Thy Neighbor (24 page)

“Tell that to her mother.”

“Her
grand
mother. Her mother was a crack whore who died after dumping the kid on the doorstep.”

Jonathan raised his eyebrows and smirked.

“Sound familiar?”

Dorris pushed past him toward the kitchen. “I don't have to justify myself to you, mister.”

He ignored this, speaking to the empty room.

“It happens every day, Dorris. Every day some kid goes missing and dies in circumstances you don't even want to think about. And every day a hundred more kids come down with some rare disease and die of it slowly and painfully. I should know—I see them year in and year out, suffering and struggling and dying.”

He shook his head angrily.

“How dare we take our own for granted? How dare we let them out of our sight for one minute? You don't deserve what you have, and if I were that woman next door, watching you throw everything away out of sheer laziness and self-pity, I'd want to kill you.”

Dorris shouted something long and involved and unintelligible from the kitchen or the hall, but I didn't try to work it out.

I'd heard enough.

This was getting like the old days, and I wasn't game.

I stood up, snapped the laptop shut, took it, and walked out of the room, yanking the door shut tight behind me and locking all the locks.

Ah, so Jonathan had been watching, and for a while now, too. So what? What was there to see? The fact that I was spending more quality time with his daughter than he was?

Well, I was.

No crime in that.

Exoneration, if anything.

Let those two peck each other to death, and let his fat man in orthos send him his reports. I had more important things to do.

21

At eight p.m. the words came on the screen.

Friends in chat: Iris Gray.

Jesus. Finally.

I typed without thinking, “I know.”

There was a long pause, then the scroll up from Iris.

“What is it that you think you know?”

“I know that—”

I froze. What did I in fact know? Now that it came to saying it, I couldn't put the words in order. I erased what I had written, then wrote:

“My father—”

My father what?

Raped? Sodomized? Infected?

“My father wrote—” I wrote, then erased.

How sentimental, I thought. How appallingly loyal after all this time. I can't put it down. I can't even put it down.

Coward, I shouted. Say it. Just fucking say it.

But say what? What had he done precisely? No one had said that he had done anything but write notes, and even that was only implied. Wasn't I used to strategy? Didn't I know what it meant to play with someone? So now I was on the other side of it. Think it through, then, why don't you, like someone who is making up the plot, not the mouse in the maze running blindly.

Be skeptical for one second.

To infer something, going backward in time and scraping together means and motive from the guilty conscience of a pediatrician and the gamesmanship of a runaway, that was one thing, but to accuse outright, that was quite another. This wasn't just loyalty to Dad. This was loyalty to the truth, or, barring that, as Dad himself would have said archly in a court of law, loyalty to the other side of the lie.

“My father,” I typed again and sent.

No, no, no. Say it.

“What he did to you.” I sent again.

“Stop,” she wrote.

And again.

“Stop.”

Fuck.

You've fucked it up. Right up.

She's right. Just stop.

I stopped.

I waited for more.

But there was no more. Just the word “stop.” Twice. A hand in my face for stuttering. You fucking retard, you're stuttering. You're stuttering to the victim.

“OK,” I sent. “I'm sorry.”

Nothing.

Now what?

But I'm not sorry.

No, I don't know. I am and I'm not.

Why have you put me in this position?

I'd waited so long for this conversation. I'd thought it was all I wanted, and now I couldn't speak. I didn't know what to say.

So don't say, I thought.

Ask something. She wants you to ask.

Try again.

Slowly. Be careful. Be . . .
subservient
. Was that it? Again? Be less. Less knowing, less informed, less worthy. Give her the power, because she deserves it. Your role is to bend down. To regret. To take blame. In his absence, you are the surrogate for blame.

Blame for what, though?

Just ask.

“What did he do to you?” I wrote.

I reread it several times.

It was direct. It was a question.

I was comfortable with that.

Somewhat.

Right.

Send.

I sent.

And this time the answer came quickly.

“I don't know.”

I stared. Frozen again.

I had expected a lot of things, but not that.

“You don't know?” I sent.

“No.”

How could she not fucking know? All of that had led only to this. All that “evidence,” and no testimony? Really?

“I don't understand,” I typed.

