The Invaders (21 page)

“You're totally out of touch with what's going on here, aren't you?”

He was challenging me. “I see the fence, man,” I said. I stared out toward the fence and the seawall and tried to determine how far I'd have to go to get to the fence. If I could even propel myself over it. I realized that it was too far and that I couldn't. Before it would have been easy.

Tuck looked exasperated, waiting for me to say something more.

“I'm hearing what you're saying and it sounds like you're pretty pissed off. I understand. I just don't know who you're talking about,” I said.

He took another sip of beer.

“Lori Hughes, man. She's bringing us all down. This neighborhood is a sinking ship.”

I tried to stay out of neighborhood politics because Cheryl and my dad were always bitching about someone building a too-big garage, or unkempt flower pots, or dog shit, or whatever.

“It starts with the sand and it ends up with putting a choke hold on this whole place. She canceled the sailing race.”

I shook my head, confused. He was nearly slurring and I wanted him to stay on topic. “One thing at a time. What'd she do to the sand?”

He cracked open a new beer and said, “Imported it. I saw the trucks myself. Dropping it down, covering up that beautiful Connecticut sand. Who does she think she is?”

I stared at the beach, her house, and said, “I don't know. Someone with too much money.” I took another beer. “What do you mean she canceled the race? That's total bullshit. She doesn't have the power.”

He was rocking the Whaler back and forth with all his anger and aggression. “Does she own the water that touches her beach, too? Does she own the waves that crash onto her expensive sand?” he yelled.

“I don't think so,” I said.

“When does it stop?” He moaned. “How much does she have to own to make herself happy?”

“Someone should do something,” I said.

And then he said, “Don't you know it.”

I looked at him and knew he was going to be the one to do it. Good old stoner-dad Tuck had finally gotten riled up about something.

We stared at the houses and floated.

I DROVE AROUND IN CIRCLES
for hours, up and down backcountry roads, through small immaculate towns with quaint Connecticut-town names. Past old-town creameries serving cups and cones to small children and apple orchards with rows of trees brimming with new fruit. I thought about early autumn orchard fairs and hayrides and apple cider, warm and steaming. I thought about hiding in far-flung rows of apple trees with boyfriends as a teenager, rolling around on rotting fruit, not caring at all. It was hard not to see all my life choices on a loop.

Finally I ended up in front of my mother's house. I drove up and down the street at first, and then parked in front. Her driveway was empty and there was a For Sale sign in the front yard. The windows were no longer covered in tinfoil. I could see inside if I wanted to. I looked through the windows and saw furniture and rugs and rooms filled with things I remembered. I tried the door and it was locked. The broken window had been fixed. I wasn't going to try to smash it again. My hand had finally healed. I was starting to feel frantic being so close
to the remnants of my life but unable to touch them. I walked around the small garage and tugged at the heavy rolling door.

It was musty inside and full of broken pieces of brooms and vacuum cleaners and other household things. Things my mother should have thrown away. I stood in the garage, inhaled the spores of dust and mold. The concrete floor was covered in layers of faded oil spots, some probably mine, and I thought about my mother's old Datsun that I used to drive around, looking for some excitement in this small town. I remembered there was a spare key to the house here somewhere, I'd hidden one for the times I'd try to sneak back in after my mother had kicked me out, always looking for a way back in.

I looked through the cobweb-covered paint cans on the shelves, checking under each one. I knew none of them had been moved since I left, so there was a chance. There was always a chance. I found the key hidden under a box of nails and screws. It had been untouched for so long, the outline of the key was imprinted on the wooden shelf. My hand shook as I walked over to the metal-sided door and pushed the key into the lock. She wouldn't be in there. What was I afraid of? The door opened and the dusty air moved as I moved through it and clouded around me. I stood in the kitchen and didn't know what to do except stare at the ceramic orange jars that had held cookies and treats for us as kids. I opened them and found them empty and had to sit down. Everything was just as I remembered it, but vacant. A shell of a memory.

