The Couple Next Door (10 page)

Anne and Marco lie down on the bed together in their clothes, ready to jump up if the phone rings. They hold each other and whisper.

‘I wish I could see Dr Lumsden,’ Anne says.

Marco pulls her close. He doesn’t know what to say. Dr Lumsden is away in Europe somewhere, for the next couple of weeks. Anne’s appointments have been canceled. ‘I know,’ Marco whispers.

Anne whispers back, ‘She said I could see the doctor who’s covering for her if I needed to. Maybe I should.’

Marco considers. He’s worried about her. He worries that if this goes on too long, it will truly damage her. She has always been fragile when stressed. ‘I don’t know, baby,’ Marco says. ‘With all those reporters out there, how would you go to the doctor’s?’

‘I don’t know,’ Anne whispers bleakly. She doesn’t want the reporters following her to a psychiatrist’s office either. She is worried about the press learning of her postpartum depression. She saw what they were like about the mistake with the
onesie. So far the only ones who know about her depression are Marco and her mother, her doctor and her pharmacist. And the police, of course, who went through their house right after the baby was taken and found her medication.

If she hadn’t been in treatment with a psychiatrist, would the police be circling them now like wolves? Maybe not. It’s her fault they’re under suspicion. The police have no reason to suspect them otherwise. Unless it’s because they left the baby in the house alone. That was Marco’s fault. So they’re both to blame.

Anne lies in bed remembering what it felt like to hold her baby against her own body, to feel the warmth of her pudgy little infant daughter in her arms, wearing only a diaper, her skin smelling of baby and bath time. She remembers Cora’s beautiful smile and the curl in the middle of her forehead – like the little girl in the nursery rhyme. She and Marco have often joked about it.

As broken as she feels –
what kind of mother feels depressed after the gift of a perfect baby? –
Anne loves her daughter desperately.

But the exhaustion had been overwhelming. Cora was a fussy, colicky baby, more demanding than most. When Marco had gone back to work, the days had begun to feel unbearably long. Anne filled the hours as best she could, but it was lonely. All the days began to seem the same. She couldn’t imagine them ever being any different. In her fog of sleep
deprivation, she couldn’t remember the woman she used to be when she worked at the art gallery – could hardly remember how it felt to help clients add pieces to their collections or the thrill of finding a promising new artist. In fact, she could hardly remember what she was like before she’d had the baby and stayed home to care for her.

Anne didn’t like to ask her mother to come and help – she was busy with her friends and the country club and her charities. None of Anne’s own friends were staying home with babies at the same time. Anne struggled. She felt ashamed that she wasn’t coping well. Marco suggested hiring someone to help, but that made her feel inadequate.

The only relief was her moms’ group, which met for three hours once a week, on Wednesday mornings. But she hadn’t really connected with any of the other moms sufficiently to share her feelings. They all seemed genuinely happy, and more competent at motherhood than she was, even though it was the first baby for each of them.

And there was the one session a week in the early evening with Dr Lumsden, while Marco watched Cora.

All Anne wants now is to go back twenty-four hours. She looks at the digital clock on her bedside table – 11:31. Twenty-four hours ago, she was just leaving Cora in her crib to return to the party. None of this had happened; everything was fine. If only she could turn the clock back. If she could have her baby back, she would be so grateful, she would be so happy, she didn’t think she would ever be depressed again. She would cherish every minute with her daughter. She would never complain about anything, ever again.

Lying in bed, Anne makes a private deal with God, even though she does not believe in God, and weeps into her pillow.

Eventually Anne falls asleep, but Marco lies awake beside her for a long time. He cannot stop the buzzing in his brain.

He looks over at his wife, sleeping restlessly on her side, her back to him. It is her first sleep in more than thirty-six hours. He knows she needs to sleep if she is to cope with this.

He stares at her back and thinks about how much she has changed since the baby was born. It was entirely unexpected. They’d looked forward to the baby so much together – decorating the nursery, shopping for baby things, attending the birth-preparation classes, feeling the baby kick in her tummy. They had been some of the happiest months of his life. It had never occurred to him that it would be hard afterward. He hadn’t seen it coming.