A pause.

“I don't remember,” she replied.

I was shouting again. How can you not remember? How can you presume?

“How is that possible?” I typed.

“I don't know. I don't know,” she answered.

Keep her here, I thought. Don't panic. Find out. Dig. Needle in for the sliver and grasp it. There is something there, a motivation at least.

Find it.

I typed.

“But something did happen. I mean, the medical record alone—”

I stopped, erased this, and typed again.

“Where did you get the golf card?”

Again the answer came quickly.

“From him, of course.”

“But where?”

“In your bedroom.”

My
bedroom? What?

“What? When?”

“At night, of course.”

Stop with the “of courses” already, you arrogant bitch. If you were here, I'd slap you.

Calm, Nick. Calm, I said aloud to the screen.

“What were you doing in my bedroom at night?” I wrote.

“The sleepovers with your mom.”

“So you remember them?”

“Yes, why wouldn't I?”

Yes, why wouldn't you? No reason to forget that. No play on that angle, right? You and my mother lying around in your nightgowns watching old movies, throwing out lines, and throwing back gin. She'd have given you gin, I know that much. Oh, just a splash in some orange juice won't kill you. Live a little. You're young. And you'd have taken it just as I did, because you were in love, and because Auntie Mom was irresistible, was she not?

Gin was like mother's milk to her. [
Laugh
.] And therewith [
bow
] memory scarpered [
flourish
]. Good dog.

Yes, I know the tricks of memory, too, and the things you wake up to after.

A little vomit, a little strange, a little VD in the morning.

That stings.

“So he came into my room at night when you were sleeping,” I wrote conclusively.

“Yes.”

“How often?”

“A few times.”

“And one night you took the golf card?”

“No.”

“I don't understand.”

“I found it.”

“How do you mean?”

Nothing.

“This doesn't make any sense,” I typed. “You say you were asleep. You say you don't remember. So how do you know he was there?”

No answer.

“What does a golf card prove?”

“Nothing,” she replied. “It wasn't meant to prove anything. Only to show you. I found it on the floor by the bed and kept it. That's all.”

“So,” I repeated, “how do you know he came into my room at night?”

“Because, Nick. The notes. He wrote those notes in my diary.”

A silence here. The silence of getting it slowly, as designed. My brain moves in patterns.

Wide ruled. Pink. Sharp, marginless edge. Jesus Christ. Why hadn't I seen? The notes were cut from her diary.

A young girl's place to keep her thoughts. Write every day, said Mother. She bought it for you, no doubt. Pink pages, yellow cover—was it?—and a pretty locking clasp on the side with a key to it.

Christ, were they both seducing you?

She typed again.

“He left the notes for me to find in the morning.”

And what he did or didn't do in the darkness you don't know, I thought. Did he watch you sleep? Did he drug you? Or had Mom done the sedating for him? Did he spoon you nighty night? Did he rub up against you, warts and all, while you slept the sleep of the drunk?

“So you really have parted with the evidence,” I wrote. It was all I could think to say.

“Some of it.”

“But why? Why not send a copy?”

“I told you, because I needed you to believe.”

“But why? Why me at all? Why did I need to know what he did? What possible purpose could it serve?”

“This has never been about what he did, Nick.”

“What are you talking about? That's all it's been about. The notes. The card. The diagnosis.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“I told you there was a lot, and that you would have to know it slowly. That you would have to hear it for yourself, find it for yourself, and hold it in your hands.”

I didn't answer.

“Nick,” she wrote. “This is only the beginning. You had to know this to understand the rest. I'm sorry.”

“But you're not sorry. You're wronged, and you want me to suffer and atone somehow for him.”

“No, I told you. This is not about what he did.”

“Then, please, tell me. What the fuck is it about?”

A pause.

“What I did, Nick. It's about what I did.”

This was more of the game and I could see it. I could see myself running to her bait and devouring it, knowingly devouring it and waiting for the next. But knowing wouldn't stop me. I would run through as led just the same, and at her pace, with her cadence, every turn as she designed it, laid out and bending in careful order to the last.

“Wait,” I typed, and waited.

