The Neighbors Are Watching Read online

  The wafting cigarette smoke hit her nostrils again and her stomach gave a slight lurch. She turned her head, looking for the source, and found it halfway down the street. A skinny woman with short black hair stood at the edge of her driveway, leaning against her mailbox, puffing on a smoke like her life depended on it. Maybe she could feel the weight of a stare at her back because she turned, registered, and smiled, waving the cigarette-holding hand as a greeting. As a response, she waved her own hands in front of her face as if to get rid of the smoke, which was rude, but whatever, because it was also rude to stand and smoke on people. Why didn’t the woman go do that in her own house where she couldn’t pollute other people’s air?

  She hated people who smoked.

  No, she didn’t hate people who smoked. She hated her mother. Who smoked one goddamned cigarette—just one—every goddamned day.

  Her bladder was totally full now and threatening to burst. She was sweating again and feeling anxious—heart racing. She was seized by something close to panic—maybe it was panic—feeling hemmed in suddenly by this street with its garage doors and crazy piano and whores and weird women. The air felt sharp and hot in her nose. Her head pounded. The baby kicked in a flurry like it was trying to get out. Or get away.

  I don’t want to be here.

  Suddenly, it all felt like a huge mistake. If she could … If she could she would call her mother this very minute. Come and get me. But that bridge had been burned. And she’d been the one who’d torched it. It was then—visions of flaming bridges in her head and her fingers curling around the cell phone in her pocket—that the car drove onto the street and turned into the driveway where she was standing.

  So. They were home.

  There were a few seconds where nobody did anything. The woman—passenger—and the man—driver—didn’t get out of the car, just turned the car off and sat there. They stared at her through the windshield, this stranger in their driveway, and she stared back at them. The cooling engine ticked. Just as it was all starting to feel really, really weird, they both got out simultaneously, slamming their doors behind them.

  She could see him now, the white guy she’d never met who was about to get the biggest surprise of his life. For some reason—maybe it was the guilty look in his eyes and the turned-down corner of his mouth—it seemed like he might already know. Like maybe he’d been waiting for this moment.

  Not so with the blond, ponytailed tight-ass who had to be his wife. She was looking like she wondered what kind of hurricane blew this trash onto her doorstep and what was it going to take to get rid of it. She saw the wife look from her, to her suitcase, to her belly, and to her husband, her blue eyes darting like they had no place to settle, and she had just one thought. Bitch. The baby kicked and her bladder screamed with the urge to pee. Damn.

  He came up to her, close, and looked right down into her eyes. He was taller than she’d thought he would be. And better looking.

  “Hi,” he said. “Who are you? Can I help you with something?”

  “Are you Joe Montana?” she asked.

  “Yes, I am.”

  And then there was a second where it all threatened to fall apart, where she could taste the tears and fear at the back of her throat, and she had to bite her lip and press her fingernails into her palms just to keep from breaking down and crying. But she pulled it in and got it straight. She cleared her throat once and said, “I’m Diana Jones. I’m your daughter.”

  chapter 2

  Allison lay corpse-still, her back to her husband, unblinking eyes staring at the broken squares of moonlight on the carpet. The window was wide open, but the bedroom felt hot and stifling. The lemon-tinged scent of eucalyptus leaves was heavy in the air, coating her sinuses. Thoughts ran thick and furious inside her head, pulsing through her unmoving body, throbbing between her legs. Two impulses fought for control, both so strong they made her throat constrict. She wanted to kill him—just reach over and choke him until his breath was gone—and she wanted to climb on top of him and screw him senseless. She understood the murderous urge. After what he’d done, who could blame her? But the craving for sex surprised and shamed her. Her cheeks flushed with heat in the dark and she struggled to control her breathing. She didn’t want him to feel any movement coming from her side of the bed. She could tell by the light sound of his breathing that he was still awake. Her desire for physical contact was so powerful she knew that if he touched her—just one touch—she’d give in immediately.

