Chapter 6: Neighbourly Curiosities
For two days afterward Jason attended to Bethany with a ceremonial care. He brought water and aspirin, trimmed the crust from toast, brewed tea so weak it was scarcely more than warm tint; she slept in short, restless intervals, waking to complain of her head, her mouth gone dry, the ache in her limbs and elsewhere. “Every muscle,” she muttered once into the pillow. “As if I’d been thrown into a wall.” Then she subsided again, drifting between the sofa and the bed, the television murmuring as she hardly watched it.
There was time enough to set the apartment in order, to wash the glasses, to discarding the jar of pickles they had left open over night, to open up the windows and disperse the sour trace of whiskey and the other smells. He wondered, but did not inquire, what remained in her mind about what had transpired, beyond her bodily complaints; her silence stood firm, and he had no wish to press against it. He recalled with sufficient clarity the sounds she had made, and took a private comfort in the manner of her finishing, shameful though his part had been. They did not mention Mr. Miller’s visit.
By Sunday evening she had rallied, though she kept to the bed, her red hair ungoverned against the pillow, her face still pale. She declared herself hungry for something substantial; they ate pasta with a plain sauce at the table, while a detective drama filled the room with its indifferent chatter and inevitable resolution. She ate steadily, winding the noodles with concentration. “He was something,” she said at last, without lifting her eyes. Jason’s fork paused in the air. “More forceful than I expected,” she added, and there was in her tone not dismay, but a measured acknowledgment.
By Monday morning she was nearly restored, though not entirely; in her hurry to bathe and make herself presentable she left later than intended, protesting as she went that Mr. Pelham would certainly rebuke her for the delay. Jason stood at the window and watched her hasten along the walk, her coat unfastened and catching at the air, and the sight stirred in him a dull, possessive discomfort he could not easily name. The apartment, fallen abruptly quiet, seemed still to hold the trace of her recent bustle, mingled with the more unwelcome recollection of the stranger who had disturbed it. From the adjoining unit there came, through the wall, the thin, unmistakable whine of a vacuum cleaner beginning its work.
Late in the morning, having set the rooms in order as best he could, Jason carried a bag of refuse down to the bricked alcove where the bins stood; the bag, ill-balanced and faintly sour, struck against his leg at every step. He was tossing his black bag of garbage into the great green receptacle below when--above, upon the walkway--the door beside their own above gave way. Mrs. Miller appeared, and began her own approach, with her own slight rubbish bag in hand. Their paths converged upon the landing just, outside his window, and Jason had little doubt that this convergence was precisely her design.
Even as she began her speaking, Jason’s eyes drifted past her shoulder, to the pane behind, where, through the pale glare of daylight, he could still discern the arrangement of his sitting room—and, unavoidably, the precise spot upon Bethany's floral sofa where Mr. Miller had taken his drink and surveyed her with such deliberate leisure. Mrs. Miller shifted the small bag in her hand and gave a knowing little smile.
“Arthur said he stumbled into rather an eye-opening evening the other day," she began. "He came back quite astonished we had never realized we were living next door to swingers.” The label—swingers—landed so abruptly that Jason did not at first understand that Mrs. Miller had actually spoken it out loud. “We don’t make a habit of discussing such things, of course,” she went on, pleasantly. “But one does like to know the character of one’s neighbors. It’s all so… modern now.”
Jason managed, “It isn’t—” and then found he had no acceptable end to that sentence.
But the fact that he had no good ending was scarcely a barrier to Mrs. Miller's continued speaking. “I suppose it requires a very open arrangement,” she said. "Arthur said everyone seemed perfectly at ease. That’s the important thing, really. No secrecy.”'
He felt her looking at him, waiting for agreement, and discovered that silence felt less dangerous than explanation.
“It must be a great deal to keep up with,” she added lightly. “Visitors at all hours, people coming and going. Young people have far more energy for that sort of life than we ever did.”
“There hasn’t been—” he began again, and stopped. To insist on limits sounded, even to his own ears, like a negotiation of terms.
“It must feel very strange at first,” she said, settling into her harmless observations. “Arthur mentioned you were only just beginning to try your hand at it. That is how these fashions tend to arrive." She shifted the small bag against her hip.
“And you know, we do have some experience with this sort of thing," she continued. "Not swinging, of course,” Mrs. Miller said, “but my sister once took up a rigorous exercise program. She kept at it dutifully until she decided she needed a more specialized instructor; what she had, she said, was not quite sufficient. I don’t mean to draw comparisons."
