The Woman Next Door (2 page)

The babysitter called, "Sammy, I thought I told you to stay the hell in your room," and got up from the couch; she was certain that little Sammy Watson, her latest charge (God, but wouldn't it be great if she didn't need to
freakin
'
babysit
, if she could just marry some guy who had a lot of money and he could set her up in some great big house and maybe she'd have a kid of her
own
), had gotten up again for another goddamned "
dinkawawa
." The babysitter turned and faced the stairway.

And very spontaneously peed in her pants.

Because the child on the stairs was not little Sammy Watson. But this child could not possibly be on the stairs, because she was five miles away in a hospital bed and she was all trussed up because she had "sustained some spinal injuries" because accidents happened every day, no one was really to blame, it was fate.

The babysitter mumbled something, her throat suddenly too dry for speech.

The child on the stairs grinned a big, wide, malevolent grin that made the babysitter wet her pants once more.

And then the child vanished.

T
he nurse's name was Simpson, and one word—
pathetic
—was going through her head now. Ever since the Winter child was brought in, two weeks before, that word had been running around inside Nurse Simpson's head. It was the only word that fit. And now it fit doubly well.

The nurse reached out and gently touched the sleeping child's lips. "I hope," she whispered—she felt a tear start —"that your dreams are good dreams, little one." She took her hand away. "And I hope you always have reason to smile."

BRETT

1981

C
hristine
Bennet
knew that the whole thing would end in an argument, their first. And it was an argument that couldn't be avoided; that was the hell of it. His role, his position, as her husband, provider, maker of decisions, and, yes, even her protector was at stake, regardless of how vehemently he'd deny it. And that all added up to a matter of pride. Better to injure him physically than to injure his pride.

"It's amazing, isn't it?" Tim
Bennet
said.

Christine nodded.

"A chance like this," he continued, "doesn't come along very often."

If only he wasn't so wildly enthusiastic, it would be easy to tell him,
Yes, Tim, you're right. But it just doesn't appeal to me. You understand, don't you?
And that would be the end of it and they could go on looking.

"In five years," Tim said, "this will be the place to live. Hell, it already is. Do you know that fifteen, twenty years ago you couldn't even drive through this area, let alone live here?"

"Uh-huh," Christine said.

"It's really amazing," Tim repeated.

Christine tried to fault him for his enthusiasm, his pride, tried to ascribe it to some lack of understanding, some break in communication that originated with him. But it was no good. He was what he was and she was what she was, and if he saw only so far, saw only what was apparent, it was because at this point in their marriage it was all he could deal with. A person learns to walk before he runs. Christine grinned at the cliché.

"What's funny?" Tim asked.

She looked at him. He was driving with both hands on the wheel, even though he was keeping the car just below the thirty-mile-an-hour limit. It was another sign of his protectiveness.

"Funny?" she said.

"You were smiling."

She thought a moment. "I was, wasn't I?" She paused. "I don't remember why. Sorry."

He brought the car to a slow, easy stop at a red light. "See that house there?"

Christine looked. He had indicated a large, square, whitewashed brick building with a red stone roof and a small, nonfunctional wrought-iron porch under each of three front windows. The double front doors were of glass and oak; an oversized number 1 had been painted in yellow on the left-hand glass panel, and the number 4 on the other. The small, bright-green lawn was bordered by a tall, ornate fence, also of wrought iron. Christine thought the house forbidding and pretentious.

"Yes," she said.

"That was the first," Tim explained. "A man named Williamson bought it for fifteen hundred back around nineteen sixty-two."

"Fifteen hundred? Is
that
all?"

"It needed a lot of work, of course." The light changed. He pressed the accelerator gently. "I don't know exactly how much he had to invest to make it livable, but it was something like thirty thousand. And he had to do all the work himself, but that saved him a bundle. The house is worth at least a hundred thousand now."

"Sounds pretty impressive," Christine said, just missing the tone of enthusiasm she had tried for.

"Oh, it is, and that's why so many people latched on to the idea, and why there are so few houses left." He paused. "Light me a cigarette, would you, darling?" He pulled a pack of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket and handed it to her.

H
e parked the car in front of a big, rambling brownstone house. The windows on its first floor had been boarded over with plywood; most of its second-floor windows were broken; faded obscenities were visible on the sidewalk leading to the front door and on the door itself, there were gaping jagged holes scattered around the roof. Paradoxically, the lawn had recently been mowed, and the honeysuckle hedges encircling the house neatly trimmed.

Tim, leaning over, looking at the house through the passenger window, said, "That would cost us two thousand."

"Two thousand," Christine said, not as a question but merely for something to say. "It's certainly big, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is."

"Be hell to heat."

"Absolutely."

"Are you thinking of buying it, Tim?"

He straightened, put the car in gear, and pulled slowly away from the house. "Hell no," he said. "It needs too much work. I've been through it. And besides, it's too big for just the two of us."

Christine thought she heard something vaguely accusatory in the way he said, "just the two of us," but decided to disregard it. That delicate subject had yet to be opened, and it deserved far more attention than they could give it now.

T
im and Christine
Bennet
had been married for six months. The marriage was a culmination of a long and progressively more passionate relationship, the end destined to make them husband and wife.

