The New Neighbor: A Novel Read online

  It’s true that these thoughts have an edge. There’s no help for that, resistant as she is to drunkenness as charming innocence. But she thinks the thoughts with affection, nevertheless. She’s fond of Megan. Of course she is. She gives Megan a hug. Which, frankly, surprises her as much as it seems to surprise Megan.

  Megan says, “Whoosh!” as though Jennifer squeezed her tight, and then squeezes Jennifer tight, and plants a loud kiss right by her ear. She pulls away to look Jennifer in the eye, trying for serious. “I’m a little drunk,” she says.

  Terry must have given her the hugging idea. Jennifer thinks it’s been some time since another adult hugged her, and it must have been nice to be hugged. When an adult and a child embrace, one hugs and one holds on. She’d forgotten that those are different things.

  “Are you drunk?” Megan asks.

  Jennifer shakes her head.

  “Oh! That’s right. You don’t drink,” Megan whispers. “You told me that.” She takes hold of Jennifer’s sleeve and swings her arm gently from side to side. “Are you going to have fun?”

  “You mean without drinking?”

  “That. And in general.”

  “I am,” Jennifer says. “I swear.”

  Megan gives her another serious look. “People will like you, you know.”

  Jennifer wants to look away. There’s a tingle in her cheeks like she might blush. She tries to hold Megan’s gaze, but she just can’t do it.

  “Sometimes people find it hard here,” Megan says. “It’s just so small, and everybody knows everybody, and I think sometimes when you arrive it’s like the party got started without you and everyone already has all their inside jokes.” There’s an edge to Megan’s voice, some remembered hurt. “But it’s really a welcoming place,” she says, earnestly, almost pleadingly. “At heart it is. If you want to you can belong here.”

  Jennifer doesn’t know what to say. What she feels is seen. How does Megan know that she’s wondering if she can belong? If she should? How can Megan see that she wants to? Does she know how it terrifies her? The wanting to.

  Megan, bless her, doesn’t require an answer. She releases Jennifer from eye contact, aiming a shy smile at the floor. “I really am drunk.” She laughs a little breathlessly.

  “Hey, y’all,” a voice says beside them, and Amanda is back, with two other women in tow. So far she seems to be the sardonic one. There’s a brassy one, and an intellectual one, and an uptight one, and an empathetic one, who reacted with too much sadness when she asked about Jennifer’s husband and Jennifer had to say he died. Jennifer will avoid this last one. Amanda she likes. She thinks they could be friends. Amanda says something wry about a TV show, and Jennifer laughs, and Megan beams at them both like a proud matchmaker.

  What will they call Jennifer, the women at this party? The watchful one? The sad one? The one you just can’t get to know?

  But she rejects this kind of thinking. She will not curl into herself like a snail. It’s just she’s never talked much at parties. She’s never had to. She can see Tommy beside her, telling one of his slow-drawl stories, and everybody watching him with an avid collective longing, and how beautiful he is, how beautiful. She can’t begin to replace all that was lost in him. She wonders—did his voice allow her silence, or insist on it? Two more people have joined their circle now, and they’re laughing at a small-child story, and Jennifer could tell one, she has plenty of them. Now is a moment when she could be the one to speak.

  “Milo,” she starts, and they all look at her with such goodwill. They are all so willing to listen. Behind her from the staircase comes a male voice, a voice calling, “Megan!” and Megan’s head snaps up. Looking at Megan as she calls out, “Yes, honey?” it’s impossible not to think of a dog’s quivering attentiveness. Or perhaps a rabbit’s. Is it obedience she sees in her friend or fear? Wait—is there any difference?

  “Could you come here a sec?” the man—Sebastian—says, in a voice that is carefully neutral. A voice with a vibration in it—so familiar it seems to chime in with a chord that’s always ringing in Jennifer’s head. She turns to look at Sebastian but the wall blocks her view of him. Megan flashes a brightly sheepish smile and calls out, “Sure!” starting toward him even as she speaks.

  Megan gone, everyone shifts uncomfortably, as if struck with the sudden realization that without her they have nothing to say to each other. Amanda nudges Jennifer. “I think you were about to tell a story,” she says.

  “Was I?” Jennifer says, though she knows she was. The story doesn’t seem funny anymore. It needed to be told on a wave of good humor and goodwill.

