Cynthia glanced down at the flyer, shook her head. “It’s a new awareness campaign we’re doing. I’ve been talking about household mold so much lately I’m having nightmares where I’m being chased by fungus.”
“Like that movie,” I said. “The Blob.”
“Was that fungus?”
“Fungus from outer space.”
She rested her head on the back of the chair, kept her feet perched on the railing. She sighed. “I never did this at home. Just decompressed at the end of the day.”
“That’s probably because we don’t have a porch with a railing,” I said. “I’ll build you one if you want.”
That prompted a chuckle. “You?”
Construction was not one of the manly arts at which I excelled. “Well, I could have someone build it. What I lack in hammering skills I make up for in writing checks.”
“I just—at home, there’s always something I have to do, right then. But here, when I get home from work, I sit here and watch the cars go by. That’s it. It gives me time to think. You know?”
“I guess.”
“I mean, you’ve got the summer to chill out.” She had me there. As a teacher, I had July and August to recharge my batteries. Cynthia had been working for the city only long enough to get a couple of weeks off every year. “So my holiday is an hour at the end of every day, where I sit here and do nothing.”
“Good,” I said. “If this is working for you, then I’m happy.”
She turned and looked at me. “No, you’re not.”
“I just want what’s good for you.”
“I don’t know anymore what’s good for me. I sit here thinking I’ve removed myself from the source of my anxiety, all the fighting and nonsense at home with Grace, and then I realize I’m the source of my anxiety and I can’t get away from myself.”
“There’s a Garrison Keillor story,” I said, “about the old couple who can’t get along, wondering whether to take a vacation, and the man says, ‘Why pay good money to be miserable someplace else when I can be perfectly miserable at home.’”
She frowned. “You think we’re an old couple?”
“That wasn’t the point of the story.”
“I won’t stay here forever,” Cynthia said, having to raise her voice some as Barney shifted his mowing activity to the front yard. The smell of freshly cut grass wafted our way. “I’m taking it a day at a time.”
As much as I wanted her to come home, I wasn’t going to beg her. She had to do it when she was good and ready.
“What have you told Teresa?” Cynthia asked. Teresa Moretti, the woman who came in to clean our place once a week. Four or five years ago, when Cynthia and I found ourselves so busy we couldn’t seem to get to the most basic household chores, we’d asked around about a cleaning lady and found Teresa. Even though I was off for the summer and possessed the requisite skills to tidy a house, Cynthia thought it was unfair to Teresa to lay her off for July and August.
“She needs that money,” Cynthia’d said at the time.
Normally, I wouldn’t even see Teresa. I’d be at school. But six days ago I was there when she let herself in with the key we provided her. She didn’t miss a trick. After noticing that Cynthia’s makeup and other items were not in evidence, that her robe was not thrown over the chair in our bedroom, she’d asked if Cynthia was away.
Now on the porch with my wife, I said, “I told her you were enjoying a little time on your own. Thought that would do it, but then she wanted to know where you’d gone, whether I’d be joining you, was Grace going, how long would we be gone . . .”
“She’s just worried we’re going to cut her back to every other week or once a month.”
I nodded. “She comes tomorrow. I’ll put her mind at ease.”
Cynthia tipped the bottle up to her lips. “Did you know those teachers?” she asked.
Those two retired schoolteachers who had been killed in their home a few days ago, not more than a mile from here.
From what I’d read and seen on the TV news, the cops were baffled. Rona Wedmore, the police detective we’d been involved with seven years ago, was the lead investigator and had as much as said they couldn’t come up with a motive and there were no suspects. At least none the local police would talk about.
The idea that a couple of retired folks, with no known connections to any criminal activity whatsoever, could be slaughtered in their own home had led to a sense of unease in Milford. Some—particularly the news shows—were calling this the “Summer of Fear” in this community.
“We never crossed paths,” I told Cynthia. “We didn’t teach in the same schools.”
