The Invaders (8 page)

She was always pacing and waiting for our father, but she looked so gentle floating back and forth, her nightgown billowing behind her with each step. Her heels would tap against the wood floor and hypnotize us with the sound. When she wasn't home, we'd take her heels out of the closet and try to mimic that sound as we paced and puffed on invisible cigarettes, looking out the window for our father, trying to capture that same exasperation. When our father stopped coming home, she took to waiting for other people's fathers, but we didn't wait with her then.

There were times when the men would bring us food and we'd be fed for a while. But sometimes she would be gone for days and we'd have to search the house for spare change or for some of the rolled-up money we saw them give her when they thought we weren't watching. We'd take it, knowing she would always get more, then run to the store and stock up on TV dinners, breakfast setups with smiling parents on the packages, frozen treats we wouldn't save for dessert. When she was home, she'd
prepare a feast of whatever she had. She made it feel elaborate and special. Once, she had come home with a watermelon, exclaiming it was too hot to eat anything else. She cupped a melon baller and dipped it in and out of the flesh of the watermelon, making a hillside of sticky red balls on a plate. She cut out stars to put on top of the overflowing plate. She said we could eat it all; it would fill us up. Then she gave us each a cube with a dusting of salt and told us to pretend it was the main course, the rest could be dessert. Juice flowing down our chins, we ate until our stomachs rumbled, sick from the sweetness. She said some people never got to taste watermelon even once in their lives and we got to eat one whole.

My mother always dyed her hair a brassy blond and when she wasn't entertaining, she put it up in curlers with a thin, gauzy scarf wrapped around it. But when she unwrapped the curlers and pulled her fingers through the loose waves, she looked beautiful. Her face never betrayed her sadness about being abandoned or about our sister Laurel, who had died before she even turned two. Her slender calves and shapely hips filled in her dresses just so as she wandered the house night after night. As I got older, I would put on the laciest of her bras and imagine taking them off for someone. I kept my hair long and blond, not as bright as hers was, though. I had her body everywhere and displayed it casually, like it would always be perky for me. I was happy that I had studied her femininity well enough to capture it. But I was no longer making use of it. The subtle, daily humiliations had finally taken their toll on me because nothing I tried worked any longer.

When our father left, our old rotary phone would ring and my sisters and I would fight like rabid dogs over who would answer it, hoping it was him, but it never was. My sisters spent less and less time at home, wanting to be away from all the sadness, the outline of missing people too grim. Boys would take them away, my mother would yell, warning them they'd end up like her, alone with a brood of ungrateful girls of their own, but they didn't listen. Neither did I.

I remember the thrill of hearing my first feverish call—a man breathing into the phone, asking for Roberta. We would hang up on them and run away, or sometimes, if the phone would ring and ring, we'd leave it off the hook. Our mother would chase us around then, calling us brats and worse. But the phone kept ringing and I started picking it up and I wouldn't hang up when I heard the begging voices. Instead, I'd let my voice go gravelly and low and I would ask them what they wanted exactly, then I would try to give it to them. Sometimes they wanted me to laugh in their ear, sometimes they wanted me to tell them what my dreams were, sometimes they just wanted to know what I'd do if we were alone in a room together. I would wrap and unwrap the phone cord around my index finger and watch it go red, the blood just under the skin wanting to burst out. Sometimes, my mother would follow the cord and I could feel the tug as she picked it up and walked with it down the hall and into the pantry, where I was hiding and whispering about my see-through panties. She'd yell at me, but I would run, and eventually, they only called for me. I had to leave then, as our resentments became unbearable and the house became a tomb to everything we had lost.

•  •  •

I opened all the windows, the smell of reeking fish drifting in. Jeffrey hated when I opened the windows. He had the thermostat turned to 64 degrees and expected the temperature to stay that way. Why live on the ocean when you could never smell it or feel it? The gardeners were already working, trying again to re-seed lawns that had stubbornly refused to grow after being flooded with salt water during last summer's hurricane. I stared out at my own garden and saw weeds poking up from around the fence. I opened the doors, went outside, got down on my knees, and started pulling. The rocks were already dotted with fishermen and I wondered when they'd be pulled off for ruining someone's view. I saw the old man and his dog weaving their
way back along the rocks and waved, but he didn't see me.

