The Good Neighbor Page 8

  move tomorrow morning. All the crap your sister has bought over the last ten years that we didn’t have room for. And I’m not run ning a hotel here.” He gave Francie the Eye of Doom, but she de flected it with practiced ease, resting her chin on her hand and staring blankly at him as if waiting for him to get to the true point. “And most of my stuff is staying here, including my very ex pensive stereo system,” he added, “and I don’t want you messing around with it. Plus, I seem to recall a couple of CDs that you ‘borrowed’ the last time you were here. You didn’t happen to bring them with you this time, did you? My Steely Dan greatest hits, for example?”

  “Oops,” said Michael. “Okay, man, chill. Of course I’ll help you move.”

  “That would be most appreciated,” said Colt.

  “The harshness in here is a little what you might call stifling,” said Michael to his sister, taking yet another slice of meat loaf. “Kind of like having a whole other dad, isn’t it?”

  “He really does go away if you ignore him,” Francie said.

  Michael snorted with laughter. “Good one, Sissie,” he said. “I’ll have to remember that.”

  ❚ ❚ ❚

  “He’s got a learning disability,” Francie reminded Colt later, as they were lying in bed. “He’s dyslexic, and he’s got ADD. It’s re ally not his fault he’s so erratic. And I don’t appreciate you being so tough on him.”

  “They’ve got a name for everything now, don’t they?” Colt said. “Nobody has to be responsible for anything anymore. Listen, the only real problem that kid has is that your father is still shelling out an allowance every month. He doesn’t even have to work. It’s pathetic. He doesn’t contribute anything to the world. He just . . . coasts.”

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  “He will contribute something someday,” said Francie. “He just needs encouragement.”

  “You know what would encourage him? Starvation.” “Colt! That’s terrible!”

  “All I mean is, he needs a job.”

  “Well, if you have any bright ideas, maybe you should share them with him. He needs some pointers, Colt. He needs guidance. It doesn’t help that you make fun of him all the time. You might not know this, but he actually looks up to you. You’d get a lot fur ther with him if you weren’t so hostile.”

  “He does not look up to me,” said Colt. “He talks to me like I’m eighty years old. He patronizes me.”

  Francie sighed. “You could show a little patience. Help him fig ure out what to do.”

  “It doesn’t matter what he does,” Colt said in exasperation. “That’s the thing he doesn’t seem to understand! He acts like he’s waiting for his dream job to be handed to him on a silver platter. All that really matters is that he earn his keep, at least for starters. Anything would be better than doing nothing. He could pump gas, or work at a fast-food place. Once he got a taste of that, he’d be motivated pretty quick to find something better. Eventually he’d find something he liked.” He paused. “Or not. It’s not like it mat ters whether he even likes what he does. Life isn’t a fucking cock tail party, after all. We’re not here to have fun all the time. It’s . . . it’s just not like that.”

  “That’s your point of view, Coltrane, not his. Not everyone sees the world like it’s a punishment to be here. Some people ac tually enjoy their lives.” She sighed. “Besides, he doesn’t even know where to start, Colt. He says every time he thinks about it his brain freezes up.”

  “Well, did he actually major in something during his . . . how many years of college? Six, was it?”

  “World Cultures.”

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  “World Cultures is a major?!”

  “Shh, Colt. He’ll hear you. These walls are thin.”

  “This is my home, for God’s sake. I can talk as loud as I want. What exactly does majoring in World Cultures qualify you for, if it’s not too insensitive of me to ask?”

  “It gives you an appreciation of the world we live in,” Francie said, “which is something you could use a little more of yourself.” Colt fell silent, clenching the sheet in his fists as he stared up at the darkened ceiling. An appreciation for the world we live in? he thought incredulously. This was one of the many problems with America today, he thought: colleges and universities were too strapped for cash to turn anyone away. They even had to invent bullshit subjects like World Cultures so they could keep the money coming in. People like Michael didn’t belong in school, he thought. They belonged in factories, or the army. Places where

  they would at least be useful.

  “For God’s sake,” he managed finally. “How are you supposed to make money appreciating the world we live in?”

  “There are other things in this world that are more important than making money, Coltrane.”

  This was unbearably familiar terrain, and rather than traverse it again Colt opted for a good night’s sleep, in preparation for what was sure to be a strenuous day of heavy lifting and further arguments. He rolled over and put a pillow over his head, mutter ing a good night.

  “Promise me you’ll try to be nice to him,” said Francie. “What?” Colt pulled the pillow off his head. “What did you say?” “I said I want you to be nice to him. It’ll make things a lot eas

  ier on me. I can’t take any tension right now, Colt. This is such a happy time. I don’t want anything to ruin it.”

  “Oh, God,” said Colt, “all right, I promise.”