“It’s a horrible thing,” she said. “Senseless.”
“There’s always a reason,” I said. “Maybe not one that makes much sense, but a reason nonetheless.”
There were beads of sweat on Cynthia’s beer bottle. “Hot one today,” I said. “Wonder if it’s going to be nice this weekend. Maybe we could all do something together.”
I went to reach for her phone so I could open the weather app, check the forecast, the sort of thing I did at home all the time if my phone wasn’t nearby. But before I could grab it, Cynthia moved the phone to the other arm of the chair, beyond my reach.
“I heard it’s going to be nice,” she said. “Why don’t we talk on Saturday.”
Barney went down the other side with the gas mower.
“He said he hopes we work things out,” I said.
Cynthia closed her eyes for two seconds and sighed. “I swear, I really haven’t said a thing. But he puts things together, sees you coming over but not staying. Likes to offer advice. Seize the day, that kind of thing.”
“What’s his story?”
“I don’t know. Mid-sixties, never married, lives alone. Likes to tell everyone how his leg got busted up in a car accident back in the seventies, hasn’t walked right since. He’s kind of sad, actually. He’s okay. I listen to him talk, try not to hurt his feelings. I might have a plugged toilet one night and need him to come over.”
“Does he live here?”
Cynthia shook her head. “No. There’s a young guy across the hall from me—there’s a hell of a story there I’ll tell you sometime. And on the first floor, there’s Winnifred—swear to God, Winnifred—who works for the library, and across the hall from her another sad sack named Orland. Older than Barney, lives alone, hardly anyone ever comes to see him.” She forced a grin. “It’s the House of the Damned, I tell you. They’re all here living alone. They’ve got no one.”
“You do,” I said.
Cynthia looked away. “I didn’t mean it that—”
There was a sudden noise from the house. Someone coming down a flight of stairs, fast.
The door swung open and a man, late twenties to early thirties, slim, dark hair, stepped out. He spotted Cynthia before noticing me.
“Hey, good-lookin’,” he said. “What’s shakin’?”
“Hi, Nate,” Cynthia said, an awkward smile on her face. “I’d like you to meet someone.”
“Oh, hey,” he said, his eyes landing on me. “Another friend dropping by?”
“This is Terry. My husband. Terry, this is Nathaniel. My across-the-hall neighbor.” Her eyebrows popped up briefly as she looked at me. This was the guy there was a hell of a story about.
His face quickly flushed, and it took him maybe a tenth of a second to decide to extend a hand. “Good to meet you. Heard a lot about you.”
I glanced at Cynthia, but she wasn’t looking at me.
“Where you off to?” Cynthia asked. “You don’t walk dogs this late in the day, do you? Isn’t everyone home by now?”
“Just going out for something to eat,” Nathaniel said.
“You have dogs?” I asked.
He smiled sheepishly. “Not here, and they’re not mine. That’s what I do. I’ve got a dog-walking business. Go from house to house through the day, take my clients’ mutts out for a stroll while their owners are at work
.” He shrugged. “I’ve had a small career change. But I’m sure Cyn—I’m sure your wife has told you all about that.”
I looked at Cynthia again, expectantly this time.
“I haven’t,” Cynthia said. “Don’t let us hold you up.”
“Again, nice to meet you,” he said to me, then trotted down the stairs, got behind the wheel of the Caddy, and took off on North Street.
“A dog walker with a Cadillac?” I said.
“Long story. Short version goes like this. Hit it big in the phone app business, market went south for a while, lost it all, had a nervous breakdown, now walks dogs for people every day while he gets his life back together.”
I nodded. This house seemed to be a place where people came to regroup.
“Well,” I said.
Neither of us spoke for the better part of a minute. Cynthia watched the street the entire time.
Finally, she said, “I’m ashamed.”
“It was an accident,” I said. “It was just a crazy accident. You never meant for that to happen.”
