The Woman Next Door (18 page)

"I thought . . . a friend of mine lived here. A woman."

"No woman here when I got here, Mr. Courtney. And only your tracks, what was left of '
em
."

Brett accepted the man's words without question: He wouldn't understand; he couldn't.

"Thank you," Brett said.

"Wasn't nothin'. Just
doin
' my job, is all."

"Thank you," Brett repeated. And added, "Thank you for more than I can say."

S
onny Norton had never before felt a pain like the pain that was pushing through him now. It had started in his head, just a whisper of pain, as if some small insect were trying to burrow into his scalp. It had quickly escalated, vaulted into his neck and shoulders, then into his chest and legs, as if some great invisible animal was on him, pushing him to the sidewalk, trying to suffocate him. He groaned, tore at his shirt, his ears, his hands. He fell to his knees, groaned louder, longer.

And the pain was gone. He continued groaning, though only in memory of the pain. He looked about. Marilyn Courtney's house was to his left, Christine
Bennet's
to his right.

The insect started burrowing into his scalp again. He stood jerkily, panic overcoming him, and stumbled away.

B
rett mixed himself another scotch and water, sipped it. "Something for you?" he said.

"No," Marilyn answered. "Just get on with it."

Brett looked quizzically at her. "What does
that
mean?"

"You've got something you want to talk about. It's been obvious ever since you got home. Jesus, Brett, you think I don't know you after sixteen years? You're predictable; you have routines. Like drinking. You do your drinking after supper. I've never seen you pour a drink at this hour—it's not even time for lunch. There have been other things, too. For instance, you've been talking in your sleep. And you said a name."

Brett stiffened. "A name?"

"Yes. I don't know whose name, but it certainly wasn't mine."

"Well, I don't have any—"

"So, I have to assume that you've got something on your mind. Am I right or wrong?"

Brett hesitated. So, the time had come—sooner than he'd hoped. He'd hoped for a week or two, for time enough to sort things out in his own mind, time enough to somehow ease Marilyn into it, though he had never had any idea how.

"And I know," Marilyn added, "that you didn't go up to the cottage just to get it ready for the summer. You don't do things like that, Brett."

And Brett realized that "time enough" was a rationalization, his cowardice coming back. Time and distance and warmth were weakening him.

"Brett, I'm waiting."

"You're right, Marilyn." A moment after the words escaped him, he wanted desperately to call them back. "You're right," he repeated, because he wanted even more desperately to be certain she heard the words.

She grinned—the same malicious grin he had seen two weeks earlier, only now it had an added dimension:
Gee, this might be entertaining
. "Go on, Brett." She crossed her legs as if making herself comfortable. "Who is she?"

"Her name doesn't matter."

A look of quick and very intense pain flashed across Marilyn's face. Her grin vanished. "It matters, Brett!" She spat the words. "It matters to me."

He downed the rest of his drink. "Andrea," he said. "That's her name—Andrea."

Marilyn's grin reappeared. "Yes, continue."

"And you could say . . . that I loved her."

Silence. Stiff, cold silence. And that damned grin.

Brett poured himself another scotch, stared at it blankly a moment, then dumped it into the ice bucket. "It all started about a month ago." He waited for her to interrupt, but she said nothing. He looked quizzically at her—her silence was beginning to unnerve him —and continued: "We never talked about divorce or marriage or anything like that." He noted the uneasy tone in his voice, noted that it was on the verge of a
whine
; Jesus, if she'd just stop grinning. "We loved each other, Marilyn; it's as simple as that. We loved each other. Totally." And a simple, hard truth struck him: He had been using the past tense to describe his relationship with Andrea, as if, having come magically into his life, she had magically gone out of it, forever. "And you know, the beautiful thing, Marilyn, the really beautiful thing is, we never said it. We didn't have to say it; we lived it every time we were together." And it struck him, too, that this truth—that Andrea had come into his life, had helped him to change it, and now was gone from it—did not really sadden him, because, he thought wryly, the beautiful and impossible fantasy that Andrea was could hardly last very long. He closed his eyes briefly, suddenly aware that he had stumbled into yet another truth, but one that was far more complex, one that his logic told him wasn't at all possible. "And that feeling Andrea and I had, Marilyn—that love is so obvious it doesn't need to be said—is something I've never experienced before."

Marilyn stood abruptly. She was still grinning. Brett could see that her hands were clenched into fists, her knuckles white. He thought,
My God, what have I been saying?

"I'm sorry, Marilyn, forgive me, I didn't mean—"

She turned and left the room. Brett listened as she went up the stairs to their bedroom. Listened as she closed the door. Locked it.

And listened in disbelief to the long, catlike scream that caromed off the inner walls of the house.

Dear Tim,

I feel tired. I've never felt this tired before. I wish I could compare it to something you'd recognize. I wish I could say I feel as if I've just run ten miles.

A comparison does come to mind. I hope you understand it. First, you must know that this tiredness I feel is not a physical thing. Going to sleep for twenty-four hours would have no effect on it. Nor is it a mental exhaustion. I think it's mostly an emotional weariness, as if I've been waiting a long, long time for some very momentous thing to happen to me. Like waiting and waiting for an important letter to arrive, only much more protracted than that. And I don't know when this thing will happen, or why, or even what it is, only that it will happen and that my life will be changed by it. And so I feel in a constant state of transition, as if I'm being taken somewhere by someone for some reason, and though in time I will know all the why's, they are being hidden from me now.

I doubt that I'll give you this letter.