It was at first an uneasy relationship, one tinged by uncertainty. Because Christine, for nineteen of her twenty-one years, had been paralyzed from the waist down. All indications were that the paralysis was permanent. The wheelchair was her almost, constant companion, and, predictably, it had drawn to her a succession of altruists, and men with pity to spread around and be known by, and, pathetically, the occasional oddball. But she learned quickly enough to identify each type and to cultivate a cool but polite attitude toward them.

When Tim came into her life toward the end of her freshman year at Brockport State College—where she majored in fine arts and where he had a part-time position as an assistant professor of photography—she found that he was persistent, despite the attitude she cultivated. It became obvious that he saw through the façade, saw through to the spark of interest he had started in her. And he was so beautifully direct:

"You think I'm something other than what I appear to be, don't you, Christine?"

They were having lunch together on the college grounds. He hadn't asked the question offhandedly, eyes averted, in a foolish attempt to appear unconcerned, or subtle.

She toyed very briefly with the idea of saying
I know exactly what you are
and thus throwing him off guard. But his question—or at least the way he had asked it—demanded an honest answer.

"Yes," she said, "I'm afraid I do."

"I understand," he said. "At least I think so."

From Christine's point of view, it was not the perfect reply. There was a question in it—a plea that she explain his uncertainty to him and so put him on firmer ground. Which was why, of course, he had lowered his head and closed his eyes. Because it was her turn.

The dull ache of disappointment flowed through her. There had been something genuine about this man, and now he had destroyed it.

"Will you give me some time, Christine?" His bead was still lowered, eyes still closed.

"Tune?" she said, without expression.

He raised his head, looked at her. "I'm not going to try to talk you into something or out of something. I don't think I'd be able to; you've made that very clear. All I want is for us to take the time to get to know each other. I like you . . . very much. Well, that's obvious, isn't it? I can't say . . . ." He paused, considered. "I can't say I like the fact that you're crippled. I don't like it. I wish I had some kind of healing power. I wish I could lay my hands on your head and say 'Rise, walk,' and then throw that damned chair away. But I can't. No one can. Which leaves us . . . here. Nowhere, if that's what you want, and I don't think you do. I know I don't. So . . . ." Another pause. "So, I understand. This past month you've been watching me very closely, trying to get a line on what I'm all about, what my intentions are." Again a pause. "I have none—intentions, I mean. Not yet, anyway. Given a little time, though, which is what I'm asking for, I'm sure I'll come up with something." He grinned. "End of speech."

Christine felt like applauding. He had redeemed himself. And the point of it was, he hadn't been trying to redeem himself. His sincerity had been obvious.

And they both realized that it was the beginning of something.

Two years later, they were married.

B
ut there was still the uneasiness, however subtle. And still, on his part, an
overprotectiveness
that Christine was reluctant to make an issue of—because it was almost an instinct with him, and it would take time to soften it.

This "house thing," as she thought of it, was a good example of that
overprotectiveness
.
A home of our own
—it was a phrase he used in a tone that approached reverence. And Christine realized it was in reverence of her, or, more correctly, in reverence of her handicap. A home of our own. Compensation for all that life had denied her, the gift of privacy and independence in lieu of the gift of mobility.

Fortunately, valid excuses had been easy enough to find: the expense, the neighborhood, etc. They were excuses that, over the past six months, she had ultimately been forced to agree with.

Today, however, was the turning point; Christine knew it. Tim's enthusiasm was too great. An argument was inevitable. This place—the "Cornhill Preservation District"—charmed him. The ten square blocks of large Victorian homes and converted gas lamps and cobblestone streets was like a leap backward to a less convoluted, less self-serving, ultimately simpler time. Add to that the fact that houses still in need of restoration were selling for as little as a couple hundred dollars, and Christine couldn't blame Tim at all for his enthusiasm. Here his dream of a home of our own was all but assured. Only she—the focus of that dream—stood in the way.

H
e turned right onto
Selbourne
Avenue. "The next one," he said, "is a gem. You'll love it." He reached the end of
Selbourne
Avenue and turned left onto Briar Street. He stopped almost immediately.

The house, like most of the others in the district, was of brick, but it was simple, uncluttered. There was some scrollwork along the roof line and around the windows, but it did little to alter the house's appearance of strength and solidity. There was nothing
gingerbready
about it.

Christine hated it. It was a hiding place, a fortress, a place to shut herself up in. That was why Tim had called it "a gem," she realized.

"What do you think?" he said. He was smiling, pleased. This was the
pièce de r
é
sistance
.

She smiled back, hoping he would catch the falseness of it. "I don't know."

"You don't know? How can you not know? It's perfect, absolutely perfect. It's practically all you need."

"All
I
need, Tim?"

"All
we
need." He was still smiling, was obviously not aware of the implications of what he'd said. "Just the right size, doesn't need that much work, and we can get it for almost nothing. It's perfect."

"Can we talk about it, Tim?"

"Talk about it? Sure we can talk about it. Let's talk."

"I mean later."

He said nothing for a long moment, then: "I'm wasting my time, aren't I."