The Invaders (24 page)

“How did you know I watched you?” I said.

She turned to me and her hair fell onto her lips and she stared at me, real deep, and I turned away.

“I saw your car. Then you,” she said. She looked down at her smooth legs.

“Why didn't you let me in?” I said it as a joke, but she considered it.

“If I knew that you'd stop showing up, I would have.”

And then what, I wanted to say. And then what? The breeze picked up her short white dress and I could see a flash of flesh-colored underwear. Full fabric—I was curious why she didn't wear thongs like other girls. Maybe it was an age thing.

I reached out and slid my fingers under her underwear and let my skin touch hers and felt the goose bumps rise. She let me touch her for what felt like minutes. She was smooth and soft, and when I pressed down I could feel the muscles she got from hours of playing tennis. She felt spectacular. Jill slid away from me and sat back down and put her
hand over mine. We stared out at the sun until it was nearly gone. This was the best I was going to get.

She turned and smiled at me, then said, “Do you think they're finished playing yet?”

I said, “Maybe you should just go over there now.”

She looked at me a little hurt, but we were now both aware that nothing was going to happen and that this wasn't fun anymore or cute. I wasn't sure what she was expecting, maybe for me to start showing up again, hiding in the jungle gym, hoping to get a glance of her. She got up and brushed off her dress, then put her arms out again as she moved over the crab carcasses and broken pieces of clam shell.

“I'm sorry about what happened to you,” she said. She touched my arm and it felt like something she would say to her kid, not someone she had just kissed.

I WAS ALONE
in the house and everyone was gone, the TV was set to the Weather Channel, and the meteorologist was bleating about high winds and storm swells in Cape Hatteras.

Then he said, “Unlikely to hit the Northeast,” and I was crestfallen.

The phone started to ring and I stared at it with terror. I knew it was Jeffrey and that he would ask why I hadn't saved him. He would demand that I pick him up, pay for letting him be humiliated like that. I pulled the phone out of the wall to make it stop.

What was I going to do? I couldn't run. I was afraid of what would happen when Jeffrey came home. I locked every door in the house and went upstairs. With no storm coming my options were limited.

I ran to the bathroom and looked through the drawer with my shampoos, slipped my hand past the Hilton Hotel's generic products, and found Teddy's pill bottle. It was empty. I looked around, couldn't believe it. I even went through his room, checking under dirty clothes, rifling through drawers. Searching pants to no avail. They were gone.

No one was preparing because there were still no indicators of the coming storm in the sky. I pulled the small statue of Mary out of my purse and held it, rubbing the robes, checking for chips. There were none and I let go of my breath. I had hoped for some slender cracks, chipping paint, to feel age. I wanted the statue to be something more than a factory-made trinket.

AFTER JILL LEFT ME,
I went back to the house and didn't want to go inside. I tried my dad's car and it was locked, so I went to Cheryl's and found a spare ignition key above the back wheel in one of those secret key holders. I hadn't really driven since the accident, but it was either leave or sleep in the car. I needed a drink. I hadn't had a drink in days. I wasn't even sure how I was surviving. I drove around for a while along the road that led from Little Neck Cove to Graves Point. It curved along the rocks and the water came up right to the fence during high tide. The sun was gone and the sky was a dark blue. The houses on the islands stood out black and empty against the sky.

I finally drove to Milligan's and took a place at the bar. It was slow. I looked around, trying to figure out why no one was around. I didn't want to ask. Guinnesses started to appear before me and I didn't ask questions. I was there for hours, long enough to drink six beers at a steady clip, anyway. The baseball game was over. The Yankees had won, and whoever was in the bar left pissed off. I paid my bill and wandered
outside. I stood at the edge of the marshes, the smell of salt water thick in the air. In the woods across from the gravel parking lot I used to catch fireflies as a kid. We'd ride bikes there, a line of us pushing one another with taunts to get there faster. We had small traps our mothers made us, glass jars with tinfoil on the top with holes pressed in with forks. We held onto them as we maneuvered the handlebars. We were experts by then and could do this with ease. We'd throw our bikes down in the grass and run into the woods, afraid to miss even one. We swung our arms wildly and put each captured light into our jars. By the end of dusk our jars were all glowing phosphorescent yellow and we slowly rode home, careful not to drop them, watching the lights bounce around as the fireflies frantically tried to escape.