If she had died, I wanted to know where it had happened. Was it in here or was she doing something mundane like shopping at the supermarket? There had been no mention of her in the papers; I'd checked. Maybe she wasn't dead. Maybe she just got up and walked out of her life one day. I left the kitchen and walked through the living room and stopped. The furniture was the same, musty nubby chairs and a faded leather couch. Something new and strange inhabited the house, though. Dozens of Virgin Mary statues crowded the mantel. Some
were large like you would find in someone's yard, paint chipping off the delicate noses, and some were small and plastic. When we were young, my mother's religious ferocity was just beginning. She used to pray the rosary defensively, her wrists flicking back and forth as she counted the beads, as if she was at war with the cosmos instead of in charge of her own fate. Seeing all these Marys together made me realize how intense it had become. It was as if she had filled her life by looking for redemption but never thought to ask us for forgiveness. I took one of the smaller statues and put it in my purse.

I knew where the dark corridor led—our room. I was not ready to venture there yet, so I sat on the leather sofa, touching the worn-down parts, trying to channel memories of where I came from.

The light was fading in the house. How long would I wait for her to appear? I made my way down the corridor, past the bathroom, past the stairs to the room I had shared with my sisters. I could still smell a hint of the winter wood-fire smoke. I could almost feel the heat of it. I went to open the window for air. The window was jammed shut and I struggled with it, desperate for air. When it did finally come loose, I could see the flurry of dust spiral through the bright light. I stepped away from the window and waited to hear the familiar crackle of gravel, but it never came. I gulped in the outside air.

I don't know if I expected it to have stayed the same as I had left it, but it wasn't the same at all. There were more Marys in this room, crowding every flat surface. There was a sewing machine on the table, dusty and old. Rolls of fabric sat in a pile next to the old wood-burning stove. There was no sign of me or my sisters. The room was filled hip-high with Home Shopping Network boxes, unopened packages from QVC, receipts from religious shopping channels. Is this where all my checks had gone? I couldn't even bring myself to open the boxes. Each unopened package was an insult, an endless array of still-boxed pots and pans and Jazzercise equipment labeled “As Seen on TV.” She had
wasted all the money I was sending her. I had thought maybe she had no money to eat or pay for gas, and here she was spending it on garbage. She did not have one reminder of me. Just all this
stuff.

I walked into my mother's room, angry at her erasure of me. Angry at Jeffrey's desire to start erasing me. Her room was spotless. A quilt that I remembered my grandmother making covered her bed. I touched it and the wool was rough. There was not a single picture of any of us on her walls or on her nightstand. We were ghosts, all of us. I opened her drawers, hoping to find something, anything that would feel intimate. I saw a pile of my letters. The early ones where I tried to make amends, asked her if we could see each other. She never responded. Some weren't even opened. I didn't want to see what I had written over the years. The ways I tried to explain how I felt about her. I wondered if she ever even read the opened ones or if she just plucked out the checks. I crawled under the quilt and waited for the sun to drop. I sniffed the pillowcases, but the smell was unfamiliar to me. There was no sign of her anywhere and she was never coming back. I couldn't live here. And I didn't even know her.

•  •  •

The next morning I drove home and I knew time was running out. Everything was exactly the same: lawns, manicured flower beds, American flags waving. I was searching for some kind of change that could right my trajectory. I couldn't find my gloves or my small trowel. I got down on my hands and knees in the yard and started looking under the bushes as the waves crashed nearby. People had been stealing things from my home. Steven, most likely.

The September Sadness golf tournament would mark the end of summer and it would get cold again; the summer people would leave and the houses around ours would be empty. I wouldn't be living here anymore, either.

It all seemed like too much: the desolation of winter, the fence barricading everyone in, Lori being so gleeful about it. I got up and tried to
pull at the fence. It was a plasticky metal. I heard someone coming up behind me and I hoped with all hope that it wasn't Jeffrey.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“What are you doing?” Steven asked.

I turned around and he had his hands in his pockets.

He stood against the fence, next to me, and it was the first time I had seen him so up close since the nature trail.

“I don't know.”

We stood leaning against the fence, side-by-side. He reached out his hand and put it over mine. I looked around at the other yards and they were empty. I didn't move my hand.

