Karolina Waclawiak - The Invaders

I stared out the window and mouthed a low “No.”

• • •

Jeffrey still wouldn’t answer my question about where he had been all afternoon as we walked to Elaine’s. I was carrying a Tupperware container of cookies that I had found in the pantry. Keebler or whatever. Jeffrey wouldn’t let me take the Danish ones. He said they were his favorite. I would hide the cookies behind everyone else’s food and if anyone asked I would deny I had brought them.

“Something terrible happened,” I said once more.

“I’m sure we’ll hear all about it at Elaine’s.”

“Was a woman attacked?” I pressed.

“They said a teenager was attacked. A kid.”

A kid! A kid! Steven was no kid. I felt ashamed for being excited about his lingering look. He was a predator. An uncircumcised predator. Jeffrey looked at me as I worked to catch up with him.

“Why are you limping?” he asked.

“I hurt my foot earlier.”

He asked me where and I almost said the nature trail. I caught myself just in time. Instead, I said, “On the rocks, by our house. I’ll be fine tomorrow.”

“Look,” Jeffrey said.

I looked. Steven was standing hunched over with his mother farther up the street. His face was bandaged. I did that, I thought.

“Who knows if he just got in a fight with someone and doesn’t want to tell the truth?” I said.

“We should go talk to them. See what happened.”

“Don’t revel in someone else’s misery,” I said.

“You know that’s not what I’m doing.”

I felt Steven watching us. I could hear him saying “You want it” over and over again.

“Maybe he was asking for it,” I said.

“He’s a victim, Cheryl.” Jeffrey tugged at my arm and leaned in, breathing hot on my neck. “Get it together,” he said.

I looked up and Steven had disappeared with Fran into their house. I still felt his presence, though. And him watching me. I looked into all the windows of the houses we passed as we walked the rest of the way to Elaine’s house.

The living room was filled with people and they were already drinking cocktails. Elaine was wandering through the room in a caftan with a big turquoise flower in her hair, and I thought, Oh no, it was going to be one of those parties. The ones where she hoped everyone would drink too much and stay too late and it would be like old times. Key-party times in the early 1980s when everyone was still youthful and supple-skinned. When their children were young and could be tucked away quietly. When cocaine flowed freely. Later, when their marriages started fraying, they all started trying to behave, or tried to keep better secrets. I looked at them, some in their midsixties now, and tried to imagine just how wild they had been. I thought about the things that had happened in this room and how it was haunted with other people’s regrets. When I reached out for Jeffrey, he was already gone, working the room. I went up to the built-in bar, from when Harold was still alive, and the bottles were all still intact, the top ones dusty and with faded labels. I scanned the wall and wondered if alcohol got old, then grabbed for a bottle of vodka, slightly warm. I ignored the laughter around me and concentrated on slicing a lime wedge, and when someone brushed up against me, I pretended not to be alarmed, but I was. Everything was making me feel nervous and I hoped I didn’t still smell like bleach.

Rob Girardi was smiling like we hadn’t just seen each other the day before on the greens, like he hadn’t yelled at me from his cart to get moving because I was holding up the men.

“Where’s your better half?” he asked.

I waved toward the crowd of people. All couples — the Picards (always hoping), Mary Ann and her husband, Larry. Christine was there, too, with her doctor husband keeping her in check. Tuck was nimbly peeling away the skin of the figs on the paper plate in front of him, trying to make eye contact so that he could start a conversation with someone. His wife sat next to him, laughing and full of light. She was luminous with her silken blond hair and straight white teeth that positively glowed against her tan, freckled skin. Everyone looked at her happiness and wanted to absorb it. She must have been pregnant again. They were all sitting in pairs. Except for Debbie Picard, who was sitting on the arm of the three-seater sofa, too close to Larry.

“Somewhere in there,” I said, and Rob laughed.

“Heard he squared off with the town police today,” he said.

“The fishermen,” I added quietly.

“It’s bigger than those people,” he said.

He leaned in close. “Didn’t you hear?” he whispered, like he really wanted to warn me.

“No,” I whispered back. “What?”

“There was an attack.”

He nodded his head and clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Attempted murder, they’re calling it.”

“That’s absurd. I saw him walking. Just now,” I said.

“He was really messed up, wasn’t he?” Rob said, still clucking. “Irreversible damage.”

I almost said, It was probably just a few broken teeth, a cut above his eye. I could have done worse. But I kept my mouth shut.

Rob put his hand on my shoulder to steady me, to show his support.

“The family is beside themselves. Our whole community, naturally.”

He said things like “our community,” “how could this happen,” “used to be safe,” and “what was happening,” but all I could do was scan the room and look for Jeffrey. Rob made me sound like a monster, not someone trying to defend herself.

“It’s so terrible. It’s an unsafe world for everyone,” I said. “Did he say who did it?”

Rob didn’t say anything for a long while. He just looked at me and I felt flush again, dizzy, like I had said the wrong thing, the thing that was going to get me in trouble and get me caught, because I said it before I asked if little Steven was okay. Rob gripped my shoulder like he wanted to feel my pain and soothe it and then he told me that they had a suspect but weren’t sure, were still looking, and were sure it was someone from somewhere else.

He had hairy knuckles and he rubbed my shoulder with his hand. He told me it was probably a pervert who did it. He leaned in close and said, “The kid was half undressed.”

When he leaned in, I could smell the scotch on his breath. He told me the family didn’t want that part getting out, but that he knew he could “trust me.”

He looked me in the eyes long and hard until I pulled my face away from his. I felt a slap on my back and it was Elaine in her caftan, laughing.

“I’m going to have to pull the plug on you two soon,” she said, a little too forcefully. She thought she had a claim to all the men who were only tenuously linked with their wives.

Her lips were rimmed with a frosty lilac lipstick. She bought it at the Walgreen’s in bulk. It was called Amethyst Smoke. I knew because I always saw her pulling it out at the pool when we were tanning and she needed to reapply it. For moisture, she said. She had tubes of it loose everywhere.

“We’re just talking,” I said.

She snorted. “Almost had his mouth on yours,” she said.

Rob rolled his eyes and said, “I’ve got one at home.” He walked away, letting his hand stay on my shoulder for as long as he could, stretching his arm out long. No one wanted to deal with a drunk Elaine.

“Watch that one; he’s about to be in the middle of a nasty divorce,” Elaine said.

“Who isn’t?” I said.

“Not many right now, actually. Everyone’s trying to keep their shit together,” she said. “The economy is bringing back cohabitation.”

“I’m glad it’s for all the right reasons,” I said.