Christine

Brett cringed, remembering his words. He knew now precisely what "twisting the knife" meant. He'd not only twisted it; he'd shoved it in up to his wrist and run it around inside her for a while. Small wonder her reaction.

And yet it had been such an inhuman scream—not just a scream of agony, but grotesque agony, as if she'd been exploding from the inside, and slowly, slowly. As if, in those long, terrible seconds, he was hearing some abominable creature that had crept into the room with her, put its vile hands over her mouth, and screamed for her.

He shuddered and cursed his imagination.

The important thing was, the marriage was over. At last. And that meant readjustment.

He would let her keep the house, of course. It was hers, really. She had decorated it, she had seen to its renovation—the hiring of plumbers and electricians, carpenters and
groundsmen
—and she so reveled in the product of her labors. And if she were forced to move to some other house, an ordinary house with twelve-by-twelve-foot rooms and coffin like closets, her claustrophobia would soon overwhelm her.

The queen and her castle. Let her have the house. Greg, however, was another matter entirely.

He thought, suddenly, that he should have locked the door to this room. Should have closed it, anyway. He sat up in the bed. He felt unaccountably thankful for the yellow night-light in the hallway. He knew instantly, and with a tinge of regret, why he was thankful: Marilyn frightened him. Her grin frightened him, and her silence. He felt comforted that he was in a room on the opposite side of the house from her. He thought that when he actually moved out, his damned migraines would finally go away.

He lay down again. Marilyn was no threat to him. She was a threat to herself, perhaps. But not to him.

I
n his entire fifteen years in the house, Brett had never slept in this part of it. There were three bedrooms, all off the same long hallway, which were reserved for the occasional overnight guest, usually one of Marilyn's relatives. (Brett's relatives rarely visited! His brother, Lou, had come closest to explaining why: "It's a very nice house, Brett, but the atmosphere's a little stiff, isn't it?" Brett knew what he meant. Marilyn was a big part of the atmosphere of the house.) And because he'd never slept here, he was unaccustomed to the noises the house made on this side. On the other side, a brisk wind could cause the window casings to
groan
dramatically, and, on particularly humid nights, the house made strange, random, cricket like noises (it had something to do with the expansion of the wood beneath the new metal siding on the house's back wall, he supposed). The toilet adjoining their bedroom made its own noises, too—persistent, low gurgling noises. ("You got a hell of a lot of plumbing in this house," the plumber explained. "Sure you're going to get some noise from it, sure.")

Brett listened. The rasping sounds seemed to be coming from the end of the hallway, near what Marilyn called the Red Room (because the motif was predominantly, and loudly, red).

"Marilyn?" be called.

Silence.

He decided in the next moment that if she was on her way to this room, the old floor would shout her approach. He imagined her moving slowly, stealthily down the hallway, some kind of weapon in hand, keeping her weight on the extreme right or left side and away from the middle, because that's where the boards creaked loudest, of course. The image made him chuckle nervously.

"Marilyn?" he said again, surprising himself. He swung his feet to the floor.

He heard the rasping sounds again, closer, near the second bedroom.

He stood, moved on tiptoe to the door, stuck his head out, squinted down the hallway.

"Daddy?"

It was Greg.

"T
im, I wrote you, a letter."

Tim rolled to his shoulder. "Oh? When can I see it?"

"I put it in the garbage disposal."

"Why'd you do that?"

"Because I didn't want you to read it."

Tim smiled a nervous smile. Why was she being so cryptic? "If you didn't want me to read it, Christine, you wouldn't have written it."

"Uh-huh. I guess." She nodded out the window at the dark bulk of the Courtney house. "It's very big, isn't it?"

"Christine, the letter. . . ."

"A person could easily lose himself in a house that big." She turned her head to look at him. "Do you know, it has fourteen rooms.
And
a semi-finished attic? That's what Marilyn told me." She turned back, focused on the house again. "Marilyn's not
all
bad, Tim."

"I never said she was. Besides, I thought we were talking about this letter you wrote, the one you put in the disposal. Don't dangle the bait and then snatch it away."

"That's very colorful, Tim."

He gave her a puzzled look; her remark had been biting, sarcastic. "I'm sorry," he said, for lack of anything else to say.

"No, Tim,
I'm
sorry. I'm just tired. That's what the note was about—about being tired. Emotionally tired."

Tim touched her cheek gently, as if she were very fragile. "Do you want to see your doctor?"

"No," she answered after a moment. "I'm okay. It's something that comes and goes. I'm okay."

"I don't understand."

"I don't either, Tim. I wish I did."

"And what if . . . I were to
order
you to see your doctor?"
God
, he thought,
that sounds foolish
.

Christine said nothing. Her grin mirrored his thoughts.

"Well," he continued, "I don't mean it that way. I mean . . . what if I were to ask you, for your own good—"

Her gaze settled again on the Courtney house. "When I think it's time," she said, and Tim noticed something distant and cold in her voice.

"And my opinion doesn't matter?"

She turned her head, touched his face affectionately. "Of course it does." She turned back, studied the house silently a long moment. Then: "It certainly is big, isn't it, Tim? Why would three people want to live in a house that big?"

Tim said, "I don't know, Christine."

Christine said nothing.

B
rett seated Greg in a yellow club chair near the bed. "What's the matter, son?" And seated himself on the bed, hunched forward, hands clasped loosely in front of his knees. He was trying to look casual, trying to put Greg at ease. He talked with Greg so rarely—he couldn't remember the last time.