Her labor had been long and difficult; they hadn’t been prepared for that either. Nobody ever tells you about that in birthing classes – everything that can go wrong. In the end Cora had been born by emergency C-section, but she was fine. She was perfect. Mother and baby were both fine, and they came home from the hospital to a new life.

The recovery, too, had taken longer and been more difficult for Anne because of the C-section. She seemed disappointed that she hadn’t had a normal birth. Marco had tried to talk her out of it. It wasn’t what he’d imagined either, but it hadn’t seemed like a big deal to him. Cora was perfect, Anne was healthy, and that was all that mattered.

Anne had trouble breast-feeding in the beginning, getting the baby to latch on. They’d had to get professional help. Anne’s own mother had been of no use – she’d bottle-fed her baby.

Marco wants to reach out and lightly stroke Anne’s back, but he’s afraid of waking her. She has always been emotional, sensitive. She is one of the most refined women he’s ever met.
He used to love dropping in on her at the gallery. Sometimes he would surprise her there at lunchtime, or after work, just because he wanted to see her. He got a kick out of watching her with clients, the way she lit up when talking about a painting or a new artist. He’d think,
I can’t believe she’s mine.

Whenever there was an opening for a new exhibition, she would invite him; there would be champagne and hors d’oeuvres, women in smart dresses and men in well-cut suits. Anne would circulate around the room, stopping to talk with the people clustered in front of the paintings – wild, abstract splashes of color or more somber, tonal works. Marco didn’t understand any of it. The most beautiful, the most arresting thing in the room, for him, would always be Anne. He would stay out of her way, stand over by the bar eating cheese, or off to the side, and watch her do her thing. She had been trained for it, getting her degree in art history and modern art, but more than that, she had an instinct for it, a passion. Marco had not grown up with art, but it was part of her life, and he loved her for it.

For their wedding he’d bought her a painting in the gallery that she fervently desired but that she said they could never afford – a very large, moody abstract work by an up-and-coming painter she greatly admired. It hangs over their mantelpiece in the living room. But she no longer even looks at it.

Marco rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling, his eyes burning. He needs her to keep it together. He can’t have the police suspecting her, suspecting them, any more than they do already. What she said about Dr Lumsden disturbed him. The fear in her eyes. Had she said something to the doctor about wishing to harm the baby? That’s what women with post-partum depression sometimes thought about.

Jesus. Jesus. Fuck.

His computer at the office. He’d Googled ‘postpartum depression’ and followed the links to ‘postpartum psychosis’, read those horrible stories about women who’d murdered their babies. The woman who had smothered her two kids. The woman who’d drowned her five children in the bathtub. The one who had driven her kids into a lake. Jesus fucking Christ. If the police look at his computer at the office, they’ll find all that.

Marco starts to sweat just lying in bed. He feels clammy, sick. What would the police make of that if they found it? Do they already think that Anne killed Cora? Do they think he helped her cover it up? If they saw his browser history, would they think he’d been worried for weeks about Anne?

He lies there flat on his back, eyes wide open. Should he tell the police about it, before they find it themselves? He doesn’t want to look like he’s hiding anything. They’ll wonder why he researched it at work, instead of using his home computer.

His heart is racing now, as he gets up. He makes his way downstairs in the dark, leaving Anne snoring lightly behind him. Detective Rasbach is in the chair in their living room that he seems to have chosen as his favorite, doing something on his laptop. Marco wonders if the detective ever sleeps, wonders when he’s going to leave their house. He and Anne can’t exactly kick him out, although they would both like to.

Detective Rasbach looks up as Marco comes into the room.

‘I can’t sleep,’ Marco mumbles. He sits down on the sofa, tries to think of how to begin. He can feel the detective’s eyes on him. Should he tell or not? Have they been to his office yet? Have they looked at his computer? Have they found out the mess his business is in? Do they know that he’s at risk of
losing his company? If they don’t yet, they soon will. He knows they’re suspicious of him, that they’re looking into his background. But having financial problems doesn’t make you a criminal.