That was what I missed.

Then I felt an intense pain in my face and I dropped to the ground. I didn't have time to catch myself, so my cheek hit the gravel.

What had hit me?

Who had hit me?

Above me stood a sea of pastel colors. They took turns kicking me. Every time I opened my eyes I could see the moths fluttering around the glass globe hanging over the door to Milligan's. I didn't even fight it. No one tried to stop them, not even me. I took it. I heard things like “my children,” “cocksucker,” and “faggot.” I had to laugh at that one and that just made the kicks come harder. I lay there wondering who was kicking the shit out of me and calculated that there were probably about five legs kicking at me with varying degrees of intensity. Some of these guys were actually pretty weak. I bet I could kick harder if I tried, if I was upright. My laughter elicited a move to use fists to quiet my giggles. If I hadn't been so drunk, I probably would have been crying from pain. Crying for my mother. Crying for my dead dog, Maxwell. Wishing I had learned to be brave. And then . . . he leaned down. I knew this because a shadow stretched over the light and he whispered in my ear, “You fucked my wife.”
I wanted to tell Jill's husband that I wished I had, that I still could.

I should have to deserve a beating like this. I should have fucked his wife for this. Instead of just jerked off to the thought of it. And then a warm, wet glob of spit hit my cheek and slid down past my mouth. I lifted my head slightly and saw that he was wearing navy corduroy pants with small red lobsters embroidered on them.

I would have thought that someone in Milligan's would have called an ambulance or asked me if I needed help. I contemplated crawling into the nearby marsh, trying my luck with the sea, but I just lay there like an impotent asshole. The one fight I'd been in in my whole life and I was blindsided by five assholes and never even got in one hit. I couldn't even embellish the story and say I think I got one of them. I didn't get any of them. They all got me. Their pent-up upper-middle-class aggression was taken out on me. I'd be whispered about at parties and lobster boils, at male-bonding experiences. I was going to have to clean myself up and get in my car and go home and bang on the doors to be let in, and when my dad got back I'd have to tell him that I got my ass kicked and that I didn't even get one hit on them. Not one.

That would be added to the story they told—the story about how these men recaptured their masculinity. How they felt alive again, dangerous and strong, erasing all the years their wives had been emasculating them. Except they weren't going to say it like that. They were going to say that I stuck my dick in one of their wives and they were fighting for their family. Protecting their family against someone like me. And look who was going to come out looking like the asshole. One-armed me.

I got up and hobbled toward Cheryl's car. Everything hurt except my bad arm and I laughed as I cradled it. I had done my good deed for the summer, giving Jill's husband and his friends reason to slap one another's backs again, walk a little taller, and fuck their wives a little harder. I had done them their great big favor. I had reminded them that I was the weak one, not them.

I COULD FEEL MY JAW
each time the air pressure changed now, that certain ache that made me rub the bone line. If I had Teddy's pills, I wouldn't have to feel it anymore. I lay in bed with my arms stretched wide, the way you sleep when no one is going to come and disturb you. I thought about Steven and our connection and how lucky I felt to be wanted again. Like I had gotten a second chance at something and no one could take it away. He seemed so needy, like me at his age. If I had found someone who cared so much about me then, I wouldn't be here now. Would that have been better? How could I even ask myself that question?

I heard the front door open and braced myself. I heard movement downstairs, as if someone was searching for something. I did not move, my body tense as the footsteps started up the stairs.

