The New Neighbor: A Novel Page 18

  Back outside, she’s surprised to find Sebastian and Ben lounging on the playground, as if waiting for them. She assumes Sebastian wants to see Milo apologize, so she complies with this unstated request—crouching down, looking Milo seriously in the eye, pointing at Ben. At first he refuses, but she walks him over and makes him repeat the words until they approximate sincerity. Throughout this Ben twists from side to side, as if he finds the whole scene excruciating. When it’s over, he looks up at his dad. “Can we go to the playground?” he asks. “With them?”

  “We’re on a playground.”

  “No, the other playground. The one me and Milo like.”

  Sebastian looks at Jennifer and shrugs. A master of ambiguity. It bothers her that Ben is so quick to forgive Milo, so recently his abuser. And yet she’s also glad. “Okay,” she says.

  They walk. Though often in Sewanee you drive a distance that short, Sebastian sets off walking without discussion. The boys run ahead of him and Jennifer lags behind, because her only previous encounter with Sebastian has convinced her that she doesn’t enjoy his company.

  To her surprise, when they get to the playground Sebastian starts playing with the boys—chasing them and swinging them around until they’re manic with delight. She’d had him pegged as the type to hang back, checking his phone. She sits on a bench and watches him do the testosterone thing. Sometimes she plays with Milo like this, but she’s too old to sustain the necessary energy long. Tommy wanted to be this kind of dad, and intermittently was, before he died. But a drunk can’t be counted on to distinguish between fun and frightening. A drunk can’t be counted on to gauge another person’s response.

  Sebastian flops down next to her on the bench, giving off heat. He makes an animal sound of weariness. He doesn’t look at her, keeping his eyes on the boys. They’re giggling behind the slide, planning something they clearly think is devilish and clever, but most likely isn’t. “I guess that was just a blip on the radar,” he says.

  “What was?”

  He mimes stabbing.

  “Oh,” she says. “I’m really sorry.”

  He shrugs irritably, and from this she concludes he wants no further apology. But she can’t think of anything else to talk about, so if they’re to converse the burden will be on him. He props his elbows on the back of the bench, not looking at her. “I need to apologize,” he said. “I’m sorry about how I was at Megan’s party.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “Not really. It was a little early in our acquaintance to show you my worst side.”

  “Better than the reverse,” Jennifer says. “At least then you know what you’re getting.”

  Sebastian looks at her like he can’t decide whether to be affronted or amused.

  Jennifer watches herself choose to press forward. Something about him provokes her to speech when normally she’d choose silence. “Why do you live here, if you don’t like it?”

  “We came for Megan’s job.”

  “Oh.”

  “If you’re an academic, you have to go where the jobs are.” He sighs. “But also Megan likes it here. She didn’t really like New York.”

  “But you did?”

  “I did. I was a real photographer in New York, and now I take pictures of toddlers in their Easter clothes.”

  “Oh,” Jennifer says again. Then, to her own surprise, she says, “I lived in New York a little while. I wanted to be a dancer.”

  “Really? What happened?”

  “I got married.”

  “Ah.” Sebastian laughs. “Me too.” There’s a silence, and then he says, “At my wedding my aunt told me she had a piece of advice. I thought it would be something like never go to bed angry, but instead she looked at me and said, ‘Endure. Endure. Endure.’ ” He tells this like it’s funny, but Jennifer feels no urge to laugh. Maybe because she doesn’t, he gives her that wary look again. “Anyway, I’m sorry. I’m sure you think I’m an asshole.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Maybe not?”

  “It was just one incident,” Jennifer says. “Do you think my son’s a sociopath?”

  He grins. “No. Maybe not.” The grin fades, and he continues, “But I have to warn you that Megan might. She gets very worked up about Ben, very nervous any time she thinks another kid might be a bully.”

  “Oh,” Jennifer says.

  “We have friends, another couple, with a kid a year older than Ben, and once we had them over for dinner and their kid bit his ear. Now I can’t get Megan to hang out with them. Don’t be surprised if she’s weird with you for a while.”