  “Let me consult the record,” Amanda says. She makes a show of looking at everyone. “Who was taking the minutes?”

  “Oh no,” one of the others says. “I forgot my . . . wait, what are those things called?”

  “What things?” Amanda asks.

  “Those typey-typey things. You know, that court reporters use.”

  “Oh, good question,” Leigh Anne says, and the others murmur that they don’t know, and then someone ventures a guess, and someone else digs for her phone to look it up, and the conversation deflates until Megan reappears, dragging Sebastian with her.

  “Sebastian wants to say hello!” Megan announces brightly, though his expression makes clear that this is patently untrue. He does say hello though, making eye contact with an air of painful duty, his mouth a flat unhappy line. His eyes are as pretty as they looked in the photos Jennifer saw, maybe more so. They’re one of those unreal colors, a green so pale and shimmery you think there must be contacts involved. He should just shave his head, because his patchy hairline mars the effect of those eyes, while baldness would probably augment it. But possibly Megan doesn’t want the effect augmented. Who knows to what uses he puts his powers. Jennifer shakes his hand, giving him a firm grip, a brisk “Nice to meet you.”

  “He wants us to be careful not to be too loud,” Megan says. “He just finally managed to get Ben down.”

  Sebastian shoots his wife a look, and Jennifer wonders which one of those statements annoyed him. Does he not like her unmasking him as a scold? Or does he not like the implication that he mismanaged Ben’s bedtime? It’s nine, a little late for a child that age, not that Jennifer is one to talk. She’s only just arrived at the party mostly because she lingered at home coaxing Milo into bed, while the teenage babysitter Megan recommended sat on the couch texting furiously. “Well,” Megan says mildly, in response to his look, “I didn’t say the request was unreasonable.”

  “No,” Sebastian says. “You didn’t say that.”

  “I’m a little drunk,” Megan tells everyone, lifting her glass. Amanda lifts hers, too, and they clink, and Sebastian frowns.

  “What are you drinking, anyway?” he asks Megan.

  “Vodka!” she says.

  “Is that a good idea? Vodka? Why not beer? Why not wine?”

  “Oh, sweet,” Megan says. “He’s worried I’ll have a hangover.”

  “She sometimes gets carried away with vodka,” he says. “I don’t know if you’ve ever been with her on a martini night . . .”

  “What does carried away mean for our mild-mannered Megan?” Amanda asks. “Will she dance on a table?”

  “Dancing on tables is apocryphal,” one of the others says. “No one ever dances on a table.”

  “Megan might,” Sebastian says grimly, and there’s a brief enigmatic silence.

  “Well,” Megan says in a small voice, looking into her drink.

  “Just take it slow,” Sebastian says.

  “Okay, honey,” she says.

  Just as Jennifer thinks he’ll make an exit—turn on his heel is the phrase in her head—he startles her with a flash bomb of a smile. Oh, look what’s in his arsenal! Suddenly all the women are smiling back at him. Even on Jennifer’s face, a traitorous, responsive smile. “Have a good time, ladies,” he says, and then he does indeed go, and they all watch him walk away.

  “He doesn’t like
me to drink,” Megan says sheepishly. “He thinks I’m embarrassing.”

  “Embarrassing to yourself?” Jennifer asks. “Or embarrassing to him?”

  “Both I guess,” Megan says. And then, in a rare display of waspishness: “But mostly to him.”

  “What’s he afraid you’ll do?” Amanda asks. “Besides dance on the table?”

  “Oh, say something stupid,” she says. “He especially hates it when I get facts wrong. Like, I relate something I read on the Internet, but I get part of it mixed up. He hates that.”

  “Why?” Amanda asks.

  Megan shrugs. She’s starting to look sad now, and Jennifer thinks the conversation should probably be over, even if she has a nagging urge to insist on its continuance. “Some people see their spouses as separate from them,” Megan says. “And some people see their spouses as an extension of them, and that informs their attitudes and behavior.”

  “You are such a sociologist,” Amanda says, making everyone laugh. Just like that, the party mood returns, but Jennifer can’t recover so easily. It would be easier if she drank. She used to like a cocktail as much as anyone, but at some point she stopped drinking, hoping to encourage Tommy to do likewise, and then once she lost hope for encouragement her refusal became a reproof. Without Tommy there’s no reason not to drink. There’s no one to measure herself against, no spouse to embarrass or be embarrassed by. No, listen—she can be a different person without Tommy. Tonight, at this party. Just to try it out. Like smiling until you’re happy. She can pretend until it comes true.

