Bedbugs Read online

  “I can’t believe we have two floors,” he said, pausing midway up the steps and gesturing expansively at all their space, in the manner of a Roman emperor. “Nice work, Sue.”

  Susan finished her champagne and poured herself another cup, adding new items to her to-do list, until her eyes were drooping shut and she admitted to herself there was nothing else that could realistically be accomplished that night. She went upstairs to the bathroom, unzipped her gold toiletries bag, and fished around until she found the Altoids tin in which she kept her Ambien. She counted the pills, each one a perfect little white oblong: there were twenty-seven ten-milligram tablets left, out of an original stash of fifty, prescribed eighteen months ago with instructions to take half a pill when anxiety made it impossible to asleep. On nights like this one, however, with her mind racing through all the upcoming tasks, Susan gave herself a dispensation. Carefully she split a pill with her fingernail, put one half back in the Altoids tin and placed the other half on her tongue, cupped her hands to collect a scoopful of water from the faucet, and washed it down.

  But if the Ambien worked, it didn’t work nearly enough. The minute Susan’s head hit the pillow, her mind busily began annotating and revising the to-do list, which she could see in her mind’s eye as clearly as if it were displayed on the iPhone screen in front of her. Unpacking, of course, was at the top of the list, broken down into several subcategories: Emma’s things, her and Alex’s things, kitchen things, sheets and towels. Now that they had more space, they would need more furniture, and there was a sublist for that, too: small end-tables for the living room, some sort of sideboard for the kitchen.

  … and could they afford new furniture? How much had the movers ended up charging? Alex would know the exact figure, but Susan couldn’t remember—four thousand? five?—plus that massive security deposit—moves were a money sieve, Alex was right …

  Susan’s restless mind jumped to the universe of small activities, mundane but crucial, that went with setting up a new household: the making of keys, the filling out of address-change forms, the search for good grocery stores. It was to Susan, of course, that most of these tasks would fall.

  … since you’re not working right now … since you’re not working right now …

  She looked at her husband, his thick torso, his face squashed in his pillow, a thin line of drool connecting his lower lip to the collar of his ancient Pearl Jam T-shirt, and wondered just how angry he really was at her, just below, or not even below, the surface, how much resentment he harbored. Alex had artistic ambitions, too, after all, which he had long ago boxed up and stashed away, just as she had. But now she was taking hers back out again, unpacking the dreams of her youth like antique linens from an old chest, while he was stuck shooting pictures of watches and diamond rings, pretending to take pride in it … supporting her and their child, her and her dilettante ambitions.

  Of course he’s resentful, he must be, he …

  Susan took a deep breath. Alex had never expressed any such feelings to her, of course—everything he had said on the subject was quite to the contrary (“To tell you the truth, Sue, I think it’s a great idea!”)

  But that wasn’t good enough for Susan, lying awake in the Brooklyn dark in the middle of the night, surrounded by a shadowy forest of wardrobe boxes and furniture in an unfamiliar room. Surely Alex thought terrible things of her, surely he seethed every time he looked at her. Why, otherwise, had the question of more children never been raised between them? Somehow the time to bring it up always seemed wrong. Somehow it always felt like if she did bring it up, he would launch into a list of reasons why a bigger family was impossible right now, would slam the door on the question, just as he had slammed the door shut on the artists’ loft with a harbor view in Red Hook …

  … oh, hell, Susan, you don’t need that place anymore, you got this place, remember?

  This thought, vaguely comforting though it was, led her back along her twisting maze of anxiety, to yet more things that needed to be done: find out when recycling goes out, find a nonfilthy Laundromat—no washer/dryer, remember?—look into preschool programs for Emma for January—she had secured a slot at a well-regarded place in the Flatiron District, but now Susan had wrenched up the family and moved them here, for no reason, for no good reason …

  Susan sat up, panting, clutching a hand to her chest. “Shit,” she said to the darkness.

  The bedside clock read 2:34. Susan rose, stepped into the bathroom, and took the other half of the Ambien.

