The Wrong Family(23)
On the days when they couldn’t bear to look at each other but could tolerate a walk together, Juno saw their real connection. She caught words, sentences—but mostly it was their body language that interested her. They were never more than three feet apart—even when angry. It was like they were connected by a rubber band with only so much stretch. She’d known couples like this, had sat them on her office couch for counseling. But none had ever interested her like these two. She told herself it was harmless, her fascination with them—like watching reality television. Wasn’t that what everyone was into nowadays? But somewhere deep inside, Juno knew it was more. They walked late in the evenings when the foot traffic at Greenlake Park had thinned out for the day and they wouldn’t have to share the path with a fleet of strollers. She’d never followed them after they left the park, because they were just that—her park family, something to be interested in other than her own tired problems. They had a child—a boy with wavy hair that hung in his eyes. During the week he’d join them, scootering ahead so fast they’d frantically call out for him to wait, but he wouldn’t hear. It was Juno’s opinion that he chose not to hear. That always made her laugh. Prepubescent boys had a way of wringing their parents’ nerves dry. They called him Samuel—never Sam—but Juno thought he looked like a Sam with all that hair and those big eyes that stared so intently.
How many weeks had she trailed them around the 2.8-mile loop, sometimes trotting to keep up with them, cursing their youth? It went from interest to obsession for Juno in a matter of days. She couldn’t sleep; she could no longer eat for fear of missing out on something. All Juno could think about was this family. For weeks she’d stopped near the utility shed and watched as they’d crossed the street and gone into a monstrous brick house on the east side of the park. Then, one day, just out of curiosity, she’d taken a peek into their mailbox, just to see their names. And there it was, right on a postcard from their car dealership reminding them to get an oil change: Winnie and Nigel Crouch. The names fit them well, Juno decided. Out of boredom, she’d Googled them on the library’s computer, a fat gray machine that hummed louder than she did, and found that Winnie currently worked for a nonprofit called None the Richer as coordinator for their fundraising events, while Nigel worked as a web designer for an athletics company called Wella.
Juno liked how the information made her feel. Like she wasn’t without all the things that made up a person: a family, a home, history. Just to hold theirs for a few moments left her heart racing. She wasn’t doing it again. No, that’s not what this was. She shook her head, narrowing her eyes at her own inner voice, that old liar. The last time, she knew she’d been wrong: she’d allowed herself to get too involved and it had cost her everything. But this time, she didn’t have anything to lose; this time, Juno could throw herself into the project. And the project was the Crouches, who needed her help.
She hadn’t decided to move in with them; an opportunity had presented itself and Juno had merely taken it like any person would. She’d needed a place to stay, and the Crouches had plenty of space—so much space in that monstrosity of a house. And yet they were adding rooms! She couldn’t believe the greed of it. For weeks she watched from the park as the crews arrived early in the morning and worked through the day. The workers would carry their lunch across the street to the park and sit under the trees, sometimes napping in the shade until it was time to go back to work. Once, they’d come to the same tree where Juno herself was napping.
“Oh, shit,” one of them had said. “She’s homeless. Let’s go sit over there,” and they’d ambled away to a different tree. Juno, who had pretended to be asleep the whole time, had rolled over to watch them. There were three of them: two looked to be in their early thirties, and the third—who was on the outskirts of the friendship but had clearly latched on—was just a baby. He can’t be twenty-one, Juno thought. He laughed at everything they said but a little too loud and a little too hard. She’d heard them call him Villy, as in “Villy, you dumbass” when he didn’t know who Chris Farley was, and “Villy, you punk-ass bitch” when he admitted to listening to Justin Bieber. Juno felt bad for Villy. She’d rolled up her sleeping bag and left it in the crook of the tree, and then she followed them back to the Crouches’ house.
She’d wanted to get a better look at what they were doing; it was just regular old nosiness, she told herself. To the workers she looked like nothing more than an old lady taking a walk down one of the more prominent streets facing the park. Old ladies wore sweatshirts and sweatpants in the winter, they waved at babies in restaurants and stopped to tell the parents, “Soak up every moment. It goes too fast.” So when she started sitting on the wall watching them work, they’d thought nothing of it. She waved at them some days, and they waved back. She’d asked one of the workers once about the addition, and he’d said they were adding a multiroom structure to the side of the house.
“Wow,” Juno had said dumbly. “Isn’t that nice. Must be expensive.” And he had looked right through her, as most young people did. For weeks she watched as they filled in the framing, then plastered the walls. They’d installed the wide window that would look out at the flowered backyard a few days ago. But then it was almost finished; any day now, the workers would pack up their things for the final time. Juno wanted to have a closer look before that happened, so around lunchtime she went to sit on the little wall across the street, the low brick one. She had a ham and cheese sandwich and an orange soda, and she swung her legs as she ate, kicking the backs of her heels against the wall and watching the last of the men leave for lunch. She noticed with satisfaction that none had stayed behind today as they sometimes did, probably on account of the good weather. She left her trash on the wall and gingerly crossed the street that ran parallel to the house. The addition was being put on the south side of the house, a compact limb jutting from the body. Juno gazed around. There was an old-fashioned lunch pail sitting in the corner, and someone had left a waterlogged John Grisham novel on the windowsill. She looked for more human touches but found none. Then her eyes found the double doors at the back of the room.