‘There’s something I’d like to tell you,’ Marco says nervously.

Rasbach looks at him calmly and puts his laptop aside.

‘I don’t want you to misconstrue this,’ Marco says.

‘Okay,’ Detective Rasbach says.

Marco takes a deep breath before he begins. ‘When Anne was diagnosed with postpartum depression a few months ago, it really kind of freaked me out.’

Rasbach nods. ‘That’s understandable.’

‘I mean, I had no experience with this kind of thing. She was getting very depressed, you know, crying a lot. She seemed listless. I was worried about her, but I thought she was just exhausted, that it was temporary. I thought she’d get over it when the baby started sleeping through the night. I even suggested that maybe she should go back to work part-time, because she loved her job at the gallery and I thought it would give her a break. But she didn’t want to do that. She looked at me like I thought she was a failure as a mother.’ Marco shakes his head. ‘Of course I didn’t think that! I suggested she get a bit of help during the day, maybe get a girl in so she could nap, but she wouldn’t hear of it.’

Rasbach nods again, listening intently.

Marco continues, feels himself getting more nervous. ‘When she told me her doctor said she had postpartum depression, I didn’t want to make it into a big deal, you know? I wanted to be supportive. But I was worried, and she wasn’t telling me much.’ He starts rubbing his hands on his thighs. ‘So I looked it up online, but not here at home, because
I didn’t want her to know I was worried. So I used my computer at the office.’ He feels himself flushing. This is coming out all wrong. He sounds as if he suspects Anne, as if he doesn’t trust her. It sounds like they’re keeping secrets from each other.

Rasbach stares back at him, inscrutable. Marco can’t make out what the detective is thinking. It’s unnerving.

‘So I just wanted you to know, if you check my computer at work, why I was looking at those sites about postpartum depression. I was trying to understand what she was going through. I wanted to help.’

‘I see.’ Rasbach nods as if he completely understands. But Marco can’t tell what he’s really thinking.

‘Why do you want to tell me that you were researching postpartum depression at your office? It seems a natural enough thing to do, in your situation,’ Rasbach says.

Marco feels a chill. Has he just made things worse? Has he just made them want to examine his office computer? Should he explain further about following the links to the murders or just leave things as they are? For a moment he panics, unsure of what to do. He decides he has already screwed up enough. ‘I just thought I should tell you, that’s all,’ Marco says gruffly, and gets up to go, angry with himself.

‘Wait,’ the detective says. ‘Do you mind if I ask you something?’

Marco sits back down. ‘Go ahead.’ He crosses his arms in front of him.

‘It’s about last night, when you went back to the neighbors’ house after checking on the baby at twelve thirty.’

‘What about it?’

‘What were you and Cynthia talking about out there?’

The question makes Marco feel uncomfortable. What
had
they talked about? Why is he asking? ‘Why do you want to know what we were talking about?’

‘Do you remember?’ Rasbach asks.

Marco can’t remember. He doesn’t remember talking much at all.

‘I don’t know. Just trivial stuff. Chitchat. Nothing important.’

‘She’s a very attractive woman, wouldn’t you agree?’

Marco is silent.

‘Wouldn’t you agree?’ Rasbach repeats.

‘I guess,’ Marco says.

‘You say that you don’t remember seeing or hearing anything when you were out back last night between shortly after twelve thirty and just before one a.m., when the two of you returned inside.’

Marco hangs his head, doesn’t look at the detective. He knows where this is going. He starts to sweat.

‘You said’ – and here the detective flips back through his notebook for a bit – ‘you said you “weren’t paying attention”. Why were you not paying attention?’

What the hell should he do here? He knows what the detective is getting at. Like a coward, Marco says nothing. But he feels the pulse in the vein at his temple, wonders if the detective notices.

‘Cynthia says that you came on to her, that you made sexual advances to her out on the patio.’

‘What? No I didn’t.’ Marco lifts his head sharply and looks at the detective.