The Woman Next Door (6 page)

"Thank you. So are you."

The girl blushed. "My daddy says I look like my mommy and he says my mommy looks like a witch."

"Do
you
think your mommy looks like a witch?"

"My daddy says so, but I think he's just kidding."

"Of course he is." She paused. "Cecile?" Another pause. "Cecile, have you seen . . . do you know a little boy . . . he's about your age, maybe a year or two older, and he's about so tall"—she held her hand up, palm down, several inches above the little girl's head—"and his hair is almost as light as mine, and he's very handsome, with blue eyes. The last time I saw him he was wearing a blue jacket." She caught the confusion on the girl's face. "He didn't like to play with the other kids very much, Cecile."

The girl's confusion was replaced by a look that approached sorrow. "Oh," she said, "that's Jimmy Wheeler. He . . . he died."

Christine said nothing. She didn't want to know how he had died; she knew how—in some stupid automobile accident. Not from some disease, not while playing, but from a stupid automobile accident. Somebody had run a stop sign or someone had been drunk, and had killed him. Some stupid slob who would feel sorry about it for a few days or weeks and then go out and do it again. That type had ended Jimmy Wheeler's life. And had left himself, and his own kids—like these kids, these studies in mediocrity—alive.

Christine lowered her head, ashamed by the thought. When she looked up, finally, her eyes moist, the little girl was gone.

It was a bad memory, and it came back to her now, made her eyes moisten again.

She studied the painting, the eyes especially. She wouldn't change it, she knew; she couldn't. For her sake, this was Jimmy Wheeler.

She put the canvas on her lap and wheeled herself out of the room and into the small foyer. She decided that once she had it in a frame, the painting would go on the west wall, to the right of the living-room doorway. Jimmy Wheeler would be undisturbed there; few visitors would bother to stop and look at him. He could watch.

"D
amn it!" Marilyn Courtney said. "Damn it!" She could hear the rushing noise the gas jets made, could see the rectangle of blue flame. Upstairs, she had felt the radiators heating up. "Damn it!" So, the furnace was working; it was doing what furnaces were supposed to do. And it wasn't. Which was impossible.

"Appears to be all right to me, Mrs. Courtney," the furnace repairman had told her an hour before. "You got any windows open?"

"Of course not," she answered.

"Well, then, you got your storm windows up? These things are tricky sometimes."

"Yes, we
have
storm windows up."

He grinned an apology. "Sorry, then, I can't help
ya
. It's not the furnace, I can tell
ya
that." And he left, taking a twenty-two-dollar check with him.

She thought about calling Brett, then wondered what good that would do: He knew as little about furnaces as she.

She reached up to turn off the bare light bulb hanging from one of the beams, saw that her fingers had been blackened. She grimaced.
Cellars
were always such foul, dirty,
close
places.

S
imple white drapes, Christine thought. Nothing ostentatious, nothing pretentious. Just something simple, to match the room. To match the house. And no rugs. The hardwood floors were all right.

It was a good house. Tim had done a fantastic job with it.

She reached out, put her hand on the window. The glass was warm. Beyond it, a light snowfall had begun. It wouldn't amount to much, she thought. It was like dust falling. Maybe it was only the top layers of the two-day-old snow already on the ground being lifted into the air by a gentle, persistent breeze.

Winters. . . . They were hateful. And they were beautiful. They kept her prisoner, kept her out of the parks and off the sidewalks, unless someone—Tim now—was there to help her. But they also slowed things down, or appeared to, brought things to a standstill, and in that they were beautiful. Things that moved—cars, motorcycles, bicycles—were covered over in a heavy snowfall, stopped. Real things became scenes from a picture postcard.

She took her hand from the window. Her gaze settled on the Courtney house. It was a fortress on the outside, she thought, and a museum inside—dust-free, precise, sterile. The old things Marilyn Courtney surrounded herself with had died under her influence. Died, hardened, lost their texture, their warmth, their charm.

She thought she couldn't blame them, really. Marilyn Courtney was that kind of woman. Things died around her. Even the air chilled.

She turned away from the window; she disliked the cruelty of her thoughts. How long had she known the woman, after all? There had been only the half-hour conversation the day before, a conversation that had obviously been uncomfortable for her, for all three of them. So, it was too soon to be making judgments, wasn't it?

Jimmy Wheeler stared at her from across the room. Christine smiled wistfully at him. "Yes," she said. "Okay." And the words made her wistful smile a self-amused one.

January 23, 1961

J
oanne
Vanderburg
was a slimy little bitch, thought the babysitter. The thought pleased her; it was right on target, an indictment worth filing away for future use, for the next time the bitch opened her big mouth. Which would be soon, of course: Monday morning, in study hall. The babysitter wondered if it would be the "zit" thing again, as it had been earlier today. ("Oh, what is
this
? Is it a
zit
? My God, it
is
a zit! What a pity. It absolutely spoils your face. Are you going through puberty? Is that why you have that thing on your face?") It had been a long, painful five minutes before the laughter in the classroom had ended, and then only because Mrs.
Beaman
had come back.

The babysitter wondered just how much her hatred of Joanne
Vanderburg
had grown in the past few months. Enough that if the opportunity presented itself, she could actually. . . . A gentle shove at the curb where the buses pulled up, a well-placed foot at the top of a flight of stairs? Something that required only minimal involvement, something that would be widely thought of as an unfortunate accident. Splat, and that would be it for the damned slimy bitch. No more mouth, no more worries. Splat! The babysitter smiled. Maybe, given the right circumstances, she could do it. Just maybe. It was very pleasant to consider.

