Karolina Waclawiak - The Invaders

I looked at myself and thought, This is you, Teddy. This is all about second chances, right, brother? You’re on a game show and this is you getting your shit together. I made fierce faces at myself in the mirror to show that I meant it. The numb buzzing was hitting hard and I went into the shower, closed the glass door, and stood under the water. I opened my mouth to let it all in. I wanted to drown in it.

CHERYL

I PASSED THE TENNIS COURTS and listened to the pop of tennis balls hitting racquets — percussive pop pop pops as tanned arms swung back and forth in perfect unison — and followed the one-way road back toward the water and my home. At the Hughes’ house—“Bay Hoovs Us”—Lori was bent over picking out weeds from around the Petite Lizette heirloom roses she had strategically placed all around the perimeter. I was surprised she wasn’t ordering her gardeners to do it.

“Oh, Cheryl!” Lori shouted.

I waved hello and took note of her new personalized license plate — LOVE 40. Her obsession with tennis was unparalleled in this neighborhood. Despite that, she was short and round and always seemed unhappy. Once she even confided in me that she was lonely. Who wasn’t? Her husband was a partner at a top New York law firm. What more could she want or need? I tried to extricate myself, worried about what Teddy was doing in the house, but she was not interested in letting me go.

“Why weren’t you at the fashion show?” I asked.

“I went to the VIP preorder.”

I didn’t even know about the VIP preorder.

“Hey, Mrs. Hughes, do you still need me to watch your dogs this weekend?”

We both turned around and saw Steven walking toward us. Lori seemed taken off guard. She said, “Didn’t your mother give you the message? We aren’t going away after all.”

I sometimes played doubles opposite his mother. He was handsome with deep-set eyes and thick dark hair. I lingered too long looking at his muscular arms and broad shoulders and he kept his eyes on me long enough for it to be noticeable. I blushed at the attention. He was a child, really, even if he didn’t look it.

“That sucks.” He looked at me, momentarily embarrassed, then said, “Sorry.” He smiled and asked: “How are you doing, Mrs. Willard?”

“Fine. Fine. Are you working this summer?” I asked.

“Nah. Taking the summer off. Hey, you take any pictures of those sunrises you watch?”

“No,” I said, startled that he knew I was pacing the streets each dawn.

“Too bad. I bet you’d get some great ones.” He said good-bye and walked away.

Lori gave me a look. “What was that about?” she asked.

“Sometimes I get up early and take a walk. I didn’t think anyone was paying attention,” I said, watching him go. I’d never seen him on the street before and I wondered when he’d seen me. Who else watched me pacing the streets under the lamplights?

“Don’t hire him to do anything because he’ll rob you blind,” Lori said. “He ate all the cookies in my pantry. Crackers, too. I bet he had a party.”

“They all do,” I said.

“Some are worse than others. And he’s one you have to watch out for. Do you know they had to pull him out of school? For good this time.”

“College is hard, Lori. I didn’t have an easy time of it, either.”

“Apparently, he was having ‘issues.’ I wonder how Fran’s going to whitewash this episode.”

Steven’s mother, Fran, had become increasingly protective of him. He used to wander at low tide for hours looking for oysters to sell around the neighborhood, smart and entrepreneurial from the get-go. He was the kind of son you wanted to have because he was going to be someone special. Except something had happened and he stopped getting things right. His deviancy was overlooked at first, but it had been snowballing lately. He had locked two seagulls in his mother’s bathroom last summer, and when she came home, they attacked her — squawking and shitting everywhere. She ran out of the house screaming and the birds followed her out the front door. I chuckled thinking about it — Fran’s own starring role in The Birds .

“The school saw him as a threat,” Lori whispered. I asked her to whom, but she had no answer. I knew she had heard it thirdhand.

“He also went through my closets.”

“Maybe he just wanted to see how he looked in your tennis skirts. I’m sure he has nice legs.”

“As if you need more men in your life when you’ve got Jeffrey.”

I was always hearing these indictments from women around here, but they had no idea. I had resigned myself to nodding politely and pretending I was ravaged nightly or at least weekly. Once I even heard someone say, I wouldn’t mind having his slippers under my bed. I wanted to shout at them all, tell them the truth, but what could I say? There was no need to embarrass myself in front of them. They wouldn’t show me any kindness about it; it would just become drunken dinner-party conversation to make themselves feel better. It would start with, Can you believe after all that they don’t even screw? How sad , they would say in unison . How sad is she? I didn’t need their pity, so I kept it to myself. Except sometimes, looking around, I wanted to tell someone and not hear This was your choice.

“I’m not saying I’m going to do anything with him, Lori. I’m saying he’s handsome.”

“You’re terrible,” she said, laughing.

She watched him disappear around the bend and I knew what she was thinking, even if she didn’t want to admit it. We were both thinking it. Even if it only flitted through our minds for a moment, the shame came right after it, hard and fast. But the attention, even if just a passing glance, was thrilling and I held on to it. I stared at the bumper of her car, at the placard that said FOR GOD, FOR COUNTRY, AND FOR HARVARD, and started to inch away from her fence when she said, “I need to talk to you about your tree.”

“Oh, Lori. I’ve been meaning to talk to Jeffrey about it,” I said as I turned away quickly. But I could not shake her; she squared off in front of me, pointing at the tree that overlapped our yards.

“I don’t think you understand the severity of the situation, Cheryl. The tree is dead. Another big storm and it’s going to fall on my house.”

It was conversations like these, the starts of conversations like these, that made me wonder why people couldn’t just be happy here. Instead, I listened to endless conversations about shrubs a few inches too high, saw neighbors on alert and busily notating where dogs were defecating, devoted hours to committee meetings regulating everything, and now it was a tree with a bit of a lean. It wasn’t even dead. We had checked. I had wormed my way into this neighborhood, thinking it was a place where people spent their time playing tennis and having after-golf drinks, where everyone felt lucky every day. How could you not in a place like this? Instead, Lori Hughes tried to muscle me into cutting down the one thing in my yard that had been there longer than anything else. I think it was actually protected. I didn’t think we could cut it down even if we wanted to. I could have ended up somewhere less exclusive but with more varied paint hues. Even somewhere as offensive enough as to allow vinyl siding. I could have ended up somewhere where people had good reason to be unhappy. It’s not as if Lori had to live next to people who were constantly adding on to their house. How many cars did one have to fit in one’s garage? The incessant drilling and sawing and banging were enough to drive anyone insane.

We heard a crash and turned around and stared at our middle-aged neighbor, Tuck, teetering half off his bicycle. Khaki shorts, Top-Siders, and a fraying, faded polo shirt. He was bent over, looking at his leg, which sported a fresh cut, a trickle of blood.