He did not, at first, understand why the neighbor had stopped to tell him this; but the story was so evidently for his benefit as she stood there with her refuse, waiting—quite patiently—for some sign that he had taken it as meant. A faint heat gathered under his collar.
“I understand that Bethany was quite undressed at the little gathering Arthur found himself drawn into,” Mrs. Miller said; she spoke as though it were a small point, but ice stabbed through Jason's heart. “She has always struck me as confident. When I was young, such liberties were not so freely taken, particularly where other women’s husbands were concerned. Though of course,” she added, “I am sure she intends no mischief. Girls are encouraged to be expansive now. You of all people understand, I’m sure.” She adjusted her glasses, as if to see by tilting them if he did understand. “I was very slight when Arthur and I first married—quite lithe. One was expected to exercise a certain reserve at mealtime. Not every woman formed so over-generously would be at ease displaying it.”
He might have let it pass, and wished to; but the remark lingered in the air with a faint unkindness that seemed to require answering. “There’s more of her, yes,” he said. “I’ve always thought that suited her.”
Mrs. Miller paused, the length of a breath, as though reconsidering how seriously to take him. A faint lift of her brows suggested she had not expected him to press the point. “Standards do broaden, I suppose,” she resumed. “In beauty as in loyalty. One cannot keep pace with all of it. I’m sure you understand.”
She shifted the small rubbish bag in her hand, gathering its neck more tightly, as though reminded of her errand only after the fact.
“Well,” she said, with a faint air of settling something administrative, “Arthur thought it best that I should be acquainted with the situation. And I daresay by tomorrow someone will have asked Arthur whether everything is quite all right next door. That is how these places function--sound carries, you know, and not just through the walls." She clucked her tongue at the inconveniences of close-quarter dwelling. "These modern situations can be complicated. It helps to have steady neighbors.”
Jason could not tell whether she was offering some kind of help, or quietly assigning herself as supervisor. He gave a small nod that committed him to nothing, yet felt uncomfortably like agreement.
"Do give young Bethany my regards," she finished. She continued on past him, down the stairs, the thin plastic of the bag rustling against her skirt as she descended toward the bins.
Jason had the sense that this was not the end of Mrs. Miller's interest in their personal affairs, and his instinct proved correct; only an hour later, as he prepared himself a lunch, he saw her outside, through the windows, engaged in cleaning that she had never before undertaken.
She was at the railing of the walk with a damp cloth, wiping the bars in slow, broad arcs along the chipped and tacky metal. The practiced care of it—the way her hand followed the rail’s entire length, from her own door past the midpoint to within a foot of theirs—had the air of an established ritual. Yet Jason could not recall, in all his time living there, ever having seen her attend to that rail before. He watched, his butter knife forgotten in his hand, as she gave the rail a final, possessive polish and retreated, without a glance his way; he felt, more than heard, the rattle of her front door as she went back into her apartment.
But this was only the beginning.
Even before Bethany was back from work that day, Mrs. Miller passed by once more; she paused, her sturdy shape interrupting the light entering through the windows, and bent with an air of methodical interest to inspect something upon the sill. Her gaze, however, did not settle upon the paint-chipped woodwork, but traveled past it, into the room itself, peering over the contents of her neighbor's abode with the slow, assessing thoroughness of a bailiff making an inventory. Her demeanor had no shame, as a furtive peeper might, but the open boldness of a warden, taking her natural right to audit the shadows within. Jason stayed in place, his feet tucked beneath him on the couch, his show briefly forgotten.
Jason stayed in place, his feet tucked beneath him on the couch, his show briefly forgotten. She straightened up with a small, deliberate motion, her fingers brushing imaginary dust from her skirt, and proceeded down the stairs without haste, as if her pause had been for no other purpose than to catch her breath after some unseen exertion.
This pattern, once established, refused to cease.
The very next morning, as Jason sat at the small table with a mug of cooling coffee, she appeared with a dustpan and brush, attending to some phantom debris on the concrete walk just outside her door. Her movements were unhurried, thorough; she swept the same patch three times over, her gaze lifted periodically as if to assess the sky, though her line of sight passed unavoidably through their uncurtained window and across the whole of their kitchen space.
