The Candy House(74)

“Yes, you can, Bruce,” Mom says. “You’re saying it too much right now.”

They stare at each other. Then Mom turns and walks out the back door into the garden. Dad returns to my SAT, pretending not to care, but he can’t pull it off. He goes to look out the kitchen window, then strolls briskly through the back door—the equivalent, for Dad, of taking off at a sprint. Through the kitchen window, I see that Mom has jumped the fence between our yard and the Salazars’ yard and is standing on their lawn. Her platinum hair shimmers in the dark.

“I’m over the property line, Bruce,” Mom calls. “What’s going to happen?”

“That’s not up to me,” Dad says from our side of the fence. “You are beyond the scope of my protection.”

“You weren’t protecting me in the first place.”

“I protect you in ways you’re hardly aware of,” Dad says, “but I can’t protect you from yourself.”

I duck away from the window at the sight of Stephanie Salazar coming outside, but I can’t resist creeping out our back door and crouching behind Dad’s grill, with its floppy rain cover. Stephanie has short black hair and looks nothing like the other moms. A few months after the Salazars first moved in, she became doubles partners with Kathy Bingham, the High Priestess of Bitches. They did a lot of winning until Bennie Salazar moved out, at which point Stephanie and Kathy stopped being doubles partners and also stopped speaking. That led to whispers about whether Kathy had played a part in the Salazars’ breakup, but the whispers were very quiet because (according to Mom) no one wants to risk having Kathy rub them out.

Then came last year’s singles match between Stephanie and Kathy for the 2006 Ladies’ Championship at the Crandale Country Club. The match took almost five hours. Every game went on forever; every set went into tiebreakers that required tiebreakers themselves to be broken. Eventually, scores of people gathered from all over the club to watch. When Kathy finally won, Stephanie dropped onto the court with her face in her fists and let out an animal howl and then began to sob. To everyone’s wonderment, Kathy went around the net and knelt beside Stephanie on the clay and put her arms around her—something nobody could believe and later thought they hadn’t really seen; it must have been a trick of the twilight. But it happened: I saw it. Kathy pulled Stephanie onto her feet, and they walked to the locker room together. After that, they were doubles partners again. They haven’t lost a match.

“Hi, Noreen,” Stephanie says, crossing her lawn toward Mom in a friendly way. “Everything okay out here?”

“I’m just making a point,” Mom says.

“Well,” Stephanie says. “It’s a beautiful night.”

“True,” Dad agrees from across the fence, and it is true: The sky looks dark and clear, and everything smells fresh from a rainstorm earlier in the day.

“Your lilacs are going crazy,” Stephanie tells Mom. “God, that smell—I wish I could live in it.” She’s good at handling Mom—but is she handling Mom, I think, or just being nice?

“Thank you,” Mom says, and begins edging back toward the fence.

Just then the door to the Salazar house flies open and Jules, the felonious brother, bursts onto the lawn with Stephanie’s son, Chris, and a little girl named Lulu who’s staying with them for some reason. Jules hasn’t changed since I saw him on our doorstep two years ago: He’s pale and overweight, his button-down shirt untucked. He looks normal except for his eyes, which are frantic.

“What are you doing out here?” he asks Stephanie. “Why is she on our property?”

“We’re discussing the lilacs,” Stephanie says.

“She’s standing on our lawn. There is no reason for her to be doing that.”

“Noreen,” Dad says, “why don’t you—”

“Get off our property,” Jules orders Mom. “Now.”

Stephanie wheels around on her brother. “Don’t speak to her that way, Jules! She’s our neighbor. Jesus.”

“It isn’t your property,” Mom corrects Jules. “It’s your sister and her husband’s property.”

“Actually, we’re divorced,” Stephanie says. “So it is my property.”

“I’m her brother,” Jules says. “Get off.”

“Jules, stop it!”

“There is no sibling resemblance between you,” Mom says.

“She’s crazy,” Jules says to Stephanie. “You’re letting a crazy person stand on our lawn. Why?”

Dad and Stephanie approach Mom from opposite sides of the fence. “Noreen, please come back over,” Dad says, and I hear in his voice the anxiety he gets when he thinks laws are about to be broken.

“I apologize for my brother’s rudeness,” Stephanie says.

“He’s rude, but he’s right,” Dad says.

“A sane person!” Jules cries. “Thank you!”

“You’re hopeless,” Mom tells Dad.

“Noreen, is there something you need over here?” Stephanie asks, and I realize that she is handling Mom, and what makes her so good at handling Mom is having to handle her brother on a daily basis. “Because if not, I think Jules would be more comfortable if you—”