“Why me?” I asked.

“I don't know,” he admitted. I had hoped for more intent.

He interlaced his fingers with mine and I let him. He moved closer to me and I let him.

“Can you act surprised?” he said.

“What?”

“Look at me with surprise.”

“But I'm not,” I said.

He turned his face toward me and I stared at the pink and shiny scars and drew my finger along his cheek, along the biggest scar, and slid my fingers into his mouth to feel if his teeth were fixed or still jagged. He parted his lips and let me run my fingers over the smooth enamel of his front teeth; he smiled as I did it, showing them all off to me. His eyes were pools of black and brown and I could feel the soft hair on the farthest part of his cheek.

We stood, leaning up against each other, breathing on each other, and he finally kissed me. His lips were chapped and full. He reached out and touched me next, felt the skin of my arm, then the skin of my stomach just below my shirt. I felt his breath against my shoulder.

“Whoa,” Tuck said. Holding up his hands. I moved away from
Steven and he pulled himself together and took off across the lawns. Tuck nodded knowingly.

“Don't,” I said.

Tuck shrugged his shoulders and disappeared into the walkway between the houses and I stood against the fence, considered running after him and explaining myself, but why? Instead, I turned toward the water and stared at the faraway summer storm clustering over Long Island. I felt the humidity weighing everything down.

IT WAS NICE HAVING
a break from my father, I had to admit, but all I wanted to know now was when he was coming back. He hadn't answered his cell in days. I was starting to think something had happened to him and I didn't know why I wasn't doing more about it.

I ducked behind the parking lot and then the bushes that ran along the snack bar and stood there for a while. Kids with swimmies looped around their arms were walking with their babysitters and the babysitters were mediocre-looking. I was itching to see Jill. I thought a dip would feel nice because I hadn't showered in days and a crust of salt had formed on me.

I didn't feel like talking to anyone at the pool, any of the young girls who looked at me above their stupid books that had young girls in sunglasses on the covers. They wore small white bikinis and were toned and blond and thought they looked really hot. All the men around them, old enough to be their fathers, thought so, too. They golfed with the fathers of these girls and jerked off about them in the clubhouse bathroom. I
knew, because I could hear them, alone in the stalls. These girls crossed and uncrossed their legs, layered Hawaiian Tropic oil on themselves to glisten brighter and attract attention to their boobs and that thin ridge in between their boobs that I liked a lot. These girls didn't look at me anymore. I was invisible to them now, with my limb hanging limp at my side, muscles eating themselves minute by minute. My other arm was already dwarfing my dead arm in size and it made me look lopsided. I hated them then—those girls pretending to read and really just hoping to be another image in the family friend's spank bank.

I took a towel from the waiter and felt thirsty. I couldn't carry both a towel and a drink. I couldn't anymore. I had to carry one or the other. Or try to lasso it around my neck. Or tuck the towel under my arm and squeeze it tight while I tried to maneuver the spout of the water tank to spill water into the plastic cup and nowhere else. It all seemed impossible. I thought,
This is how it's always going to be.
I would only ever do one thing at a time.

I tried to lay the towel down on the chaise with the wind blowing; I almost had to ask for help. I pulled off my shirt and felt people watching me, as if they wanted to see how I would do it. I kicked off my shoes and leaned back on the chaise. The sun was nice and for once I felt safe. I closed my eyes and listened to the children scream and play.

I saw a shadow cross over me and I opened an eye. It was Jill, folding a towel down over the chaise next to me. She was already stripped down to her bathing suit. I felt my penis move. I was getting aroused and became very self-conscious. A girl once told me that the best way to get rid of a hard-on, or to make one last longer, was to think about ham sandwiches. Build the layers—the pieces of bread, slices of ham, cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, the mustard on top—and get really involved in the ingredients. Visualize putting the thing together. You could go on making ham sandwiches for minutes, then look down and realize you were all right. I looked down. There was hardly a stir. Jill turned
around and looked at me and I saw the white part of her breasts, the part that hadn't tanned this summer. I wanted to cry.