Bedbugs Read online

  And then, on Tuesday night, carrying Emma out of the bath in her oversized ducky towel, Susan jammed her big toe on a floorboard on the landing.

  “Ow!” she shouted, “Damn it, damn it, damn it!”

  Emma’s eyes went wide. “Mama?”

  “I’m OK, I’m OK, honey.” She put Emma down and clutched at her throbbing toe like a cartoon character. “Alex, can you come up here, please?”

  “Just a sec.”

  Examining the floor while Emma wrestled herself into her underpants, Susan discovered a slight but undeniable gapping between two of the floorboards. One of the boards was minutely raised, creating just enough of a little cliff to jam your toe against.

  “We gotta be careful here,” she said. “OK, Em?”

  “Yeah,” Emma agreed solemnly. “Careful.”

  “It’s not a big deal,” Alex concluded, when he took a look. “If we owned the place, maybe I’d pay someone to sand it out.” Susan raised an eyebrow, and Alex shrugged. “Or whatever you do to floors. But I mean, whatever, I think we can just step around it.”

  “Yeah,” said Susan. “I guess. But let’s keep a lookout for other spots like that. I hadn’t noticed it before, had you?”

  “Nope.”

  Alex padded back down the stairs and returned to the living room, where he’d been basically camped out, staring at his computer screen, cutting and cropping digital images. It was a bummer to have him so distracted during their first week in a new home, but Susan understood the reason. GemFlex was a small company, and the only way they’d become a bigger one was by getting a “rep”: a professional middleman who would tout their services to the big jewelry outfits, and handle all the negotiating and billing—all the tedious busywork that had the least relation to what Alex really enjoyed, which was taking pictures. Now there was a rep named Richard Hastie who’d called them, first thing Monday, with a week’s worth of work for Cartier, shooting three watches for a small print advertisement. And though nothing had been stated explicitly, Alex and his partner felt they were being tried out, with the potential reward of not only steady work from Cartier, but ongoing representation from Hastie.

  “So?” Susan ventured, hours later, when Emma was long asleep. She’d settled on the other end of the sofa, with a glass of wine and the crossword puzzle. “How’s it going?”

  “You know, I don’t know,” Alex answered slowly, looking up from his computer with a tired smile. “All right, I think.”

  “You think you’ll get it?”

  “Well, like I said, I don’t know.” He yawned and turned back to the screen. “I hope.”

  Susan returned to her puzzle, feeling a mild, prickly wash of irritation. Yes, he was busy, but it was unlike Alex not to say something along the lines of, “And how are you doing?” Never mind “the house looks great” or “thanks for working so hard to get us set up.”

  His focus on this opportunity actually frightened her a little, made her wonder how important this contract was to their financial health, especially after the considerable expense of the move.

  Susan folded up her crossword and kissed Alex gently on the top of the head on her way upstairs.

  Even after taking half an Ambien, Susan took what felt like an eternity to drift off, and when at last she did, it was into the grips of an awful nightmare. She was walking down Cranberry Street when she jammed her toe on a crack in the sidewalk, just as she had jammed it between the two floorboards on the landing. But this time the pain was intensified a hundredfold, out of all proportion to a stubbed toe, sending wave after wave of burning agony up her leg. Susan clutched at herself, howling, and went sprawling onto the sidewalk. Prostrate and writhing, she saw that Andrea Scharfstein was sitting at the top of the stoop, dressed in a wrap of eerily bright vermillion, waving her thin arms wildly, shouting, “Look out! Susan, look out!”

  She craned her neck upward just in time to see a gigantic double stroller hurtling out of the sky. She leapt to her feet and stumbled back, and the carriage hit the sidewalk. The stroller exploded and blood burst out of it, as if the thing had been a gigantic sloshing balloon full of blood; erupting in waves of blood, cascades of it, vastly more blood than possibly could have been inside those two poor little girls. Susan was splattered, covered, drenched in blood. She wailed, wiping the blood from her eyes until she could see the small corpses of the girls, their battered pulpy skeletons, strapped into their little seats in the side-by-side double stroller, hands clenched together … she screamed again, woke herself with screaming, woke to find her hands balled into fists and grinding into her eyes.