  “But I didn’t stab Ben.”

  He shrugs. “Your kid did. Same thing.”

  “But not for you.”

  “I’m not quite as caught up in the psychodrama of child rearing. Is your kid alive at the end of the day? Did you feed him? Did you tell him you liked his drawing? Good. Great. You’ve done your job. It’s crazy to think you can mold them into perfect human beings, if you just make all the perfect choices. It’s crazy to think you can protect them from pain.”

  Jennifer has a stunned, stupid feeling. The only thought in her head is: I ruined it.

  “People don’t think it, because she seems so nice, so open, but Megan’s actually pretty unforgiving.”

  “I didn’t realize that.” Jennifer must sound stricken, because Sebastian glances at her and groans in dismay.

  “Shit, I’m sorry,” he says. “She might not be like that about this. I know she really likes you. She told me as soon as she met you she thought you could be friends. I’m just dumping my own crap on you again. I don’t know why I keep doing that.” He shakes his head. Then, to her enormous surprise, he starts to cry.

  Her first instinct is to touch him, but she represses that. Her second is to look around for the boys, thinking that to see Sebastian in tears might alarm Ben, if not Milo as well. But they’re still barely in sight and happily oblivious, on the other side of the playground. Sebastian’s turned even farther away from her now, with his hands on his face, and she can see that he’s trying to stop crying, that he’s trying to hide. God, sometimes she really does feel sorry for men. Manliness—a trap they build themselves, and then invite their sons to join them in. And little boys are so tender! Milo’s heart breaks much more often and more extravagantly than Zoe’s ever did.

  She scoots a little closer. She hesitates, but it seems cruel to leave him sitting there in tears, untouched, so she puts one gentle hand on his shoulder. He tenses, trying to throw off her ministrations. He’s afraid to let go. Automatically she squeezes the shoulder a little, as she would in a massage, pushing back against the body’s resistance. She feels how knotted up he is, how deep the tension goes. “Oh,” she says. “You’re sad.”

  He sniffs, scrubbing at his face. “Clearly,” he says in self-mockery.

  “No, I mean, you’re really sad,” she says. “I can feel it in your body.” She works the knot a little more. “You’re really sad. Maybe more than you realize, even, it’s down that deep.”

  He swallows. “Oh,” he says.

  Her instinct tells her to keep touching him, because he needs the comfort. But it’s been too long since she touched a man, and it seems dangerous to her, her desire to keep doing it. She takes her hands away and stills them in her lap. If he were on her massage table, she could find the buzzing, knotted places in his body, separate the balled-up threads of pain and sorrow, and he could tell her whatever he wanted to tell, facedown toward the anonymous floor. He could cry. Sometimes people weep on her table. They find relief in that unburdening. This is one reason why her clients love her, why they call her again and again, why they are so grateful. That should be past tense, of course. Loved, called, found. Because then her daughter called the police and the clients never called again. She says, “People who seem angry—often what they really are is sad.”

  “I love Megan,” Sebastian says, suddenly forceful.

  “I know.”

  “Sometimes I
wish I didn’t.”

  Jennifer says nothing. What is there to say? She can’t grant wishes. Sometimes I miss my husband, she thinks of telling him. Sometimes I’m glad he’s dead. I don’t have to wonder where he is, what he’s doing, or who. I don’t have to worry about all the ways he’ll scar my son. I don’t have to watch myself give in again and again, audience to my own relentless weakness. I thought if he were gone I wouldn’t hate myself so much, which isn’t true, as it turns out, but still his absence is as close as I can get to freedom. There’s a certain clearheadedness now, there’s a kind of lonely clarity—

  “Sebastian!” Megan calls. They both jump. Megan is visible at the place where the playground meets the parking lot, approaching.

  Sebastian waves. Jennifer lifts her hand and drops it, trying not to look nervous, trying to smile. Sebastian looks at Jennifer with apprehension. “Do I look like I’ve been crying?”

