Good Neighbors(76)

When all that was done, they were told that they could see Larry, but no more than two people at a time. The Wilde family heard this. They were in so much trouble already that they didn’t care. The hospital was busy. No one noticed. They sneaked Julia in between them.

They gathered in his room. He’d been struck with something sharp and hard. It had cut a flap of his skin open along his forehead and upper brow. He had an intravenous tube to keep fluid moving through his system so his brain stem didn’t swell.

Gertie was glad to see that his eyes could focus. When he’d first woken, they’d goggled.

They didn’t say much. Just showed him all the green clothing that Julia had packed, and talked about how lucky he was to get an unlimited supply of lime Jell-O. Then they sat on the bed, careful not to disturb him. They breathed in and out in time. As if matching him, trying to be him, and carry his pain. This didn’t last. They were too different.

For a long time, Gertie had blamed herself for Larry. Worried that she’d eaten the wrong things while pregnant with him, or been too stressed out. She’d yelled too often and tweaked his nervous system in the wrong direction when he’d been little, or she’d not been affectionate enough and because of that he couldn’t connect with others. After the accusation, she’d even worried that Arlo had done something to him.

But now, Julia’s homemade Robot Boy in his arms, vigilant and cheerful despite his heavy eyelids, she saw that he was the perfect incarnation of all of them. A misfit, who never stops trying.



* * *




They talked quietly in the car on the ride home. Julia was in back, but these things couldn’t wait until she was someplace else.

Gertie told Arlo her story about the photos of brush bruises, about the bricks and the state of Rhea’s house. She told about leaving her shoes behind. That the evidence she’d worked so hard to get was now gone, though she hadn’t been sure it would have proven his innocence anyway.

It might have been Rhea who’d sneaked in during the night. But was Rhea strong enough to cause such damage? It might also have been Fritz or FJ, or anyone else from Maple Street. Why they’d picked Larry to retaliate against was anyone’s guess. Perhaps, on the ground floor, he’d just been closest and most convenient.

They kept driving. The closer they got to Maple Street, the less they talked. From her slinked-down position in the car, Julia could only just see blue sky and green trees and an airplane flying too close to the ground, its engine rumbling.



* * *




At 116 Maple Street, they packed their belongings. Enough for a couple of days. They’d decided to go to that Motor Inn in Hempstead. They closed their windows. They passed under the crystal chandelier that Gertie loved so much because it reminded her of the convention center in Atlantic City, all rainbows and light. They took their favorite things from the small bedrooms and the bathrooms with real tile, and they passed the squeaking stairs they’d loved so much because they’d never had stairs before. Never had a house before.

They looted the fridge, grabbing the stuff they could microwave at the extended-stay, plus apples and frozen cherries. They took the gun. They locked the door behind them. Julia took the back seat again. She slunk down again, too, so that all she could see was sky.

Arlo and Gertie packed the trunk. It hurt her back to move but she did it anyway. As they packed these things up, the patrolman left the block. After that, the neighbors began to appear. They didn’t come out of their houses. They were too cowardly for that now. They brushed aside curtains and peered through windows, no breeze on that unbearably hot Sunday afternoon.

Arlo glared from one house to the next, trying to catch a single eye. The Walshes, the Harrisons, Pontis, Schroeders, Singhs-Kaurs, Hestias, and the Ottomanellis. Unabashed, they met his gaze. The people of Maple Street. They’d won. He and his family would never come back to this place they’d dreamed about. This place that was supposed to be their golden ticket. Maple Street had deemed them not good enough. And now they were gloating about it.

You reach a certain point, and there’s no going back. It’s a place so hot that logic breaks down.

“I could kill them,” Gertie said, and that was all he needed.



* * *




The safety was on. That was the important thing to keep in mind. He hadn’t wanted to hurt anybody; he’d just wanted to scare them. Because he’d finally understood what they wanted. This wasn’t about Shelly. It wasn’t about rape. It was about his tattoos. It was about Gertie’s accent. It was about Julia, stealing those Parliaments, and Larry’s Robot Boy. It was about their crappy lawn, and their Slip ’N Slide, and the ludicrous music of a has-been.

He and Gertie had dared try to become one of the All-Americans. They’d had the audacity to move to Garden City, and for that all of Maple Street had wanted to punish them. To tear up their family. To erase them. They’d won that. Arlo was ready to surrender. If that was all they wanted, he might have left quietly. Sold 116 at a loss, taken the family, and never come back.

But now that they had their hooks in, they wanted more than erasure. In order to prove themselves right, to soothe their own guilty consciences, they wanted the Wilde family’s total evisceration. They wanted Julia in foster care and Larry dead. Gertie in a mental institution, the baby wrenched from her belly and delivered to strangers. Arlo back in jail and on the needle, because nothing else was left.