The Neighbors (25 page)

She closed the door to Isaac’s room and crossed the hall to the master bedroom. Red was there, packing a suitcase without a word.

“I warned you for years,” she told him.

He flipped the hard shell of his luggage closed and clasped it shut, giving his wife a look that could kill.

“You’ve underestimated me for far too long.”

T
he room gave Drew the creeps. He sat at the edge of the bed, listening to the branches of a tree scrape against the glass in the wind, feeling like he wasn’t actually allowed to touch anything. Everything was strategically placed, from the books on the bookshelf to the trinkets on the shelf above the bed. If he moved anything, Harlow would know. He was already anxious, and the museum-like quality of the guest room made him even more so. Harlow’s extreme organization hadn’t bothered him before, but now that his choice of staying or going had been taken away, it was like an itch he couldn’t scratch.

But that wasn’t what disturbed him most.

The thing that got to him was the room itself. It wasn’t the typical guest room that most households had—nicely decorated but lacking personality: neutral colors, not too girly, not too masculine. This room felt like it had belonged to someone. The books were all novels he had read in school:
A Brave New World
and
Lord of the Flies
, held in place by a makeshift bookend—a golden baseball trophy, the pitcher’s arm pulled back to make the winning throw. There were a couple of spiral notebooks stacked on the top shelf of the bookcase, perfectly aligned; bits of paper were
held captive between the twisted metal binding, a telltale sign of pages being torn away. There was an outdated stereo on top of the dresser, though no CDs that Drew could see from where he sat. And if he opened the closet, he was almost sure to see someone’s forgotten wardrobe hanging there, clean and pressed, ready to wear. He felt like he was trespassing by just sitting there, his duffel bag at his feet.

Harlow called up to him from the base of the stairs. She wanted to celebrate her newfound freedom by letting someone else cook dinner for a change. Drew didn’t much feel like going out, but he didn’t have the heart to deny her.

Peering at his hands as he sat there, he leaned down to unzip his bag with a sobering awareness: his packing job had been little more than a random grab at various T-shirts and a few pairs of jeans, leaving him completely unprepared to accompany Harlow to whatever restaurant she chose. Undeniably, it would be some fancy place where he could hardly read the menu—if places like that existed in Creekside at all.

“Goddamn it,” he muttered, regretting not having spent more time deciding what to take with him on this unannounced hiatus. He sat there for a long while, his elbows pressed to his knees, his head in his hands, the duffel bag peeled open like an in-process autopsy.

When he finally dragged himself down the stairs, he found Harlow sitting in Red’s recliner. She stood when she saw him, smoothing down the front of a little black dress with the palms of her hands. But her smile was quick to fade when Drew held out his arms like Jesus on the cross, wordlessly showing her the sorry state of his clothes.

Her fingers toyed with the pearls around her neck as she surveyed the situation. But rather than showing disappointment, she cracked a girlish smile and gave Andrew a helpless shrug.

“Oh, forget it,” she told him with a laugh. She pulled her high heels off her feet and dashed up the stairs, coming down a minute
later in an ensemble he hadn’t seen before—an outfit that made his heart flutter like a butterfly in a net. Standing on the bottom step, she wore an old Kansas State T-shirt tucked into a pair of jeans. An outfit that would have made anyone else look careless and disheveled made Harlow Ward look elegantly casual. She flashed him a girlish smile, pushing a strand of flaxen blond hair away from her forehead.

They piled into his pickup and rambled into town, Drew’s stereo—the newest addition to that Chevy—playing an old INXS CD on repeat. Harlow rolled down the window, letting the storm-cooled wind whip through the cabin, her right arm sticking outward, grabbing at the air.

She directed Drew to Creekside’s one and only drive-in. It was an old place, one that he assumed had been there almost as long as Creekside had. Despite being run-down, it still held an air of nostalgia, of the glory days it surely must have seen—candy-colored hot rods pulling up with greasers behind the wheel and Pink Ladies in the passenger seat.

A roller-skating girl twirled just outside Drew’s open window, delivering their burgers and shakes on a bright red tray. While nobody had officially called their outing a date, Drew paid the bill out of what little cash he had left. He wouldn’t have felt right otherwise.

He watched Harlow struggle with the giant sandwich.

“My goodness,” she said, trying to keep the wrapper in place, sizing up the quarter-pound burger as if searching for the best place to bite.

He laughed as a glob of ketchup ran down Harlow’s slender wrist, and she blushed when she managed to get the entire thing into her mouth, chasing it down with too-salty fries.

“I ate nothing but burgers when I was in college,” she told him. “Completely addicted.”

Andrew shook his head at her, smiling around a mouthful of shake. Her confession would have had him raising his eyebrows
a few days before, but now, seeing her so casual in her jeans and sneakers, he couldn’t help but be delighted by the idea of her having been a normal kid, just like him.

“My daddy loved hamburgers,” she said. “He was like that fat little cartoon character on
Popeye
. What was his name?”

“Wimpy?”

Harlow threw her head back and laughed, the name spurring some hilarious memory Andrew wished he could share with her; he wished he had memories of his own dad that he could contribute. But rather than dampening the conversation by bringing Rick up, he stuffed a few fries into his mouth and smiled instead.

Drew couldn’t help being surprised, not by her appetite but by how casual Harlow could be. It was like seeing a snapshot of the girl she had once been—someone he’d never met before. He wondered whether Red had once had the pleasure of meeting this girl, or if Harlow had always been the perfect picture of the atomic age. Her head lolled atop her shoulders when she turned to look at him, her eyes glittering with lazy contentment.

