Good Neighbors(45)

“I wasn’t as friendly with the people who stayed. They had their own clique. Their children all played together. Rhea was their Top Dog. I never got a bad feeling about her. She was always polite. Some people say that now, that she’d seemed dangerous. But I never saw that side [of her] and that’s not why I left…

“Would it have happened if the rest of us had stayed? I’ll bet they’d have felt more self-conscious. The brick thing wouldn’t have happened… And I suppose all the worse things after that wouldn’t have happened, either.

“They acted like good neighbors, but they weren’t. They’ve all written blogs and gone on chat shows and cashed in and I don’t judge that. Everyone’s doing their best in this economy. But there’s not a single account by any of them that they went over to Rhea’s house and asked how she was doing. Not a single mention that they offered to take care of Ella or drive FJ to lacrosse practice. Nobody ever invited Fritz for a beer. Even Linda Ottomanelli, who claimed to be Rhea’s best friend, never set foot inside that house. Not for the entire four weeks. Honestly, were any of them really friends?” —Anna Gluskin





Maple Street


Monday, July 26

In the hangover-like aftermath of the brick, the people of Maple Street turned inward. They went to work and cleaned their floors and paid their bills and neatly arranged the things that, over the long search for Shelly, had gone untended.

Those who’d watched Peter Benchley roll to 7-Eleven, presumably to call the police, and then return with an ambulance and three cop cars, had been surprised. Who would have guessed that Peter was so capable? And why would the Wildes need an ambulance?

They’d been appalled when thrashing and pregnant Gertie Wilde got wheeled out on a stretcher. What were the odds, throwing blind, that FJ would have struck anyone at all?

They’d watched the Wilde house after it emptied, too. Its lights stayed on and its front door open, though the family was gone. Peter Benchley got out from his motorized chair and crawled up the Wildes’ front steps, stumps shimmying, until he was at the top. He looked back at the crescent. House to house. Could he see them, watching him? They stepped back, out of the light. He reached high, got his hand on the knob, and closed the Wildes’ front door.

This small act of decency proved unnerving. An accusation, boomeranged back at its accusers.

More detectives—people named Hudson and Gennet—appeared early that next Monday morning before many left for work. They went door to door. We saw nothing, they said. We heard nothing.

We know nothing.



* * *




The children of Maple Street were not so sanguine as their parents. Their testimony had hurt the Wildes and they knew it. They thought about the things they’d said. The conversations they’d repeated. They’d used the word rape, hadn’t they? But was that a word Shelly had ever used?

Or had they invented it, to cure their boredom, engineering a summertime fantasy that they’d never imagined responsible adults would believe?

Through eavesdropped whispers, they heard about their parents’ greased faces, and Gertie Wilde’s hysterical shrieks inside an ambulance, and poor Julia and Larry, riding after in tank tops, shorts, and sleep-caked eyes.

The brick was a double insult, too soon on the heels of the first—Shelly’s fall. They had not yet caught their breaths. They wanted to mourn their missing friend. To digest that unless she’d perpetrated a great hoax, she really wasn’t coming back.

“Could we pretend I never told you?” Sam Singh asked his mom on the morning after the brick.

“It’s not your concern,” Nikita answered while her four other children buzzed, each tossing glasses and spoons and bowls into the sink. Even though the house had a “no shoes” rule, the floors were caked with bitumen.

“But it wasn’t true. Shelly lied. I only told you because you asked.”

Nikita was a busy woman, and this American culture was still new to her. It always would be. She hadn’t the tools to measure nuance here. That was someone else’s job. “Just be lucky he’s never been alone in a room with you, Sam Singh!… He hasn’t ever been alone with you, has he?”

“I don’t think so?” Sam asked.

Nikita visibly began to shake.



* * *




Charlie Walsh had an even harder time.

“Mom, you’ve got it wrong. Shelly was the one who went after Julia. Her family’s nice. She’s the nicest girl on the block. I like her. I’ve been over their house a hundred times,” he told Margie. She was sitting at the polished kitchen table, scrolling through a grant proposal for Habitat for Humanity.

“Can I tell you something?” Margie asked. “This is for grown-ups. It’s a grown-up matter. I know you think they’re good people. Maybe they are good people. But good people do bad things. That’s why it’s so awful.” Her tears had welled, as if from personal experience. “Look at what they come from. That song about heroin and cartoons. That’s a true story Julia’s dad sang, about his own life. That kind of history leaves scars, Charlie. It damages a person. Victims turn into predators… I know this from experience… Tell me the truth,” she asked, earnestly and for the ninth time, “has he touched your penis?”