Julie says, “Not very well. We introduced ourselves when we first moved in. He wasn’t interested in getting to know us, but I had a dream about him last night, that he was growing extra fingers, first on his hands, but when the palms and backs of his hands were covered, they started growing up his arms, until he looked like some kind of anemone.”
I take her hand. “Julie, stick to the questions.” I hope to call up the Julie that knows better from deep inside her.
“Do you have an idea of what this dream might mean, Mrs. Khoury?”
“Are you a dream interpreter, Detective?” I ask.
“Might be. Depends on what her answer is.” He sneers at me. I can tell he’s not impressed with what I think I know.
“We’re not going to find him,” she says frankly.
“What makes you say that?”
“That man had loads of secrets, more than we’ll be able to figure out, but I’m curious what else you can tell us about him,” my wife says, artfully trying to turn the tables, to test whether this exchange is as one-sided as I predicted it would be.
“With all due respect, ma’am, we’ll ask the questions.”
“Can you tell us more once his body is found?” I ask.
“Why are you so sure he’s dead?” the detective asks.
“I assume. We know he was seriously injured because of what you found in the woods. He hasn’t been located. With that much blood, how could he survive?”
“It’s incredible what the body is capable of, so we’re not calling his life lost quite yet. Tell me, Mrs. Khoury, I’m told that you said something about him watching you to one of the officers. Can you tell us more about that?”
Julie glances at me looking for approval. I pretend that she is pausing before she decides how to respond. I don’t react. The officer notices, though. I’m sure they’re convinced I’m responsible for something and I’m forcing Julie to help me cover it up.
“You can be honest with us, Mrs. Khoury. You don’t have to ask your husband’s permission.” He says the word husband in a way that implies I’m nothing of the sort, but instead a trickster or a con artist using her for who knows what.
“We were suspicious of him. He was nosy in a far-off kind of way,” she says. “Often when we were getting home, I would see his face staring at us from behind his window, and I can’t say we welcomed that.”
“How did you respond?”
“Honestly, I stared back hoping he would stop, but it rarely worked.”
“Mr. Khoury, did you also see Mr. Kinsler spying on you?”
“Not as much as Julie. She would call me over to look. He often disappeared before I made it to the window.” While this answer is true, I regret making a comment that would call Julie into question.
“And can you think of anything you were doing that might have made Mr. Kinsler suspicious of you? Like he had to keep an eye on you for his own safety?”
I fear she might tell them about the way we dug around the yard looking for bodies. I worry she’ll reveal all the objects I pulled inside out. I’m concerned she might say that the man knew something about the house. He might have had answers about why it was so strange and full of folds. He might have been waiting to watch us get driven out. I jump in before Julie can answer. “I don’t think so, Detective. We’re pretty boring people. Tried to be friendly. He wasn’t having it.”
“But you didn’t go over there and ask him to leave your wife alone?”
I stay calm. I try to ignore the insult to my masculinity. “Now that you ask, yes. I did go knock on his door. He didn’t answer.”
“And when did you say you last saw him?”
“Friday,” Julie answers.
They look to each other to see if either has anything else to ask. “Okay, that’s it for now. If you think of any additional information, please contact us right away.” The detectives rise and head to the entryway. As we shut the door behind them, Julie tells me her stomach is cramping up. I lean her into me. I kiss her cheek. I tell her we’re alone now as if it were a comfort.
54
I ARRIVE AT the doctor’s and strip down and slip into a gown the consistency of a cheap bedsheet washed too many times and I crinkle up onto the paper-covered examination table. After a night of no sleep, crimped with sharp intervals of pain, I woke early to see if the office had an opening.
The doctor tells me to lie back and begins pressing on my abdomen and I recoil, and she says, “That hurts?” I say it does, trying not to be a wimp about it. “What about here?” She presses on the other side, but again, the pain flips itself through me, and my legs curl to block her. “Okay, sorry for any discomfort. I’ll let you relax for a second. Why don’t you sit up, and I’ll do the rest of the exam?” She looks in my eyes, ears, nose, and down my throat, and she tests my reflexes and my muscle strength. “Let’s try the pelvic exam again,” she says, trying to sound as confident as she can, and I agree because I don’t know what else to do. “Your reaction leads me to believe there could be some sort of infection, so I’ll go slowly and we’ll try to figure out what the trouble is, okay, Julie? Was anything bothering you before you phoned?” She has an ease and natural beauty that makes me wonder why anyone wears makeup or colors her hair, why everyone doesn’t covet a motherly belly showcased in high-waisted pants.
“Last night, I started to have some cramping, but I assumed it was because I’ve been under a lot of stress.”
“Okay.” She angles in the speculum and she is gentle and the pain is less severe and she shines a light inside and says, “Okay, well, it does appear that your cervix is bruised. Have you had any trauma in that region recently? Vigorous activity?” She raises her eyebrows, matter-of-fact.
I tell her no. I flash to falling on the stairs and then in the cave, but it doesn’t seem as if the impact could have rippled so deep.
“I think we’ll perform an ultrasound then, so we can figure out what’s causing this. Stay here, and we’ll get everything set up.”
I feel as if I should be worried, as if I should get my priorities straight and fear for my life, but I feel numb, sure now that I know where this internal bruise has come from, like all the others: it’s that house that’s been sinking into me, farther and farther. I want to suggest this, but I want her to give me another answer.
A nurse arrives and keeps a hand clamped on the back of my gown as she accompanies me to the next room.
As I lie on the table, they rub the jelly onto my pelvis and examine the screen and zoom in and point to different areas. I look away and notice how delicate the doctor’s ankles are in her kitten-heel pumps. I look up when she tells me they see a cyst that’s burst. The blood broken free of its vessels has spread and they tell me it might have happened this morning, and that the tenderness will clear up in a couple of days and they give me a prescription for pain medication to take sparingly as needed.
The doctor says they’ll be doing some tests to determine the cause of the cyst and the severity. “We can do a full blood workup for you in the next few days. Is there someone I can call to take you home?”
I think carefully and give them Connie’s number.
55
“MY GOD,” I say when I find Julie at home, in bed. “Why didn’t you call me?”