“Och, but it is not toys. It is cans of . . .” The old woman held up a hand, and with her index finger she pressed an imaginary nozzle. “The spraying kind of paint. Also the ends of cigarettes. They have found these things in the morning time when they did not see them the evening before, and so it seems they are being left there very late.”
“Jesse’s home by ten every night,” Markie said, feeling her voice stiffen. Mrs. Saint craned her head to stare pointedly at the egress window, and Markie felt herself arch up as something inside her snapped. She could not have made it more clear that what she wanted above all was to be left alone, yet other than those first three weeks of blissful silence, she had been intruded on almost daily by this woman! And on every occasion, although Markie had desired desperately to turn her unwanted visitor away at the fence, she had instead forced herself to be polite—friendly, even—despite the fact that on most days she could barely summon the emotional energy to carry on a conversation with her own child.
And what had she gotten from Mrs. Saint in return? Not respect or time alone, but only “Ochs!” and head shakes and criticisms and accusations. It would have been excruciating enough for her to have to deal with a neighbor who was nonjudgmental and uncritical; to have to bear someone so nosy and opinionated was torture. Why had she made herself suffer through this?
“Look,” she said, her voice low, her eyes boring a hole into the old woman, “I am done with your accusations. He’s smoking, his friends are up to no good, he’s sneaking out late at night to play with spray paint? I mean, what else—”
Mrs. Saint chuckled and shook her head as though Markie were a peevish child complaining about things she didn’t understand. “Non, non, but I am for Chessie, of course, not against. I like him very much. And the same is for Frédéric. He feels very worried. Le pauvre, with no father around—”
Markie popped out of her chair and stood ramrod straight. “He has a father!” she heard herself screech as her hands balled into tight fists. Mrs. Saint flinched at the noise and opened her mouth to speak, but Markie beat her to it. “They had a misunderstanding that time you saw his dad drive away without him! A simple misunderstanding, like people have! It wasn’t some big trauma that caused my son to go from perfectly well-behaved boy to sneaky, smoking, spray-painting hoodlum! You’ve blown it all way out of proportion!”
The old woman moved to speak again, but Markie held up a hand and went on. “I don’t know what your problem with me is. Maybe you don’t like single mothers, or maybe you don’t trust teenage boys, or maybe you’re just bored. And obviously, you didn’t get the message when I said it the first time, but I don’t want . . .” She waved her hand at Mrs. Saint and the fence. “All of this! So you need to take your . . . whatever it is . . . somewhere else. And leave me and my kid alone!”
She waited a beat for emphasis before marching to the door and yanking it open. As she stepped inside, she allowed herself a brief glance toward the fence, and to her delight, her neighbor appeared completely cowed—head down, hands clasped together. Markie fought the urge to throw her head back and cackle. She was stepping inside when she heard the woman clear her throat. She froze and waited—she couldn’t wait to hear this apology.
“Of course, a dog would bark if someone was trying to sneak out the special window.”
Markie ground her teeth, stomped inside, and slammed the door.
She woke in the night to a thud and the sound of voices. At first she thought she must have left the TV on, but when she opened her eyes, the room was dark. The clock read 11:40 p.m. Instinctively, she reached for Kyle.
She hadn’t sobbed, night after night, at the sight of his empty spot in her bed. Nor had she fallen asleep clutching his pillow, or stared miserably into her closet, gripped by regret over the lack of men’s shirts and pants and shoes. The absence of aftershave in the bathroom didn’t depress her. But she had missed him desperately when it was late at night and a lightbulb flickered and then burned out, or the fridge motor kicked on suddenly, waking her. Or when the house creaked—or, like now, thumped.
And lately she had noticed the void when she wanted to complain to someone about Jesse’s bad-temperedness. Many times she had reflexively turned sideways to roll her eyes to Kyle after a particularly rude glare or grunt from her son and had been surprised and saddened to find he wasn’t there. That was her own doing, though, as was the fact that there was no girlfriend she could call and vent to anymore, either. Her mother may or may not have risen to fill the role of confidante, but Markie hadn’t given her the chance. The thing about setting your life up so you could be completely alone was that you ended up completely alone. And while most of the time that suited Markie just fine, there were times when she wondered if it had been the right thing to do. Like when her kid was acting terrible. Or when she was blaming herself for being the reason her kid acted terrible. Or when her house was making noises in the night.
Markie expected that if Kyle missed anything about her, it was probably something equally bland and passionless, like her organizational skills or the way she folded laundry. It made her feel disappointed in both of them, and she vowed to encourage Jesse to hold out for a partner whose absence would cause the complete annihilation of his soul. He should never settle for someone who could be replaced by a good home alarm system or a dry cleaner. She listened for another minute and then, hearing nothing, pulled her hand back from the empty space, rolled over, and drifted back to sleep.
Hours later, a loud knock woke her, and now she was truly frightened. The clock read 3:30 a.m. There was another knock, and she wondered suddenly if it was Mrs. Saint. Maybe she had hurt herself somehow and needed a ride to the hospital. Or lost power. She tiptoed to the window overlooking Mrs. Saint’s house and looked out. There was a light on in her neighbor’s sitting room. Had the old woman left it on before making her way across the yard in the dark?
A louder sound rang out—they were banging now, not just knocking—and Markie realized it was coming from the front door. It couldn’t be her neighbor, then—she would never walk around the house when there was an entry much closer. Kyle wouldn’t show up without texting first, especially at this hour, and Jesse’s friends surely wouldn’t choose three thirty in the morning to make their first appearance. It couldn’t be anyone they knew. Whoever it was must be at the wrong house—a drunken neighbor, maybe.