The Neighbors (16 page)

“OK,” Drew relented, feeling like he was accepting more than a dinner invitation, like he was consenting to the growth of thoughts he wanted to escape. It was almost as though Harlow was doing it on purpose: inviting him over more and more often, leaving cookies, appearing out of nowhere just as soon as he needed some reassurance that his decision to move had been the right one. He had to assume that her sixth sense alerted her to the fact that he was uncomfortable, that something was bothering him just beneath the surface, and yet, if it had, she was choosing to ignore it.

Exhaling a breath, Andrew rose from his seat and gave her a parting smile.

“I’ll see you then,” he told her, moving out of the kitchen and toward the front door.

As he shut the picket gate behind him, he told himself that it was nothing; these thoughts would dissipate. He was love-struck by what Harlow represented—family, happiness, wholesomeness, and compassion—not by Harlow herself.

But the flower he kept on his windowsill suggested otherwise. The handwritten card tucked behind his license told another story.

There was something about Harlow the woman, not Harlow the substitute mom, that Drew just couldn’t shake.

Exhausted by a long day in the sun, Drew was spent; but Mickey sensed something else when Drew returned home—an uncomfortable energy. He told himself to ignore it—to ride it out just as he had ridden out the ones before.

But as soon as Drew stepped through the door—uneasy and dragging his feet—Mickey was struck by a sense of responsibility. This was his buddy, his childhood friend. This wasn’t some stranger off the street that Mick could erase from his memory.

Andrew still had a chance, and Mickey was the only one who could warn him.

“Tired?” he asked.

Drew stopped in the hall, regarding Mickey with a curious look. “Yeah,” he responded after a second of hesitation. “Long day.” Then he turned toward his room.

“Hey, you want to go get dinner or something?” Mick asked. Christ, how weird that felt to say. He had always been a man of few words; forcing himself to make small talk made his skin crawl. Until tests had proven otherwise, his own mother had thought him to be autistic, but Mickey Fitch simply didn’t like to speak. It made him feel vulnerable. The more words that came out of his mouth, the more his lack of education was exposed. But this was too important to go unchecked. If he kept his silence, his roommate would soon be an ex-roommate, just like the others. And Mickey wasn’t OK with that.

Andrew looked about as uncomfortable as Mickey felt. Paralyzed, he stood in the mouth of the hallway like a spooked animal in a hunter’s sights. Mickey suddenly wanted to laugh, wanted to tell Drew that if he was freaked out now, wait until he got a load of what he was going to tell him over a plate of nachos at the local greasy spoon.

“Um...” Drew cocked his head to the side, offered him a baffled look. “I’m actually going next door.”

Mickey’s chest tightened. “I thought you said you’re tired,” he protested. “Screw it; we’ll get a pizza. Watch a flick.”

Drew gave him a faint smile.

“Hey,” Mick said, a lightbulb going off above his head. “We can watch
Psycho
. You know, with that Norman guy? I’ve been meaning to watch it since you brought it up, man...” But his enthusiasm was short-lived. Drew shook his head, declining the invitation.

“I already said I’d go to the Wards’,” he confessed. “I’m too tired for a movie anyway.”

“That’s kind of what I want to talk to you about. I don’t think it’s a great idea for you to be hanging out over there. I mean, did old man Ward give you a job or something?”

“Or something,” Drew replied. There was more edge in his tone than Mick had expected.

“Look, man.” He raised his hands to his chest, assuring Drew he meant no harm. “I’m just saying, you know?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve lived here for a while...”

“How long?”

“Like ten years...but that isn’t the point.”

“What is?”

“The point is that, you know, after living somewhere for a long time you start to, well,
notice
things.”

“You mean like network names?” Andrew countered. “‘My neighbors suck’?”

“Look, I’m just saying that not everything is as it seems or...” He paused, rerunning his words to check they sounded right. “Yeah.”

“So they’re hiding something,” Drew concluded.

“Dude,
yes
.” Mickey exhaled a relieved breath.

“Like what? Do you think that maybe they’re, I don’t know, drug dealers?”

Mickey’s relief was replaced with wariness.

“Judging by your expression, I’ll take it that the Wards are right?”

“Whatever, man.”

“So you’ve never dealt drugs?”

Mickey hesitated for half a second.

Drew shook his head. “That’s great,” he muttered. “Fucking awesome—I’m living with a felon. Thanks for the heads-up.”

“Hey—”

“Now every time I see a squad car cruise down the street I’ll reflexively shit myself.”

“That was a long time ago,” was all Mickey managed to say, but Drew wasn’t interested. He shook his head and waved off whatever details Mick wanted to share, making it clear that he didn’t care.

“Hey, whatever...you didn’t tell me before, so don’t tell me now,” Drew said, turning his back on his housemate. “I have to take a shower.”

“Andrew...you need to listen to me,” Mickey insisted, but the only response he received was the sound of the bathroom door closing, the click of a lock. Drawing a hand down the length of his face, Mick turned away and stared across the living room. “Shit,” he muttered. This was worse than he thought.

Harlow was taking her time to nurture him, weaving an invisible web. Andrew actually
cared
about her. He was already trapped, and Harlow was hovering just above his head, her red mouth pulled into a malevolent grin, poised to strike. Straight for the heart.