I thought about calling out, pretending I was surprised by the intrusion. I closed my eyes quickly as the footsteps moved down the hall toward our room. I heard them stop in front of the other rooms. Doors
opening. Then he was standing in front of the open door to the bedroom and did not move for a while.

I heard footsteps creaking toward me and I squeezed my eyes shut harder, like when I was a child and I didn't want my mother to know that I was listening.

The footsteps stopped next to the bed and I waited.

I could feel the weight of him in the air beside me and kept my eyes closed, not knowing what he was going to do.

“Can I lie down next to you?” Steven asked.

I opened my eyes wider than usual, trying to muster surprise, and he liked it, I could tell. I moved over in the bed and he slid under the sheets fully clothed. He leaned in close to me and I could smell the detergent on his clothes.

We faced each other, heads on the pillow, and then he pushed my shoulder, wanting me to turn over, and so I did. He pulled me toward him, nuzzling his face in my back. I just lay there, listening to him breath and feeling his warmth, our legs entwined together. He clutched onto me as if being this close was a necessity for life. I looked at his skin next to mine, hoping for some miraculous change, but all I saw were my sun-worn hands against the kid-hair on his soft arms and it was devastating.

“Will you help me?” I asked.

He murmured yes against my back.

•  •  •

Teddy woke me up in the middle of the night, banging on the front door, covered in blood. Steven had left sometime before, but his imprint was still in the bed and I knew then that I had not imagined him being there.

I nearly had to carry Teddy to the bathroom and while he was showering off the blood, that's when I saw the TV reports that the storm was going to hit us after all. It was a Category 3. It could move to a 4,
maybe even a 5 if the perfect conditions arose. Then they started calling the conditions “perfect.”

•  •  •

Later, when the storm came, no one was prepared for it because of all the false reports from previous years. It was worse than the forecasters had imagined. The water was rising rapidly and it was clear that the seawall wasn't going to keep it back. There would be evacuation centers with cots and food set up at the Warren G. Blake Middle School. The checkout lines at the grocery store stretched back into the aisles and men from the meat department had to direct traffic inside the store. They ran out of bottled water in less than an hour. People were talking about where they should go, unsure where to take their supplies. They were bracing for the worst, with little more than party-size bags of corn chips and Doritos. Children piled in the fruit snacks as if they might be their last packages on earth. Inland hotels and motels filled up quickly and there was talk of price gouging at the gas pumps in nearby towns. Police on TV said they would be investigating the reports.

I watched as Lori stood in her driveway, her arms loaded with pillows, and yelled at her children to take their dogs and get into the SUV. They just stared at her, unmoved. I wondered where her husband was. His car was already gone.

Later, I looked outside again and saw Tuck pedaling toward the water. I moved from window to window watching him. All the families had fled by then, but he propped his bike against the white fence and walked out along the seawall as if no catastrophe was looming. He walked with his head tucked down, the wind flattening his hair against his skull. I watched him from the front windows. He stared out at the ocean, watching his boat being tossed around in the waves. Then he stretched his arms wide and began to flap them like wings, like he was trying to fly away. I laughed in spite of myself. Then he turned around
and stared at my house, at the window I was standing in, laughing. I watched as he ran back to his bicycle and rode off, and I wasn't sure how he was able to stay upright in the wind. He stopped in front of Lori's house. She had been careful to have all the windows boarded up and he jumped off his bike and hurried toward them. I watched him try to pull the boards away with his bare hands, but they did not budge. He disappeared into her garage and I waited for a few minutes, wanting to see what he would do next.

He came back with two golf clubs, a driver and an iron, and lodged the iron between the nearest plywood-covered window and the house. He ripped the covering off and took some of Lori's expensive shingles down with it, then used the driver to smash the glass. As he went from window to window I thought about intervening, but Tuck was doing this for all of us.

He crawled through a window, then came back out through the glass doors, leaving them wide open. He got on his bike, saluted to the ocean, and rode away.