Thy Neighbor (28 page)

“Me, too,” I said thickly, my voice swelling unexpectedly with tears.

“Really?”

I put my arm around her shoulders and squeezed.

“Yeah, really. Building this with you has meant a lot to me. I didn't know it until just now, but it has. A lot. You have no idea.”

She smiled up at me, pleased, but not quite understanding.

I slid my arm off and away from her self-consciously and replaced it at my side.

“When you get older,” I explained, “you don't do things like this anymore. You forget or you don't have time or nobody brings it out in you, and it just goes away. And you miss it. Only you don't know that you've been missing it until you have it again. Like now. Do you know what I mean?”

She nodded.

“Sort of,” she said.

“It's like what you said,” I went on. “A feeling that everything's okay and that all the hard things about the real world don't exist. Nothing exists but this. And it's how you want it to be.”

She nodded again, more emphatically.

We sat silently for several minutes then, looking at the sky and the dark houses and the empty street, and listening to the soft breathing of the trees. I was on the verge of telling her about the shape of my sleeping giant in the growth of leaves above the Blooms' house, but then I wondered if it would seem too strange to her. I thought better of it and didn't. I plucked a fat spear of grass and wound it around my finger and began tying it in knots. It broke and I threw it aside.

Abruptly, there was the sound of her voice.

“Do you . . . love . . . me?” she said.

She said it so haltingly that, at first, I thought I had misheard.

I waited, watching her face, half pleading for an escape.

Had she said it? Had she meant it? That way?

Please don't have, I thought. Not that. Not now. Not from her. Not that same question the other way around. But she
had
said it, and meant it. She was waiting for an answer.

But what answer?

Don't do this to me, kid.

It was there, as always, so quickly—my father's longed-for voice saying the thing he had said to me once so long ago in response to this same question?

Yes, it was his voice, not mine. And memory's.

Dad?

Silence.

Dad?

Do you love me?

Silence.

Then:

As your mother says, love is not had as a gift . . .

No, no, me. Not her. Please. Not that. Me. Just answer me.

More silence.

Long, grueling silence.

Then, sighing, at last:

Don't do this to me, kid.

Yes, he said it just like that.

I do remember.

And now I know why.

I have known why before, but now I am on the other side of it, and I know it more completely, more painfully, in a way that explains the anger he felt.

Because I feel it, too.

Because the real answer, my answer, is this:

I do not love you, kid. I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry, but I do not love you.

You are too plain. Not mine. Just . . . just not enough, and I'm sorry.

But it is not my fault.

And it is not your fault, either.

And
goddamn it
why am I in this position?

Why?

Because it is the other side and it hurts, too.

You see?

Not to love hurts, too.

To be on the other side of love,

not loving,

hurts, too.

Now you know.

And what's worse,

now you have to lie about it.

Or don't.

Lie to a child about love,

or don't lie and rip her

as you yourself were torn

by the wrong words.

Don't do this to me, kid.

I straightened stiffly and coughed.

“Miriam, listen,” I said, too loudly.

She started at the resolve in my voice.

“This is very important,” I said, more softly, “and I want you to hear this, really hear this, okay?”

She made no sign that she had heard, except the sign of not making a sign.

She was hurt already.

“Okay,” she murmured, too late and too timidly to sound sure.

I touched her arm.

“I mean it.”

“Okay,” she said, pulling away. “I said okay.”

I pulled up more grass and began to twine it nervously around my fingers.

“Love is a strange and complicated thing,” I said, wincing at the tiredness of that phrase. I was going to flub this and I knew it.

“Just to say the word ‘love' isn't enough,” I added firmly, wincing again.

I checked her face. It was still closed and wounded.

“A lot of people will do that, and they won't mean it, and it will hurt you in the end . . . It will . . . because, you see, love is not just something you say. It's something you do. Love is easy to say, and very hard to do. Do you see?”

Again she made no sign of recognition.

“So people say it a lot, and then they don't do it, and that's worse than not saying it at all.”

I paused clumsily.

This wasn't going to work. I could see that. The damage had been done, the desired answer not supplied. Nothing else would penetrate. Still, I couldn't stop myself from trying. The guilt was too strong.

“I know none of this makes much sense now, but it will, which is why I want you to remember it.”

“I'll remember it,” she said flatly, standing fastidiously and brushing off her shorts with hard smacking motions on her rear. “I'll always remember it.”