Fitful crying from the child's room halted the babysitter's thoughts. She cursed, stood, went into the room, turned the light on, and moved quickly, with agitation, to the crib.

Her agitation softened when she bent over the crib. The child had stopped crying and was smiling now, obviously pleased by the babysitter's presence.

Feigning a grimace, the babysitter lifted the child, checked her diaper, and found that it was dry. She laid the child down. "So what's the big problem?" she said. She waited. The child continued to smile at her. The babysitter straightened and put her hands on her hips in mock frustration. She felt something soft around her ankles. She looked. The child's pink cotton blanket lay on the floor in front of the crib. She picked it up, covered the child with it, and quietly left the room.

T
im rolled to his side; he put his arm over Christine's chest. "Hi," he said.

"Hi," Christine said, noncommittally.

A number of phrases came to Tim:
Are you in the mood? How are you feeling? You really smell good. Your breasts feel nice under my arm
. Even
I'm horny, how about you?
He rolled his eyes in disgust. Christ, if he had to talk about it with her first, if he had to convince her, it wasn't worth the effort. They had gone that route for the first six months of their marriage, and their lovemaking had undergone a long, painful transition. Even now, tonight, he could sense something of the aura of those months coming back. He closed his eyes, and their first time together—a long, sweaty, nerve-wracking two hours—replayed itself. He wondered if he would ever forget it; he wondered if he wanted to.

They had been avoiding it for months; it was something, they knew, that could either destroy their relationship or cement it. And then:

"I'm a virgin, Tim. What do you think of that?"

Tim had grown accustomed to her pointed questions, but he smiled nervously at this one. "What would you like me to think of it?"

"That I'm courageous."

"Okay. You're courageous."

"Or that I'm afraid."

Tim hesitated. He would be treading on very unstable ground here. He hoped she would elaborate on her fears, because he had his own, and—damn it!—they were probably not far removed from hers. But she didn't elaborate; she waited. And Tim felt that she had put him on the spot; he told her so:

"You've put me on the spot, you know. You do that from time to time."

But Christine was not to be sidetracked. She grinned.
That's not what we were talking about
, the grin said.

They were at his apartment. With his help, Christine had seated herself in a big, comfortable La-Z-Boy left by the previous tenant. Her knee-length plaid skirt had hiked up considerably on her thighs, and Tim, standing near his small makeshift bar, made a point of noticing.

"You've got marvelous legs," he said, and cursed himself. Of all the things he might have said, all the small erotic, suggestive comments available to him, that one had to be the clumsiest and the cruelest. "I'm sorry," he murmured.

"Why? I
do
have nice legs. Even my therapist thinks so. He says they're a little thin, but he thinks I'm thin, anyway. He says I should eat more." She hesitated. Then: "Please don't be nervous, Tim. I'm nervous enough for both of us."

He went to the kitchenette, got a kitchen chair, brought it back into the living room, and placed it next to the La-Z-Boy. He sat, considered a moment, then put his hand on her thigh. Her upper body shivered noticeably. He withdrew his hand quickly, lowered his head, shook it. "Jesus, Christine. . . ." It was as much in admonishment of her as of himself. He felt her hand take his; he raised his head. She placed his hand back on her thigh. "It tickles?" she suggested, and they laughed suddenly—a soft, strained laugh.

He patted her thigh and stood so that his back was to her. "This is all very awkward, isn't it?" he said.

"Yes, it is, Tim."

"Would you rather we just forgot about it?"

"No."

He turned his head, surprised by her response. "No?"

"I love you, Tim. You know that I love you. No, I do not want to stop."

He went back to the bar. "Would you like a drink?"

"Maybe later."

He was about to make himself a gin and tonic. He put the bottle away, sat on a barstool. "So," he said, trying to sound casual, "you're afraid of sex, huh?"

"I don't know if I am; I've never experienced it."

"You're afraid of finding out about it?"

"Aren't you?"

Tim hesitated, momentarily uncertain what her question meant. "I think it could be disastrous for us. And it could be quite beautiful."

"Disastrous, yes. Beautiful? No."

"Christine, darling, we've got to be philosophical about this." Tim was suddenly pleased that he was saying all the right things.

"My paralysis is not a matter for philosophy." Her quick, impatient tone surprised him. "Neither of us, Tim, is so . . . so high-minded that we can overlook it, that we can pretend it doesn't exist. I may be a virgin, Tim, but I sure as hell am not naive. I've read the books; I've seen the movies. I know what people want from each other—a good
performance
. That's not a value judgment, Tim; it really isn't. I am very, very happy for those people who can
give
a good performance. I'm sure it's very fulfilling. But
I
can't, you see, because, as a matter of hard, cold, and really lousy fact, I am a paraplegic."

"Christine," Tim cut in, "you're not being—"

"Realistic?"

"No. Fair."

"Fair to whom? Myself? You?"

He got off the stool, went over to her, and sat in the kitchen chair. "Now we're fighting, and that's no way to begin a seduction. At least, that's not the way I begin one." He heard her words before she said them:

"Oh? You're very practiced at the art of seduction, are you?"

And he thought,
I deserved that
. "Not really," he said. "No more than normal."

"I wouldn't know about that—normal, I mean."

"That's cute, Christine." His voice was heavy with sarcasm. "Your self-pity is terribly creative—"

"Tell me, Mr.
Bennet
, just how many women
have
you had here? A dozen? A hundred?"

"Sixteen thousand and two, and they were all marvelous."