The New Neighbor: A Novel Read online

  That’s all that was said about the plan to see her mother. Another thing for which Zoe is grateful. Margaret isn’t pressuring her toward action, urging her on her way. Far from it. Margaret seems content to fuss over her, to treat her like an invited guest. She said she would make Zoe hot chocolate when she got back, which breaks Zoe’s heart a little, because it reminds her she’s not a child. Still, Margaret knows her intentions. Margaret knows who she is, and why she’s here, and so in her presence Zoe can’t help but know these things, too.

  The girl at the cash register has lifted her head and spotted Zoe approaching, and so now she has to proceed, like a normal person would. She buys the tiger. But she isn’t ready for step two, which is delivery. She goes back to buy the hiking guide.

  She chooses a hike almost at random and drives to the overlook where it starts. Green’s View, it’s called. There’s a car parked on the other side of the circle, engine running, some guy gazing out at the vista. Zoe wishes he weren’t there, but she can park right by the trail access, and though the guy might look at her, she doesn’t have to see him do it. Because of him she doesn’t pause to contemplate the view, lovely as it is, but goes ahead and starts picking her way down the steep and narrow trail. It takes her into a hollow of early wildflowers and enormous boulders, the boulders like castoffs from another planet. At the bottom she tilts her head back to gaze up at where she started; it seems impossibly far away. The trail winds on, and she follows it. Down here she has a blessed sense of being completely unobserved.

  Up ahead, just off the trail, she notices a large piece of rusted metal. She’s puzzling over its nature and origin—there’s no access to this place except by trail—when she happens to look beyond it, back toward the bluff, and sees an entire car. Or the ruins of one. She’s not even surprised, the car so incongruous she can barely register belief in its existence. It’s upright on its wheels, its roof more or less intact, but the front is smashed so that it yawns like an unhinged jaw. The steering column stands to the side, stuck into the earth, a circle on a pole. It looks like a flower. She clambers up rocks toward the car, and then sees beyond it a second one. This one landed upside-down, rests there in pitiful permanent exposure of its rusty undercarriage. Next to it a strip of red metal. Bright red. Why do some things keep their color, while others get worn away? The car on its wheels has the low-slung look of a seventies hot rod. Inside it the front seat is visible, retaining its pale upholstery.

  There is no way for these cars to have come here except in a plunge off the cliff. Glorious or horrifying, depending on the director and the score. Or maybe comical, if the cars were empty. She sees no bloodstains on the seats. Surely even if a body had been extracted long ago, there would still be stains. She looks up again at the top of the cliff. It must be several hundred feet up. Maybe some drunk college kids pushed the cars off the edge, then scrambled carelessly down the trail, slipping and sliding and laughing at their flirtation with peril, to see what they had done. Maybe this is even the most likely scenario. Or the cars might have nothing to do with each other, the second leaping years after the first. Still she imagines one fleeing, the other in pursuit, faster and faster toward the edge of the world, until both of them flew off.

  The Ordinary

  Milo and Ben play with cars on the floor—smashing them together, saying ow, ow, ow—while Jennifer and Megan sit at Jennifer’s table over tea, syrup-coated plates pushed to the side. Jennifer made French toast. Sebastian is shooting a wedding and will be gone all day and late into the evening; Megan as usual has ungovernable stacks of unfinished work. Jennifer offered to take Ben for part of the day so Megan could catch up, but Megan’s guilt wouldn’t allow this. Brunch was the compromise. Jennifer isn’t solving Megan’s problems but distracting her from them, which sometimes is enough. And she thinks in an hour or so, if the boys are still playing well together, she might persuade Megan to go get some work done, because she really is overwhelmed, poor thing, and Jennifer would like to help. She worries about Megan. She feels for her a deep tenderness that extends often to Ben and, at times, to Sebastian. She would like to be an agent of good to them. She would like Milo to grow up with a friend he can’t remember not knowing, as close as he’ll come to a sibling. And she’s happy to have settled, herself, into friendship. With Megan she doesn’t feel like she has to guard against her own tenderness. Megan won’t use it against her.