She barreled past me and sprang across the yard to the mock village. When she'd reached it, she turned to shoot a last punishing look in my direction—she had Dorris's flair down pat—then she turned back and with all the willowy force her small body could command she kicked down the gazebo and stomped on it. It made a light whiffing sound like a house of cards collapsing, and then a mild series of cracks as she trampled it. Unsatisfied, she dropped to her knees and tore out the tea party with her hands, flinging dirt and leaves and litter all around her like a panicked bird wrecking a nest. She stood again to destroy the cemetery and the streets, but I caught her in time, grasping her roughly by the shoulders.

“Stop,” I shouted, shaking her. “Don't do this, Miriam. Please.”

“Let go of me,” she screamed, her voice slicing through the night air.

It was a terrifying sound. I dropped my hands at once and stepped back.

She lowered her voice, but only slightly, to a half-stifled sob.

“You're a liar and I hate you.”

She turned and flew out of the yard, her arms and legs flailing furiously, her body thrashing from side to side like a kite whirled in an angry wind.

I followed her as far as the end of my drive to be sure she wasn't going anywhere but home.

She ran down the property line her accustomed way and across the street to her house. She had left a front window ajar on the ground floor, her way out, presumably. She lifted it higher, pulled herself through to the waist, toppled inside, and shut the pane behind her.

I turned and picked my way back to the house, shaking and wiping the cold moisture from my face.

As predicted, I failed.

I was no better than he was—Dad, the man who was too honest—who couldn't say the words outright—
I love you
—and so had chosen to moan aloud at his condition instead, and my forcing of it.

Don't do this to me, kid
.

But what I had said to Miriam was worse.

Some gasbag parry of the question posing as wisdom.

Love is a strange and complicated thing?

What was that?

I'd have walked out, too, in Miriam's place.

But Miriam isn't my child. Surely that counts?

No. It doesn't matter. In the end it doesn't matter. You should have just lied and told her what she wanted to hear. You should have said I love you and worked on the feeling afterward. Maybe it would have come with effort in time.

Now all you have is the mistake.

24

When I came into the house, Monica was there waiting for me. She was sitting at my desk looking at the obituary for Dr. Cunningham with a slack expression on her face.

“Hey,” I said.

She looked up, momentarily startled.

“Oh, hey.”

She tapped the paper with the back of her hand.

“Did you know him?”

“A little,” I said.

“Your doctor?”

“No. A friend's.”

“Yeah?” she said. “Which friend is that?”

“No one you know.”

She threw the paper on the desk, seeming to accept the dodge, and turned toward me.

“So what's the emergency?”

Her tone was hard and superior, as if she were talking to a hysterical child prone to blowing life's little mishaps all out of proportion. I felt a pang of embarrassment. Embarrassment that I had been so in need, so without emotional resources as to beg someone I hardly knew—via someone else's voice mail no less—to come and rescue me in my own home in the middle of the night.

“It's passed,” I said curtly.

She raised her brows skeptically.

“That was quick.”

“Emergencies usually are.”

This came out reproachfully instead of coolly, the way I had meant it to.

“Yeah, well, that's one of the downsides of being untraceable,” she said. “Can't rush to help a fuck buddy in need.”

“Since when do you say fuck buddy?” I asked.

She shrugged.

“Since I got a fuck buddy, I guess.”

I did not like this mood, whatever it was. Not now especially. She could be of no help to me like this.

“Glad to know I've made a lasting contribution,” I said, trying to match her nonchalance and failing.

“I wouldn't say lasting,” she scoffed. “Isn't that the beauty of fuck buddies? They come and they go?”

I smirked.

“Usually.”

She nodded, pursing her lips dismissively.

“Why are you so hostile?” I said.

“I'm not hostile.” She smiled fakely. “I'm just not making an effort to be nice.”

“Was it so hard before?”

She thought about this for a second.

“Yes, actually. Often it was.”

“So why bother? Why did you show up at all?”

She looked away.

“Look,” I said. “I don't judge you about Damian. I just didn't know how else to get in touch with you. I'm sorry if it put you in a bad spot.”

“It didn't,” she said.

“So what is it then? Are you angry that I called you to ask for help? I know it's been a while and maybe you figure I have no right, which is true, I guess, but I've been . . .”

I couldn't think of how to describe it.

She straightened attentively.

“You've been what?”

“I've been through a hell of a lot.”

“Really?”

She still had that condescending barb in her voice.

“Yeah, really,” I snapped.

She took this in.

“Where were you tonight?” she asked. “Your car was here. I thought I heard a voice outside.”

“I was next door,” I said without thinking.

“At four in the morning?”