  *

  Reluctant to return to bed, Susan turned the other way out of the bathroom, slipped past the linen closet, and creaked open the door of Emma’s new room. Looking down at the peaceful, sleeping figure of her daughter, Susan felt almost unbearably in love with her. Emma’s little chest rose and fell, rose and fell. She had her father’s thick dark hair and big brown eyes, but her small frame and sometimes-playful/sometimes-hesitant spirit were all Susan.

  “Oh, sweet pea,” she murmured. Gingerly she eased the covers down from where Emma had tugged them up under her chin. She insisted on being tucked in so tightly, even in the late-summer heat.

  Then Susan glanced at the window and gasped. “Oh God! Oh my God!” she said, loudly, scaring herself in the quiet dark of the bedroom.

  Emma stirred but didn’t wake. Susan stepped closer to the window and gaped, wide-eyed, at where a person, or the shadow of a person, was standing in the backyard, leaning against the rickety back fence and staring up. The man was massive. In his hand was the long barrel of a gun, or some kind of club, or … something … in the darkness, from this distance, it was impossible to say.

  “Alex!” Susan shouted, but he didn’t answer. Susan’s heart was knocking at her ribs, and she clutched at the windowsill. “Alex! God damn it, Alex!”

  Emma shifted and moaned in her sleep. Susan opened her mouth to scream again—she would have to go in there and shake him awake. But then she looked again, and there was nothing—no one—in the yard.

  Whatever Susan had seen, or thought she had seen, it was gone.

  4.

  On Monday morning, exhausted from her nocturnal adventure and the fitful sleep that had followed, Susan sipped her coffee and scrolled through headlines on her iPhone while Emma toyed with her breakfast. When the nanny rang the bell at 8:50, a full twenty minutes late, Susan walked briskly down the hall to let her in, and a moment later Emma hopped down from the kitchen chair and flew into her arms.

  “Marni! Marni! We live in this house now!”

  “I know, buddy,” said Marni, and swept the little girl up, mouthing “I am so sorry” to Susan over Emma’s shoulder. Susan smiled forgivingly, boiling inside. Marni only worked from 8:30 until 2:30, and Susan counted on those hours, especially during a week like this one, when she had a million and a half things to do.

  “The subways totally threw me for a loop,” Marni apologized. “The Internet said it’d take me twenty-three minutes to get here, but it was at least twice that.”

  “That stinks,” said Susan evenly, thinking Wow, the Internet was wrong. Never could have been predicted.

  “Hey, the new place looks great,” said Marni, and Emma dragged her by the hand to show her around.

  Marni was a doctoral student in psychology at Fordham, finished with her coursework but still writing her dissertation, with mornings free and a need for extra cash. She had been working for them only about seven months—and had agreed, to Susan’s mild chagrin, to stay in the job after their move. Marni’s seeming inability to arrive on time was just one of several things that bothered Susan. She was, in general, a bit sloppy, leaving the lunch dishes in the sink and only occasionally bothering to clean the stroller and diaper bag before she left for the day.

  There was also a collegiate looseness about Marni, an easy sexiness of tousled hair, multiple-pierced ears, and tight T-shirts that rubbed Susan the wrong way. She knew very little about Marni’s personal life, but the young woman had never mentioned any part
icular boyfriend, and Susan had at some point decided that this indicated not chasteness but rather the opposite: an active and unsettled romantic and sexual life. Susan frequently imagined (and reprimanded herself for doing so) that Marni was coming to her nannying job directly from her latest one-night stand.

  Alex’s days started early, and he was usually gone before Marni arrived and home long after she left. He never paid any particular attention to her, which was just fine by Susan.

  “So, Emma-roo,” said Marni, tossing her little H&M jean jacket casually on top of a packing box as they returned from their circuit of the apartment. “Were you aware that Brooklyn has its very own children’s museum?”

  “It does? Let’s go there! Let’s go there!” Emma bounced around Marni in a loopy circle. “Mom! Mom! We’re going to a children’s museum!”

  “Is that OK?” Marni asked Susan, who obviously couldn’t say no, not now.