  “A little,” she says. “It could be allergies.”

  “I don’t have them,” he says. “But I could maybe be getting a cold.”

  They watch Megan’s approach in silence. Jennifer wonders if she should slide farther away from him on the bench, but Megan would see that, and it would look suspicious, in a way it’s possible her current proximity to him does not. She has a despairing sense that Megan will register a new intimacy between her and Sebastian and mistake it for something it isn’t.

  “Hey,” Sebastian says.

  “Hi.” Megan’s a little breathless. She looks around. “Where are the boys?”

  Sebastian points. “On the other side of the jungle gym.”

  “I don’t see them.”

  “They’re there.”

  Megan looks at Jennifer for the first time, flashes a tight little smile. She says to her husband, “When I got out of class I saw the school had called, so I went by there. They told me what happened.” Her eyes flick to Jennifer, then back to Sebastian. “I saw your car was still in the parking lot, so I thought maybe you were down here.”

  “The boys wanted to play,” Sebastian says. “It was Ben’s idea.”

  “Uh-huh,” Megan says. “Are they playing together well?”

  “They’re fine,” Sebastian says.

  “But how do you know, if you’re sitting here talking, and they’re over there?”

  “Nobody’s screamed.”

  “Uh-huh,” Megan says again.

  If Jennifer weren’t here, would Megan unleash her fury? Would she yell? Would she say, Nobody’s screamed? What the fuck is wrong with you?

  She is here. So there’s no way to know.

  “I’m just a little concerned.” Eye flick. “Because of what happened today.”

  Sebastian shrugs. “They’re children. They’re boys.”

  “Yes, but . . .” She gives Jennifer a smile that’s not quite a smile, a potent cocktail of anger and apology. “What happened today was more than the usual roughhousing.”

  “Megan,” Sebastian said, “they’re fine. You have to relax. You have to let this go.”

  “I’m just being careful. I don’t want . . . I’m just being careful.”

  “They’re fine,” Sebastian says. “Boys will be boys.”

  “Boys will be boys,” Megan repeats. Jennifer knows that Megan is thinking about the little hole in her son’s face. That she wants to protect him, not only from that but from boys will be boys: the abuse you’re supposed to take without flinching, the abuse you’re supposed to dole out. If Milo were not her child, it’s possible she’d agree with Megan that Ben shouldn’t play with him. But because he is, she’s grateful to Sebastian for his efforts to make the whole thing go away. Shake it off. Get back in the game. How easily opinions shift from vantage point to vantage point. Of course we’re all hypocrites. Without hypocrisy there’s no survival.

  Jennifer has not said a word. She can’t think of a word to say. Jennifer knows now, with the intuitive certainty she feels in massage, that if Megan hears her story their friendship won’t survive. It’s not, and never has been, Megan who might understand her.

  “If you’re so worried about it,” Sebastian says, “why are you here talking to us? Go monitor them.”

  Megan nods. “Fine.” She heads off toward the playground, calling out, “Ben?”

  The boys whoop with startled glee in response, dashing around the jungle gym in Megan’s direction, then abruptly changing course as they get close to her. They run away screaming, and Megan obliges them by running after, making monster sounds.

  Maybe Jennifer should follow, join in, apologize, plead her case. But she doesn’t.

  “She didn’t even notice,” Sebastian says. “So at least I didn’t have to lie.”

  “I almost wish Ben would do something to Milo,” Jennifer says. “In front of Megan. Nothing too bad, of course. Just push him down or smack him upside the head. Just so they’d be even.”

  “You almost wish that?” Sebastian asks.

  “I wish it,” she says.

  Later, when they part, Megan says, “Let’s get together,” but not as if she means it.