  “They’re so cute, aren’t they?” Megan says, smiling down at the boys with pleased fondness. Ben at that moment lifts a car high in the air, as if it’s flying backward from a collision, and utters a long low-pitched scream.

  Jennifer almost makes a joke about the juxtaposition of Megan’s comment and Ben’s pantomime of violence, but instead she just agrees. She’s leery of accidentally invoking the face-stabbing incident, which has, thankfully, been forgotten, or at least receded far enough into the background that they can all pretend not to see it there.

  Jennifer yawns, covers her mouth, says excuse me. Megan laughs at her. “You yawn like a cat,” she says.

  “How does a cat yawn?”

  “Hugely. Like, with its whole face. Its eyes squinched up. You’ve never seen a cat yawn?”

  “I guess I have. I must have.”

  “Surely everyone on earth has seen a cat yawn.”

  Milo says, “I haven’t,” proving once again that children are most likely to be listening to adults when they don’t appear to be.

  “I haven’t, either,” Ben says in proud agreement.

  “You’ve seen a cat yawn, Benjy,” Megan says. “Think about the lions at the zoo.”

  “They show their teeth,” Ben says.

  “That’s right.”

  “They have huuuuuge mouths,” Milo adds.

  “Do I have a huge mouth?” Jennifer asks, feeling an absurd spasm of adolescent self-consciousness.

  “Mommy has a huge mouth!” Milo says.

  “No, it’s not huge,” Megan says in mock-scolding. “It’s totally normal sized.” She takes a sip of her tea and shoots a teasing sidelong grin at Jennifer. “For a giant.”

  Jennifer is about to retort, but then she hears a sound that surprises her: tires on her gravel drive. What she was about to say she’ll never afterward be able to remember. Megan raises her eyebrows, listening. “Who could that be?” Jennifer says.

  “You’re not expecting anyone?” Megan says.

  She shakes her head.

  “Maybe it’s a package,” Megan says. “Maybe you need to sign.”

  “I didn’t order anything.”

  The boys are at the front window. “It’s a car,” Milo reports. From outside comes the sound of doors shutting. Jennifer could get up to go look, but she doesn’t want to. She has a bad feeling about this, which she struggles to ignore. In an ordinary life, people sometimes drop by. Except they don’t anymore, not since cell phones. “It’s a girl,” Milo says.

  “What girl?” Jennifer asks.

  Milo shrugs, turning away from the window. “I don’t know,” he says. “Some girl.”

  “What girl?” Jennifer pushes up from the table.

  “I don’t know, Mommy,” Milo says, in a cheerful singsong, losing interest now that Jennifer’s is engaged.

  There’s a knock on the door. A loud, insistent knock, one two three. Jennifer and Megan look at each other like the police have arrived. “Why am I freaked out?” Megan asks.

  Jennifer moves toward the door, but Milo is right there, and quicker, and he opens it. “Who are you?” he says.

  And Zoe says, “I’m Zoe, silly,” and then she drops to her knees and pulls Milo into a hug.

  Milo yanks out of the hug, looks at Jennifer for help. “Mommy,” he says.

  Zoe crouches there, looking at him entreatingly, empty armed. “Milo,” she says, “don’t you know who I am?”

  Zoe. Her beautiful daughter, her angry girl. She rises now and looks at Jennifer. Jennifer flinches, then tries to disguise the flinch by holding her wh
ole self absolutely still. Her daughter’s gaze is a spotlight, blinding and insistent. Accusatory. It has always hurt to look at her, and now it aches. She looks past her daughter, expecting to see her mother-in-law waving custody papers, a lawyer, the police. But Zoe is the only one here. Does that mean she’s the only one coming? Or is she the advance guard?

  “Who are you?” Milo asks.

  Behind Jennifer, Megan has risen, clearly aware that something strange and fraught is happening. “Ben,” she says quietly, “come here,” and Ben just does it, no demand she justify her order, not a word of protest.

  “He doesn’t know who I am?” Zoe looks at Jennifer in puzzlement.

  “Mommy!” Milo demands. “Who is she?” He steps closer to Jennifer, tugging on her hand.