“I do everything I can to protect her and I’m the one who ends up sending her to the hospital.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“You probably need to get home and make Grace dinner,” Cynthia said. “Give her a hug for me.” She paused. “Tell her I love her.”
“She knows,” I said, getting up. “But I’ll do it.”
She walked me to the car. The smell of freshly mown grass wafted up my nostrils.
“If there was anything going on, if Grace were in trouble, you’d let me know,” Cynthia said. “Right?”
“Of course.”
“You don’t have to tiptoe around me. I can take it.”
“Everything’s fine.” I grinned. “Mostly she watches me to keep me out of trouble. I try to throw any wild parties, she nips that right in the bud.”
Cynthia rested her palm on my chest. “I’m coming back. I just need a little more time.”
“I know.”
“You just keep an eye on her. This thing, about those teachers being killed, it’s got my mind going all kinds of places it shouldn’t.”
I forced a smile. “Maybe it’s some former student, years later, getting even with teachers who gave him a hard time for not doing his homework. I better watch my back.”
“Don’t even joke.”
I lost the smile. I realized I hadn’t been funny. “I’m sorry. We’re okay. We are. We’ll be better when you come back, but we’re getting by. And I’m watching her like a hawk.”
“You better.”
I got in my Ford Escape, keyed the ignition. Driving home, I couldn’t get out of my head two things Nathaniel had said.
Hey, good-lookin’ was the first.
And the second was: Another friend dropping by?
FOUR
“WANNA have some real fun?” the boy asked.
That worried Grace. Maybe not a lot, but a little.
She had a pretty good idea what Stuart was getting at. They’d already been having some fun—just above-the-waist stuff—parked out back of the Walmart in his dad’s old Buick. This car, it was an aircraft carrier. Massive hood and trunk, and inside, well, you hardly had to get into the backseat. The front—which went all the way across, no console or shifter in the middle—was the size of a park bench but way, way softer. The car was from the seventies, and when it went around corners, she felt as if she was in a huge boat way out past the sound, out in the Atlantic or something, getting carried away by the waves.
Grace was okay with what they’d done so far—she’d let him touch her in a couple of places—but she wasn’t sure she wanted to take things any further. Not yet, anyway.
She was still just fourteen, after all. And even though she knew, with absolute certainty, that that meant she was not a kid anymore, she had to admit that Stuart, being sixteen, might know slightly more about the whole sex thing. It wasn’t even so much that she was scared about doing it for the first time. What scared her was looking like a total amateur. Everyone knew, or thought they knew, that Stuart had already been with plenty of girls. What if she ended up doing it all wrong? Ended up looking like a total idiot?
So she decided to play things cautiously. “I don’t know,” she said, pulling away from him, leaning against the passenger door. “This has been, like, good, you know? But I’m not sure about taking things, like, to the next level.”
Stuart laughed. “Shit, I’m not talking about that. Although, if you’re thinking you’re ready, I’ve come equipped.” He started to reach down into the front pocket of his jeans.
Grace slapped his hand playfully. “Then what are you talking about?”
“It’s something totally cool. I swear, you’ll wet your pants.”
Grace could guess. Maybe some pot, or X. What the hell? She could give something like that a try. It was actually a little less scary than letting him get into her pants. “So what is it? I’ve tried a few things. Not just pot.” A lie, but one had to keep up appearances.
“Nothing like that,” Stuart said. “You ever driven a Porsche?”
That took her by surprise. “I’ve never driven anything, you idiot. I won’t have a license for two more years.”
“I mean, you ever ridden in a Porsche?”
“Like, is that the sports car?”
“Jesus, you don’t know what a Porsche is?”
“Yeah, I know. Okay. Why you asking me if I ever had a ride in a Porsche?”
“Have you?”
“No,” Grace said. “At least, I don’t think I ever have. But I don’t exactly pay a lot of attention to what kind of car I’m getting into. Maybe I was in one and didn’t know it.”
