The Girl Next Door (13 page)

June

Jackson

Jackson wasn’t stupid. He’d been hearing that he was clever all his life. It was always followed by a ‘but’ or an ‘if only’. His teachers at school told his parents he was a smart boy but that he lacked judgement, or application. His professors said he was smart, but unambitious. His father said ‘smart, but more smart‐arse’. His mother said she knew he had a good brain, if only he’d use it.

He was clever enough to do just enough. Just enough to get through school. Just enough to get into Duke (although without the family name, he wouldn’t have done). Just enough to get his Bachelor’s degree.

He just wasn’t that interested in most stuff. But he got obsessed with things. When he was really young, it was John Deere tractors. He knew them by model number. At twelve, it was the Civil War. He’d been bitten by that particular bug on a school trip to Gettysburg. He’d been able to recite numbers of casualties, battle plans, parts of speeches Abraham Lincoln had made. He’d once spent an entire year restoring a 1978 Pontiac Firebird, working on it every night and at weekends. Losing interest in it the day it was finished and once he’d driven it around the block.

Right now he was obsessed again. With Emily Mikanowski. He wanted to know her. He wanted to understand her. He wanted those incredible blue eyes to look right into his, and that mouth to smile right at him.

She didn’t even seem to know he was alive.

Raoul and Che and Jesus had helped him piece together a picture of her. Especially the fabulously indiscreet Raoul. He’d always known those Spanish lessons would come in handy. He wasn’t fluent, but his Spanish was better than their English. And speaking it, just making the effort, made them much more inclined to conspire with him. That, and the great holiday tips and the occasional six‐pack…

He knew she worked at NBC. He knew she was from Oregon. Just the name told him she was Polish, somewhere down the line. He knew she was on the gardening committee they’d started. And that she was hanging out with Charlotte Murphy, the dumpy girl from the second floor. Who hung around with Madison Cavanagh – the building babe, up until the point that Emily had moved in, though not strictly his type. He knew she ran every weekday, from 7.30 until after 8 a.m., and that at the weekends she cycled, on a pretty serious bike that she didn’t keep in the bike room. He knew that because he’d checked. The super ran the bike room like a military operation. Everyone had to label their bike or face the consequences (no one knew what they were, but no one messed with Mr Gonzalez’s system – this was the guy who fixed blocked toilets, and it paid to stay on his good side). One bike per person. No exceptions. There was no bike labelled Emily Mikanowski.

He had no ins at NBC – nothing that would be helpful. I mean, he watched it, but that was it. He’d never been to Oregon. He’d rather poke toothpicks in his eyes than get involved in gardening of any kind and he was pretty wary of Violet Wallace, who bore an uncanny resemblance, physically and in demeanour, to the matron of his prep school. Charlotte Murphy looked at him like a startled rabbit if they ever met in the lobby. And Madison Cavanagh like a rabbit, too, but not the startled kind.

That left the somewhat unpalatable concept of exercise. Which was a problem, since the last time he’d run for so much as a bus, Clinton had been in the White House. He tried a couple of times, during the day, when there was no danger of running into Emily. He had the stretching down – he thought he stretched like a real pro. It was when he actually started moving that the problems started. The first day, he’d been out of breath by the corner. The second time, he’d thrown up in a trash can about 300 yards into the park. Even Good Charlotte and Blink‐182 blaring through his iPod couldn’t keep him going. By the end of two weeks, in which he’d given up smoking entirely, he could run a mile without stopping. But he couldn’t possibly speak or look cool while doing it and he suspected that Emily could easily outrun him two to one. As much as he might enjoy watching that swinging ponytail overtaking him, it clearly was not the way to go.

That left cycling.

Violet

Eve and Violet were in a café having lunch. Violet had driven them out to New Jersey in her ancient Buick, Joan Baez playing loudly on the stereo, to look at garden furniture at a large warehouse near Elizabeth. Violet had called it a reconnaissance trip, when she’d phoned about it earlier in the week. Eve had been flattered that she had been chosen as the wingman for the outing, and excited about a day out. The feelings Eve was having were a little like a first date, she knew. She had something like a schoolgirl crush on Violet. This pretty old, very English woman was her first real friend in New York. Even Eve knew that the Korean girl in the nail bar, and the tall black guy in Starbucks who handed her her Venti skim decaf every morning didn’t count. Friends don’t let friends tip them.