  ❚ ❚ ❚

  The Good Neighbor 79

  In the deepest part of the night, Francie had a dream that jolted her awake; but by the time she lifted her head off the pillow, she’d for gotten what it was. She lay back and twirled her hair in her fingers, staring up into the blackness. Colt was snoring heavily at her side. Irritated, she reached for her foam earplugs. Just before she stuck them in, she heard Michael through the wall, muttering something in his sleep. She had tucked him into the guest bed, marveling at how he’d gone unconscious almost immediately. He’d always been that way, ever since he was a baby; she remembered the day of his first homecoming perfectly, even though she’d only been five—his puckered red face, his thin, reedy cry, like someone blowing on a blade of grass between their thumbs. Even then, she’d felt that it was up to her to take care of him. She would sneak him out of his crib at night and take him into her own bed, and their parents would find them like that, morning after morning—she curled around him, despite all their warnings and threats about suffoca tion and accidental squashings. She thinks she’s his mother, her father used to say. Lord knows how she got that idea.

  Lord knows indeed. She pressed the foam in until she felt pres sure on her eardrums. We’re moving tomorrow, she thought. Of course Colt’s not happy about it. He treats it like everything else: like it’s a nuisance. He was happy about it for about five minutes. Why is it he sees the world as though we were all laboring together on some kind of assembly line? He never used to be that way. Or if he was, I didn’t notice. That hardly seems possible. But it’s been al most ten years. People can change a great deal in that time, or, what’s more likely, they stop changing; they drop the mask they used to lure you in with, and you see their true, terrible face.

  Now what kind of talk is that? she thought, astonished at her self. Shut up and go to sleep, would you?

  Aided now by artificial silence, she did.

  ❚ ❚ ❚

  80 WILLIAM KOWALSKI

  The movers showed up the next morning only an hour late, a mi nor miracle and a good omen—two brown-skinned Indian men in a truck that bore the logo TWO SMALL BROTHERS WITH STRONG BACKS MOVING CO. and a caricature of themselves, big-headed and tiny-bodied, laboring mightily under a massive grand piano. It was an ad that inspired confidence in those who favored under dogs. The men finished loading the extra furniture and the guest bed into the truck around noon, and then left. Francie cruised once more through the apartment, which now seemed unfamil iarly bare. She found, to her mild surprise, that she could now
move through the place without banging her shins on anything. They left the city soon after in a convoy made up of themselves, the Camaro, and Michael’s ancient Volkswagen bus.

  Somewhere in New Jersey, Coltrane asked, “So, did he say how long he’s going to be visiting us?”

  “Michael? A few days,” she said, pawing through the contents of her purse. “You know, he seems kind of upset about something. Like something bad happened, but he doesn’t want to talk about it. Did you notice?”

  “My heart overflows with concern,” said Colt. “He seemsd like his normal worthless self to me.”

  “Well, a sister can tell these things.” “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Honey? I don’t mean to alarm you, but I forgot to get my pre scription refilled before we left.”

  “They have pharmacies in Pennsylvania, too,” said Colt. “How long is ‘a few days,’ anyway?”

  “A week, maybe,” said Francie. “I just . . . I just hope I have my actual prescription slip somewhere. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen it in a while.”

  “Well in that case, he can sleep in the basement,” said Colt. “Or no, let’s put him in the barn. Your prescription is probably in one of your ten zillion boxes. How many pills do you have left?”

  “One,” she said. She put her purse down and leaned back, run

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  ning her hands distractedly through her hair. “And I have to take it tonight. So I have none for tomorrow.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Colt said. “I’ll get you some more this weekend when I come back into the city. Plenty of time.”

  “I’m not supposed to miss a day. It throws me off.” “Francie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You were the one who said you didn’t want anything to ruin your good mood. So don’t worry about it. Really. Missing a few days won’t hurt you. You’ve been on that stuff so long your body won’t even notice.”

  It’s not my body, it’s my brain, Francie thought; but she only smiled weakly.

  The bare trees of New Jersey stood like sentinels along the road, bare arms flexed as if they were supporting the weight of the sky. They sped around the Delaware Water Gap once more, its surface chilled thick and oily, abandoned now by all but the hardiest birds. Anyone could see that winter would be coming early this year, that it was nearly time to hunker down and burrow in.

  “Would you tell me something?” she asked Colt quietly. “Tell you what?”

  “You know what.”

  He knew what she wanted to hear; once upon a time he had been able to read her mind, nearly always, and he would guess what she was thinking. Feeling a sudden rush of—what? warmth? pity?—Colt reached over and took her hand in his, squeezing it.

  “Yes, I love you,” he said. Francie smiled.

  7‌

  Things As They Ought To Be

  It seemed as if the Pennsylvania heavens had been burned black by the time they pulled into the driveway of the house in Pennsyl

  vania, early that afternoon. A mighty storm was creeping out of the northeast, turning the sky to the dull sheen of charcoal. Fran cie got out of the car and stood in the driveway, looking up, en tranced, as a raft of marbled clouds sailed westward, so low she could nearly touch them. It had been sunny in New York, though cold; but they’d entered the season of rogue weather, when no one could tell what was going to happen.

