Good Neighbors(7)

“Let’s look it up!” she’d said, because at the time, she hadn’t known how to use an oven, either.

A boyfriend hadn’t been a part of her plan. She’d always pictured her future as an empty room, clean and bright; filled only with ideas and the long-distance adoration of colleagues. She hadn’t imagined sharing her time with anyone but her dad. Not when she had so much important work to do.

But plans change. Careers crash and burn. She’d been so lost. Then along came Fritz: a brain in a box with occasional human urges. Unobtrusive but breathing. The perfect choice.

As a person, he had peccadilloes. He needed his shoes to be arranged in specific directions, and he couldn’t stand tags in his shirts, and he had an earwax buildup problem, except he hated the sensation of Q-tips, so he used steamed washcloths. He ate whatever random items he found in her cabinets, including tuna out of the can with his fingers. It grossed her out so much that she learned to cook. When she bought clothes for herself, she bought new khakis and tagless shirts for him, too. It’s nice to do things for other people, especially when they return the favor with wide-eyed gratitude. Besides, she’d had plenty of peccadilloes of her own. She’d just been better at hiding them.

About a year into dating, Fritz accepted a high-paying job formulating perfumes at the BeachCo Laboratories in Suffolk County. Sugary-smelling stuff with names like Raspberry Seduction and French Silk for the low-end Duane Reade market. She’d suggested marriage, even though she’d known that it wasn’t right between them. They weren’t close in an emotional way. Didn’t confide in each other or talk about their upbringings. For instance, he had no idea about The Black Hole, or the murk, or the accident that had ruined her career.

Still, one evening he took her to the top of the Space Needle. Led her to the edge. “Even around people, I always feel separate,” he’d explained without looking her in the eyes. “I’m lonely with you, too.”

Her gag reflex had triggered. Was he dumping her? Didn’t he know that without him, she had nothing? She’d seen him standing there, looking scared, and it had taken a great effort of self-control not to shove him right off the ledge.

He took the small, princess-cut ring out of his pocket. “But you take care of me. No one’s ever done that. I’m a limited person. I think this is the best it will get,” he’d said. “And I do love you.”

“You know?” she’d answered with total surprise. “I think I love you, too.” By then, tourists were watching, clapping. So they’d kissed.

The wedding was at the justice of the peace. No honeymoon. Just a flight to Long Island. She never got around to unpacking the box that contained the pieces of her unfinished book, because by then, she’d been pregnant with Gretchen.

In her pre-Fritz life, she’d debated abstruse theory with Ivy League geniuses. Now, she spent her days on Maple Street, alone with babies. These babies often cried. Sometimes she didn’t know why. She didn’t speak baby. It got hard. All that stuff she’d always thought was stupid, destructive female fantasia—stuff like friends and hugging and hot sex—she found herself watching Terminator and Starman and The Abyss, wishing she had it. Wondering what was wrong with her, that she didn’t.

Fritz spent the time building his career. He only showed up on weekends and when his family visited from Munich. When he and Rhea were together, they cheered soccer games and dropped kids at the mall and paid bills in perfect agreement; partners who know each other like the lines of their own hands. But it was all surface. No laughs, no confidences, no companionship.

It was so lonely.

The first ten years, she cried a lot. But she kept it a secret, a hidden shame, because she was sure that her lackluster marriage was evidence of her own inadequacy. If she confessed her loneliness to Fritz, he’d know the truth: that she was messed up. He’d divorce her. His lawyer would unearth the accident. Everyone would know why she’d been fired from U-Dub. All of Maple Street. They’d look at her and see right through her. They’d know everything. Unthinkable.

And so, she dried her eyes. She buried her loneliness so deeply that she lost the knowledge of it. She stopped seeing it.

The following decade, she transformed herself into everything a suburban wife and mother ought to be. She organized all the block parties and made it her business to befriend every new addition to Maple Street with a basket of chocolate goodies and Fritz’s newest perfume. She volunteered at the kids’ schools and raised funds for iPads and art teachers. She resolved arguments and reported bullies. She sent out annual family Christmas cards with the Schroeders in matching sweaters, adopted class crayfish, and stayed up late most nights with her daughters, because one of them invariably had a crisis.

She worried about Gretchen’s perfectionism, and Fritz Jr.’s shyness that he used to medicate with food and now he medicated with other things. About Shelly’s instability, and Ella’s stutter, which had since resolved. Four kids is a lot. But she did it well. She raised them popular and healthy and smart. Teachers complimented her. So did neighbors. She dressed like she was supposed to, in Eileen Fisher, and she cooked nutritious foods, and she kept her figure acceptably trim. She looked the part until she felt the part. Until she was the part.

Once her youngest started grammar school, she picked up work as an adjunct professor, teaching English Composition at Nassau Community College—the only job she’d been able to get after the stain on her record.