Later that afternoon, a plastic bag, so empty it collapsed upon itself, dangled from her hand as she made her way to the bins; again, in the fading light of evening, she was there with a rag, meticulously wiping the rail. This became her routine. Each pass was a silent punctuation mark in the day’s text, a comma of vigilance, a period of inspection. She became a moving part of the view from the window, a regular feature as reliable as the mail carrier or the shortening of the days.
She became a moving part of the view from the window, a regular feature as reliable as the mail carrier or the shortening of the days. Each evening, as Bethany recounted her tedious hours at the pharmacy with a strange, placid contentment, Jason would recall the neighbor polishing the rail or shaking out her mat again and yet bite back the words that gathered on his tongue. Bethany stepped with new lightness in, and hummed brightly in the kitchen, and bestowed new, unasked-for smiles upon their silent walls—all of it, he felt, was tender proof of a memory of that fateful night; he dared not sour her adventure with a petty alarm. The spectre at the window, with her damp cloth and her silent audits, seemed a paltry thing next to Bethany’s rare and recent peace. He therefore sealed the observation away, a hidden splinter beneath the skin of their domestic quiet, and chose to say nothing at all.
Several evenings later, as she unpacked a bag of groceries with a newfound energy, Bethany turned to him, her face bright. “I ran into Mr. Hennessy at the mailboxes,” she said, “and he was in such a happy mood.” She placed a can upon the counter with a definitive. “He suggested we should come over some evening for a dinner or some drinks.”
“The old man in the apartment below us?” Jason asked, his voice low. A vision of the stooped, yellow-fingered man shuffling across the courtyard, to the mailboxes along the lower walk, flitted before him; it was the only time he ever saw the elderly recluse. “He’s old enough to be your great-grandfather.”
Bethany laughed, a short, exasperated sound, and shook her head. “You’re always misreading things,” she insisted, her tone brushing his concern aside like a crumb from the table. “He wasn't asking to be brought into a sexual escapade. He's only in need of friendly company, that’s all.” She huffed. "Not every man is always thinking about sex, Jason."
Jason did not disabuse her of her feminine naivety.
A brittle quiet settled over the apartment in the days that followed, punctuated only by pleasant moods in the evenings and the shade of Mrs. Miller haunting the walkway and the rail. He began to arrange his movements to avoid the windows during her presumptive patrols, a useless evasion since the layout of the rooms offered few true sanctuaries from her line of sight, though he refused--on some morbid principle--to draw the curtains entirely.
One Thursday morning, near ten o’clock, brought a change; the silence was broken not by her shadow in the window yet again, but by a firm, deliberate rapping at the door. He knew it was her before he looked through the peephole; the timing was too precise, the knock too businesslike for a delivery or a friend. Through the fisheye lens she was distorted into a bulbous, waiting shape, one hand cradling a small plate covered in clear wrap. He kept his hand on the knob an instant longer than he ought to have, as if delay were a kind of defense. He opened the door a cautious width.
“Jason,” she said, as though they had an appointment. “I’ve brought you a little something. One gets tired of cooking for oneself, I always think—though perhaps you don’t. Some people are very methodical.” She leaned slightly, obliging him to stand back. “It’s only a spice cake. My mother used to make it when we had callers. Not that we had many callers. But she liked to be prepared.”
The plate arrived before her feet did; he had to yield the narrow strip of hall or let it bump his chest. She set the plate down before he could answer and removed the wrap with small, efficient motions, glancing meanwhile at the curtains; she chose the table nearest the window, without looking for his agreement, and left it there for him to cut.
“You’ve more light in the mornings than we do next door. Arthur never notices such things. Men don’t, generally. They notice other atmospheres.” She paused, then added, almost as an afterthought, “He said the other evening was very—different.”
Jason said nothing. Silence, he had learned, was safer than correction; it gave her less to carry away. He nodded once instead, a motion small enough to deny later, if he needed to deny anything.
“Yes, well.” She touched the back of a chair, then the sofa, as if deciding where she preferred to sit, but did not yet do so. "You’re very industrious for this hour. Some men don’t know what to do with themselves when they’re home alone."
She slipped off her cardigan and folded it, laid it down, adjusted it once, and only then sat. He remained standing; sitting would concede familiarity.
“And Bethany is out all day? Young ladies keep such hours now. When Arthur and I were first married there was a girl upstairs who worked—typing, I think it was—and one was always aware of her schedule without meaning to be. People imagine they are private, but stairwells and pipes carry everything. Not deliberately. Simply the way of shared walls.”