  “I’m your sister,” Zoe says. “You’re my brother.”

  “I don’t have a brother,” Milo says.

  “No, you don’t. You have a sister.”

  “I don’t have a sister.”

  “Of course you do, silly,” Zoe says. “I brought you this.” She holds out a little stuffed tiger.

  But Milo won’t take it, pressing his body into his mother’s side, his brow intensely furrowed, his lower jaw stuck out. “Mommy!” he says.

  Jennifer would like to embrace Zoe, then carry her out the door. But that is not possible. What is possible? What should Jennifer do? She feels a sharp longing for five minutes ago. “She’s just pretending, sweetie,” Jennifer says. “You’ve never had a sister. You’re an only child.”

  At this, Zoe takes a stumbling step back, her face wiped of all its passionate certitude. Not since she was a small child, not even after Tommy died, has Jennifer seen her this vulnerable, seen her express a sadness that wasn’t three parts rage. But she has to save the child it’s possible to save. She crouches to look at Milo. “I need to talk to this girl,” she says. “Can you go play in your room?”

  Milo shoots a nervous glance at Zoe. “Can I watch TV?”

  “Yes, you go watch TV,” Jennifer says, and Milo clatters up the stairs.

  “Can I go, too?” Ben asks, and Megan says, “No, sweetie, we should leave.” He protests, and she opens her mouth to speak again, but at the same time Zoe says to her, “Did she not tell you about me?”

  “No,” Megan says.

  “Because I’m not pretending.”

  “No,” Megan says. “I can see that.”

  “I’m her daughter.”

  Jennifer looks at Megan, who is looking back at her. “I don’t understand,” Megan says. From upstairs, to Jennifer’s relief, comes the loud blare of a raucous TV show.

  “Her name isn’t Jennifer Young,” Zoe says. “It’s Jennifer Carrasco.”

  “Really?” Megan asks Jennifer.

  “Really,” Zoe says. “She must have changed it so no one could look her up.” Suddenly she turns to Jennifer. “Say something,” she demands. She waits, then turns back to Megan. “People think she killed my father.”

  Megan’s face. Megan’s sweet face, transformed by horrified astonishment. That fevered blush she gets, which Jennifer has only ever seen caused by embarrassment, but this time is evidence of something else, some new emotion, whatever it is that Megan now feels.

  Jennifer looks at her daughter. Her twin, Tommy used to say. “And why do people think that, Zoe?” she asks coolly. “Because you got rid of the bottles he used to kill himself?”

  Zoe doesn’t look at her. “The police took it seriously,” she says to Megan.

  “Yes,” Jennifer says. “Thanks for that.”

  “We have to go,” Megan says. She has Ben tightly by the hand, and as she leads him past Jennifer, Jennifer can see the tension in Megan’s arm, the way she maneuvers so that Ben won’t accidentally brush against Jennifer, so that Jennifer, the monster, won’t come into contact with her precious son. One minute you are one thing, and the next you are something else. The first thing is lost to you. You can never be the first thing again.

  Zoe steps aside to let them leave. Jennifer hears Megan’s car door open, hears Megan urging Ben into his car seat, and knows that next she’ll lean in to check the buckles, adjust the straps, make sure her child is safe. Then she’ll go to the driver’s seat, and then she’ll be gone, gone, gone.

  Jennifer darts outside, past Zoe, as if she doesn’t even see her there. She slows a few feet from Megan, who stands grasping the handle of her car door, watching her like a startled deer. “Megan, please,” Jennifer says.

  Megan waits. She shakes her head. “Is all this true?”

  “She’s my daughter, yes,” Jennifer says. “The rest is complicated.”

  “I’m sorry.” Megan opens the door. “I think it’s too complicated for me.”

  “Megan, please,” Jennifer says again. She hears the pleading in her voice. “Everybody has secrets. Your marriage isn’t perfect, right? You drink too much.”

  Megan rears back. That was the wrong thing to say. Though Jennifer knows with a doomed certainty there was no right thing.

  “I’m so sorry,” Megan says, crying now. “I’m so sorry for you.” She gets in her car hastily and shuts the door.