“Looks that way.”

“What the hell for?”

“I had the keys,” I said, as if this made sense. I slumped down on the arm of the couch. “I don't know. I really don't know. Just working something out with my dad, I think.”

“Through Gruber?”

“Sort of. And through stalking around at night.”

She didn't ask me to explain.

“It's an incredible feeling,” I said. “Being out in the world when everyone else is asleep. Walking around in people's private spaces. It makes you feel powerful and privileged, like you're looking at what the world would be like if you could peel back the cover and see underneath.”

She nodded.

“Yeah, I know what you mean. Being able to access that world in different ways is really the only thing that makes life livable. That's sort of what shoplifting is like for me. That, and living out of a coffee can. The whole soft-criminal life. It keeps it interesting and off center.”

She shuddered and turned the corners of her mouth down.

“If I had to live in the waking, working world all the time, doing what I'm supposed to do—I mean, Jesus, there's no place more depressing than a mall or a Wal-Mart—but when you're stealing or casing or you're there in the middle of the night, everything about it changes.”

“Exactly,” I said. “So then you know what I mean. All that shiny, plastic coating on everything and everyone melts away. And—I don't know—it feels more honest somehow.” I paused, thinking about the cameras. “But it isn't, really.”

“No,” she agreed. “It isn't. But it's how we survive.”

I searched her face for disapproval but found none.

“I can't,” I said, letting myself fall from the arm into the body of the couch. “I just can't do this anymore.”

“Do what?”

“I don't know. Play this game. Be artificial. Be strategic. Be angry. All of it. I'm tired. I'm so fucking tired and I have no explanations for anything. Just more parties to the suffering.”

She came and sat beside me on the couch. She put her arm around me and kissed my temple.

“All these people caught up in an invisible person's pain,” I said. “Me most of all, and I don't understand it. I don't know why we're all still talking about it and trading pieces of something that happened so long ago. I mean, how does one person cause that much wreckage?”

“You mean Gruber?”

“No—well, yes, actually. Now that I think of it, I mean everyone on this block. It's the same thing over and over again in every house. But I was talking about the doctor and Mrs. Bloom, and, fuck, even my father.”

She sighed heavily.

“I think the causes and the effects are hard to separate. That's all. Everybody is somebody's cause and someone else's effect. Everybody's doing harm and being harmed in big ways and small ways. That's life. Family life. Relationships. Love. Even doctors and priests and accountants get caught up in the tussle. It sounds stupid when people say that we're all connected. But it's true. How could it not be? We're all stuck here together maneuvering in the same small space. Contact is inevitable.”

“And that's why you live so cut off from the world?” I said.

She thought about this, rolling her lower lip gently between her thumb and index finger.

“Mostly, sure. The less contact I have with other people, the safer, the cleaner it is for all of us.”

She smiled, poking me in the chest. “And you're not exactly a hub yourself, you know. If you didn't need to get laid so often, you'd never leave the house.”

“I go to the gym almost every day.”

“Only to get laid.”

I laughed.

“No, to stay in shape.”

She laughed, too, nodding, sewing up the conclusion.

“Right. So that you can get laid.”

“Well, okay, maybe partly, but it's mostly emotional. It's mostly because—you're right—otherwise I wouldn't leave the house enough, and because it's the only way I know, other than booze and sex, to manage the pain.”

She pulled a mock serious face.

“What pain?”

“Don't be an ass. You know what pain.”

“Yes, right, I know. How could I forget? How could anyone forget? But I'm curious to hear you say it. Describe it.”

“No.”

“No, I'm serious. I want to know what it feels like. What it really feels like.”

I shot her a rebuking look, then looked away.

“If you don't know, I can't tell you.”

“Oh, come on. Enlighten me. Here's your chance. Why not?”

“Because it doesn't work that way. I can say, it's pain, it's terror, it's desolation. But what does that mean? Describing it doesn't get you any closer to the experience. It's like trying to describe what it feels like to be high. The closest you can come is . . .”

I didn't want to say this part.

“Oh, forget it,” I said, waving my hand dismissively. “You don't want to know anyway.”

She leaned forward to get the rest, prompting.

“The closest you can come is?”

Is hurting other people as much and as often as you can, I thought but didn't say. Just so that you can have some company. You know, break hearts occasionally, if you can, even if they're soppy stupid half hearts and easy marks, and even if the very notion of breaking hearts is just too embarrassingly Harlequin to admit.

So, keep that crap to yourself.

And leave the hearts out of it.

So what, then, if not that?