She meant, of course, the sounds of Bethany's excitement, which had undoubtedly drawn Mr. Miller's attention on that night. Jason moved toward the kitchen. “I can make some coffee.” He said it too quickly, grateful for an errand that had rules, and would take him away from her invading presence.
“If you’re making it for yourself,” she replied, as if conceding. “I never refuse a cup, though I ought to.”
While he prepared it in the kitchen she continued speaking, hardly raising her voice to be heard from the sitting area; it was clear her conversation did not require his presence to proceed. The little machine clicked and then began its slow chug; he listened to it as if the pot of coffee were the better company; he measured the grounds with an exactness not required.
“Arthur wasn’t sure, you know, whether he should come in that night. He said your friend behaved as if it were the most ordinary call in the world. That reassured him. Men like to be told what is customary. Saves them deciding.” Her words followed him into the kitchen as reliably as the smell of cinnamon, and he found himself arranging cups on the counter; the rearrangement failed to remove her from the rooms.
Jason returned with the cups. He placed coffee down quite carefully, and she accepted it without thanks, but her eyes went first to the plate. Her fingers nudged it nearer the center of the table, a small correction.
“I told him afterward that customs change faster than people do,” she said. “One hears of situations like this and assumes they they're quite exotic, and then suddenly they are next door, and one must adjust one’s thinking. Not object, you understand—just adjust.” She tasted the coffee. “That’s quite drinkable.”
Jason stood a moment longer with his own cup in hand, uncertain whether to sit; he sat at last because upright felt like open defiance. They ate a few bites of cake. The sweetness filled his mouth too quickly; he swallowed before he had properly tasted it. Her attention lingered on his fork and his chewing, as though she had brought the food chiefly to watch it be consumed. She herself seemed to lose all interest in her cake at once.
“I expected, from Arthur’s account, that weekday mornings here might have a different air,” she went on. “Not untidy. Only less—paused.” Her eyes rested briefly on him, then moved away to the bookshelf. “But stories expand when they travel across a landing. By the time they reach the kitchen they scarcely resemble themselves.”
Jason set down his fork. He did not trust himself to keep eating under her regard.
“Arthur said you were very quiet,” she added, as though remembering it late. “Meek was the word he chose. Though men choose words carelessly. Silence can mean many things. My mother used to say good manners conceal a great deal, and she valued manners above almost everything.”
Jason felt the color rise in his face, not at the insult itself, but at the ease with which it had been made domestic and acceptable, like a remark about weather. He tried to think of a reply that would not become an admission. Nothing presented itself, which failed to surprise him; he rarely knew what to say, until after the moment had long passed and he had occasion to rehearse the memory of his failure.
Mrs. Miller finally smoothed her skirt and rose, pushing back her coffee so it sat beside her plate.
“Well, I’ve interrupted your morning enough. I only wished to see how you were settling. One likes to have some sense of the life beside one’s own. In a place like this, awareness comes whether invited or not.”
He half rose as well out of reflex, then checked himself, unsure whether that would be read as impatience. She gathered her cardigan, then paused at the door, the pause held lightly, as though she had forgotten something pleasant and only just remembered it.
“Do give my regards to Bethany. I hope I haven’t made too much cake—I assumed, given her appetites, she would prefer an extra serving or two.”
He managed, “I’ll tell her,” and heard, in his own voice, how small it sounded.
Through the window he saw her pause at the railing, run her hand along it as though testing for dust, and then continue to her own door. The apartment, once she had gone, seemed no longer entirely his.
But by the evening the sense of her intrusion was hardly so strong. Bethany was back, smelling faintly of her day's work and the cold air outside, her hair pinned up in a hurried knot with two bent bobby pins already giving up. They ate at the table with the television murmuring in the background; Bethany spoke in short bursts of a man who insisted a coupon had "always worked," and of a broken register drawer that Carol Farber had blamed on her (though Jason had no idea who this was). When the dishes were cleared, he brought out Mrs. Miller's cake and cut it; Bethany ate her portion with simple pleasure, and had two more.
Later, when the lights were lowered and the apartment was quiet once again, he moved on her the way she now expected. He took his time, remembering her gratitude, and slid down to her with a patience that felt newly intentional. She was quieter without the drink, but she kept him there, guiding and insisting, and that was proof enough.