“Do you see her, Mommy?” Maisie asks about the dog, and, “Where did she go?”
“I don’t know, Maisie,” I claim, peering over my shoulder to offer a placatory smile, reaching a hand back to pat her knee. I don’t want to lie to her, but how could I possibly explain? “Maybe somewhere up here?” I suggest as I roll along the road and toward the home that, according to the White Pages, is registered to Melinda Grey. I pull to the side of the street and stare at the low-slung home with its evergreen bushes and trees. It’s not much to look at. It’s small and plain, and now that I’m here, I haven’t the first clue what to do. Do I park the car and walk to the door and knock? What would I say to her? Would I ask her outright if she and Nick were having an affair? Or would I make up some excuse as to why I’m here: a door-to-door sales rep maybe, or a missionary from the Church of the Latter-day Saints, here to evangelize and proclaim my faith, so that I can catch a glimpse of the woman who’s taken my husband from me? I wonder what she looks like, as my imagination enlarges the wee figure in the profile photo, the white bikini top and the sarong, until she takes on supermodel stature, a bathing beauty with long, lean legs and enormous breasts.
But I also wonder about the restraining order. Do I call her out on it? Do I point my finger at her and demand to know why she sought an Order of Protection against Nick? There’s no way in the world Nick did something to harm her.
But instead I stay in the car.
I don’t go anywhere. I sit and wait for her to come to me, certain that if I wait long enough, I’ll see her black car pull into the narrow drive, or that she’ll step out from behind the front door to walk a dog or gather the mail or sit on the front stoop with a glass of wine and read.
But waiting with a four-year-old and an infant in the back seat is near impossible. A reconnaissance mission with children tagging along. It isn’t easy to do. It’s not long before Maisie begins to whine that she can’t find the dog, that she can’t find the dog anywhere, and I tell her how we must be quiet so we don’t scare the dog away. “If we stay here, Maisie, then maybe the dog will come to us,” I suggest, “but we have to be quiet.” I press a finger to my lips, and ever-intelligent Maisie suggests that maybe food would help, that maybe if we left some treats outside the car the dog would come to us. Except of course that we don’t have dog treats, no food other than some Goldfish crackers I keep stuffed in a plastic bag at the bottom of my purse, and so I open the car window and toss a handful of crackers outside and watch as Maisie waits optimistically for the dog to come.
The dog doesn’t come.
Nor does Melinda Grey appear, though as six o’clock comes, a light clicks on inside her home, illuminating a living room.
“Stay here, Maisie,” I say, which is a completely needless thing to say, seeing as Maisie is strapped beneath her seat belt and can’t go anywhere.
“Why, Mommy?” she asks, and it’s an impulse when I lie to Maisie and tell her I thought I saw a flash of fur around the corner of the house and hightail it into the backyard of the home.
“I’m going to go see,” I say as I set my hand on the door handle and pull, and Maisie squirms in her seat, saying she wants to go, too. I look to the skies, grateful for rain clouds, and say, “Rain is coming, Maisie. It’ll be here any second. I don’t want you to get wet.” Then I slip quickly from the car and close the door before she can object. I leave the car running, the keys in the ignition so that the air conditioner cools Maisie and Felix in the back seat, and like the flash of fur I supposedly spied, I dart across the street and hightail it toward the backyard, too.
There’s a window on the side of the house, one that joins to the same room where the light turned on. She’s there, I tell myself. Melinda Grey is there. The bad woman is there.
I press myself in between the laurel hedging and toward the double-hung window on the west side of the home. The evergreen clings to my clothing, scratches my skin. A cobweb binds to my hair, and I try hard not to imagine its owner spinning webs in my hair or on my back. My feet sink into dirt. My shoes get dirty.
At the window, I rise up on tiptoes to see inside, careful not to be seen. I rise only so far that my eyes can see, the rest of me hidden beneath the window ledge. It’s a living room, complete with a TV and sofa, a piano and a reclining chair. Like the house itself, it’s a dated room. The carpeting is thick and plush, streaked with stains. A tile entryway buttresses the front door. Framed photographs line a taupe wall, but they’re far away, the images impossible to see from this distance. I can barely make out colors or shapes, though I try. Oh, how I try. I squint my eyes and press closely to the window and try to make out Melinda Grey in the photographs. I rise up higher on my toes so that now my entire face is at window height, but the closer I press, the more the aluminum screen distorts my view so that everything is marred by silver lines.
I rise higher. I press closer so that the screen abrades my face, likely leaving dust on my nose and cheeks. I cling to the outer edges of the window and pull myself in. I forget altogether to breathe.
And that’s when I see the eyes.
Blue eyes that are ever-so-slightly cross-eyed, an aqua blue that press against the screen from the other side, staring at me so that I clutch at my chest and nearly scream, falling quickly to the earth like a soldier at war, diving for the trenches. My heart beats fast, the blood circling my body so quickly that I feel woozy and sick.
And then I hear a name, my name, “Mommy,” hissed at me through the hedges, and as I part the bushes and peer to the other side, I see her, Maisie, standing before me.
“Is the doggy there, Mommy? Did you find the doggy?” she asks, her ginger hair falling into her sleepy eyes. I’m so taken aback at seeing Maisie here, out of her seat and on the other side of the street, that I forget the pair of aqua-blue eyes watching the two of us from the living room window, reaching for a phone to call the police, or a weapon, maybe, to prevent us from telling the truth about Melinda Grey and her black car chasing Nick down Harvey Road.