  Susan took a series of ragged breaths until her hands quit trembling. Then she staggered out of bed and into the bathroom and stared at herself in the mirror for a long time, wiping intensely at herself with her palms, as if the blood of the dream was still caked on her cheeks and clinging to her hair. At last she tiptoed back into the bedroom and stared at Alex, who slept peacefully, undisturbed. The glowing red lines of the bedside clock told her it was 5:42. Susan unplugged the baby monitor from the bedside table and took it downstairs, certain she was up for the day.

  5.

  Susan did not meet the “nice gentleman” who acted as Andrea’s unofficial, part-time maintenance man until Wednesday afternoon.

  It was a little after one, and Susan was returning from yet another epic morning of errands when she turned off Henry Street onto Cranberry and heard the panicked, terrified wailing of a child. Her heart lurched in her chest—Emma—and she burst into a panicked sprint, the heavy plastic-sheathed bulk of the dry cleaning shifting in the crook of her arm, shopping bags flapping against her legs.

  Emma appeared to be unharmed, thank God. But the girl was red-faced and screeching, crying with a ferocity that Susan rarely witnessed, standing at the center of an anxious tableau at the bottom of the stoop, just past the squat black wrought-iron fence that separated the brownstone from Cranberry Street. Andrea was crouching beside the girl, patting her uneasily on the shoulder; Marni hovered over them, wringing her hands and looking around stupidly; a few steps to Marni’s right, standing with one foot up on the bottom step, was an older black man with a bald pate and a massive gut, looking anxious and flustered. The sun glinted off the man’s smooth scalp while trickles of sweat dripped into his eyes.

  “Mama!” screeched Emma, holding out her thin little arms.

  That’s him, Susan thought as she launched herself into the scene and scooped up her daughter. That’s who I saw in the yard that night. That’s him. She cradled Emma to her chest and murmured, “Oh baby, oh baby, it’s OK my love. It’s OK.” And then, to the rest of them: “What happened?”

  “Emma got upset, the dear,” said Andrea, straightening up and nervously readjusting the gold-grey kerchief knotted in her hair.

  “I can see that. Why?”

  “She was trying to get into the basement.”

  “What?”

  Andrea gestured to a cramped plywood door under the steps, secured with a heavy padlock. Susan knitted her brow; she had never noticed the door before.

  “I was upstairs, but I guess she was at the door to the basement, fussing with the lock, and Louis saw her and he rushed over to stop her.” Susan looked at the stranger, who nodded steadily but said nothing, just pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and ran it over his brow. “Which, in Louis’s defense, he was absolutely right to do,” Andrea continued. “That basement is no place for kids. Power tools, flammable materials—”

  “Wait. Stop. Who is Louis?” Shifting Emma to her other arm, she pivoted toward the man. “Who are you?”

  “Well, my name is Louis,” he said slowly, and Susan rolled her eyes. It’s like an old-folks home around here. “Yes. I got that.”

  “Louis is the gentleman I mentioned,” Andrea said. “I told you. He handles things for me, repairs, blown fuses, light fixtures.”

  “Oh. Right. OK.” To Susan, Louis seemed an extremely unlikely handyman: he was portly, to put it mildly
, and looked like someone’s kindly but absentminded great-uncle, emitting none of the quiet confidence Susan associated with mechanical aptitude. Plus, if the guy was any younger than Andrea, it was by five or ten years, tops; he looked like he would struggle to carry a bag of groceries, let alone haul a toolbox up the steep stairs of 56 Cranberry Street.

  Emma’s sobbing had subsided into a series of arrhythmic, pained hiccups; Susan squeezed her tighter and smoothed her pale hair.

  “Did you tell her not to go down there, or did you raise your voice at her?” she demanded of Louis. “Did you touch her?”