You can't just trip over my father, I thought. He's not just a stone along the way to be kicked. I won't let you defame him offhand as part of
your
story. You will have to give something.

“Tell me that what he did doesn't matter,” I wrote.

And she replied immediately.

“I don't know what he did. Or not all of what he did. I have flashes, and then I can only guess. And I might be wrong. I only know for certain what I did after, and that's the part that matters. What's left over is what counts. Your father is one piece, one motivation. There must be so many others that explain it, that explain me, but I can't put them all together because I don't know what they are, either. I only know the result. I have to live with the results.”

“So you don't know?” I repeated.

“No, I don't know. I don't know what actually happened. I don't know how or even for certain if he gave me that infection, though I don't know who else could have. But I do know that he wrote in my diary at night and I know that what he wrote wasn't right. And I do know that I turned up at the doctor's office scared to death with something filthy and contagious growing on me, and I know that the doctor and my mother lied about it to me and to themselves and that it ruined all of our lives forever.”

You don't know who else could have? Who else could have infected you? But it could have been anyone, anyone else you don't remember. You have flashes. Flashes of what?

“What do you have flashes of?” I wrote.

“Him,” she replied.

“Him how?”

“Kissing me. Touching me.”

“So you do remember?”

“I see it. Quickly. Like in a film. In pieces. Very small pieces. But not all.”

I was hardly listening. I was reading the words but not fully taking them in. Only leaping to the next reply, charging back. Prove it. Somehow. Make it real to me.

But how?

Would she know? If he had been there, she would know. So ask. Yes, ask. A piece of information. A flash. But wait— There is no going back if she answers. If she knows it, then it's true. Truer than anything else. Can you handle that?

You're a beast for even thinking it. So what? So what? She's accusing. So let her accuse. Fuck her. Ask.

I was mad now.

So, Robin. You were there.

“What did he taste like?” I typed and sent.

You bastard.

Yeah, yeah. I'm a bastard. You want to play? Let's play. You were there. So say. If you know so much, what did the old man taste like? What did he smell like? Get that and I'll believe you.

Scroll up.

“Blood,” she replied.

Good answer, little girl. Good answer. But maybe just a bit overdone for effect. Back it up.

“Why blood?” I sent.

Typing.

Scroll.

“Because he bit me.”

Really? Hmm, creative. Okay. More. Back that up, too.

“Where?”

How long would she pause on that one?

Not at all.

“My mouth.”

Stands to reason.

No, that's a movie you saw. Not a flash like in a movie. It
is
a movie.

He tasted like your blood? Too easy. I don't believe you.

“Bullshit,” I sent.

A pause.

“When we meet I'll show you the scar.”

She was laughing at me. How could she be laughing?

Push harder. Ask the last.

Fine. Laugh at this.

“What did he smell like?” I sent.

Be careful now. Don't ruin it. Either you know or you don't.

No pause. Iris typing.

“I'm not doing this.”

There. You lying sack of shit. Got you.

“You lie,” I sent.

Nothing.

For a long time, nothing.

Then, from Iris: “Funny you should ask.”

No. It can't . . .

She can't know. She doesn't know. Don't listen.

I didn't reply.

“Sometimes lately,” she wrote, “I could swear I've smelled him. Like he's been in the room.”

She couldn't know that without—

Without knowing.

Right? Right?

Still I didn't reply.

Don't give. Don't fold. She's lying.

Scroll up.

She wrote:

“I've been thinking I'm crazy. I've smelled your mom, too.”

There. See.

You have your answer.

No lie. You know it's no lie.

“I can't describe it,” she sent. “How do you describe how someone smells?”

A pause.

“But it was them. I just knew it was them. By smell. Am I crazy, Nick?”

Yes, you're fucking crazy. We're both fucking crazy.

She knows, I said aloud. She's telling you the truth.

Believe her.

“No,” I sent at last. “You're not crazy.”

Not crazy.

Then what?

Now what?

I can't.

I can't do this.

You said you're not doing this, and I can't do this. But you are doing it. Fuck. But I can't.

“Fuck,” I sent and quit.

Exit chat.

Close out.

Shut down.

Exit. Close. Shut. Fuck. Out.

I put my head on the desk and wept.