I went inside and laced my binoculars around my neck and decided to take off for the nature trail. It was quiet as I walked through the tall reeds and onto the path and bridge. I wanted to see if the man under the bridge was back. I made a point to check. I looked down, saw no legs, no body at all, and was disappointed. I pulled out my binoculars and scanned the reeds. I was having bad luck today. The fledgling chicks had still not arrived. I was reaching down to clear some pebbles out of my shoes when I heard whistling behind me and froze.

I turned to look and didn't see anyone there. The whistling stopped. I briefly panicked, thinking the fisherman I had called the police about had followed me.

On the bridge, I was surrounded by marshes and beach, the water and islands in front of me. I saw the sailboats floating out, white and tall in the water. On the other side of the bridge were thick trees and underbrush. The whistling started up again, and I hoped someone would come through biking. A woman with a stroller, anything. It wasn't a bird call and it wasn't the wind. It was a distinct whistle. It was him. I knew it was. It had to be. He was following me. I was disgusted that Jeffrey and Bunny were right. I didn't want to be called out as the fool, have them pity me because I was naive and still believed people were capable of good. I breathed in and out slowly. Maybe it wasn't the fisherman, maybe it was a bird lover like me. I was just overreacting because I was alone.

I put my bird book back in my pocket. I could go farther down the trail, over the second trolley bridge, or head back through the marsh. Why would someone be hiding in the marshes and whistling? It didn't make any sense. Calm down, Cheryl.
Calm down.
There were more nests down the trail and I didn't want to go back home yet. I wasn't ready to face the drive to my mother's house. I was starting to lose my nerve.

As I walked into the wooded area, the whistling stopped.
Thought so. Some stupid kids, that was all.
I kept walking. Ahead was a small, rusted-out bridge covered in graffiti. Teenagers always wrote the dirtiest things. Like everyone wanted to know who they wanted to fuck or love. What did they really know about either? Branches cracked around me and I stopped, but I didn't want to turn around. Wind rustled the leaves around me and the nature path seemed very empty all of a sudden. Where was everyone anyway? It was a beautiful day, high tide, birds everywhere. Where were the kayakers at least? I heard the rumble of a speedboat in the distance, but otherwise, just the wind and the crackling of underbrush.

I was scared.

I convinced myself that I didn't have to look, that no one was behind me. I just had to walk a bit faster.

I felt the weight of my binoculars. They could harm someone. I gripped them tightly and kept moving toward the trolley bridge. There were more pebbles in my shoes, jabbing me through my thin socks. I decided to just keep moving.

I was hearing things. The stress of Teddy coming back, Jeffrey being upset. The situation with Lori had me rattled. That's all it was.

I checked my pocket and realized I had left my phone at home.
Of course, Cheryl.
It didn't even matter. Everything was going to be okay. I would be home soon, and in the future, I would ask friends to come on walks with me. Even Bunny!

I could see the clearing and the trolley bridge in the distance and I knew I would be okay. At the other end of the bridge, in town, there was open water and boats and people. A ball field. Maybe I would walk the streets home. It would take longer, but there were cars passing often.

The whistling started again. It was a tune I didn't recognize and if I turned around it would be to accept that there was indeed someone behind me.

I wasn't going to do it.

I could feel myself getting hot, sweating. Tinges of panic that I was trying to keep at bay. I started to power walk.

What was that tune? It sounded so familiar. I had heard it before.

On the ground I saw a rock, something that could fit in my hand, and I reached down to pick it up and then kept walking. If it was someone I knew, someone from the club playing a trick, and they saw me wielding a rock on the nature trail. . . Well, let's just say I'd be a laughingstock.

If it was the fisherman, then everyone would tell me how right they had been all along and I would have to nod and admit that their hatred was not misguided. I would have to do that even if I was wounded; I would have to tell them they had been right all along.