Eve hadn’t been out of the city this way before – the Lincoln Tunnel was just somewhere she heard about on the TV news, always backed up. She and Ed flew in and out of JFK, through Queens. The first time she’d made the journey, last year, the first people she’d seen outside the airport had been a group of kids playing cricket on a piece of grass between the highway and the clapboard homes, and she’d felt strangely comforted by that. One weekend not long after they’d arrived, they’d taken a boat called the
Beast
, from where the Circle Line cruises left. Ed had said he couldn’t bear the full three‐hour cruise, that all he’d really wanted to do was see the Statue of Liberty up close (and climb into the crown, but they’d stopped that after 9/11, so you couldn’t), and so they’d changed lines and bought tickets for a speedboat painted with teeth and flames, which did exactly that – drove like a bat out of hell out to Liberty Island, allowed just enough time for a photo op, and drove back again, all the while playing redneck rock and roll, and aiming to get the passengers as wet as possible in the wake. It had been brilliant – exhilarating and fun. They’d steered the boat over the Lincoln Tunnel, and the captain, Crazy Horse, had said that if you looked carefully at the water, you’d see the top of the tunnel, and Eve had been the only person on the boat who’d looked, and Crazy Horse had named and shamed her for it, and made everyone laugh at her.

Going through it, as opposed to sailing over it, was neither exhilarating nor fun. They sat in traffic, being directed by cops, for nearly an hour. Eve felt almost claustrophobic once inside – it was really long, and really slow. New Jersey, this part at least, was industrial and grey and relentless. Violet said the Jersey shore was beautiful, and that inland the state was lush and green. She sounded like she knew it well. Eve wanted to ask her about her life, but it was too soon. There was something closed off about Violet. She wasn’t cold – it wasn’t that – although Eve had the definite impression that she was warmer with her than with many of the residents of the building. She made Eve think of that phrase about still waters… She seemed private. Maybe that was just a period thing – a different generation. The era of the stiff upper lip.

This part of New Jersey was neither beautiful nor lush. Eve supposed it was the machinery here that kept New York working, but there was something depressing about the industrial wasteland they drove through for what seemed miles and miles. Once they got there, though, the warehouse was worth the trip. It contained a daunting variety of styles and materials, and they wandered around for a good hour without seeing everything. They both liked the teak, but disagreed about whether it should be allowed to weather to a silvery grey (Violet) or oiled to retain its new, honeyed appearance (Eve). And it was very expensive. Black wrought iron was out because it would get too hot. The new wicker, plastic, was a possibility. Impossible to damage, easy to clean, and reasonably priced. They made some notes for the committee to consider, wrote down costs, and Eve took some pictures with her phone, wishing she’d remembered to bring a proper camera. They looked for old‐fashioned deckchairs, with primary striped canvas seats, the kind you rented for the day in Bournemouth and Weymouth, but they couldn’t find them.

Now they had garden furniture fatigue, and so they’d found the coffee shop next door, and ordered panini and tea. Eve always drank tea when she was with Violet, who abhorred both coffee itself and the coffee culture of New York. She did not understand, she said, why people felt they couldn’t walk 100 yards down the street without carrying a large white paper cup full of flavoured hot milk, like a city full of big babies being pacified by dairy products. When Eve did take a Starbucks back to the apartment, she always hoped the elevator doors would not open to reveal Violet, disapproving, as she smuggled her beverage in. And, actually, tea was nice. Violet gave instructions like Meg Ryan ordered sandwiches in
When Harry Met Sally
, about the temperature of the water, about the type of teabag, the milk and the sugar. She preferred a thin porcelain cup to a thick china mug. Violet being fussy, and Eve laughing at her, had become a part of their ritual, quickly established and already comfortable.

They gossiped a little about the committee. Violet, it seemed, knew everything and everybody, and almost everything about everybody. Eve wondered how this was possible – she asked so few questions. She loved Todd and Greg (‘just as in love as any straight married couple I’ve ever known – wish to God they’d make it legal in the city, save all the poor dears running off to Massachusetts to get hitched’), and Maria Piscatella, and the scarily glamorous Rachael Schulman.