Sitting at a dining table waxed to a mirror finish, Andrew smiled as Harlow placed a pot roast in the center of the table. The house smelled better than any restaurant Drew had ever been to, Bobby Darin’s buttery vocals making a perfect scene even
more charming. Harlow stepped away from the table, taking it in with an artistic eye. She placed her hands on her skirted hips, a frilly apron still tied around her svelte waist. After a moment of consideration, she made a motion as though remembering something, untying her apron as she turned back toward the kitchen.

Red gave Drew a smile from across the table, already sipping a glass of wine. His attire struck Andrew as a bit strange—a stiffly starched shirt paired with a deep-crimson tie. Who wore a tie to a dinner in their own house? Nobody that Drew knew, unless it was Christmas or Thanksgiving, and even then, the ties were less than serious—ties featuring the Grinch and succulent cartoon turkeys, ties that had flashing LED lights and played stupid songs. This wasn’t a special occasion, at least not that he was aware of, and yet there was Red, buttoned up, his tie standing out like a warning flag against his white shirt.

Andrew returned the smile, though it was a bit of a puzzled one. But before he had time to dwell on Red’s choice of dinner attire, Harlow stepped back into the dining room with a basket of fresh-baked bread.

“I always forget something,” she said with little laugh, stepping around the table to her seat. She paused beside her chair as if waiting for something, her gaze locked upon her husband. Red didn’t seem to notice, and eventually Harlow quietly cleared her throat and took her seat.

“Well,
bon appétit
, everyone,” she said, plucking up a bowl of roasted baby potatoes, holding them out so that Drew could serve himself.

“This is amazing,” Andrew told her, and really,
amazing
was the only word he could come up with to appropriately express what was set out before him. This was the quintessential family dinner—the kind of dinner Drew had watched on television throughout his adolescence but knew he’d never have again.

He had made an attempt at such a meal when he had been seventeen, reading through his mom’s old cookbooks, making
giant grocery lists and fighting the crowds on Christmas Eve. He nearly pulled it off, having draped his Gamma’s old kitchen table with a white tablecloth. Not brave enough to attempt making a cake himself, he’d picked one up at the market and decorated it with cranberries and mint leaves. He spent all day in the kitchen, Christmas carols filling the house, the tree shimmering with multicolored lights. He had nearly invited Emily but decided against it; his mom never liked anyone inside the house other than them. His chest swelled with pride when he stepped back and observed the meal he had created for himself and his mother. It was beautiful.

Leading his mom into the kitchen, he held his hands over her eyes. When he revealed what he’d prepared, she stared at it for a long while, dumbfounded. And then she turned and ran upstairs, weeping. Drew tried to get her to come back, but she refused. She didn’t want Christmas dinner, not without Rick there. Christmas was a family affair, and the Morrisons had no family to speak of.

Drew ate dinner alone that night. He hadn’t tried another dinner since.

“So, Andy...” Red said.

Drew looked up from his plate, a large silver spoon held in his right hand. He stuck the spoon back into the bowl of parsleyed potatoes still in Harlow’s hands.

“What’s your plan?” he asked.

Harlow blinked a few times, as though against the sudden stab of a loose eyelash. Drew caught the waver in her expression: a quick blink from charmed to agitated. But it was gone as quickly as it had appeared.

“My plan?” Drew asked.

Harlow placed the potatoes next to Red. She didn’t hold them out for him the way she had for Drew.

“Your plan,” Red repeated himself. “For the future.”

“Oh.” Drew looked down to his plate. Harlow was busy dishing out his portion of pot roast, spooning sauce and carrots over
his slice. Andrew couldn’t help but notice her blouse. It was looser than what she normally wore, and when she leaned toward him just so, he could see the outline of her bra. He was suddenly struck by the fact that he had no idea how old she was, and her body wasn’t giving away any secrets. From the little he could see, she’d be at home in a bikini, lounging in the sun on the front yard lawn.

“Andy?”

Drew blinked. Red was still waiting, probably looking to be impressed by his answer; something in the vicinity of getting out of Kansas, going to college, studying to be a brain surgeon or an astronaut.

“Honestly?” Drew hesitated, carefully stabbing a baby potato through its center, just waiting for it to slip out from beneath his fork tines and shoot across the room, destroying this vision of perfection. “I don’t really have a plan; at least not right now.”

Harlow cut into her pot roast, placing a tiny bite into her mouth.

“You haven’t thought about it? Isn’t that a bit...” Red searched for the right word.

“Weird?” Drew helped him out. “Yeah.” He nodded. “It’s weird.”

“So then, why no plans? Surely when you graduated from high school you had a goal in mind.”

“I didn’t,” he admitted. “When I graduated high school I was working at the Kroger on Main. I had been for years.”

“That’s a nice store,” Harlow interjected. “Wonderful floral department.”

“But what would you
like
to be?” Red pressed.

Drew lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “You don’t really dream about the things you can become if you know you can’t become them. I mean, I guess you could, but it doesn’t seem all that realistic.”

It was a strange conversation to have—one he hadn’t had with anyone up until now. Nobody had ever bothered to ask
him what he wanted to be when he grew up, at least not after his Gamma and PopPop had passed away. It seemed as though his grandparents had been the only ones to fantasize about what their grandson would grow up to achieve.

“What’s holding you back?” Red asked.

“I already had two jobs,” Drew said. “The grocery store, and then there was my mom.” The confession felt different here than it had at the Thriftway, more natural. It didn’t turn his stomach the way it had there. As strange as it was, Andrew actually
wanted
to tell the Wards about his past.