I slowed my pace so the would-be attacker could catch up with me. I wanted him to think that he could get me and that he was winning. The whistling was getting closer and I couldn't take it anymore, so finally I turned and threw the rock as hard as I could.

I saw it flying through the air and then it hit the man squarely in the face. He fell, crumpled, to the ground.

I covered my mouth with my hands. It was Steven. I had smashed him above the eye.

I screamed. “Oh God! I'm sorry!”

I looked around. How could no one be here? How could there be no one to help? I ran toward him and he was lying on his back, his face covered in blood and moaning.

“What did I do?” I said.

I looked at Fran Cronin's teenage son, Steven. Lori's bad house sitter Steven. Nice legs Steven.

What was he doing following me? I looked him up and down and inhaled sharply. I recognized his sneakers.

His penis was hanging out of his pants. He was going to do something to me. Or maybe he was just peeing. Maybe this was a mistake.
Then Steven sat up and reached for me angrily, saying, “I know you.” Grabbing my arms hard, he said, “You want it.”

I looked down at his still-erect penis and black pubic hair blossoming out of the slit in his boxer shorts and zipper hole. I struggled away from him and in a panic I picked the rock back up and hit his face again. I heard the crunch of tooth and bone. His mouth was a bloody wound as I dropped the rock.

I backed away from him. He was lying in the middle of the nature trail, bloody-faced, with his penis hanging out. He wasn't even circumcised. I kept backing away and he called out, “Help!”

I backed away and started to run. I wanted to get away from his moans and the plovers who were running now, too, back to their nests. I didn't stop until I reached the inside of my house. I slammed the door behind me and leaned against it, breathing hard.

My feet ached from the pebbles and I pulled off my shoes, starbursts of blood coming through my socks from the small wounds.

I clutched my neck. My binoculars were gone. Jeffrey had had them initialed for me. I felt dizzy thinking that I had left them beside the body. No. He wasn't a body. He was still alive when I left him.

“Hello?” I called out.

My voice cracked when I said it. Was I supposed to call the police? He had wanted to hurt me on the nature trail. I had to do what I did. I stared down at my hands. There were specks of blood on them. Steven's blood was on my fingers. I went to wash them, limping.

“Hello!” I screamed again.

Where were my binoculars?

Jesus Christ.

There was hardly any blood. Maybe a little splatter. Splatter. What was I thinking? I scrubbed my hands furiously.

In the kitchen, my face was hot and I felt achy. I tore through the cabinets. Where was the bleach? I looked down and saw that there was
a tiny bit of blood on my tank top and I ripped it off.

His penis was out, Cheryl. It was OUT. This was not your fault. It was his.
And he counted as a full-grown man. He wasn't some boy. He just had a young-boy face. He said that I wanted it.

I poured the bleach over my hands and my nostrils burned. I went back to the bathroom and dumped the rest of it down the sink, in case there was any blood there. I stared at myself in the mirror.
He grabbed you, Cheryl. He wanted to hurt you. You are not a bad person.
You were defending yourself. You didn't want it. He was using the nature trail as his private jerk-off spot and that was unacceptable.

I had only seen him socially a few times, once possibly at a Christmas party. Had he been one of the carolers that had gone house to house last year? Yes, he had a sweet voice, the only one in the group who could carry a tune. He knew I took walks. And yesterday I had said he probably had nice legs to Lori. She would remember that. She would tell people I was asking for it and he was just a child. She was that kind of gossip. My hands were burning. Would there be fingerprints on the rock? I had no idea. Maybe I should have called the police. What if he told on me? Would I go to jail for leaving the scene of a crime? I gripped the sides of the sink and tried to hold myself steady. I found the hydrogen peroxide and poured it over my feet, listening to the sizzle and pop. I cleared out bits of dirt and sediment that had crusted onto my toes with the peroxide swell.

I went over and picked up the phone. My hands stunk with bleach. I started to dial 911, then hung up. I had to ask Jeffrey what to do. I dialed his office. No answer. Then his cell. No answer. I tried again. It went to voice mail after two rings.