The Woman Next Door (21 page)

She waited. Greg said nothing. His lower lip quivered.

"I repeat, do you
want
to make her cry?"

"No."

"She said what a nice boy she thinks you are. Let's not prove her wrong."

Marilyn left the room and locked the door behind her.

Greg screamed again. Mentally. Loud and long. The effort threw him against the door. He crumpled there, sobbing.

At least she hadn't used barbed wire.

"I
s he okay?" Christine asked.

Marilyn returned to her wing chair. She crossed her legs, pulled her housedress over her knees, smiled apologetically. "He's okay. A nightmare—he had a nightmare." She glanced at her cup on the end table. "Some more tea, Christine?"

"No, thank you, Marilyn. I should be going. Tim will be home soon."

Marilyn stood to escort Christine to the door. "May I?" She indicated the chair's push bars.

Christine smiled. "Of course."

Marilyn pushed her slowly from the room. She stopped in the hallway. "You know, Christine, our little talk has been quite therapeutic for me."

"It was my pleasure, Marilyn. Anytime."

"Can I take that as a promise?"

"Yes—please do."

"Because, as you can imagine—and regardless of the bastard he turned out to be—it's going to get a little lonely here without Brett. This is quite a large house—"

"I've noticed."

"And Greg certainly isn't . . . well, adult companionship. It would be nice if you and I could be friends."

"Yes, that would be nice, Marilyn."

"I don't have many friends, you know."

"I wouldn't have guessed."

"Lots of opportunities, naturally, but very few real friends. I've never had the time for them. Or the patience. People can be such idiots."

"Yes, they can."

"But I like you, Christine. I like you very much." Christine turned her head and smiled warmly.

"Thank you, Marilyn." She turned her head back. "Tim must be sending the dogs out for me by now." "Oh, yes. Forgive me."

She pushed Christine briskly to the side door. There was only one, short step down to it, and with Marilyn's help, Christine negotiated it easily. Marilyn opened the door, held it:

"Maybe I could get an estimate on a small ramp, Christine—something like what you've got at your front door."

Christine turned her chair around to face her. She reached out, touched her hand. "Thank you, Marilyn, but it's not necessary. That step's not bad." She withdrew her hand, started down the driveway.

"Be careful," Marilyn called after her.

"H
ow does this place look?" Marilyn said.

Christine addressed Marilyn's reflection in the shop window: "Expensive."

"It's my treat today, Christine." Marilyn's reflection smiled generously. "A hat, gloves, whatever—it's my treat."

"Marilyn, that's awfully nice, but—"

"And another day it can be your treat."

Christine thought a moment. "Okay," she said. "But nothing too expensive."

Marilyn wheeled her into the shop. A clerk came forward. Marilyn said, "This is my friend, Christine
Bennet
."

The clerk—a tall, thin, middle-aged woman—nodded and smiled solicitously.

"And since today is her birthday," Marilyn went on, "I'm giving her
her
pick of anything in the store."

"Marilyn, my birthday's not for eight months."

"That means it's only four months past."

Christine laughed. "That's one way of looking at it."

"Anything," Marilyn repeated. "I'm feeling quite generous."

The clerk gestured toward a display case nearby. "Perhaps some jewelry?"

Christine studied the case a moment. "No, I'm not much for jewelry."

"
I
have it," Marilyn announced. She turned Christine's chair around, started for the door. She looked back at the clerk. "I'm sorry, dear, but this place is awfully stuffy." She laughed. Then, to Christine: "I just remembered, there's this little art supply shop only a block down the street. . . ."

P
ain shot through Brett's testicles. He winced, doubled over. The pain slowly dissipated. He breathed long, slow breaths. "She didn't hit them straight on, apparently," he remembered the doctor telling him. "If she had—this is going to be hard to believe, but it's true—if she
had
hit them straight on, the pain would have been even more intense. As it is, you'll probably have occasional pain in the area for several months, perhaps longer."

Brett put his hand against the wall, expecting another attack of pain. He waited. There was a burning sensation in his lower abdomen, but it finished quickly. He continued moving down the hallway toward what had been Greg's bedroom. "Greg?" It was possible, though not likely, that she had put him back in it—because he'd complained about a strange room. She couldn't stand it when he complained; she called it whining. He remembered the time Greg had broken a toe and kept it from them both for a week, not wanting to be scolded for complaining about it.

That was the kind of boy she had turned him into —a scared little boy. Scared to go outside without her permission, scared to play without her permission, scared to do much of anything without her permission, or without, at least, the knowledge that she didn't object. He wasn't the classic "mama's boy": That phrase indicated something that had never existed between Marilyn and Greg—love (even the possessive, cloyingly sweet love that Brett had experienced with his own mother). Marilyn loved Greg no more than she loved her Queen Anne chair or her Duncan Phyfe table. She possessed them; she possessed Greg. And, though it was a damnable and shameful truth, she had possessed him—Brett.

"Greg?" he called. He leaned against Greg's bedroom door, turned the knob. "Greg, are you in there?" He pushed on the door. It swung open.

The room was empty. No bed. No dresser or lamps or bookcase. Just bare walls and bare floor. The aura of hurried abandonment was heavy in the air.

"
Goddamnit
!" The word came quickly, hollowly back at him and reinforced his sudden anger. He slammed his fist hard into the wall above the light switch. He heard plaster inside the wall crack and fall.

"
Goddamnit
, Marilyn,
goddamnit
! You don't have the right, you don't have the fucking right—"

He turned, stepped out of the room, slammed the door shut.