  Oh, stop being so annoyed, Susan told herself, digging her wallet from her pocketbook to pay for museum admission and lunch. She wondered in passing whether her occasional distaste for Marni came from her own annoyance at herself, mild but ever-present: you’re not going to work, and we’re still shelling out four hundred bucks a week for child care?

  She gave Emma a shower of kisses, handed Marni a pair of twenties, and headed out the door.

  Susan’s first stop was Trader Joe’s, at the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Smith Street, so she could fill the fridge with milk and yogurt and stock the pantry with applesauce and juice boxes and cooking oil. Alex did most of the cooking, but Susan generally handled the shopping. She moved swiftly through the aisles, bopping her head to “Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch” and lingering briefly in the frozen meat section before adding FIND A BUTCHER to her to-do list and moving on. Next to Trader Joe’s was a spacious wine shop run by twenty-something hipsters, where she picked up two reds and two whites from a “ten-and-under” table. “This Montepulciano is the bomb,” said the girl behind the counter, who sported auburn pigtails, oversized plastic-framed glasses, and an arm sleeved with colorful tattoos. “Oh? Rad,” said Susan, thinking, I love Brooklyn.

  Back home, Susan unpacked the cold stuff and then took a half hour to line her drawers and cupboards with wax paper before unpacking the pantry items. She turned on the radio, found WNYC, and spent the rest of the Leonard Lopate Show slicing open boxes marked KITCHEN, rinsing off dishes they had stupidly packed in newsprint, and finding counter space for the KitchenAid, Cuisinart, and hand mixer. Settling down with her laptop at the kitchen table, Susan filled out a numbing series of address-change forms and then composed a mass e-mail with her new address, appending the de rigueur postscript about how “my cell phone number and e-mail will of course remain the same … ”

  Susan’s brisk march through her task list was slowed by a headline on her Yahoo! homepage: Anna Mara Phelps, the young mother accused of killing her daughters, had been arraigned and pled not guilty by reason of insanity, as expected. Susan noted, before forcing herself to get back to work, that Phelps was a former actress, had moved to New York from Minneapolis in 2002, and was thirty-four years old, same as Susan.

  Upstairs, Susan swept out the closet in the second bedroom and opened a box marked CLOTHES: EMMA. She was smoothing out the miniature party dresses on their pink plastic Cinderella hangers and arranging them carefully when she heard the excited clamor from downstairs, as Marni and Emma stomped inside. Downstairs she heard all about the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, which apparently featured a working greenhouse, a delightfully scary collection of snakes, and a fully functional pretend pizza restaurant.

  “And how was the bus ride back, sweets?” Susan asked, crouching to wipe a smudge of yogurt from Emma’s cheek.

  “Oh, actually? She was super worn out,” said Marni. “So we took a car home. I hope that’s OK.”

  Susan went to find her purse, and forked over another nine bucks.

  When Emma was up from her nap, Susan got her dressed and they went out together, with no fewer than three shopping lists: one for the hardware store, one for the drug store, and one marked “misc.” On the front stoop, holding Emma in her arms and balancing the stroller on her back, Susan nearly tripped over Andrea, who was seated on the top step with her legs folded beneath her and the Times spread out on her lap.

  “Whoa. God, sorry, Andrea.”

  “No, look at me, I couldn’t be more in the way!”

  Andrea was wearing oversized old-lady sunglasses, studded along the stems with rhinestones. Susan was always seeing glasses like them in secondhand shops and wishing she had the kitschy nerve to sport a pair. “So? Are we Brooklynites now? Are we finding everything OK?”

  “I think so. Wait, no. Butcher?”

  “Oh, yes. The place to go is called Staubitz. It’s down Court Street, just past Kane, I think. Or just before. Anyway, it’s down there somewhere. Should I draw you a map?”

  “No, no.”

  Emma squirmed in her arms. “We’re going, love. We’re going.”

  “Some people like Los Paisanos, on Smith, but if you ask me those people are idiots. Staubitz is the place, and tell John I sent you.”

  “I will. Are you OK?”

  She had noticed that Andrea was holding her hip, shifting her position laboriously from one buttock to the other.

