Good Neighbors(51)

“Fuck that cunt Schroeder bitch,” she heard some crazy woman say, in a freakish baby voice. And it was her. She was that woman.

The kids hid behind the next hospital bed’s curtain, peeking out with wide eyes. Arlo stood a few feet back, hunched and making himself small. She knew that they would not remember the brick from this night. They’d remember the heart of their family going mad.

“Bee bee boo,” she said. “Shitty neighbors down the hole.”

The doctor got in her face. Whispered hard and urgent, in the way that women do to each other, when important things happen and children are involved. “Stop it! Right now!”

Wide-eyed and terrified, pleading for help as best she knew how, Gertie opened her mouth. “The hunters are coming. They take the children first!”

Another prick, and everything faded.





Creedmoor Psychiatric Center


Tuesday, July 27 Day

She woke up in a different hospital, in a room with a locked door. The guy who interviewed her was the chief psychiatric resident at Creedmoor, Queens’s version of a public madhouse.

She lucked out. The resident was better than the social workers from when she’d been growing up, or even the shrink who’d helped her process her baby blues. He asked her about her childhood and whether she ever hit her kids. If she’d lately considered hurting the baby in her belly. If she’d stayed on the medication her records showed she was supposed to be taking, which she had. Whether she and Arlo loved each other, or if she needed a referral to a family shelter for battered women. He asked her why she’d reacted that way, gotten so hysterical. She’d told him maybe his neighbors should get together and hit his pregnant belly with a brick in the middle of the night, and then he could call her hysterical.

Because she had a history of mental illness, and also because she was responsible for young children, he placed her on a thirty-six-hour hold. He’d check in again. If she was still rational, he’d release her.

Arlo came that night. She wanted to be strong; show him that she wasn’t crazy or damaged or any of those things. But as soon as he sat down in the chair beside her, she was weeping from the shame of it, the brick entirely forgotten.

He didn’t comfort her like she’d expected. Didn’t seem to have his usual sixth sense, to know that this time, she wanted to be held. “I’m so ashamed,” she said.

“I’m tired of shame. We didn’t do anything wrong,” he answered. Then he stretched out his arms. You had to look closely. They’d healed after all these years. But she’d seen him naked. He had track marks in other places, too.

“I feel like I did something wrong. I always feel that way.”

“I know that feeling.”

“Can the kids come? Are they here?” she asked. “I need to hold them.”

“Cafeteria.”

“They don’t want to see me?”

“Don’t take it personal.”

She cried more. Took a while to get hold of herself. He didn’t comfort her and she saw that he was exhausted. Body aching, not sleeping, marrow-deep exhausted. “Sit down next to me,” she said.

He shook his head. He was trying not to cry. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to stand back up.”

“Did I upset the children very much?”

“They’ll get over it,” he said. They both knew from experience that this wasn’t true.





Tuesday, July 27


It took a while, but she returned to herself. Her thoughts stopped spinning so very hard, and she stopped feeling so horribly frightened. When that happened, alone in that hospital with distance from the neighbors, she had time to think about the brick.

Arlo hadn’t just spotted a single psycho out on Maple Street. If that were the case, what happened might have made some sense. No, he’d spotted at least ten neighbors out there, all smeared with sticky oil to appear anonymous.

What kind of people commit such acts?

Did Maple Street truly believe that Arlo had raped Shelly? They could not. Physical evidence placed him elsewhere.

So what was going on?

She knew these people. Not just Rhea, but the rest of them. She’d seen them stay up all night to finish their kids’ science projects. She’d seen them get weepy over news reports about teen drug addicts and pediatric cancer and lead-contaminated water. They had date nights and took salsa lessons. They read popular fiction about the women’s movement, even the men. They’d gone to real colleges—the kind with ivy and real dorm rooms—and they aspired to send their kids to even better colleges. So how could people like that turn on her and Arlo, and by proxy, Julia and Larry?

She regretted moving to Maple Street. She’d been the one to push for it. Arlo’d wanted to buy an apartment in their old building. Stick with the kind of people they already knew. Nice people, but people so strapped they didn’t have the time or interest to self-improve unless you counted dieting and trying to quit smoking. She’d been the one to insist on Long Island. She’d had this idea that they’d be like undercover agents, learning the life secrets of the suburban middle class. They’d develop habits like them, and wind up with better jobs like them. She’d reasoned that even if she and Arlo weren’t comfortable with Maple Street, their kids would learn to be. Upward mobility was what counted.