And headed for what had once been his and Marilyn's bedroom.

"T
his is the first time I've been in here, Christine," Marilyn said quietly, as if she might offend someone with what she was saying. "Though I never really had the need. I adore art, certainly—you know that; you've been in my house—but as far as creating it. . . ."

"It's my first time, too," Christine told her, grinning conspiratorially.

"Good," Marilyn said, still quietly. "That makes me feel better." She glanced around. "It's awfully close in here, isn't it?"

"It's a little small; most art stores are."

"Never mind. You pick out something, anything: a new set of paints—what do you use, oil paints?—an easel, a canvas, anything."

"Marilyn, are you sure about this?"

"Of course." She paused, glanced around again. Then, as if to herself: "Almost scandalously small. How's a person supposed to make his way around, for God's sake?"

Christine reached for Marilyn's hand. "Marilyn, are you all right? Do you want to leave?"

"I'm okay," Marilyn answered hesitantly. "I have this little problem—"

"Claustrophobia?"

Marilyn stiffened visibly. "No," she snapped. "Of course not. It's nothing like that at all. Not at all." She paused, breathed deeply. Then: "Anything, Christine. Anything. My treat."

"Let's go, Marilyn. You look uncomfortable."

"I said anything. Do I have to pick it out for you?" Despite herself, Christine smiled—perhaps, she thought, to help put Marilyn at ease. "Okay, Marilyn, a small canvas, nine by eleven. I need one."

"Nine by eleven?"

"Yes, I can stretch it myself."

"I don't understand."

Christine withdrew her hand and motioned to a clerk nearby. "Just give me a moment."

"Yes, ma'am?" the clerk said.

"Could you tell us where your canvases are, please?"

"Us?"

"My friend and me." She gestured behind her, turned her head slightly.

Marilyn was gone. Christine turned her head further, saw her just outside the door. Marilyn's back was to it. She was shivering violently.

B
rett doubled over. He fell to his knees. Waited. Eventually, the pain faded. He stood, cursed himself, though gently. He'd have to watch his temper; it seemed to have a lot to do with the onrush of pain, and if he was going to double over every five minutes because a room he looked into happened not to contain Greg, then he'd be here a long, long time.

A whisper of pain lingered in his lower abdomen. He took a step, felt the pain widen, as if it had been a needle and now was a small nail. He lowered himself to a sitting position in the hallway, chanced a long, slow, deep breath. The pain vanished. "Thank God," he murmured.

He stood. "Greg?" he called. He looked right, then left, unsure of where he had just been. On impulse, he turned left. The attic stairway was ahead, at the end of the hall, and, before that, two rooms he hadn't yet checked. "Greg, please answer me," he called. "Please. . . . It's me, your father." He waited. There was no response. "Greg?" Again nothing. He wondered idly if she'd taken him out of the house altogether.

He tried a door. Unlike the others, it was locked. And the lock was new—a Yale lock.
This is it
, he told himself. He put his face sideways to the door. "Greg," he said aloud, comfortingly. "Open the door, son." He put his ear to the door. "Greg?" He listened. Was that Greg breathing just on the other side of the door? "Greg, I've come for you. If you're afraid, don't be. Especially not of me. I love you, son." He stopped, listened again. Had the breathing grown louder, faster? "Greg, open the door." He heard movement inside the room—slight, shuffling sounds, as if someone were stepping slowly and quietly back from the door.

M
arilyn's long silence ended when they turned onto Aberdeen Street. "Did you get your canvas?" She looked briefly at Christine. "No, of course you didn't. I was the one who was going to buy it for you, wasn't I?"

Christine said nothing. She still wore the smile that had come to her lips when she first realized Marilyn's discomfort in the art store. The smile unsettled her, because she knew now that it had not been intended as a comforting thing at all. It was an amused smile. Marilyn's discomfort—her pain—was amusing. But that was impossible, insane. No one's pain amused her, especially the pain of this woman who was so rapidly becoming her, friend.

Marilyn said (as if it were the first time she'd used the phrase with Christine), "It was awfully close in there."

Christine forced her smile down. "Yes, it was. Art stores are usually not very big."

"That clerk was abysmally rude."

"Uh-huh," Christine said.

"You don't think she was rude coming out onto the street and fawning all over me like that? You don't think that was embarrassing?"

"She thought you were in some kind of trouble, Marilyn."

"If I'd been in trouble, I'd have called for help." She turned onto Longview Terrace. "I'll drop you off, Christine, and then I've got to get home and check up on Greg."

"How's his fever?"

"Still up."

T
wo entities fought for control of Greg. One told him,
It's okay. He's your father and he's never hurt you
. And the other—stronger, louder—kept repealing Marilyn's words: "Greg, if your father comes here looking for you when I'm not home, you're to stay quiet. You're not to utter a peep, not a peep, do you hear? Because if I discover that he's taken you, I'll hold you responsible, and when I find you, by God, I'll—" And then she had smiled—a smile that made him shudder. She had told him other things, things about his father wanting to send him to reform school. He wasn't sure that it was true, but it probably was; his mother said it was. And she had told him that his father had never been a real father to him, had never taken him anywhere—fishing, to the movies, to an amusement park. Other fathers did that, he knew; he had heard the kids at school talking about it from time to time.

"Stand away from the door, son. I'm going to try to break it down."

His father had always been too busy, she'd said: "He liked his work more than he liked you, Greg. Now he likes this other woman more than he likes either of us."