  “Oh, you know. This and that, dear. The equipment is old. Still works, but it’s old.” She gave Emma her big comedienne’s wink, which Emma returned enthusiastically.

  Susan smiled. “So, Staubitz?”

  “Staubitz.”

  She gave Andrea a little mock salute and continued down the steps. Halfway down Cranberry Street, she remembered the person she’d seen, or maybe imagined seeing, lurking in the backyard on Sunday night, staring up at the house.

  She stopped and turned back. “Oh, hey, Andrea?”

  But the door was just closing; Andrea had slipped back inside.

  Tuesday began on an unexpectedly delightful note: Emma woke up early, and Susan, feeling unusually well rested and at ease, decided they should whip up a batch of cookies. Emma, naturally, thought this was pretty much the best idea she’d ever heard. They spent a happy and loud half hour, clanging around the kitchen in matching polka-dot aprons, mixing, pouring, and giggling, until Alex came down for his coffee at 7:45 to find both wife and daughter flour-caked and giddy.

  “Oo! They’re ready! They’re ready!” announced Emma, dancing in front of the oven while Alex yawned and scratched his butt.

  Susan slipped on an oven mitt, pulled out the tray, and handed Emma a sample, which she ate in one bite before throwing her arms around her mother’s waist. Susan sipped her own coffee, shot Alex a grin. “What can I say? The kid loves me.”

  Four hours later, Susan was bustling about in the master bedroom, hanging a few small framed photographs and waiting for the cable guy, when she was struck by a strong pang of guilt and self-recrimination. It was all well and good to take on these endless logistical rounds—shopping, unpacking, hanging pictures, hanging clothes—but when was she going to set up her easel and do some painting?

  That’s right, mess around forever, whispered the accusatory inner voice she knew too well, arch and recriminatory, and then you never have to put your money where your mouth is … right? Never have to try. Susan was frozen in place, holding her favorite red cardigan sweater up by the arms like a dance partner; she had just dumped out an entire box of packed clothes that needed to be folded and put away.

  Never try, never fail.

  Susan knew what she should do: put down the sweater, march downstairs, and start painting. No time like the present, right? There was nothing she was doing that couldn’t wait. Instead, she lay down the sweater on the bed and brought its arms down and across, one by one, then folded it deliberately upward from hem to collar, smoothed the crease, and stowed it in the dresser.

  Very nice, Frida Kahlo, said the voice of self-recrimination, soft and insistent. Very nice.

 
The man from Time Warner rang the bell at 11:58, two minutes before the expiration of the four-hour window in which the dispatcher had prophesied his appearance. His name was Tony, and he made small talk in a thick Brooklyn accent as he installed the cable box. Susan offered coffee—“No, tanks,” said Tony—and then hovered in the living room, scanning the Arts section and waiting for him to finish.

  “Hey,” Tony said all of a sudden, and looked up from his squat before the entertainment center. “Wassat?”

  “What’s what?” Susan asked.

  “Dat. Ping. Ping. Hear dat?”

  She narrowed her eyes and listened. It was very low, barely audible, but the cable guy was right: there was a light ping, every ten or fifteen seconds, coming from … somewhere. She walked a slow circle around the room, then up and down the hallway, but couldn’t figure it out. “Weird,” she said.

  “Yeah,” said the cable man. “Anyway, dat’s it. Finished. Lemme show ya the remotes.”

  When Tony from TimeWarner was gone, Susan grabbed the dustpan and handbroom from under the kitchen sink and swept a tidy circle around the entertainment center, gathering up the little bits of clipped wire he’d left in his wake. Before she went back upstairs, she cast a quick, worried glance at the door to the bonus room.

  “Tomorrow,” she said firmly. “I’ll do some painting tomorrow.”

  As was perhaps inevitable, given the speed with which Alex and Susan had decided to take the apartment on Cranberry Street, they started to discover small problems they had overlooked during their one brief tour. The face plate on an electric outlet in the kitchen was slightly askew, so Susan had to angle the prongs awkwardly to plug in the toaster. A long ugly crack marred the wall above the sink in the downstairs bathroom, and the faucet in the kitchen sink had to be tightened with unusual force, or it dripped.