Good Neighbors(58)

118 Maple Street


Wednesday, July 28

Night. Far past time to sleep. A knock came. Rhea Schroeder did not say, Come in.

“Are you there?” Fritz called through the old, thin wood. All this time in America, and he still had an accent.

Rhea was in her office, unmarked papers heaped in piles. She turned the volume down on The Black Hole, playing off an old VCR in the corner. The one from college, that she’d brought with her to every place she’d ever lived.

“Rhea?” Rhee-a, he said, had always said, making that first syllable especially long. But he so rarely spoke her name that it shocked her.

The room was dark, lit only by the TV light. He wasn’t often home, and when he was here, he never came to this place. She fiddled with Shelly’s Pain Box, which she’d been trying to pick with an unbent paper clip for hours on her lap. So late in the day, her fingers had lost their dexterity.

She crossed the room. Put her hand on the door, turned the lock inside the handle, so he couldn’t get in. She felt panicked, though she couldn’t explain why. Would he care that she’d gone through two bottles of wine tonight? Was this about the brick? Or Shelly? She didn’t want to talk to him about those things. He had no business offering an opinion, knocking on her secret place.

She could see the shadow of his feet beneath the sill of the door. He ran his hand, skin on wood, so specific and so similar to the sound of night rain. “Yes. I understand,” he said at last. “I’ll leave you.” And then footsteps; his thick leather loafers, walking away.

In the dark, she returned to her chair, her lockbox, to her Black Hole. The paper clip caught, then lost the catch. On-screen, it was at the part in the movie where the good guys discover that the captain of the spaceship has lobotomized his own crew and turned them into slaves. They’re not robots after all. She wished her dad were here to watch with her. Imagined him in the chair beside her. Willed it.

She’d been having fun that day at the Hungarian Pastry Shop, the café all the smart kids frequented. Close enough to graduate-student age that she could have passed for one.

All nine of them had been talking about the panopticon when this second-year PhD, Aileen Bloom, had started babbling about Bertrand Russell. There’s a troublemaker in every class. They can’t abide authority figures, or they care so much about the subject matter that they self-destruct, or they simply have bad personalities. Aileen Bloom was all three.

Aileen had this idea that no educated person could believe in God. Politely, Rhea had offered the counterargument: intolerance works both ways. When that hadn’t worked, she’d shut her down, which had been easy, because Rhea knew her Bertrand Russell.

The rest of them left to get the fresh babka that had just come out of the oven. She’d thought the argument was over. But then, red-eyed with fury, Aileen had scooted her chair close to Rhea, like they hadn’t been teacher-student at all. Like this was the schoolyard, and Rhea was still that awkward, scrawny kid who hid in hallways to avoid recess. Who called home from the office every chance she got. Once in a while, she’d caught her dad when he wasn’t at work but had stayed home sick. He always came when that happened. He’d drive her back home, car swerving. They’d always napped together on the couch the rest of the afternoon, watching old sci-fi.

“This is about your father,” Aileen had said, fast, so no one else would hear.

Rhea had stared down at her beer. The noise in the café had been so loud that she’d wondered if she’d misheard. “What do you know about my dad?”

“Everybody who clings to this fairy tale of an all-supreme being—it’s always daddy issues.”

Rhea had looked away, trying to hide her full eyes.

“I don’t care that you’re my teacher. I’m older than you anyway. Just be honest and admit that there is no God. He’s dead.”

“My father was perfect,” Rhea had answered.

Aileen had looked at Rhea askance, like there was something wrong with her. She’d unmasked something broken in her teacher that she’d craved to see.

The students getting their babka returned. Aileen excused herself, and then Rhea did, too. And then, somehow, she’d kicked in a door. Sprained her knee against it. The face on the other side hadn’t looked right.

Rhea’s knee burst with pain now, just remembering. Or perhaps she’d been hitting it with the Pain Box, that was why. Somehow, more than an hour had passed since Fritz had come knocking. The Black Hole had ended and started anew. It was at the opening credits, the John Barry overture wild and foreboding and even cheerful. After Star Wars and 2001, America had been so excited about things like gravity boots and rotating hallways, a future of space stations and galaxy exploration. They’d expected such great things.

She put Shelly’s box in her desk. Pain shooting through her bad knee, she got up and she shut the door behind her. Let The Black Hole keep playing in there, by itself. A loop upon a loop upon a loop.

Dishes had piled up in the kitchen. She’d cooked pasta with butter tonight, left it on the table for them, and retreated into her office, like she’d done most nights since Shelly. The house was quiet, the heat oppressive. Circulars and newspapers, letters of condolence, had all fallen to the tribal Persian rug. She’d bought it for the authentic indigo, so much more subtle than the typical methylene.