  He’d done it before. Those nights when they’d had some minor argument and had gone to bed in silence, he’d wait ten, maybe fifteen, minutes and then shift so slightly toward her, his hand moving over to caress the curve of her hip. His fingers would rest there, light, until he felt the tremor of consent under her skin and then he’d roll over, his body falling heavy into hers. It was an agreement they had: He offered and she accepted.

  Sometimes, after they’d made love, Allison was sure that their little spats were a form of foreplay. But before, in those few minutes when the space between their bodies was cold and impenetrable, she always felt a sharp bite of fear that he wouldn’t reach out—that they’d stay like that forever.

  Of course, this time was different. Even he, as thick-skinned as he often was, wouldn’t make such a move now, not under these circumstances. The stupid little things they’d found to argue about before had now been made permanently irrelevant. Their entire marriage had twisted into a question mark and nothing would ever be the same or all right again. She thought of that big-bellied girl downstairs and felt acid burning her throat. She didn’t know what was worse—the betrayal, the lies, or the secrets. Just the same, she couldn’t take the chance that he’d move over, that he’d try to fix it somehow with his body. She’d lie here like this until dawn if she had to.

  She couldn’t see the clock but knew it was about three in the morning—the blackest, bleakest part of night. On still summer nights like this, when most of the neighbors turned off their air conditioners and opened their windows, you could hear anything you wanted and much of what you didn’t—cats yowling, the clink of late-night party wineglasses, and sometimes the menacing rustle of coyotes coming down from the dry hills surrounding the neighborhood. The relentless press of housing development through every empty space over the last ten years had brought those wild dogs ever nearer; a reminder, along with the influx of black crows, of how far civilization was encroaching on the wild.

  Now, Allison heard the slow crunch of gravel followed by the sound of a car door opening. No doubt it was coming from one of the many rotating vehicles in Jessalyn’s driveway. There’d been a steady stream of late-night visitors to that house since Jessalyn had moved in six months ago, which revealed something about the nature of the callers—all men as far as Allison had been able to tell. Very few of them stayed longer than an hour or two, which revealed something else. The car started promptly, and Allison heard it pulling away.

  Allison had spoken to Jessalyn maybe three or four times at most when they were both picking up their mail or pulling into their driveways at the same time. Somehow, even though Allison had tried to keep those encounters as short as possible (something about Jessalyn just repelled Allison), she had still managed to learn that Jessalyn had been on a reality contest show and that she’d lost (“Those shows are all fixed,” Jessalyn had told her at the time). She also knew that Jessalyn was “starting over,” although she couldn’t have been older than twenty-five, was “back in school to get my degree,” although Allison had no idea in what, and that she worked in a Del Mar day spa, although she hadn’t explained what she did there. Jessalyn’s eyes were overly made-up and always glassy—maybe that was what Allison didn’t like about her—probably from drugs, which she probably got from Kevin Werner.

  Allison could actually hear him now, several houses down, listening to some awful death metal band, the sharp tinny shrieks reaching her ears on wafts of air. She could see him in her mind’s eye, pockmarked, surly, and blac
k-clad. The kid was a walking billboard for disaffected youth and just one more reason to hate teenagers. Allison didn’t know how anyone managed to teach at the high school level. Her own third graders were bad enough—they already had entitled attitudes and challenged anyone who had the temerity to knock their all-important self-esteem. But … no, you couldn’t blame the kids yet. At that age, it was still the parents. The parents were responsible for all of it. She couldn’t understand how Dick and Dorothy Werner maintained their holier-than-thou attitude considering they’d raised that kid, Kevin. Just naming a kid Kevin was asking for trouble. Allison knew from experience that the Kevins in her class were always going to be troublemakers.

