Ben Winters - Bedbugs

Emma’s sobbing had subsided into a series of arrhythmic, pained hiccups; Susan squeezed her tighter and smoothed her pale hair.

“Did you tell her not to go down there, or did you raise your voice at her?” she demanded of Louis. “Did you touch her?”

“Oh, Lord, no,” Louis said, shaking his head, aghast. “Absolutely not.”

Andrea shook her head too, insistent, no no no . “Not Louis. He would not have put a hand on the child.”

“Not in a million years,” said Louis, shifting his stance and crossing his heavy arms across his stomach. Susan was not liking this — not one bit. This was the person who would come up to the apartment? To switch a fuse or unclog the toilet? Who would know what you’re supposed to do about gapping floorboards? She turned to Marni. “And where were you during all this?”

“I was right here. I was fighting with the stroller.” Marni fidgeted with the hem of her tight American Apparel T-shirt, looking like a child, ready to burst into tears. “She wandered away for two seconds, and the next thing I knew she was down there, and he was there. He wasn’t yelling. He wasn’t. He just spoke kind of, like, suddenly …” She glanced apologetically at Louis, who looked at the ground. “And I think that’s what did it.”

“You can’t let her wander away.”

“I know.”

“For any seconds.”

“I know. I’m really sorry.”

Susan fought to stay calm, knowing that getting upset would make it harder for Emma to regain her equilibrium. She turned back to Louis and forced a smile.

“Well, it’s not a big deal. I’m sure you didn’t mean it. Anyway, nice to meet you.”

Louis grinned, relieved. “Likewise. Any friend of Andrea’s.”

“Right. But can I ask you one more thing?”

“Of course. Anything you like.”

“Were you standing in the yard last Sunday night? Right after we moved in?” As she was asking the question, Susan realized how strange it sounded — strange, or accusatory. “Like, looking up at the bedroom window? For some reason?”

“No.” Louis shook his big head, and turned to Andrea. “I most certainly was not.”

“OK,” said Andrea, and Susan nodded. “OK.”

Louis retreated to the backyard, and the rest of them tromped in a ragged line to the top of the stoop, Susan hugging Emma to her chest, Marni struggling behind with the pile of dry cleaning and the other bags, the carry-strap of the collapsed strolled looped across her chest.

“Did you find Staubitz the other day?” Andrea called, a few steps behind.

“Yeah,” said Susan, not looking back. “I found it.”

From the top of the stoop, Susan peered over the side at the door that had been the source of the morning’s drama. It had a foreboding, dilapidated appearance, old and half rotted and probably laced with termites. The door itself didn’t look safe for kids, let alone whatever power tools and flammables were padlocked behind it. Whatever Louis’s story was, Susan concluded, it was a good thing he had warned Emma away from that door.

“Everything’s OK, my love,” she told her daughter again, feeling the wet warmth of the girl’s breath as she snuggled into her throat. “Everything’s OK.”

Once they were inside, Susan told Marni she could go ahead and get going.

“Susan, I am really, really sorry about that. It won’t happen again. Seriously.” Susan glanced at Emma, who had wiped the last of the tears from her eyes and was settled on a kitchen chair, flipping through an Elephant and Piggie book called I Love My New Toy .

“All right, Marni.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know you are,” Susan replied flatly, not ready to let the girl off the hook. “Thanks.”

A couple minutes after Marni left, Andrea was at the door, her headscarf retied and her big old-lady sunglasses pushed up over her hair. She was smiling sheepishly, a girlish affectation that was slightly ghastly on her age-lined face, and bearing an old-fashioned toy: a wooden stick attached to a rolling chamber full of little plastic balls that popped and danced when you pushed it.

Emma looked up immediately. “Is that for me?”

“First you say hi, honey,” said Susan, wearily. She’d had more than enough of Andrea for today.

Andrea laughed and handed over the toy. “Now, Susan, listen,” she said, “I feel just awful over what happened, I do, and I wanted to say again how sorry I am.”

“It’s fine, Andrea.”

“And for the record, Louis is a very good person. Absolutely a gentleman. He doesn’t look like much, but he gets the job done. You’ve got my word on it.”

Emma scooted past, pushing her new popper toy, howling with pleasure as the balls danced in the chamber. Susan smiled at her little girl’s happiness; Andrea, smiling too, laid a spidery hand across Susan’s upper arm.

“Now, isn’t that the most darling thing?” she said. “My Howard, he just loved toys. He used to buy old ones and restore them, then we’d give them out at Christmas to the kids in the neighborhood. He had all sorts of hobbies, Howard did. Toys. Trains. Civil War. A man of wide-ranging and restless intelligence, my Howard.”

“Sounds like he was quite the catch.”

“Oh, forget it,” Andrea growled with sudden sharpness, waving her hand angrily, as if dismissing an unpleasant topic that Susan had brought up. “We don’t have to talk about him. ”

Whoa , thought Susan. What just happened?

But just as quickly as the overlay of anger had entered Andrea’s voice, it disappeared, and the old lady grinned engagingly. “Anyway, I thought Emma would like the toy.”

On cue, Emma crashed the push-toy into the kitchen wall, squealed with delight, and executed a wobbly three-point turn. “Thanks, Andrea. It’s really very sweet.”

Andrea waved away the thanks. “Just one more thing. About the basement.”

“I know. Stay out of the basement. We got it.” She needed to get Emma her lunch and put her down for a nap. The truth was, Susan felt like she could use a little nap of her own.

“No, it’s just, I keep forgetting to mention. Go ahead and bring any biodegradable trash to the bottom of the stoop, or even just outside my door, downstairs. Fruit and veggie peels, eggshells, teabags, coffee grounds. I’ll take it down to the basement for composting.”

“Sure, Andrea. That’s fine.”

“And that’s just one more reason we want the little one to steer clear of the basement. Stinks something awful, it really does. Two big fifty-five-gallon drums of decaying trash. No fit playground for our little duck, right?”

“Right.”

After she had tucked Emma in for her nap, Susan paused at the window to close the shade and saw Louis on his hands and knees at the edge of the garden. He was hunched over and drenched in sweat, grunting with the effort of tugging free the weeds. She watched for a moment, to see if he’d look up, but he did not.

Susan tugged down the shade, whispered “good nap” to Emma, and shut the door.

Marni, no doubt shaken by Susan’s anger and thinking her gig might be on thin ice, showed up the following morning at 8:22 with a comprehensive vision for the day. “I thought, as long it’s still so hot, I could take Emma down to that park at the end of Atlantic Avenue, the one that’s got all the water slides and sprinklers?”

“Sure.” Susan smiled at Marni’s puppy-dog eagerness to please. She hoped she hadn’t been too harsh with her the day before.

“And we can get lunch out, if it’s OK?” Marni’s auburn hair was swept up in a thick pile on top of her head. “My friend Lucy, who sits for these twins in Park Slope, told me about this place right on Atlantic called the Moxie Spot, where you can get grilled cheese, sweet-potato fries, that kind of stuff.”