  Jennifer doesn’t stand there to watch her back away. She tried, and she ruined it, this life in Sewanee, and now it is over. She turns to go back to the house. Inside Zoe is waiting, pacing up and down in front of the glass doors. She stops when her mother comes in. “I’m sorry,” she says.

  This is not what Jennifer expected to hear, and maybe that’s why she proceeds as if she didn’t hear it. “Happy?” she asks. She goes far enough up the stairs to see Milo, engrossed in a violent cartoon. Then she heads for the kitchen to pour herself a bourbon from a bottle Erica brought over. Just last week, that was. When it was still possible for Jennifer to call Megan and Megan’s friends and invite them over for a drink. After a second’s thought she pours a bourbon for Zoe, too. Back in the living room, Zoe’s where she left her. Jennifer hands her the drink, then slides open the glass door. She goes outside and sits in one of the wooden chairs. She braces her feet against the railing. She stares at the woods. She stares at the pond. The deck across the way is empty. The bourbon burns her throat.

  Zoe will never understand. There is no point in trying to make her. There’s no point in telling her any of the stories. Even if she did, who knows what Zoe would think they proved? That’s why she never tried. To fight with her would be like fighting with Tommy again, the endless tussle over who was to blame. “You’re never kind to me,” Tommy would say. “You never laugh at my jokes.”

  “I don’t feel kind,” Jennifer would say. “I don’t feel like laughing.”

  “How can I live like that?” Tommy would ask, and the look on his face would be so desolate that sometimes kind was exactly what she’d feel. Her poor baby. He didn’t want to hurt her. His sorrow and his guilt.

  Zoe comes outside, but she doesn’t sit in the other chair. She leans on the railing and looks at Jennifer. Jennifer can feel her gaze. She keeps her own trained on the trees. “How did you find me?” she asks.

  “You called me.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes you did, Mom! You called from Margaret’s house, and hung up, like I wouldn’t see a strange area code and immediately assume it was you. Like I haven’t been wondering.”

  “Margaret’s house? Margaret?”

  “Yes, Margaret.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Jesus,” Zoe says. “You can’t even admit you called me. Tell the truth for once in your life.”

  Jennifer can feel a tingling in her palm, as though she’s already slapped the girl. She takes a breath. “If I wanted to have conversations like this,” she says, “I would’ve been in touch.”

  “You were in touch!”

  “I wasn’t!” She’d like to take a swig but her hand is shaking. “If someone called you from Margaret’s house, then it was Margaret. Of course. Of course it was Margaret.”

  “
Why would she do that?”

  Jennifer shakes her head.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Zoe says. “You called, you didn’t call. Now I’m here.”

  “Because of Margaret,” Jennifer says bitterly, as if that were the worst of it.

  “She wants to help me. She’s letting me stay with her.”

  “You’re staying with her? You’re staying in her house?”

  “I came here looking for you, and I ran into her at the Smoke House.”

  “She just took you in, a total stranger?”

  “She overheard me asking about you. She knew I was your daughter, as soon as she saw me,” Zoe says. “She says I look exactly like you.”

  Above the tree line a tiny plane, a prop, climbs into the sky. “There’s something wrong with that woman.”

  “She said you’d want to see me,” Zoe says in a small voice.

  “Did she?” Jennifer watches the plane. She imagines that wherever it’s going is the next place she and Milo will live.

  “But obviously you don’t. I didn’t know you changed your name. You didn’t even tell me where you lived.”

  Now Jennifer looks at her daughter again. “You called the cops on me, Zoe. For murdering my husband. You don’t trust a person after that. You can’t trust a person after that. I can’t trust you not to fuck up my life. You’re proving that right now. Do you not understand why I moved away? Why I changed my name? Did it never cross your mind I’m trying to make a good life for your brother? What do you think it would have been like for him—” She shakes her head. “Now thanks to you we’ll have to move again.”

  “But what about me?” Zoe says. “Don’t you care about me?”

  “Zoe,” Jennifer says. She presses her mouth together against tears. “It never seemed to matter if I cared.”