The Woman Next Door Read online

  He studied her face again and thought how beautiful it was despite the . . . exhaustion that had overcome her, that it was even more beautiful than when he had first met her. In the light it had a soft pink glow, a healthy glow, the glow of youth.

  That glow, when he first noticed it several months ago, had led him to think—foolishly, he supposed—of vampires, or the reverse of vampires—that one had somehow gotten inside her and was sapping her energy and showing its face through her. Had there been an apparent reason for the change that had come over her (she was working too hard, or there had been a death in her family, or she was having a reaction to medication), he would have shared the thought with her in the hope that it would be comic relief for them both. But there was no apparent reason. Only the fact that she had changed.

  He sensed movement beside him, very slight. Then he became aware that the tempo of Christine's breathing had altered—from slow and deep to slow and shallow. She was waking.

  He turned his head. "Christine," he said aloud. He saw her open her eyes, focus on him. "Darling?" he murmured.

  "The house, Tim." She was speaking lovingly, soothingly; it was the first time she had spoken that way to him in months. "Thank you," she went on, her tone the same. "Thank you," she repeated. And she reached over and touched his cheek. A second later she had withdrawn her hand and was asleep again.

  January 9, 1961

  7:30 P.M.

  The babysitter smiled reassuringly. "Don't worry," she said.

  Evelyn Winter looked briefly, doubtfully, at her husband, then back at the babysitter. It was the girl's first night, and Mrs. Winter was having second thoughts about trusting a thirteen-year-old. The previous babysitter had been a woman in her thirties; a recent traffic accident had left her bedridden. In the small town, this young girl had been the only replacement immediately available on a long-term basis.

  "Yes," Mrs. Winter said, "well, if you have any problems, just call that number we left near the phone."

  "I'll do that, Mrs. Winter."

  "She'll sleep until we get home, but if she should wake up and start crying, it's probably because she needs to be changed."

  "Yes, Mrs. Winter . . . I know."

  A pause, then: "You're sure you can handle this?"

  "Yes, I'm sure, Mrs. Winter. I've got two younger brothers at home."

  "Okay, then." She pulled the front door open. "We'll be back by twelve, and, as I said—"

  "Yes, I know"—the babysitter smiled nervously, as if to apologize for cutting in, and waved her arm toward the kitchen—"you left your number by the phone."

  Evelyn Winter frowned. "We'll be back by twelve," she repeated. "Help yourself to whatever you like in the icebox." She started out the door, her husband in tow. She stopped. "Oh," she said; she looked back accusingly. "No boys." And she left. Her husband smiled feebly—Sorry, the smile said—and followed.

  The babysitter closed the door quietly behind them. Evelyn Winter, she decided, was a real class-A bitch. And her husband was a weasel.

  This job was going to be hell.

  The babysitter glanced at the kitchen clock: 9:06. Three hours left. "Shit," she whispered. And nothing on TV: "The Lawrence Welk Show," "Gunsmoke"—a lot of crap.

  She pulled the refrigerator door open again and peered in, hoping she'd missed something. But no. A couple half-pints of plain yogurt—disgusting—a half-dozen eggs, a bottle of Heinz ketchup, a quart of low-fat milk, the hardened remains of a Mrs. Paul's coffee cake, a dozen or so jars of Gerber baby food. And, except for a pound of chicken breasts and some leaf spinach, the freezer, she knew—she had checked it twice—was empty. She threw the door shut. Damn Mrs. Winter might as well have told her to help herself to whatever might be crawling around in the damned cellar: "Help yourself to whatever goodies you find in the cellar, darling. Lots of keen things down there." The babysitter laughed shortly. It was a shrill laugh, and harsh.

  10:15

  The child had been crying for twenty minutes. It was sporadic crying, on and off, and the babysitter had hoped that each time it stopped it would stay stopped. But it hadn't, and, at last, the babysitter realized that she'd have to do something. "Jesus H. Christ!" she hissed; it was a curse she had learned just recently, and she enjoyed the sound of it.

