Karolina Waclawiak - The Invaders

“He’s not hurting anyone,” I said.

“It’s okay,” the old man said.

“Lori, let him be,” Jeffrey said as he tugged my arm, trying to pull me away.

“We can’t bend the rules whenever we feel like it. There are ordinances, least of which is no dogs on the beach.”

“Cut the shit, I see yours there all the time,” Jeffrey shouted.

The man put his hands up and said, “It’s okay.”

Lori and the others turned their attention back to the old man. Lori pointed at his run-down truck and said, “We’re sorry. This is private property.”

They weren’t sorry, but the man nodded and said, “It’s been beautiful here for a long while. Thanks for the fish.”

He whistled to his dog to follow him and dropped his bucket in the bed of the truck, opening the door for the dog. He pulled out of the parking lot with a plume of exhaust as our neighbors watched, electric with their newfound power. I looked at Mary Ann, with her shoulders back and chest out in boast, and saw a flicker of shame on her face as she averted her eyes from me. Her shoulders curled down as she fixated on a pile of stray court clay. You are spineless , I wanted to shout as they turned and walked back to their houses.

“You’re taking this too far,” Jeffrey called out.

“This is about safety,” Mary Ann shouted, not bothering to look back.

Jeffrey shook his head and stared at our disappearing neighbors. We sat down on the curb, silent for a long time.

“What’s happening here?” he asked. “How’d it get to this?”

We sat there until the street lights came on and moths crowded the light.

“Cheryl, I’m unhappy,” Jeffrey said.

I had the sense that he had spent weeks drumming up the courage to say this to me right at this moment.

“I know you are, too. I don’t know why you have to keep pretending like everything is fine,” he continued.

“I don’t think everything’s fine. Do you want me to cry so you can see how not fine I think everything is?” I asked.

“I don’t know what happened, but nothing’s working anymore,” he said.

“I know this isn’t working, but it can,” I said.

“I just feel worse and worse about us. I can’t give you what you need.”

“How do you even know what I need?” I asked.

“It can’t be this,” he said, looking at me as if he was embarrassed that I had put up with the way things were for as long as I had.

I felt like I needed to stop this from happening somehow. I heard myself saying, “I can try harder.” Even though I didn’t think I would.

I even went as far as saying, “I can be better. We can get it back to how it used to be, you just have to want it.” Jeffrey looked straight ahead and nodded, like for a second he wanted to believe it, too.

Then he said, “I don’t think so.”

We got up and squared off. I didn’t know the right thing to say to make him wake up and be better. Where would I even go? Back to my mother? I had given him everything. Why was he the only one who got to choose the outcome? The lines on the asphalt were crumbling and cars were slowly driving by, weaving by us the minute their headlights picked up our lonely outlines.

“Is it someone else? Is that the problem?” I asked.

“It’s just you,” he said. “It just went away.”

“Get it back. Bring it back. You can’t just run away every time.”

“Do you think this is easy for me? Do you think I want to feel this way?” he yelled.

I didn’t know why he wanted me to feel sorry for him, for his position in this, but I did for a moment.

“You’re not thinking clearly. You need some sleep,” he said. “You can’t possibly want to stay in something so toxic.”

“Don’t tell me what I should think or want. I gave you everything.”

“That’s not a reason for anyone to stay,” he said, as if it were a fact.

The yelp of seagulls filled the air and I watched as a car came tearing onto the road, its headlights heading straight for us. I walked toward them.

“Goddamn it, get out of the road!” Jeffrey yelped. Then he jumped out of the way without reaching to pull me to safety. And the car swerved to miss me and drove through the metal fence of the tennis courts and straight over the clay, finally stopping at the net and rolling over. Jeffrey was standing against the curb as we looked at each other and then at the car, recognizing it as Teddy’s.

“What’s wrong with you?” Jeffrey asked me.

We ran toward the car together. The headlights were still on and illuminated the deep grooves in the clay, the hard silt spread everywhere, the lines pulled up by the pegs. We saw that the driver-side window was open and Jeffrey dropped to his knees. The mesh of the metal fence was imprinted deep in the clay and hurt my knees as I dropped down, too.

“Teddy,” Jeffrey bleated.

He reached his arms into the car and tried to make sense of the darkness. Smoke and clay dust was sifting through the air around us as the car stayed on.

He said “Teddy” again and again.

Finally, we heard a sound and I exhaled for the first time.

The association security guard rolled down Club Parkway toward us. The track lights on the top of his Dodge Neon glowed orange and he pulled into a parking space and then stepped out of his car with no sense of urgency.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Call an ambulance!” I shouted.

He pulled his phone from his belt clip as he trotted back to his car. Jeffrey kept reaching his hands into the car, trying to tug. I reached for Jeffrey’s arms.

“Jeffrey, you might hurt him,” I said.

“Don’t touch me,” Jeffrey said, and I pulled back.

We both leaned down and tried to peer into the car at Teddy. He looked like a trapped animal. We told him not to move. He had a cut over his eye and blood poured out over everything, turning the scene gruesome. I held onto his hand while Jeffrey got up and ran to the security guard, whose name, I think, was Pete.

“Teddy, can you hear me?” I asked.

He was young again in that car seat, the first time his face betrayed his feelings in a long time. He wasn’t pretending to be bad or good or adult. He was in there, mewling, scared.

“They’re coming to help. They’ll be here soon.”

“Did I hit anyone?” Teddy whimpered.

“No,” I said, hunched down low.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“It was an accident,” I said.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Jeffrey said, coming back behind me to comfort Teddy.

I clutched Teddy’s hand, my knees bruising on the ripped-up fence. I looked to see where Jeffrey was, but he had disappeared. I heard sirens and I knew Teddy heard them, too. I told him it would be okay soon, that they would get him out. I asked him what hurt as I rubbed his hand and he said, “I can’t feel you touching me.”

• • •

The club said the summer tennis tournaments might have to be scrapped because the courts were a disaster after the accident. Jeffrey had stayed silent about what we had talked about before the crash and I could only assume it was because he couldn’t possibly handle taking care of Teddy alone.

The impact had detached two nerves in Teddy’s right arm and rendered it numb and immobile below the elbow for the foreseeable future. He sat in bed or on the sofa staring out into the ocean each day, just silent. Simple things like putting on a shirt or pants were suddenly difficult. He would snap at any suggestions of help because he was making an attempt at going it alone. I told him things like you need us, we ’ re here for you , and other words of encouragement, but he only really said anything when we were going to and from physical therapy or the other specialists we had to see. And then it was just various words of disappointment and questions of when and how long .