Good Neighbors(75)
The tiny diver hadn’t been able to get through. Her hips had been too wide. The hole was covered now, about to be filled. Shelly lost inside.
She called 911 using the 7-Eleven clerk’s landline. They tried to get her to stay on the line but she hung up. She needed to wake her mom before they arrived. Keep her calm so she didn’t wind up in a psychiatric ward again.
Back home. Through the park and back to her house, this time passing Rhea Schroeder, who was standing on her porch. She seemed completely normal. Calm and well dressed. “Hello, Julia,” she said.
Julia felt something like terror, only deeper. Something in her bones that screamed. “Hi, Mrs. Schroeder.”
She got inside. Her mom was up now. Bent over Larry. Julia backed up, afraid. “Is he?” she whispered. And then she was sliding down the side of the wall, the atmosphere on this strange planet too heavy.
“He’s breathing,” her mom answered. She was shaking with manic energy as she lifted him, put a pillow beneath his head. Larry wasn’t Larry right then. He was a doll that she moved, pale and inanimate. “Everything’s going to be okay. I’m the adult and I have this under control,” she said, but there wasn’t meaning attached to it. Julia understood then, that her mom was quoting some mantra she’d read in one of her child rearing books. She was winging it. She had no idea what she was doing.
“I called for an ambulance,” Julia said.
Gertie’s eyes were especially bright in the dark. They pierced. “Oh, thank God. You always do what needs to be done,” she answered.
The ambulance came. The neighbors watched from inside and from out. Only one person was allowed to ride along. So Julia told her mom to go ahead; she’d figure it out. She’d planned to ask Charlie’s moms for a ride, but lost courage when she got to their door. Didn’t ring the bell. Because maybe they’d call Child Protective Services. Accuse her mom of abandonment.
She went back inside her house. Threw away the bloody blanket. Showered. Changed. Packed a bag for Larry and her mom. Left a note for her dad in case he came home. It occurred to her that now might be a good time to stop and cry. But she didn’t want to do that. It was easier to keep moving. She started the three-mile walk to the hospital on her own.
116 Maple Street
Sunday, August 1
Arlo got Julia’s note. He tried to reach the hospital and Gertie by phone, but reception wasn’t clear. So he jogged back out onto the crescent. All the house doors in both directions were shut, the people inside. He could feel them watching him. They must have known what had happened. They couldn’t all have been ignorant of his son’s attack. The ambulance had probably been very loud.
He stuck up his middle finger. Waved it. Then got into the Passat.
Halfway there, he saw a kid by the side of the road. Awkward-looking, her short hair a wild mess, she lugged a canvas bag, straps looped around both shoulders in a makeshift backpack like a runaway. His first thought was of his own childhood. The world’s full of loveless urchins. But then he saw that the kid was Julia.
He pulled over. Leaned across and opened the door. Julia climbed in. He didn’t start driving right away. Just sat. He was reluctant to reach out to her. Maybe she’d heard all the bad things people were saying about him. And she looked so grown, all of a sudden. So adult. So they breathed, looking ahead.
“I feel very heavy. Lately, it hurts to walk. I’m afraid to go to the hospital. I’m afraid this moment is the last one where we’re still a family,” he said, though he knew he shouldn’t have. But sometimes you can’t hold things in. Because you’ve done that your whole life, and it builds up so much you think you might die.
“I don’t know if I told you this,” he said. “But when I met your mom I had nothing. For the life of me, I’ll never understand what she saw. She was so nice. The nicest person I ever met. I know it doesn’t always seem like it. I make mistakes. But you and Larry and your mom are the most important people, the most important everything to me.”
She eased to his side of the car and cried in his arms. He ran his hands down her short, wet hair, her pimple-picked neck and back. She was substantial in his arms. Grown. He’d been chipping by the time he’d been her age. Fighting a nascent addiction. When he’d looked at other kids back then, they’d seemed like a different species. He’d never imagined they had anything in common with him. He saw now that wasn’t true. All kids are fighting their own kind of war.
“You’ll hear some things about me. Maybe you have already,” he said.
“You didn’t rape my best friend. I know that,” she said.
“No. I didn’t.”
As he held her, cars passing, his head over hers, he cried, too. She couldn’t see his tears, but she was Julia, so surely she felt them.
NYU Winthrop Hospital
Sunday, August 1
Larry had suffered a concussion. This accounted for his lethargy. The Wildes were told they would have to wait for the swelling to go down to know whether the damage was permanent.
Gertie spoke with the police as soon as she’d arrived at the hospital. They returned a second time. In the waiting room, among strangers, she repeated the events of the previous day and left nothing out. They asked Arlo questions. He had a good alibi. After that, they asked if they could speak with the psychiatrist at Creedmoor who’d attended Gertie after the brick. She agreed to this.