The Neighbor's Secret(4)

Lena was aware she was babbling, but the angsty look in Annie’s eyes was gone, so it had been worth it.

Annie nodded. “As pathetic as it sounds, exercise keeps me sane. And it helps Yellow.”

When she patted the dog’s head, Lena surmised that he/she/it was Yellow, even though it was more of a muddy greige.

“We got her when my son Hank was learning his colors,” Annie explained. She shot a wry look at Lena. “Or not.”

Lena managed a passable casual laugh. This wasn’t going horribly, not at all, or maybe it was?

Annie Perley paused and reddened slightly. Another correction from the off-site handler. There was something unsavory to discuss, Lena sensed. Presumably, the Fierce Walker had not knocked on the door to talk about Lena’s book selections and lack of commitment to exercise.

“Can I help you with something, Annie?” Lena said.

“No, no, I’m just here because. Well”—Annie Perley mashed her lips together for a moment, summoning courage to deliver unwelcome news—“there’s a penis on your mailbox.”

It sounded physically impossible, but Lena found herself following Annie across the driveway. There was something so resolute and directed about her.

At the mailbox, Annie raised her eyebrows grimly. Voilà.

Thick lines of aerosol black paint covered Lena’s custom copper mailbox. “I think it’s a face?” Lena said. “With a really long nose?”

Annie shook her head and tapped her fingernail against the copper. There was a decisive ping.

“Only one hole,” she said.

“Oh.” Lena frowned. As far as uninvited penises went, it had a disarmingly cheerful innocence. “It’s kind of friendly-looking.”

“It’s those big round puppy eyes,” Annie said with a sigh, as though the penis was just being manipulative and couldn’t be trusted.

Other properties had been hit, too. Lena, Annie explained—again with that intense eye contact—should not take it personally. Lena was about to respond that of course she didn’t take it personally, but then she realized that she did. The universe had taken a while to deliver a mailbox penis to Lena, but now that it had, her only question was: Why the delay?

“I can help you try to get it off,” Annie offered. She smacked her forehead as the double meaning hit her. “Sorry. I just meant—what I’m trying to say is I can help you remove it.”

Annie’s laugh was a wave of nervous high-pitched giggles and her cheeks reddened to a lovely deep pink. Years ago, Lena, who had been quite social (mind-bogglingly social! flitting around, hosting parties, fiddling, fiddling, fiddling while Rome burned) would have identified this warm magnet pull toward Annie Perley and thought: new friend.

She would have invited Annie to her next party, deposited her in a conversation with someone fun and lively, offered a gougère just out of the oven, fragrant and steaming.

Everyone had always gone crazy for Lena’s gougères and she had become increasingly nutty about getting them perfect. You’re missing the party, Tim would accuse.

And what had Gary Neary joked that night? The gorgeous gougères. Lena had giggled like it was high comedy, just like Annie Perley was doing now.

This was the problem with meeting new people: they dredged up old recollections, even when they didn’t mean to. Lena had never been able to conclusively destroy the unwelcome memories, but her occasional therapist Dr. Friendly had taught her a visualization process—flatten the memory like a trash compactor would, note its diminishment, move on.

She thought desperately of five minutes in the future when Annie would be gone and Lena could curl up on her couch with Odile.

But Annie, flushed and still hopelessly giggling at the wordplay, didn’t appear to be going anywhere. She clutched Lena’s arm and wiped her eyes and bent over and her sunglasses clattered down from the front of her shirt to the lawn, which only intensified Annie’s laughter.

Lena regarded the penis’s goofy face. It was funny. And so was Annie, doubled over with laughter, grasping helplessly onto the grass for her sunglasses. If Annie’s chortles were fizzy champagne, Lena’s were a vintage car engine sputtering a bit before roaring to life.

A voice floated up from somewhere deep within Lena. “Would you like to come in for coffee, Annie?”

Annie wiped her eyes with the back of her wrists. The invitation hovered between them like a balloon that Lena wished she could pop.

She’d been too forward, hadn’t she? Lena was so out of practice, but the way Annie gravely studied Lena’s house behind them—as if Lena had proposed becoming roommates instead of a warm beverage—wasn’t right either.

“I’m due at the school by ten thirty,” Annie said. “But for a little while, why not?”

Lena thought that Annie sounded disappointed in her own response, as if she had at her fingertips a million reasons why not, but had for some reason been powerless to use them.





CHAPTER THREE



“This is total crap,” Paul said.

Jen’s mouth had been open in formation of an apology to Principal Dutton, to Harper, to the entire school community for what Abe had done.

She shut it. Apparently, they were taking a different approach.

Paul sat next to her at the small conference table in Dutton’s office. A craggy blue vein pulsed at his temple. Across from them, Dutton blinked his watery gray eyes. White flakes covered the shoulders of his navy sport coat and Jen felt an automatic stab of embarrassment for him.