  Of course, Allison thought, she and Joe had just made it easier for dear Dot to maintain that superior stance forever. Dorothy had been there, kneeling in her star jasmine with her stupid yellow clippers in hand and watching when the girl had shown up. God only knew the conclusions Dorothy had drawn behind that ugly purple visor she always wore. Allison figured Dorothy was already whipping up a cake from a mix that she’d bring over for “you and Joe,” but really to find out why there was a pregnant teenager living in their house, information which she could then take back to Dick, who, as the arbiter of decency and American-ness on the block, would probably blow some sort of fuse inside his head. It was already killing him that there were lesbians living on the street and that he was separated from them by only two walls and a eucalyptus tree. Not that she’d heard this directly from Dick. But Dorothy, who had turned passive-aggressiveness into a high art, had dropped enough clues as to his point of view. “Dick’s so funny,” she’d said once. “He couldn’t find our power saw last night so he was going to go next door and ask one of the girls (Dorothy never referred to Sam and Gloria by name—they were always “the girls”) if he could borrow theirs. How silly is that? I mean, just because they, you know … well, anyway, it doesn’t mean they have tools. Men are so … Right?” And what was really the funniest thing, if you thought about it, was that Dorothy only shared this information with Allison because Dorothy thought of her as a like-minded friend.

  But Dick and Dorothy weren’t Allison’s problem. No, her problem was downstairs, nestled under the bright yellow afghan her grandmother had knitted for her before she’d passed away, in the hope that there’d soon be a great-grandchild to celebrate. Allison was glad the woman hadn’t lived to see who was sleeping under it now.

  It wasn’t the girl’s fault. Of course it wasn’t. Allison knew this intellectually even though there was nothing—nothing—appealing about Diana. From the sneering expression on her young face, to her swollen belly, which was proudly exposed and, yes, pierced, Diana was all hostility and bad attitude. The tattooed ankles rounded out the picture nicely. Diana had a snake on one and an apple on the other and Allison didn’t apprecíate the biblical references at all. And, although the girl’s mother was surely to blame for the poor parenting skills that had led to a pregnant, tattooed teenage daughter, Allison couldn’t lay fault for her sleepless night there either. No, it was Joe—all Joe. Allison clenched her thighs under the blanket creating a tiny tremor in the fabric. She was desperate for a drink, even though she’d hit the wine pretty hard before going to bed. She just wanted oblivion.

  The worst part was that Allison didn’t even know how she was supposed to feel. She and Joe had been married eight years and in all that time, not even a hint that he had a child somewhere. How could it have been so hidden—so out of her reach? How was it possible that through all the casual intimacies of their life together—shared meals and movies, paying bills, football on Sundays, washing dishes, brushing their teeth, their discussions about their future—there was no whisper, no accidentally dropped words about this girl? It would almost be easier to have woken up and found that everything about her life was a lie—that she was part of some grand government experiment, that her memory had been erased, that she was living with space aliens—instead of just this one awful truth. It wouldn’t get any better either. Because the girl was here and she was having a baby and Allison had absolutely no idea what role she was meant to play in this sordid little drama. Did Joe really expect her to be a grandma now? The very concept made her entire body stiff with anger. And beneath that anger was a kind of hurt she’d never felt before.

  But no, that wasn’t true. Of course it wasn’t. She had felt this way before and then … then it had felt so bad Allison couldn’t imagine how it was even happening, how she was able to stand it.

  Almost over. Another minute. One more minute.

  How many minutes in forever? Because that’s how long it took.

  No, don’t. Don’t squeeze my hand like that.

  There was nothing to hold on to, outside or in, while she was carved and torn.

  Just about done now. That’s it.

  The doctor was wearing a belly pack and the nurse kept her hands far from reach. The noise—that horrible mechanical groan—raging in her ears. Allison wanted to scream, but she had no breath.

  Okay. All done now.

