The Candy House(75)

“GET. OFF. THIS. PROPERTY!” Jules hollers at the top of his lungs. The sound ricochets between our two houses.

“I will not be screamed at,” Mom says fiercely.

“Let her stand there,” Stephanie tells Jules. “Who cares?”

“You’ve lost your mind, Steph. Why do you cut her so much slack?”

“Jesus Christ, Jules, we’re talking about a fucking fence,” Stephanie says, raising her voice for the first time. “The Middle East is imploding, you’ve got refugees trying to raise their kids under plastic tarps with no running water—I mean, there are conflicts over space in the world that actually matter, but our suburban split rail is not on the list.”

I listen to Stephanie Salazar and I worship her. Dad worships her. Her son, Chris, worships her, as does Lulu. Stephanie is a publicist for rock stars, but she should be a rock star.

“If more people respected each other’s fences, we wouldn’t have those problems,” Jules sniffs.

“I give up,” Stephanie says, and walks back toward her house. “Chris, Lulu, come on. We’re going in.” And they do. Stephanie doesn’t turn back around. She says she’s going inside, and she goes.

There is a long pause. Dad, Mom, and Jules stand like chess pieces in their respective positions. Finally, Dad says, “I’m going in too, Noreen,” and I dart back into the house ahead of him.

Dad sits in the study watching the eleven o’clock news but really waiting for Mom. I watch from the kitchen window as she and Jules face off in silence. They look eerie in the dark, like sculptures of people. Jules hasn’t moved any closer to Mom. He’s afraid of her. And she is afraid of him.

“There’s a sitcom version of this story,” I tell Dad. “We might even have seen it.”

“Sitcoms leave out a lot,” Dad says. “That’s what makes them funny.”

“What’s going to happen?”

“I don’t know, Hannah,” he says. “But I’m getting tired.”

By the time Dad and I call good night to Mom through the back door, Jules has gone inside. Mom is standing alone in the Salazars’ moonlit yard.

The next morning, Mom shakes leaves from her hair into the kitchen sink before she starts cooking our cheese omelets and making Brian’s and Molly’s school lunches.

“You slept in their yard?” Dad asks. “You lay down?”

“I dozed.”

“You’re lucky he didn’t call the police.”

“Felons don’t call the police.”

“Are you pleased with yourself? Do you consider this a victory?”

“You need not concern yourself any longer, Bruce,” Mom says, “with what I feel.”



* * *



Mom is suddenly very busy. There are no more non sequiturs about Jules Jones, but now and then a slight smile will drift onto her face when she flicks her eyes in the direction of the Salazar house.

“What?” Dad asks after one such smile.

“What?” Mom rounds her eyes in exaggerated innocence.

“I sense something afoot that may not be permissible by law.”

“Well, if that is true,” Mom says slyly, “and in no way am I suggesting that it is—aren’t you better off, as a lawyer, not knowing about it?”

One evening, after Mom picks us up from Girl Scouts (Molly), baseball practice (Brian), and Yearbook (me), she detours to one of the malls and says, “I need to grab something at Ace Hardware.”

“Can I come?” Brian asks. He loves Ace Hardware.

“I’d rather you didn’t, just this once.”

After a very long time, she emerges with an awkward, bulky bag wrapped so that we can’t see what’s inside it. She asks me to move into the backseat and places the bag beside her in front, with a seat belt around it.

“What did you buy?” Brian asks.

“Personal items.”

“So personal they need a seat belt?” I ask.

“That’s so the thing doesn’t beep.”

“You never tell us anything anymore,” Molly says.

“I never did,” Mom says. “You told me things.”

“We’re lonely,” Molly wails. “We feel left out.”

“Yeah,” Brian says.

Mom swivels around to face the three of us in the backseat. “The world is a lonely place,” she says. “I’ve never tried to hide that from you.”



* * *



A week after my AP exams, Mom looks out the back window during dinner and says, “He’s watching us.”

We all look out. The days are getting longer, and the sky is still bright. There are robins all over our lawn. “Where?” I ask.

“He’s inside his house, looking at us inside our house.”

“He doesn’t have the power to do that,” Dad says. “It’s not physically possible.”

“There may be machinery involved.”

Dad sets down his fork—the equivalent, for Dad, of rising to his feet and clearing his throat. “I feel like I’m losing you, Noreen,” he says. “Things aren’t getting done. The laundry is in a massive pile. I don’t have any socks.”