two little babies. I could have afforded ten nannies, and you just had the one, and she only came in during the weekdays. I got through that time. Now I’ve finally found a place for myself.” She reaches out, takes hold of my upper arm again, jogging it, as though she’s trying to wake me up all over again. “You want me to give that up?”

  “But—”

  “I work so hard, have worked hard for longer than you can even remember. I’m supposed to pay penance for the rest of my life for one night where I was able to relax and have a good time?”

  Another arm-shake. Her face is very close to mine.

  “Do you really think that’s right, Samantha?”

  I don’t know what’s right anymore. My head hurts and my heart feels nothing but numb blankness. I want to reach into her argument and pick out the thread that’s wrong, but it all seems like a tangle.

  I still watch the Garretts, relieved when I see signs of normalcy—Alice lying in a lawn chair tanning or Duff and Harry having a squirt-gun fight. But watching doesn’t give me the feeling it used to—at once hopeful and calming, that there were worlds other than my own, where extraordinary things could happen. Now it feels like I’m exiled, back in Kansas with all that color bleached to black and white.

  I try hard to skirt around memories of Jase, but they’re everywhere. I found one of his shirts under my bed yesterday and stood there with it in my hand, frozen in amazed horror that I hadn’t noticed it—and Mom hadn’t either. I shoved it to the back of my own shirt drawer. Then I pulled it out and slept in it.

  Chapter Forty-six

  I’m walking up our driveway, one of the few times I’ve cast my shadow outdoors, when I feel a touch on my shoulder and turn around to see Tim.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” he demands, grabbing hold of my hand.

  “Leave me alone.” I yank it away from him.

  “The hell I will. Don’t you pull that ice queen bullshit with me, Samantha. You dumped Jase with no explanation. Nan won’t say jack shit about you except that you aren’t friends anymore. Look at you—you look like hell. You’re all skinny and pale. You don’t even look like the same girl. What the fuck’s happening to you?”

  I take out my key to unlock the door. Despite the heat of the day, it feels like it’s made of stone, so heavy and cold in my hand. “I’m not going to talk to you, Tim. It’s none of your busin
ess.”

  “Screw that too. He’s my friend. You were the one who brought him into my life. He’s made things better. There’s no way I’m going to stand by and watch you crap on him when his world is already messed up. He’s got enough to deal with.”

  I open the door and drop my purse, which also feels as though it’s made of lead. My head hurts. Tim, of course, king of no mercy, follows me right in, letting the door slam shut behind us.

  “I can’t talk to you.”

  “Fine. Talk to Jase.”

  I twist to look at him. Even that movement feels painful. Maybe I’m slowly turning to stone myself. Except that then things wouldn’t hurt so much, would they?

  Tim looks at my face and the anger in his fades, replaced by concern.

  “Please, Samantha. I know you. This is not how you act. This is how crazy, messed-up girls into power trips act. This is how assholes like me act. I’ve known you since you were little, and you were put together then. This doesn’t make any sense. You and Jase…you two were solid. You don’t just walk away from that. What the fuck is up with you?”

  “I can’t talk to you,” I repeat.

  His cool gray eyes scan slowly over my face, measuring. “You’ve gotta talk to someone. If not Jase, if not Nan…I’m sure not your ma…Who’re you gonna to talk to?”

  Just like that, I start to cry. I haven’t cried at all, and now I can’t stop. Tim, clearly horrified, glances around the room as though hoping someone, anyone, has come in who can save him from this sobbing girl. I slide slowly down the wall and keep crying.

  “Shit, stop it. It can’t be that bad. Whatever it is…it can be solved.” He crosses to the kitchen island, pulling a length of paper towel off the porcelain holder, thrusting it toward me. “Here, wipe your eyes. Anything can be fixed. Even me. Listen, I enrolled to work toward my GED. I’m gonna move out. My friend Connor from AA has this apartment over his garage, and I’m gonna live there, which means I don’t have to deal with my folks anymore, and I can…Here, blow your nose.”

  I take the scratchy paper and blow. I know my face is red and swollen and now that I’ve started crying, I think it’s very possible I won’t ever be able to stop.

  “That’s it.” Tim pats me awkwardly on the back, more like he’s trying to dislodge something stuck in my throat than comfort me. “Whatever’s going on, it’ll be okay…but I can’t believe ditching Jase is gonna help.”

  I cry harder.

  With a resigned expression, Tim shears off more paper towels.

  “Can I…?” I’m now doing that hiccupping thing that comes after too much sobbing, making it difficult to catch my breath.

  “Can you what? Just spit it out.”

  “Can I move in with you? To the garage apartment?”

  Tim goes still, his hand frozen in the act of wiping my eyes. “Wha-at?”

  I don’t have enough breath—or maybe courage—to repeat myself.

  “Samantha—you can’t…I’m flattered, but…why the hell would you wanna do something like that?”

  “I can’t stay here. With them next door and with Mom. I can’t face Jase and I can’t stand to look at her.”

  “This is about Grace? What’d she do? Tell you she was yanking your trust fund if you didn’t ditch Jase?”

  I shake my head, not looking at him.

  Tim skids down against the wall next to me, stretching out his long legs, while I’m crouched in this small hunched circle, knees to chest.

  “Spill, kiddo.” He looks me in the face, unblinking. “Hit me. I go to meetings now, and you wouldn’t believe the shit I’ve heard.”

  “I know who hurt Mr. Garrett,” I squeeze out.