  She went into the child's room.

  It was obvious to the babysitter, even before she switched the light on, that the child had vomited: The smell of it hung sour and heavy in the room. It was a yellow smell, she thought—a very pale yellow streaked ever so lightly with orange. Some people did their bathrooms in the same color.

  She switched the light on.

  The child was standing up in the crib, a Raggedy Ann doll clutched in her right hand. Her cloth diaper, heavy with urine, hung around her knees. She had started crying again as soon as the babysitter came into the room.

  "Jesus H. Christ!" the babysitter said from the doorway.

  The child stopped crying and stared inquisitively.

  The babysitter crossed to the crib. She lifted the child by the armpits, felt the wet diaper against her belly through her blouse; she grimaced, held the child away and shook her a little. The diaper dropped to the floor.

  11:45

  The babysitter sniffed at her fingers and wrinkled her nose. The smell of vomit still clung to them, though she had scrubbed her hands several times. She lifted the bottom of her blouse and sniffed it. She cursed: This job was worth more than a lousy dollar fifty.

  She heard the child crying again, got up from the couch, went to the child's room, pushed the door open. In the light from the living room, she could see that the child was standing up in the crib again, that the Raggedy Ann doll was on the floor in front of the crib.

  The child looked pleadingly at the babysitter, then reached over the edge of the crib for the doll. "Dolly," she said.

  The babysitter crossed the room, picked up the doll, and pushed it at the child. The child took it and lay down slowly, the doll clutched to her chest.

  The babysitter crossed to the doorway. She looked back. "Now, go the fuck to sleep!" she said. She flicked the light switch on, then off, on, then off. "To sleep!" And she left the room.

  Chapter 3

  Marilyn Courtney knew they couldn't see her. During cloudless days, the glaze of sunlight and blue sky made her windows opaque. She had checked. Often she had stood at the downstairs windows and watched as passersby nodded and pointed and smiled at her house, pleased by it, of course, unmindful of the fact that she was there, behind a window, very pleased that they were pleased. And once she had even stood naked in front of one of her windows and seen no change in the nodding and pointing and smiling. That had proved it: In daylight, she could watch and not be seen. At night, she had merely to shut off the lights.

  She wanted to hear them talking, to hear what he—the husband—was saying, anyway, because he seemed to be doing all the talking. She—the wife—looked almost glum in that wheelchair. Poor little thing. She didn't even appear to be listening to him.

  They must be on their way to somewhere close, she thought, or they would have taken their van. Probably on their way to the market a couple blocks away, or maybe he was just showing her the neighborhood, or maybe she just needed some air.

  They had stopped. He was nodding at the house. Smiling and nodding at the house. Marilyn watched, expressionless, enjoying his pleasure.

  Tim Bennet often grinned when he was nervous. He didn't know why, exactly; he supposed it was self-defensive, an attempt to deny that he was nervous.

  "Why today?" he asked. "I was hoping you could help me with some of the decorating today."

  Christine said, "I don't know if I'm up to that, Tim. Tomorrow, maybe."

  Tim continued grinning. He nodded at 24 Longview Terrace again, though Christine, in the wheelchair, her back to him, couldn't see the nod. "How do you know if anyone's even home?" He paused only briefly; it had been a stupid question, he knew. "Maybe they're busy with something; maybe they're
having lunch."

  Christine turned her head a little and looked at the house. "They're not busy," she said.

  How can you know that? Tim wanted to say, but it was obvious from her tone that, whether she knew it or not, she believed she knew it. He sighed. "It's our first day here, darling. There's a lot we've still got to do. We have all the time in the world to go around introducing ourselves to the neighbors."

  Christine turned her head as much to the left as she could. Tim saw her look at him out of the corner of her eye.

  "Just this one," she said. And she smiled. Humor me the smile said.

  Tim, sighing again, turned the wheelchair to the right and began pushing it slowly, carefully, up the snow-slick driveway. "Okay," he said. "But I hope they're not making love or something." He chuckled, embarrassed by the inanity.

  Christine said nothing.