  She goes into the kitchen, where there’s an array of bottles on the counter. She has no idea what to have, uncertain as a teenager trying to fake sophistication. She’s got a bottle of vodka tilted back so she can read the label when the door swings open and Sebastian comes in. Jennifer feels caught, a feeling that intensifies when he raises his eyebrows and says, “Good reading?”

  “I can’t decide what to have,” she says. She doesn’t want to look at him, feeling both hostile and unaccountably nervous. She pretends to read the label on a bottle of gin.

  “It’s best to have a particular drink,” he says. “Then you never have to decide. Then you just go in and say, ‘The usual.’ And if there’s no bartender, you say it to yourself.” He goes to the fridge and fills a glass of water. Jennifer waits for him to leave, but he doesn’t. He leans against the counter and sips. Then looks at her. “I take it you have no usual?”

  “I don’t drink,” she says. “My usual is nothing.”

  “You don’t drink, but you’re trying to decide what to drink?”

  “You don’t have to call my sponsor. I just don’t drink.”

  “Oh, that’s not where my mind went,” he says. “I was wondering if you were celebrating or upset, to want a drink when you don’t drink.”

  “Why assume it’s one of those?”

  “Because you didn’t say, ‘I don’t drink often,’ or ‘I only drink sometimes.’ You said, ‘I don’t drink.’ So what would make you drink?”

  She looks at him now. He’s flirting with her in a way she suspects is automatic, habitual. It’s not in the words; it’s in the way he’s lingering, the slightly insinuating tone, the concentrated force of his attention. What a dangerous force, male attention. What terrible things women do to get it, or to make it go away. “I don’t really have a reason,” she says finally.

  He nods at a big glass punch bowl on the kitchen table. “That’s a champagne punch,” he said. “I made it. It’s good, but I have to warn you it goes down easy.”

  Jennifer shakes her head. “Too sweet,” she says. “I don’t like sweet.”

  He studies her. “How about whiskey?” he asks. He steps over and reaches past her to open a high cabinet. Inside are a number of graceful bottles gleaming with golden-brown liquid—so Sebastian isn’t just a drinker, he’s a connoisseur. “Megan’s not a bourbon gal,” he says. “Not that I’d really want her to put these out.”

  “Gal?” Jennifer repeats.

  “I’m from Missoura,” he says. “I’m allowed to say gal.”

  “Are you from ‘Missoura’ in 1952?”

  “Hey now,” he says. He pulls out a bottle, handling with care. “How about this one? It’s wheated. Smooth but not boring.” He picks up a cocktail glass, pours, and hands it to her. He doesn’t care that she never said she wanted it. She takes a sip. It burns her nostrils, though it’s gentle on her tongue. It reminds her of Tommy. It tastes like everything she’s ever given up. “Like it?” he asks.

  She nods. She does like it. She takes another sip.

  “You’ve been hanging out with Megan a lot lately,” he says.

  The hint of accusation makes her wary. She feels herself taking a step back. “Yeah,” she says.

  “So let me ask you something,” he says. “Do you think she’s an alcoholic?”

  “Do I think—” She stares at him. This was not what she was expecting, not the question, not a discussion of Megan at all. He’d had every appearance of being about to cross a line, to touch her, make some move that would ratify her dislike. “No,” she says. “We’re usually together with the kids, during the day. She drinks herbal tea. I’ve never seen her have a drink before tonight.”

  He nods, his expression pensive. “It’s not easy, always being the bad guy,” he says.

  “I don’t imagine that it is,” Jennifer says, and though she understands him, though she knows exactly what he means by that, her tone is sharp, and so is the look he gives her.

  He pours himself a whiskey from the same bottle and holds it up to the light before taking a sip. “She’s very sweet,” he says. “And everybody loves her. I saw how you were looking at me earlier. Believe me, I know I’m the asshole. But that doesn’t mean I’m always wrong.”

  Megan comes in then, laughing at something someone said in the other room. “You know it!” she shouts back, and then she sees them and smiles a shy, delighted smile. “You two!” she says. She comes up next to Jennifer and hugs her around the waist, resting her head on her shoulder. “What are you drinking? You’re drinking! Sebastian, did you give her the good stuff?”