  Like Apologies

  We were set up across from a POW camp, living in a dirty building full of straw. I remember watching the POWs pick lice from their clothing. The night we arrived some of the buildings were still burning. After living in a blackout for so long it was scary to see lights at night. A German physician came to us in a German jeep under a white flag, and what he wanted was medicine so that he could carry on his experiments. We gave him nothing. We let him drive away. I remember windmills, an airfield with German planes smashed up on the ground, roads full of refugees. Houses crowded together, winding cobbled streets, church spires dominating the town. Trees and flowers in bloom. We were with a division and an armored outfit, and there’d been push after push, most of the casualties caused by twelve- or thirteen-year-old boys, all that was left to fight in Germany.

  “It’s such a beautiful country,” I said to Kay. “I can’t understand why the Krauts won’t stay home and enjoy it.”

  Kay didn’t answer. She was lying in her cot. By then, she was always lying in her cot, every chance she could get. Things were pretty slow right then, so she got a lot of chances. I was pacing between the two windows in our room, half-watching the POWs. I was restless. I felt compelled to keep Kay company, though she didn’t seem to want me to. I thought her back was worse. She had so little energy. She struggled to get up in the mornings. When I could get them, I brought her morphine syrettes. Even when she didn’t ask. Like they were flowers. Like they were apologies. She said very little now, so either we were silent together, or when I couldn’t bear that I chattered like a ninny.

  “It’s almost lunchtime,” I said. “At least the army’s gotten wise to itself and made some decent C rations. Frankfurters and beans are a long way from that stinking meat and vegetable stew.”

  “I can’t eat,” she said.

  “I talked to some boys yesterday who were prisoners for seven and ten months. Just liberated. After they were captured they were marched for two days and nights, loaded on boxcars without food for five days. They were fed on turnip soup with meat sometimes but the meat was green, it was so old.”

  Kay groaned. “Don’t,” she said.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t talk about food.”

  “The boy I talked to was jaundiced and had lost forty pounds.” Out the window a man behind wire stared bleakly in my direction. I didn’t think he could see me. “Looks like this mess won’t be over before the fall,” I said. “If I have to go to the CBI I’ll be a section eight.”

  “Maggie Jean,” she said. She waited for me to turn and look at her. She was sitting up now, propped on both arms. She swallowed hard, like someone trying not to be sick. “Do you know I’m pregnant?”

  I didn’t. I didn’t know. I just stood there, gone slack. I’d been trying so hard with her, trying so hard for weeks. All that effort, like doing a rain dance in the desert. I’d exhausted
myself. I could think of nothing to say.

  “The night after the shelling,” she said. She pulled her knees up, wincing, and hunched over them. “He held me down.”

  “What?” I asked.

  Now she looked at me. “You know what I mean, don’t you?” she asked. “Please don’t make me explain.”

  I had wild thoughts: that I would find the man, that I should have known, that maybe she wasn’t really pregnant, that I should have known. I tried to stay calm. Maybe that wasn’t the right response. I don’t know what the right response would have been. “What do you want to do?” I asked.

  “What do I want to do?” she repeated. She shook her head. “I can’t get rid of it.”

  I don’t know what she meant by this. I’ve thought about it plenty since. That she didn’t know where to get an abortion? That she’d tried something and it hadn’t worked? Or that she couldn’t bring herself to try? In some ways despite all I’d seen I was innocent, and I was inadequate. All I really understood was how inadequate I was. I wanted someone else to be in charge. “Does the chief nurse know?” I asked.

  “Of course not,” she said. “I wouldn’t be here.”

  “How can you stay? Between your back and this . . . What if they send you to the CBI?”

  “I can’t go home.” Her voice a whip-crack. “They won’t have me.”

  “Then go to my parents,” I said. “I’ll ask them to take you in. Then when I get home, we can get jobs in Nashville, get an apartment there.”

  There was a long silence. “Why would your parents take me when even my own won’t?”

  “I’ll tell them a sad story,” I said. “You’ll be a war bride. Married two months, then your husband was killed. And I’ll make you an orphan, too.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then I’ll come home. There will be nursing jobs in Nashville. I still know people at Vanderbilt. We’ll share an apartment. I’ve saved some money, you probably have, too, my parents might even help a little . . .”