More often insult, appall, or if all else fails, offend, and then you'll have something in common with the other crawlers that you seek out every weekend at the Swan. What else can be done? Reducing them to your condition or thereabouts is all you have to comfort you because on some days—don't all the buzzards know—being broken solo is worse than sitting on a bar stool mean drunk and mindfucking the unsuspecting stranger.

“The closest you can come,” I said at last, “is having it done to you.”

She took this in, unable to suppress a smirk.

“So you'd have to find my parents and kill them,” she said archly, “and then I'd know.”

Reluctantly, I smirked, too.

“Or, ideally, have them kill each other. Yeah, then you might know.”

“Right. I see,” she said. “Well, besides that, what?”

“I don't know,” I said, my voice going mean. “What have you got in your grab bag of pain? . . . What's the worst thing that's ever happened to you?”

That took the tease out of her voice quick enough.

She sat up.

“Unh-unh. Nope,” she said, shaking her head vigorously. “I'm not going to share something painful on a dare just so that you can shoot it down as lightweight.”

“Maybe I won't. Is it lightweight?”

“And what if it wasn't?” she said, suddenly angry. “Wouldn't you feel like the biggest self-pitying prick in the world if I could one-up your pain? Wouldn't you feel pretty foolish if you found out . . . I don't know . . . What would even count as worse to you? . . . Ah, it doesn't matter anyway. I don't think you would feel foolish. I think you just wouldn't know who the hell you are anymore. I mean, who are you if you're not the wounded man under the thundercloud?”

“No one,” I said, still partly trying for a joke. “Not a soul.”

She wasn't buying.

“Right. So I guess you see why a person might not be so eager to share herself with you. You make it pretty impossible on both ends.”

“How's that?”

“Me and you. Either I'd feel dismissed right at the moment I'm most vulnerable, or you'd disappear.”

“God,” I groaned. “I really am my fucking mother.”

She didn't reply.

I wish I could hurt you, I thought, and almost laughed at how cheap that sounded, even just in my head. Still, there it was.

“I don't really have the power to hurt you, though, do I?” I said instead. “I mean, honestly. You don't respect me enough.”

This fell between us like something wet and foul-smelling spilled on hard ground. We both recoiled.

“It's not that,” she said, trying to deflect.

“What, then?” I insisted.

There was no lightening this now.

“I don't have to explain that. There is no explaining it.”

“Can you try? I'd really like to understand.”

“This again.” She groaned dismissively. “Why?”

“Because I care what you think. A lot. Sorry. Believe me, I wish it wasn't true, but it is, and I know you don't feel the same way, and I know it's irritating, but I just want to know why.”

“It's not a question of why. You know that.”

“No, it is. It is. People say it's not because they can't be brutally honest, or they don't want to take responsibility for what they really think and feel. But there is always a reason—at least one clear, identifiable reason.”

“But even if there were, what difference would it make?”

“It might help me.”

“How could it possibly help you?”

“To use the rejection for something productive, I guess.”

“Productive? That's got to be one of the most harebrained and self-indulgent things I've ever heard you say. Rejection isn't productive, Nick.”

“You're wrong. My whole life has run on that principle. Rejection can be made into fuel. You can live on it, and that's better than letting it kill you.”

“But it is killing you, you idiot, and you know it. And besides, you can live perfectly well—much better—on support and acceptance and good will.” She laughed sarcastically. “Everybody's doing it.”

“Yeah, everybody's doing it. Right. Look around. That's my point exactly. Nobody's fucking doing it. Nobody that I've seen. And I'm no different. I never had acceptance. What I got . . . what I got a lot of was rejection. Over and over again. So I learned to use it. And now acceptance and support wouldn't even work if I had them. I wouldn't know what to do with them.”

“Oh, for God's sake . . . so what? What do you want from me?”

“The details.”

She burst out.

“Please. Really, this is just—”

“Come on. It can't be that hard.”

She was back to rage instantly.

“Hard? What the fuck do you know about hard, you spoiled little brat? God. This is so basic, and you don't have a clue . . . You really don't, do you? . . . Well, here's the truth that would smack you in your arrogant head if you gave it half a chance. It's the luxury of the loved and whole and privileged person to seek out reasons for pain and make them into food. Real, total devastation isn't like that. You don't think about it. You don't examine it. You don't convert it. And you don't get off on it. You get away from it any way you can, if you can, and you stay away. You survive and you thank God that you have, and you look for any hint of happiness or kindness wherever you can find it, and you hold on to it for dear life.”