  Tim looks incredulous. “Fuck me. Really? Who?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Are you freakin’ crazy? You can’t keep that a secret. Tell the Garretts. Tell Jase. Maybe they can sue the bastard and get millions. How’d you find out, anyway?”

  “I was there. That night. In the car. With my mom.”

  His face blanches under his freckles, making his hair stand out like flame.

  Silence falls between us like a curtain.

  Finally Tim says, “I picked the wrong day to give up amphetamines.”

  I stare at him.

  “Sorry. Airplane joke. I’m immature. I know what you’re saying. I just don’t really want to know what you’re saying.”

  “Then go.”

  “Samantha.” He grabs at my sleeve. “You can’t keep quiet. Gracie committed a fucking crime.”

  “It would ruin her life.”

  “So you’ll let her ruin theirs?”

  “She’s my mother, Tim.”

  “Yeah, and your ma screwed up big-time. Because of that you’re trashing Jase’s life and Mrs. G’s and all those kids’? And your own…? That’s just fucked up.”

  “So what am I supposed to do? Go over there—look Jase in the eye and say, ‘Sorry—you know that person you couldn’t believe existed, the one who would hit someone and drive away? She’s your next-door neighbor. She’s my mom.’”

  “He deserves to know.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Nope, I sure as hell don’t. This is not exactly something I’ve run into. God, I need a smoke.” He pats at his shirt pocket but comes up empty.

  “It would destroy her.”

  “I could really use a drink right now too.”

  “Yeah, that would help,” I say. “That’s what happened. She’d had too much wine and she was driving and—” I bury my face in my hands. “I was asleep, and there was this awful thump.” I look up at him through my fingers. “I can’t get it out of my head.”

  “Aw, kid. Aaah, shit.” Gingerly, Tim wraps an arm around my shaking shoulders.

  “Clay told her to keep going, to back up and drive off and…she did.” I hear my voice breaking, still incredulous. “Just like that.”

  “I knew that guy was scum,” Tim spits. “I knew it. Worst frickin’ type too. Smart scum.”

  We sit there in silence for a few minutes, our backs against the wall. Then Tim repeats, “You have to tell Jase, tell him all that.”

  I shove my fists against my cheeks. “She’d have to resign and she might go to jail and it would all be because of me.” Now that I’m finally talking, the words are tumbling out of my mouth in a rush.

  “No. No, kid. Because of her. She did the wrong thing. You’d be doing the right one.”

  “Like you did the right thing with Nan?” I say quietly.

  Tim’s eyes flick to mine, widening. He tilts his head, staring at me, and then realization crystallizes on his face, and he reddens, looks down at his hands.

  “Uh well, hey,” he says. “Nan’s a pain in the ass and I like to screw with her and generally make her life miserable—but she is my sister.”

  “She is my mother.”

  “It’s different,” Tim mutters. “See, I already was a fuck-up. I didn’t cheat on papers, but I did every other shitty thing that occurred to me. Kinda seemed like karma that I’d get cheated from. But you’re not like that. You know who you are.”

  “A mess.”

  He looks at me. “Well…kind of. But if you blow your nose again, maybe brush your hair a little…”

  I can’t help but laugh, which makes my nose run more and adds, I’m sure, to my general charming appearance.

  Tim rolls his eyes, straightens up, and hands me the entire roll of paper towels. “Have you talked to your mom? Mr. Garrett’s got some infection now—this high fever, and things are just all messed up. Maybe if she knew how bad this shit is.”

  “I tried. Of course I’ve tried. It’s like talking to a wall. It happened, it’s over, resigning won’t do the Garretts any good, blah blah blah.”

  “Suing her ass would do them some good,” Tim mumbles. “What about the police? What if you gave them an anonymous tip? No, they’d need proof. What if you talked to Mrs. Garrett first? She’s cool.”

  “I ca
n barely stand to look at their house, Tim. I can’t talk to Mrs. Garrett.”

  “Then start with Jase. The guy’s wrecked, Sam. Working at the store all the time and going to the hospital and keeping up with that crazy-ass training and trying to keep it together at home…all while wondering what the fuck happened to his girl—if you couldn’t deal, or if he did something wrong or if you think his family’s just a train wreck you don’t want to handle.”

  “That’s Mom,” I say automatically. “Not me.” My theme song still.

  But…it is me. Staying quiet, pretending. I am doing exactly what Mom has done. I am, after all, just like her.

  I stand up. “Do you know where Jase is? At the store?”

  “Store’s closed, Samantha, it’s after five. I don’t know where he is now. I locked up. But I have my car and his cell number. I’ll get you to him. Not stay or anything. This has to be between you two. But I’ll getcha there.” He crooks his elbow out, offering his arm, like some courtly nineteenth-century gentleman. Mr. Darcy. In somewhat unusual circumstances.

  I take a deep breath, wrap my fingers around his elbow.

  “And, for the record,” Tim adds, “I’m so fucking sorry, Samantha. I’m fucking, fucking sorry about all this.”

  Chapter Forty-seven

  From that first day, I’ve walked right into the Garretts’ without knocking. But now when Tim puts his hand on the screen door handle, I shake my head. There’s no doorbell, so I tap loudly on the metal of the doorframe, rattling it. I can hear George’s husky voice talking on and on in another room, so I know someone’s home.

  Alice comes to the door. The smile drops off her face immediately.

  “What do you want?” she says through the screen.

  “Where’s Jase?”

  She looks over her shoulder, then comes out onto the steps, slamming the screen door behind her. She’s wearing a white bikini top and a pair of faded cutoffs. Beside me, I feel Tim’s focus disappearing faster than helium from a burst balloon.