“I love this,” she told him, motioning with a flick of her wrist to the interior of the truck, the drive-in just beyond the windshield, the red tray hanging outside Drew’s window, the ketchup-and mustard-smeared burger wrappers crumpled between them. “I love this truck,” she mused, her fingers sliding across the blanket that covered the bench seat’s imperfections. She smiled at him, her expression growing wistful. Drew furrowed his eyebrows as he watched her grow pensive, a sad sense of longing wafting off her like a pheromone.

He didn’t say anything; he just reached out to touch her hand, reassuring her that everything was going to be OK. She looked down, his hand on top of hers, her bottom lip trembling for the half second it took to compose herself.

“I’ll miss him,” she said softly, looking out the window across a dark expanse of wheat. “But it’s time to move on.
You
did.”

Drew nodded faintly. He supposed she was right. Leaving his mother behind had been the hardest thing he’d done since letting Emily go. He imagined that Harlow letting Red go was a lot like that. Turning her hand palm up, she closed her fingers over his.

Andrew stared at their hands for a long while. It was all still so strange, being here with her like this. He was hesitant to let his guard down, but the longer they sat together, the cabin of the truck redolent of pickles and french fries, the more relaxed he became. Harlow had dropped the act. Beneath the pretty dresses and frilly aprons she was a real person, just as vulnerable as he was. The fact that she trusted him enough to show him that side of her meant a lot.

Exhaling a sigh, she looked back to Drew and offered him a weary smile.

“Let’s go home,” she said.

And so they did.

Harlow couldn’t help but think of Danny Wilson and his baseball trophy, that little pitcher caked in Danny’s blood. But rather than goring Andrew when they returned, she led him up the stairs instead, heady with the memory of dates with other boys, her heartbeat thumping in her throat as she’d lean in and whisper, telling them what she wanted, asking them to be rough. She felt Andrew resist when she turned toward the master bedroom. Glancing over her shoulder, Andrew looked more like a kid than he ever had—nervous, uncertain. She turned to face him fully, closing the distance between them. Her fingers swept across his forehead, brushing his hair aside.

“Are you afraid of me?” she asked, her eyes fixed on the design on his T-shirt. She could hear him breathing, his chest rising and falling beneath the palm of her hand. It was funny;
all the others had been so easy to lure. And yet the one she truly wanted was standing before her, wavering.

Silent, Drew shook his head no.

“You know what they say,” she said, looking up at him. “You only regret the things you didn’t do.”

“Do you think that’s true?” he asked, his words thick with anxiety.

Harlow lifted a single shoulder in a lopsided shrug, letting it drop a moment later.

“I don’t know,” she confessed. “I always do what I want.”

“And you don’t regret anything?”

She considered his question, her mind spiraling back to Isaac, and then to Danny, to all the boys she’d ended with a wink and a kiss. She thought about Mickey and all the things she’d made him do; Red, and all the things he’d endured. And then she looked back to Andrew, the boy before her so painfully childlike that it twisted her heart, so vulnerable that it made her skin tingle with desire.

“No,” she told him, her fingers curling beneath the neckline of his shirt, pulling him just a little closer. She leaned in, her lips brushing along his jawline, his pulse jackhammering in the hollow of his throat. Stepping backward toward the master bedroom, she pulled him with her. “I don’t regret any of it,” she whispered. “Not a single goddamn thing.”

After Harlow lost the baby, she pulled into herself. She hardly spoke, and she most certainly didn’t play with her little boy. Isaac spent his time watching
Sesame Street
and playing with his toys, as silent as any toddler could be. With the death of Harlow’s unborn baby girl, Isaac was destined to be an isolated child, left to fend for himself while Harlow slept and his father worked.

When Isaac was old enough to go to school, Harlow became even edgier. She’d fly into a rage when he’d leave his shoes out, when he’d leave the living room littered with toys. One morning he made the mistake of leaving a box of Lucky Charms on the kitchen counter. Livid, Harlow snatched him up from his Saturday cartoons and marched him over to the stove.

“What’s this?” she demanded, shoving his chest against the counter’s edge. “You want to leave your cereal out so we’ll get ants?” Pushing him aside, she snatched the box up. “I’ll show you how to catch ants. Are you watching?”

“Momma, no,” Isaac whined, reaching his scrawny arm out for his cereal while she tore open the top flap. She yanked the bag from inside the box, took it in both hands, and pulled. Lucky Charms exploded like a Fourth of July firework, the sweet smell of sugared oats and marshmallows filling the space around them. Isaac’s eyes went wide as purple horseshoes and lucky clovers bounced onto the kitchen floor.

“There,” she said with a sneer, dropping the torn bag onto the floor. “Now it’ll attract ants for sure.” Her high heels ground cereal into the tile as she caught him by the shoulder, shoving him onto the floor. “Now clean it up.”

Isaac had been six years old.

And the older that boy got, the more infuriated Harlow became. At ten, he wanted nothing more than to play baseball. Red thought it was a great idea: baseball was his favorite game. It was a win-win for them both; Isaac would be able to get out of the house, and Red could take him to see the playoffs. Neither of them stopped to consider that Harlow hated sports, and that their little pastime would leave her home alone. But Red refused to relent, and after weeks of smooth talk Harlow agreed to Little League.