I made my way back home. Tired. Beyond tired.
A shower sluiced through the Thai food and blood clinging to me. I stood there a long time in its stinging blast as if it could wash the entire evening away.
Finally clean, comfy sweats, a cup of tea I couldn’t get myself to drink. The windows looking out toward Rachel’s house were inside me, the view peering inward.
The dead ends.
The questions.
The secrets.
And now another failure. This one a birthday party for an old man who one day wouldn’t remember he’d taught me how to ride a bike or that I was afraid of spiders. The life he’d lived would be new secrets, unknowable even if I told him.
Enough. That was enough for one day. Plenty.
A quick text to Kel letting her know Dad wanted to be alone, then bed.
As I drifted off to sleep, I wondered if Rachel was somewhere warm. If she was hurting. I hoped not. And if she was beyond all that, I hoped the end had been brief and painless.
We wish our loved ones long lives and quick deaths. It’s what separates us from animals.
No dreams. Just falling asleep and waking. The morning was oppressively gray, like night had refused to relinquish its hold fully. Over coffee, my thoughts turned on an axis, rotating through the panorama of the day before.
Whenever I wrote a character, I always asked why they were the way they were. Kel and Dad were easy, Cory less so. For me he’d always been a source of anxiety. Childhood with him brought bruises and humiliations—adulthood, verbal barbs and jabs that stung on the inside. At least until last night. Cory had been our mother’s favorite, hands down. But there was some truth in what he’d said, that Kel and I had banded together. Mostly because he’d tormented us and there was strength in numbers. Maybe part of the reason he’d picked on us was the feeling of exclusion, which had been because of his bullying. An ouroboros of behavior.
I didn’t know. It was nearly impossible to say unless someone was totally open and self-reflective.
Like the bird lady.
Her vulnerability had caught me off guard. She didn’t have a son or daughter to check on her. She had expensive binoculars, vicariously allowing the entire Loop to become her family. I let our confrontation do a rerun in my head and felt like a shit.
Leaving the dregs of my coffee, I started out the door, then jogged back to the refrigerator after a moment’s thought and grabbed the remaining three doughnuts from the dozen I’d brought to Dad the other day.
Knocking on the bird lady’s door, holding a half-eaten box of doughnuts, I didn’t really expect an answer. I hadn’t shaved, hadn’t combed my hair, was still wearing my sweats.
Crazy person.
She’d be right to turn me away. So when the door cracked open and she peeked out at me, timid as a mouse, I lost the thread of what to say for a second.
“Mrs. Tross . . . here.” I held out the doughnuts. Her eyes went down, back up, but she didn’t open the door. “I apologize for what I said yesterday. It was . . . a stressful afternoon.”
Slowly the door opened. She surveyed me, maybe wondering if it was a trick and I’d suddenly berate her again. When I didn’t, she said, “Don’t apologize. You were right.”
We stood that way for a second, a standoff. I flipped the box open. “Doughnut?”
Her sitting room smelled like some kind of old potpourri—cinnamon and cloves. The furniture was all floral and sat in carpet longer than I kept my lawn. She brought us coffee, and we chewed on the doughnuts. They were a little stale.
“Been years since someone came by to visit,” she said, finally giving up on her pastry. “Your mother might’ve been the last person to stop in.” My reflex was to say I was sorry. More so because Mom had been her last company. I just nodded. “When Tom was still alive, he said a good neighbor is someone who’ll help you change a flat tire, but you never have to learn their last name. Looking back, I don’t think he was right.” She glanced at a framed photo of her and her husband from perhaps twenty years ago. When I thought about it, I never actually recalled speaking with Tom. I’d always assumed he’d been the browbeaten husband kept separate from the rest of the community by his sharp-tongued wife.
Layers. More layers.
Something occurred to me then, the beginnings of an idea that sent moth wings through my chest. “You . . . keep an eye on the neighborhood. Have you seen anything out of the ordinary in the last few weeks?” I motioned toward the Barrens’， giving her a half smile. “Anyone else besides my dad snooping around?”