Karolina Waclawiak: The Invaders

We had met when I was working as the assistant manager of the men’s department at the Ralph Lauren store at the outlet mall off I-95. He had come in, bashful and cute, needing new dress shirts for work. I had never dated a customer before, but he was persistent. It had taken him months to work up the courage and then he wouldn’t let up until I said I’d have coffee with him. I told him it would have to be the food court because my breaks were short. After that, things went quickly.

“He left beer cans on the street! Extra-large ones.”

I told the dispatcher and hung up the phone as Lori stopped in front of the splatters.

“I was going to clean that.”

“It’s so difficult sometimes,” she said, clucking her tongue. She stared out at the rocks, at the fishermen sitting far out there. It still felt impossible that something like this could be mine, even secondhand.

“How can you stand them?” she asked.

“Who?”

“All those strange men sitting out there. I’d be so scared.”

She had lived in tiny towns, no-name places, married well, and ended up here. She made no secret of it. Everyone was a threat to the life she cultivated in this beach community. I stared out and watched the men fishing. They lived somewhere the highway led you to, away from here, somewhere women like Lori never ventured to. Her farthest trip was circling the crowded parking lots of warehouse-size grocery stores at the edge of town. The only news coming from the outside world lived on her television set with frequent reenactments of medium-size city gun battles that kept her and everyone else here huddled in their community.

“It’s disgusting,” she said. “When they need to use the restroom, they just go out there. They pee in the ocean. They do other things in the ocean, too.”

“I think it’s been established that peeing in the ocean is okay. Other stuff like what?”

“I suppose you’re fine with people peeing in the street, then.”

“Didn’t you just see me call the police?” I asked.

“Are you really going to make me say it, Cheryl?” She waited, then said, “Susan Humphrey told me she saw them pooping from her window.”

I shook my head in disbelief. She didn’t even know I was faking my shock, making fun of her just a little . I liked to get the ladies riled up sometimes, if only to feel a part of something. A collective outrage. It was only fair after so many “lost” invitations to get-togethers or watching all the girls grab a table together by the pool with no room for me to join in. These little hurts accumulated and I tried to get back at them in the smallest, most discreet ways possible. I didn’t know what else I could do to make myself fit in and I was finally tired of trying. Worn out, exhausted. Done in. Some people here looked like they just casually rolled out of bed every morning and got on the golf course, but I pressed my clothes, I made sure my hair always had a shine, I did the things that I learned over time were absolutely necessary here for me. When Mary Ann said orange was unflattering, I listened and threw out anything with an overly citrus feel. When Lori exclaimed that everyone had to take Pilates with the visiting instructor, Beth, or they truly didn’t get it , I did it. Yet it almost felt like the one time they had asked me to walk at the fashion show, it was out of pity. I had really given it my all. I had learned moves, I had practiced in front of Jeffrey, and I had even taken his suggestions. To not be asked back year after year was embarrassing. Now to pretend I was up for it and then snub me, well, it had taken all I had left. Jeffrey always said that if he saw my potential, they had to, too. He said it over and over again like it must be true, until he got tired of saying it. Maybe he stopped seeing my potential, too. Maybe I had been a bad bet all along. Why I still cared, I don’t know.

I stared at Lori’s big, watery eyes and knew I wanted to be her neighbor forever, no matter what nonsense came streaming out of her mouth. I had nowhere else to go.

“My children swim in that water,” she said. “No one should use the ocean as their restroom.”

Yes, I understood what she was saying, that I would never be able to comprehend what it felt like to have my own children swim in a sea full of feces. She was right. I only had a stepson and the idea of Teddy doing laps in a cesspool only made me feel slightly bad. And right now, if he was passed out upstairs, not bad at all.

“There’s a lot of pollution out there, with the boats and all,” I said.

“Clearly that’s a different situation. They belong here. Those people don’t belong here. Look what that man was doing. What he almost did to us. He could take it a step further and attack someone,” she said.

“We can build a fence, gate up the community,” I said, joking.

“You’re so right, Cheryl. A gate would raise property values, anyhow. You know what? I’m going to call a special meeting with the association. We have to get the dangerous element out of here. Think about the children.”

Everyone was always thinking about children. She looked at me with pity in her eyes because I was never thinking about the children, and that was a problem.

“We can think about it a little while before we call a meeting, maybe,” I said.

“The time to act is now. Before something happens, not after.”

“I don’t want anything to happen to any child, that’s for sure,” I said. “But maybe they’re just enjoying the summer.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Lori said.

I went back to the window. I stared at a family making their way onto the rocks. The father carried a white bucket, his two small children carried petite fishing poles, and they didn’t look dangerous at all. He just looked like he was trying to show his family something nice.

I called for Teddy again and got no answer.

“I should really go check on him,” I said.

She smiled and said, “What a nice surprise to have him here.”

“I’ll be right back,” I told her and walked up the stairs, feeling the doom of potentially finding an intruder, or something wrong with Teddy, and having to face Lori if she was still sitting in the kitchen when I came back down. Teddy’s door was ajar and I peered in and saw him sleeping naked on top of his bed. I hadn’t even had a chance to put sheets on. I closed the door as quickly as I could in case, god forbid, Lori had followed me up the stairs. I heard the door close as I walked down the stairs. I walked over to the window and saw her talking animatedly with Jeffrey, her swollen finger waving through the sky, his eyes following it. She went and picked up a can from where the man had dropped them and started waving that around, too. I could see her vigilante spirit awakening right then.

“Teddy’s naked and passed out upstairs,” I said as Jeffrey walked in the door. He had a thing about not hitting him with anything upsetting when he got home from work, but this was worth noting.

“What are you talking about?”

He looked back down at the mail, at the J. Jill and Eddie Bauer catalogs he was holding, and sighed.

I said, “I think it’s permanent.”

He stopped at a tattered envelope and pushed it my way, saying, “This one is returned mail for you. Who lives in Killingly?”

I stared at the letter, my handwriting, with a big red stamp demanding it be returned to the sender right there.

My mother. I should have never included my return address on my check for this very reason. I didn’t answer him; instead I just shrugged my shoulders.

“Are you going to check to see if he’s breathing?” I asked.

Jeffrey glared at me and asked what time he had gotten in.

“I don’t know what time he got in, but he was begging for drinks at the fashion show and then left the front door wide open like it was no big deal.” I walked toward Jeffrey. “I think this time it’s permanent.”