  It was a mistake, a terrible mistake that couldn’t be undone. Joe had been kind and sweet and sorry and they’d talked about it then, talked about how it was the best thing—the right thing to do—and that of course it was Allison’s choice ultimately. Her choice, of course. But it wasn’t, not really. And then, the second it was over, regret, immediate and piercing, opened a wound inside Allison that she didn’t know if she could ever close. The only thing she’d felt sure of then was that it would be impossible to experience that kind of pain again. But she’d been wrong about that too. She’d started to tell him this earlier today, but just bringing it up stung like fresh salt in that unclosed wound. Besides, he didn’t understand. She didn’t know if he ever would.

  Joe’s breath was coming slow and deep now. His shoulder muscles twitched. He was falling asleep finally. Allison felt her anger spike. He had no right to enjoy the release of unconsciousness while she lay next to him awake and destroyed. She was going to get up, she decided, slide out of bed, go downstairs to the kitchen, and pour herself a big glass of the vodka that had been residing in their freezer for the past three years. She was going to drink it all and too bad if she threw up or had a hangover. She wanted to be drunk into the next day and beyond. As far as she could see, there was no other way to handle this nightmare. At least school was out for the summer. There would have been no way she could have gone to work at this point—drunk or sober.

  Allison slid one leg to the edge of the bed as if testing the temperature of a bath. She shifted by inches, preparing to roll off and escape, but before she could lift the sheet she felt the warm pressure of Joe’s hand on her arm. They both lay suspended for a few seconds—Allison rigid with the bottleneck of her competing emotions and Joe waiting to see what she’d do—and then he leaned in close enough for her to feel the naked skin of his chest against her back.

  “Allie?” he said, his voice amplified by the silence of their bedroom. There was so much in it, Allison thought: apology, pleading, an edge of impatience, and warning. She knew this husband of hers so well that she could hear all of these nuances in the way he’d said her name. How then had she missed something so important? He moved his hand to her shoulder and gently rolled her onto her back. Allison didn’t resist. He stroked her face and touched his lips to her neck. Allison’s legs started shaking as he parted them with his hand, smoothing the skin of her thighs. She didn’t help him as he pushed her underwear down below her knees and said nothing as he climbed on top of her. But as he shifted her hips to meet his in exactly the right place, Allison started to cry.

  This is the last time. The thought was loud inside her head.

  Allison didn’t have to wait too long before Joe’s heavy breathing turned into satisfied snoring. Her eyes, still sprung open as if by cartoon matchsticks, had stopped leaking tears. No need to worry about waking him now. She pulled her underwear up and slid out of bed. She took a last look at him; his arms spraw
led in postcoital surrender as if he’d been shot down where he lay.

  In a hurry and unwilling to root around in the dark for a T-shirt or pajama bottoms, Allison grabbed a bathrobe off a hook on the back of their bedroom door. She pulled it tight across her naked breasts and cinched the belt hard.

  Never mentioned he had a child. Not once. Not even when she was carrying one herself.

  Allison padded barefoot down the beige-carpeted stairs in the dark, making a beeline for the kitchen and the cold oblivion that waited for her in the freezer. She had to stop thinking, had to turn off her brain, if only for a few hours. She visualized the bottle of Absolut Citron and her hand excavating it from behind the bags of frozen vegetables. She didn’t turn on the kitchen light. No need. A tumbler sat out on the faux granite countertop. Perfect. Allison yanked open the freezer handle, bathing herself in a frosty mist of light. She reached and rustled inside, searching. And stopped. There was a noise so faint it took a second for her to realize she’d heard it. Sounded like a sigh. Allison felt cold tension gather between her shoulder blades.

  “I couldn’t sleep.”

  Allison jumped back, her throat closing and choking off a scream as she turned her head in the direction of the voice. “Jesus!” Her hands were already shaking. “Jesus, you—you—”

  Diana was sitting on a rattan chair in the breakfast nook, barely visible between the pale light of the still-open freezer and the moon coming through the window behind her. Allison could make out the round outline of the white T-shirt stretched impossibly taut over Diana’s pregnant belly and the dark tendrils of her curly hair falling down her shoulders.