  “Of course,” he says.

  “Oh, you’re lucky,” Megan says to Jennifer. “He doesn’t break that out for just anyone. That’s the good stuff.” Still leaning against Jennifer, she starts patting her, as if in comfort, on the arm. “I’m glad you’re here,” she says. “I’m glad you’re having fun.”

  “Stop hanging on her like a spider monkey,” Sebastian says.

  Megan flinches. She steps hastily away, flashing an apologetic smile at Jennifer. “Sorry, sorry,” she says. She reaches out as if to pat her again, then thinks better of it. “I’m a little handsy when I’m drunk.”

  “I don’t mind,” Jennifer says.

  “No, no,” Megan says, turning herself in a half circle. “No, no. Just came in for—ah.” She grabs an open bottle of red wine from the counter. “Back into the fray!” she says.

  She’s gone, and Jennifer looks at Sebastian. “See,” he says, meeting her eye. “I’m the asshole.”

  “I can see that,” she says.

  He straightens his spine, clips off each cold word. “She does drink too much. You barely know her. You have no idea what it is to be married to her.”

  She can’t stop herself from asking. “What’s it like to be married to you?”

  “You might think she’s the world’s best wife,” he says. “You might think I’m so lucky, she’s so sweet, she’s so accommodating. But everything we do is on her terms. I don’t want to live in this crappy little nowhere. I can’t stand it here. The Southern sweetness. The small-town know-your-business clusterfuck. The goddamn crickets.” Over the course of this speech, he’s begun to lean toward her, his antagonist, and she’s been bracing herself for she doesn’t know what. But suddenly he collapses back against the counter. “Fuck,” he says. “I don’t even know you.”

  “No,” she says. She’s clutching her gla
ss hard. “No, you don’t.” Her throat is tight. She downs her whiskey so quickly her eyes water. “Do you cheat on her?”

  “Why?” he says. “Are you offering?”

  She makes a sound of disgust, and moves to go, but he’s fast, and he catches her by the wrist. “Please don’t tell Megan I said that,” he says, with such sudden sincere vulnerability that she nods, despite herself. Despite herself, which seems to be how she does everything. Is she being cowed or persuaded? Either way it’s weakness, and there is nothing she fears and dislikes more than her own weakness. But I love you, Tommy would say. I’d die for you. You know that, don’t you? I would die. She runs from him, from both of them, back into the heat and noise of the party.

  She expects to find signs in Megan of the scene in the kitchen—a sheepish smile, damage in her eyes. But Megan is laughing exuberantly in a crowd of people, her face shining. Maybe Megan is not easily damaged. Maybe she hides the damage well. She catches Jennifer’s eye and skips over to her. “There you are,” she says. Sebastian’s criticism notwithstanding, she picks up Jennifer’s hand and laces their fingers together. “I missed you,” she says. And then she kisses the back of Jennifer’s hand with a loud smack and leads her back into the group, where Jennifer—unsettled, uncertain—no longer wants to be.

  Smile, Jennifer. Maybe Megan isn’t the safe haven you thought she was. Smile anyway. Maybe the floor sloshes beneath her, but her feet are planted, her grip is firm on your hand. Can you bear it, Jennifer? Complication, imperfection? The possibility that you might be understood? Or would you rather be alone?

  Nobody Loves Me

  This morning I got what I wanted. I resorted to devious measures, but this is nothing that should surprise anyone at this point. I’m not sure why it still, a little, surprises me. A good detective has to be devious. If you’re a good detective, devious is the same as clever, manipulation an admirable skill. We call a flaw a virtue when we like the results. I called her number, and when she answered, I asked her if she had an egg I could borrow. I don’t know why I didn’t think of doing this before. I said I was baking cookies. Though I don’t bake cookies, or anything at all, which of course she couldn’t have known. She said she did have an egg. She said it slowly and as if against her will. I said I’d be right over and hung up before she could change her mind. I thought she might call back to say that she’d bring the egg to me, because I believed—and still believe—that she didn’t want to let anyone inside her house. So when the phone rang as I was gathering my things, and I saw her number on the caller ID, I didn’t answer. I let her think I was already on my way. Slow, perhaps, but unstoppable.