  Marilyn Courtney stepped away from the window. For God's sake, they were coming here, to the house. To introduce themselves, no doubt. To be welcomed to the neighborhood. And they had moved in only yesterday.

  Maybe all they wanted was to borrow something: a saw, a hammer, a little coffee, perhaps, some kitchen utensils—one of those things people always find themselves short of when they've just moved into a place.

  She looked frantically around the room. She thought, It's too dark. They'll wonder why there are no lights on, what I'm doing in here with no lights on . . . and with the drapes open on such a cold day.

  She crossed the room, flicked the overhead lights on, hurried back to the window, drew the drapes closed. The sudden shutting of the drapes caused a quick flow of perspiration under her arms and on her forehead.

  She studied the room again. And smiled. They would be impressed by it. She parted the drapes a little and watched as they disappeared around the corner of the house. They were going to the side door.

  Tim Bennet hoped no one was home. Forty-five minutes or an hour of idle chitchat and instant coffee served in demitasse cups with these very private people was not the stuff that ideal mornings were made of. Very private people, he knew, because in all the months he'd worked on the house, they hadn't once come over to lend a hand or to say hello. He'd seen the husband only a couple times, either coming or going in his big dark-green Mercury Marquis. And occasionally he'd caught glimpses of what appeared to be a woman's form at some of the side windows. Only the little boy—dark-haired and gray-eyed; he seemed incapable of smiling—had never bothered to say anything to him, and that just a hurried "Hi" or "You gonna live here?" or "My mommy says I gotta get right home," without waiting for a reply.

  He looked around the edges of the side door. No doorbell. He knocked gently.

  "Louder," Christine said.

  "We don't want to disturb them, honey."

  "We aren't disturbing them." She leaned forward in the wheelchair and rapped hard on the massive oak door.

  And the house itself—Tim's thoughts continued—said, announced, that they were private people. Gray brick and black trim and spiked wrought-iron fence around the sides and front, only the long driveway open. Good fences make good neighbors, Tim thought when he first saw it. And everything about the house always so neat and tidy. These were not only private people; they were fastidious. Private and fastidious. Not the kind of people who enjoyed surprise visits by new neighbors.

  "Let's go, honey," he said. "They're obviously not home."

  "They're home." Quick, certain.

  And Tim heard the doorknob being turned. He put on his How are you? smile, though he despised it, and looked down at Christine. He saw that she was smiling in the same way. It pleased him.

  The door opened.

  She was not what Tim had imagined. He had imagined someone thin and pale and with something unmistakably authoritarian, or aristocratic, about her. This woman might have been dowdy were it not for a kind of cold sharpness around her eyes and mouth. Her dark-brown hair had just begun turning gray above her forehead and around her temples, and her skin suggested too much time indoors. "Hello," she said. (Tim detected a whisper of tightness in the voice; he thought he knew what it would sound like in thirty years—a high-pitched crone's screech, grating and insistent.) "You're my new neighbors, aren't you?" she continued. (Her tone of condescension was obvious.) "I'm afraid my husband's not home. He's at work. He's always at work." (And her breasts were huge, hard-looking. They hugged her black cotton housedress in a way that would have been appealing on any other woman; on her, they were merely big and hard-looking.)

  "Hello," Tim said. "I'm Tim Bennet."

  She offered him her hand. "Marilyn Courtney."

  He took her hand, noticed that her flesh was soft and cool; it seemed an anachronism. He nodded to his right. "And this is my wife, Christine."

  The woman withdrew her hand and offered it to Christine. Christine took it; her smile brightened. "I'm very happy to meet you, Mrs. Courtney."

  "Please call me Marilyn."

  "And call me Christine."

  Tim—as if in prayer or thanksgiving—lowered his head momentarily and closed his eyes. Somehow, he could read it in the way Christine spoke, in the way she smiled, in the few words that had passed between her and this woman, she had come back to him, had rid herself of the thing—the vampire—that had been slowly draining her these past six months.

