Neighborly(58)

“I’ve been telling her that,” Doug says. “She might believe it from an unbiased source.”

Oh, his mother is plenty biased. Now from his dad, I’d believe it. That’s a man who doesn’t dish out compliments lightly. It’s funny how I used to like Melody so much more than Scott. I thought she had a sweet, gentle nature and got run over by Scott’s alpha maleness. I’ve actually come to prefer Scott. He can be an asshole at times, but he is genuine. I think Melody manipulates Scott, lets him be the bad guy and do her dirty work so she appears pure and sweet. Scott can be obnoxious, but Melody is wily. And Scott adores Melody. He never wants to see her upset in the slightest. If he feels we’ve done something, we’ll face his wrath, which is formidable, and with Crayola at stake, it’s a whole new level of walking on eggshells.

Melody leans in to Sadie and does a loud sniff. “Someone made a wee-wee in her diaper!” She looks over at Doug and me. “Shall I change her? It would be my pleasure.”

“Of course,” I say. “Thank you.”

I keep seeing Yolanda’s guarded face. No, not just guarded. Angry. I don’t know what could have made her look like that. Maybe she and the others are lulling me into a false sense of security, and they’ll roast me on a spit at my own barbecue. They’ve all been writing the notes together, a team-building exercise for the block.

How ironic that by wanting security for my family, I am the most insecure I’ve ever been in my life. Well, in my adult life, that is.

Melody swans back into the room, Sadie in her arms. “Ta-da! All fresh and clean.” Sadie’s beside herself, loving the undivided attention.

I’m overdue for a pump. I whisper that to Doug. “We’re going to get set up in the carriage house,” he announces.

“Can the little one stay with us?” Melody asks. She bounces Sadie. “Go on, tell them. Say, ‘I want to stay with Grandma!’” Sadie laughs.

There’s no refusing. I plant a kiss on Sadie’s head as I follow Doug out to the carriage house. Melody stands in the doorway, waving Sadie’s arm. “Come back soon! We’ll miss you!”

The carriage house has pine floors, a closet with a moth-fighting cedar floor, and a brass bed in the center of the room. That’s it. I find the minimalism refreshing in contrast with the main house. I get my breast pump set up and turn the dial. Doug putters around, hanging our clothes in the closet.

“Mom said she’s hoping to have some time just the two of you,” he says.

It jars me a little when he calls her Mom, like she’s my mom, too, like Doug and I are suddenly siblings. Melody asked me to call her Mom at the rehearsal dinner, the day before Doug and I got married. “You’re my daughter now,” she said, holding me in a long embrace that smelled of powdery perfume. I hadn’t yet realized her MO. I thought she’d helped me plan the wedding; I didn’t realize until afterward that she’d hijacked it. Everything was to her taste and specifications. While smothering me in words of support and love, she’d undermined me at every turn. She’d caused me to second-guess anything I liked, with comments like, “Your parents never had a wedding, did they?” or “The nicest place in Haines is a Sheraton.” In the end, she rendered me incapable of making a decision. Then she swooped in and made them for me.

“She’s hoping the two of you can get closer,” Doug adds.

I crane my neck to look at him. “Why?”

“What do you mean, why? You’re her daughter-in-law. She loves you.”

She loves Sadie, he means. She wants us up here every other weekend instead of once a month, but she hasn’t yet laid down the law. Until now, it’s been only hints. They like us on their turf, which was why I think they never argued for a guest room. That, and we were already way over budget just to get Crayola. Melody was the one who went to bat for the neighborhood, saying she’d never seen a better place to raise children. If she only knew.

“Stop tensing up around my parents,” Doug says, irritated. “They’re not doing anything to you. My mother couldn’t be nicer.”

There’s nothing I can say. He’ll never allow for the possibility that his mother’s niceness is a veneer, that it’s part of how she manipulates me.

It occurs to me that Melody and I actually have more in common than either of us would care to admit. When it comes to Doug, we’re both putting on acts.





CHAPTER 19

Showering in the carriage house’s claw-foot tub is no easy feat. The circumference of the tub is such that two thin white shower curtains are encircling and overlapping, and one always seems to be blowing in on me, wrapping itself around my leg like a cold, wet hand.

I poke my head out to check on Sadie in her car seat. “You OK, little one?” Arghh. I must have heard that term of endearment from Melody fifteen times yesterday before escaping to the privacy of the carriage house.

Sadie smiles up at me. She’s drunk on all the attention she’s been receiving, not to mention a whopping six ounces of breast milk this morning. Being in Fort Bragg has increased her appetite. Must be the bracing sea air.

She’s still in her fleece sleep bag, her arms free to wave but her legs zipped up soundly inside. As I watch her, she spits up a small bit of milk. She punctuates this with another smile, not remotely fazed by the unpredictability and mess of her bodily functions. I duck back behind the curtain.