  She breathed deeply, and at that moment she smelled some thing for the first time in years: the coming of snow. It was a frag ile scent, easily destroyed by smog, but here there was none. Nor were there those endless city buildings bristling like forests of nee dles, threatening to rend the tender belly of the sky. And the sky itself was bigger, too. The horizon simply went on until it disap peared, like it was meant to, and the clouds flowed over the dis tant curve of the earth like water pouring downhill. She half heard the slamming of doors as Colt and the Indians disembarked and

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  opened the sliding door at the back of the truck. In the distance she could hear the clicking metallic whine of Michael’s bus as he struggled up the road; he’d managed to keep pace, despite Colt’s subtle efforts to lose him on the highway.

  This was her first time seeing the house as someone who lived in it, rather than a visitor, and she paused long enough to let that sink in, too. She already knew that she was never going back to the city. She would welsh on her deal with Colt; that was no problem. She had no intention of staying in the country only “a few days.” When they’d emerged from under the river and she’d turned to see the city behind her—finally—she’d breathed freely for the first time in years. She’d never succeeded in becoming a New Yorker, she realized, as the skyline receded. Other people could move to the city and fit in within a week, so that it was al ready in their blood. But for her, it was always like a party she was looking in on from the outside, half afraid she would never be in vited and half afraid she would. Now this place, with its squared edges and rounded windows, its three and a half stories, its incon gruous widow’s walk that was at least three hours from the ocean: this place was in her blood the moment she saw it, and they were going to have to drag her out of here in a straitjacket, or carry her out feet first, before she would go back to that apart ment.

  When she opened the front door, she found that it swung easily this time, without effort. Francie stepped into the foyer and down its length, then into the outer living room, listening to the sound of her own footsteps reverberating through distant, empty spaces. It was up to her now to fill this house with furniture, and art, and things; it might very well take years. Excitement roiled in her at the thought of it. This is it, she told herself. This is the place where things will finally be as they ought to be.

  Hand in her coat pocket, Francie fingered the plastic cylinder that had once held fifty pills, and now held one; she could feel the lone survivor rattling around against her palm, a single, tiny pink pebble.

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  And suddenly, she was reminded of something.

  When she was a little girl, she’d been in the habit of saving her lost milk teeth, carrying them around in a baby-food jar as if she couldn’t bear to part with them. It was an old and familiar ges ture, this veneration of artifacts of the self. She went through compulsive phases sometimes, saving hair, fingernail clippings, sometimes used tissues by the dozens; but only now did she re member how that had started. The problem was that in those days, she couldn’t believe that the Tooth Fairy would really come to her, not when one considered how very many children there were in the world whose teeth had also fallen out. And if she did come, Francie couldn’t bear the thought of a part of herself being taken away by a total stranger—even a part she didn’t need any more.

  Her father had finally taken her teeth himself. He said it wasn’t normal—she’d been bringing them to school, to church, even tak ing them to bed, and the other children teased her about it. Fran cie didn’t disagree with him. Even then, she was waiting for someone to tell her it was all right to let things go, that it wasn’t necessary to hang onto everything. When he finally took them, it was a relief, but it was not the last time she would have to be told how to feel.

  Which was why, in a manner of speaking, she was on the pills now: she didn’t feel anything. They made it so that she didn’t have to wonder how she had to be. She could just be.

  But they were treacherous, duplicitous little tablets. Everything was actually their fault, she thought. Her life as it was now was all because of them. They were why she hadn’t written any good poems, for one thing. Also, they were what allowed her to agree with Colt on so very many issues. Like having babies, for one. He didn’t want any children, not ever; he was always saying he didn’t have the energy for both career and family. True, he worked so much that if they were to have kids, he would never see them. Twelve-hour days were normal; fourteen, or even sixteen, not un

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  usual. Bu
t what about me? she thought. I don’t work sixteen hours a day. I don’t do anything! I could have a baby, and take care of it myself. Couldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I be allowed to try, at least? Don’t I get to have a say in that, too? Why should he be the one who gets to decide everything, just because he’s the one who makes all the money?

  It must have been a sign, her losing the prescription. Just like getting the house. It must mean that she wasn’t supposed to take them anymore. What if she were to go off the pills? She was a dif ferent person now than she was at twenty-one, anyway. She was no longer a helpless girl. She was a woman now. She could stop taking them for a while and see what happened. If it didn’t work out—if things started getting bad again—she could simply go back on them. It would be good to take a break. It would be sym bolic, even—like she was making a whole new start in life, along with moving into the new house.

  Secretly, before the men came in, Francie stole into the bath room near the kitchen. She took the plastic cylinder out of her pocket and opened the childproof cap. Then, carefully, she tipped the last pill into the toilet and flushed it away.

  What a bad girl am I, she thought, delighted with herself. “What’re you doing, Sissie?” Michael asked.

  Francie whirled around, startled to see her brother standing be hind her. Quickly she put the plastic container back in her pocket. “Nothing, Mikey,” she said. “You shouldn’t sneak up on me like

  that!”

  “Sorry. I thought you heard me,” said Michael. “What was that you just flushed away? ’Ludes?” He giggled.

  “Cold medicine,” said Francie. “I had a cold. It’s gone now.” “Oh. And you’re planning on never having another cold again?” “It . . . had side effects,” said Francie.