“I think,” the boy said, “if you’d been in a Porsche, you’d kinda know. It’s not like an average car. It’s all low and swoopy and shit and fast as fuck.”
“Okay, so no.”
Stuart was kind of hot looking, and one of the cool kids, although not exactly in a good way. He had that don’t-give-a-shit thing going on, which had some appeal to a girl who was sick to death of having to make safe choices. But after being out with him three times, she was starting to think there wasn’t a whole lot going on inside that head of his.
Grace hadn’t told her father she was seeing Stuart, because he knew exactly who the boy was. She could recall her dad bringing up his name more than once, back when Stuart was in her dad’s English class two years earlier. He’d be marking papers in the evening at the kitchen table and say something about this Stuart kid being thick as a plank, which her dad didn’t do very often because he said it wasn’t professional. He said it wasn’t right to comment on the work of students his daughter might know, but once in a while, if the kid was dumb enough, he slipped.
Grace remembered a joke her dad had made. For a long time, right up until this year, she’d thought she might like to be an astronaut, someone who went up to the International Space Station. Her dad had said maybe Stuart could be an astronaut, too, because all he did in class was take up space.
Tonight, Grace had to wonder whether maybe her father had this boy nailed.
One time, Stuart had asked her what she wanted to do when she finished school, and when she’d told him, he’d said, “Seriously? They only send guys up into space.”
“Hello?” she’d shot back. “Sally Ride? Svetlana Savitskaya? Roberta Bondar?”
“You can’t just make up names,” he’d said.
Oh well. It wasn’t like she had to marry him. She just wanted to have some . . . fun. She wanted to take a few . . . risks. And wasn’t that just what he’d asked if she’d like to do?
“I have definitely never ridden in a Porsche.”
Stuart grinned. “Want to?”
She shrugged. “Yeah, sure. Why not?”
A cell phone started buzzing.
“That’s you,” Stuart said.
Grace dug her phone out of her purse, glanced at the screen. “Oh, jeez.”
&nbs
p; “Who is it?”
“My dad. I’m kind of supposed to be home by now.” It was nearing ten.
Adopting a deep baritone voice, Stuart said, “You get home right now, young lady, and do your homework.”
“Stop it.” Even if her dad was a huge pain in the ass at times, she didn’t like other people mocking him. She hated it, at school, when she’d hear other kids running her dad down. It was no picnic, going to the same school where your dad taught. All these extra expectations to be a good kid, have above-average marks. After all, they’d say, she’s a teacher’s daughter. Talk about a cross to bear. Not that her marks were bad. She did pretty well, especially in science, although sometimes she’d write a couple of wrong answers just so she wouldn’t get a hundred percent and have the boys call her Amy Farrah Fowler, the nerdy scientist girl on that TV show.
“You gonna talk to him or not?” Stuart asked as Grace’s phone continued to buzz.
She stared at it, tried to will it to stop, which it finally did after a dozen rings.
But seconds later, a text. “Shit,” she said. “He wants me to call home.”
“He’s got you on a tight leash. Your mom a control freak, too?”
If she were home, Grace thought. If she hadn’t bailed on them two weeks ago, after the thing with the pot of boiling water. She’d gotten the bandage off only three days ago.
She ignored his question and turned things back to the topic at hand. “Okay, so did your dad buy you a Porsche?”
“God, no. You think he’d be driving around in a shitbox tank like this if he had?”
“Then what?”
“I know where I can find one and take it for a spin.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I can get my hands on one in, like, ten minutes, one that we can borrow.”
“What, like at a car dealership?” Grace asked. “Aren’t they all going to be closed?” Who’d let you take a test drive this time of night?
Stuart shook his head. “No, at somebody’s house.”
“Who do you know who’s got a Porsche?” She grinned. “And how dumb would they have to be to let you borrow it?”
“No, it’s not like that. It’s at a house that’s empty this week. It was on the list.”