  Chapter 4

  Sonny Norton was a tall, stocky man in his middle thirties who walked as if he were constantly hurrying somewhere—legs stiff, shoulders thrust up, arms straight and swinging in precise arcs. He had a long, angular face, reminiscent of the Easter Island stones; his eyes and the set of his jaw had that same studied blankness.

  The "pictures" he saw had never scared him too much—they had never actually hurt him—but they had made him wonder and worry about himself, because (his sister, Irene, had told him) they meant that he was not only slow but also crazy. Sonny had been able to memorize Irene's exact words, since she used them so often: "You tell people about these things you think you see, Sonny, and they're not going to like you. They're going to say, 'Look at him, he's not only stupid, he's crazy.'" Sonny hated that word—stupid. It was a mean word, meaner than the word slow, which Dr. Fenaway liked to use. Other people liked to use retard. "He's the local retard," Sonny had once overheard George Fox say, as if being slow meant he couldn't hear, either. "But he's okay. He'd cut his right arm off for ya if ya needed it. It just makes me a tad uncomfortable having him around, if you know what I mean." And Sonny thought maybe he did know what George Fox meant, but he wasn't sure.

  Sonny had heard about the new people in Cornhill. He remembered that someone had told him the names of the new people—their last name, anyway, but be couldn't remember what it was. Names meant very little to him. They were always hard to remember, and he found it difficult to understand why other people put so much importance on them. A person's face was important, and his smile, his tone of voice. You learned a lot from those things. But you learned nothing from a person's name. Sonny had once been told that those thoughts were "surprisingly profound," and, of course, be had no idea what that meant. He knew only that they were true thoughts.

  He smiled to himself. It was good to be able to think.

  He saw that he was approaching the big, dark house where Mrs. Courtney lived, and be remembered the time—a year ago?—he had been passing the house, and Mrs. Courtney's son had been on the sidewalk, and he, Sonny, had said "Hi" to the little boy, just trying to be friendly, and Mrs. Courtney had come running out of the house, and pulled her son to her and almost spat, "Get out of here, get out of here! Stay away from my soul."

  The pictures he had seen around the woman had frightened Sonny more than any of the others. Never before had he seen such pictures around anyone. And the feelings that had radiated from her had made him nauseous, as if someone's strong hands were clutching hard at his stomach, trying to squeeze out what was inside.

  Ever since that day, even passing the Courtney house made Sonny nauseous, and so he gave
it a wide berth, his eyes riveted on the house all the while.

  "Hello," he heard, aware that the word was not really a greeting but designed to make him take notice of the person saying it. He turned his head and stopped immediately. The pretty blonde woman was in a wheelchair, her legs covered by a heavy checkered blanket. She was one of the "new people" in Cornhill; Sonny knew it immediately.

  "Hi," he said.

  "Hi." The woman smiled.

  "My name's Sonny." He gestured toward Avenue A, behind him. "I live down there."

  "Hello, Sonny. My name's Christine."

  Sonny thought that he liked her voice; it was soft, nearly musical. Which is why he was puzzled, confused, that the picture, the memory, should come to him at that moment. It stemmed from the beginning of Cornhill's rebirth, two decades before, when Sonny was still a teenager. Some of Cornhill's old, decrepit houses had been gutted to make them ready for renovation, and people with hammers and saws and truckloads of brick and roofing tile were everywhere.

  Sonny had never been allowed to own a pet (they demanded a lot of attention and care, he was told); but that did not stop him from making "free pets" of the numerous stray cats and dogs that then roamed the streets of Cornhill. ("They're my friends," he explained. "I feed them, sometimes, and I pet them. They know me, and I know them.") One day, he came upon a new stray—a huge, short-haired gray tabby sleeping quietly just inside the front entrance of an abandoned house. He watched the cat a while, pleased by the feeling of serenity and comfort it gave him, by its perfect beauty. And then—because he had no fear of stray animals, had always known instinctively which were approachable and which weren't, and because of the good feelings this animal gave him—he leaned over and put his hand on the cat's back and began to stroke it.