She told Eve some of the history of the building’s ownership. Arthur Alexander from 3C was the son of the man who’d originally owned the building. Eve knew who he was – an elderly, scruffy old man who wouldn’t make eye contact in the lift, and occasionally smelt a little of stale wine. ‘Consider yourself lucky he’ll actually get in there with you at all,’ Violet retorted. ‘If the doors open and he sees Todd or Greg or, worse still, Todd
and
Greg, he won’t get in the damn thing. He’s afraid being queer is catching, I think, and he’ll get out on the third floor as camp as a jamboree. Silly old goat.’ It seemed Arthur’s dad had sold the building to law firms and a bank in order for it to go co‐op, in the Sixties, and then squandered the money he got for it with failed deals in Atlantic City. The one‐bed on the third floor where Arthur lived was all there was left. ‘Don’t know why he expected his father to make a living for both of them,’ Violet snorted. ‘Nobody left me a fortune in real estate.’

Violet confessed to finding Kimberley Kramer difficult to like. ‘She never smiles. She’s got that pinched look, and no smiles. Not with her eyes, at least, and there’s nothing I like less than a smile that doesn’t get to your eyes. She squints. And moans. And that child… that child – she’s making a rod for her own back. Gives in to her at the drop of a hat. Avery is in charge and she damn well knows it. They’re storing up trouble, mark my words.’

‘Did you have, have you got…’ Eve didn’t know how to phrase her question. She hadn’t seen pictures of children in Violet’s apartment, and Violet had never referred to any, but she realized she didn’t know whether she had children. It was a big detail.

‘Children? No.’ For a second, the far‐off look, again, and Eve wondered if she’d crossed the line. Then Violet changed the subject back to Avery Kramer, and her famous tantrums. Che had reported that Avery had once kicked her mother in the foyer because she wouldn’t lift her up and let her open the mailbox. Kicking your mother in public was very high on Violet’s long list of don’ts.

‘I’d like some. Children. Ed and I are trying, actually.’ She felt shy. She supposed that this was the way in which Violet came to know everything. You wanted to tell her things. You wanted, in some strange way, approval. ‘We’ve always said we would, and now just seems like the right time. I mean, I’m not working, we’re here, just the two of us… it would be wonderful to be a family.’

Violet smiled gently at her. ‘Good for you, lovely. I hope it happens for you soon. You’ll be a really nice mum.’ She put her hand over Eve’s on the table, and the two of them sat quietly for a moment while the statement, the wonderfully affirming sentence, sat in the air alongside the smell of cedar and melted cheese.

Two weeks after Eve had seduced Ed with champagne, shrimp, and the ardent desire to have his seed implanted in her, on a Saturday morning, she came out of the bathroom naked, too hot from the shower to pull on her dressing gown. Ed had been to the baseball the night before with some of the guys from the office (the guys from the office having replaced the boys from the office seamlessly) and beer had been taken – so he was still in bed, which was not how things usually happened.

Ed was watching her. Not lasciviously, but curiously, appraisingly. ‘You look different.’

‘Different how? I haven’t changed anything.’

‘Different.’

‘That’s very non‐specific. And not especially flattering.’

‘I can’t be any more specific – you just look… different.’ He cocked his head on one side against the pillow. ‘Did you get your period yet?’

Several years into marriage, Eve would still prefer not to discuss this with Ed. Perhaps it was the Catholic school education. She’d much rather draw a veil over the whole business.

‘No.’

‘So is it late?’

‘Yes. But only a day or two.’ Eve pulled on her knickers, feeling suddenly self‐conscious. She didn’t mind him staring lustfully at her, but this evaluative eye was disconcerting.

‘You should take a test.’

‘I wondered that. But it’s too soon.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘No. I’m no expert. I haven’t taken one since that last time. You had to wait weeks.’

‘And that was years ago. I bet things have changed. You can probably find out five minutes after the shag.’

She made a face at him. ‘Well, I don’t want to be obsessive.’

‘I’m going to go and get one.’ Ed jumped out of bed. ‘Just a hunch.’

Eve laughed. ‘You’re mad.’