  “Oh, Lord, no,” Louis said, shaking his head, aghast. “Absolutely not.”

  Andrea shook her head too, insistent, no no no. “Not Louis. He would not have put a hand on the child.”

  “Not in a million years,” said Louis, shifting his stance and crossing his heavy arms across his stomach. Susan was not liking this—not one bit. This was the person who would come up to the apartment? To switch a fuse or unclog the toilet? Who would know what you’re supposed to do about gapping floorboards? She turned to Marni. “And where were you during all this?”

  “I was right here. I was fighting with the stroller.” Marni fidgeted with the hem of her tight American Apparel T-shirt, looking like a child, ready to burst into tears. “She wandered away for two seconds, and the next thing I knew she was down there, and he was there. He wasn’t yelling. He wasn’t. He just spoke kind of, like, suddenly …” She glanced apologetically at Louis, who looked at the ground. “And I think that’s what did it.”

  “You can’t let her wander away.”

  “I know.”

  “For any seconds.”

  “I know. I’m really sorry.”

  Susan fought to stay calm, knowing that getting upset would make it harder for Emma to regain her equilibrium. She turned back to Louis and forced a smile.

  “Well, it’s not a big deal. I’m sure you didn’t mean it. Anyway, nice to meet you.”

  Louis grinned, relieved. “Likewise. Any friend of Andrea’s.”

  “Right. But can I ask you one more thing?”

  “Of course. Anything you like.”

  “Were you standing in the yard last Sunday night? Right after we moved in?” As she was asking the question, Susan realized how strange it sounded—strange, or accusatory. “Like, looking up at the bedroom window? For some reason?”

  “No.” Louis shook his big head, and turned to Andrea. “I most certainly was not.”

  “OK,” said Andrea, and Susan nodded. “OK.”

  Louis retreated to the backyard, and the rest of them tromped in a ragged line to the top of the stoop, Susan hugging Emma to her chest, Marni struggling behind with the pile of dry cleaning and the other bags, the carry-strap of the collapsed strolled looped across her chest.

  “Did you find Staubitz the other day?” Andrea called, a few steps behind.

  “Yeah,” said Susan, not looking back. “I found it.”

  From the top of the stoop, Susan peered over the side at the door that had been the source of the morning’s drama. It had a foreboding, dilapidated appearance, old and half rotted and probably laced with termites. The door itself didn’t look safe for kids, let alone whatever power tools and flammables were padlocked behind it. Whatever Louis’s story was, Susan concluded, it was a good thing he had warned Emma away from that door.

  “Everything’s OK, my love,” she told her daughter again, feeling the wet warmth of the girl’s breath as she snuggled into her throat. “Everything’s OK.”

  *

  Once they were inside, Susan told Marni she could go ahead and get going.

  “Susan, I am really, really sorry about that. It won’t happen again. Seriously.” Susan glanced at Emma, who had wiped the last of the tears from her eyes and was settled on a kitchen chair, flipping through an Elephant and Piggie book called I Love My New Toy.

  “All right, Marni.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “I know you are,” Susan replied flatly, not ready to let the girl off the hook. “Thanks.”

  A couple minutes after Marni left, Andrea was at the door, her headscarf retied and her big old-lady sunglasses pushed up over her hair. She was smiling sheepishly, a girlish affectation that was slightly ghastly on her age-lined face, and bearing an old-fashioned toy: a wooden stick attached to a rolling chamber full of little plastic balls that popped and danced when you pushed it.

  Emma looked up immediately. “Is that for me?”

  “First you say hi, honey,” said Susan, wearily. She’d had more than enough of Andrea for today.

  Andrea laughed and handed over the toy. “Now, Susan, listen,” she said, “I feel just awful over what happened, I do, and I wanted to say again how sorry I am.”

  “It’s fine, Andrea.”

  “And for the record, Louis is a very good person. Absolutely a gentleman. He doesn’t look like much, but he gets the job done. You’ve got my word on it.”

  Emma scooted past, pushing her new popper toy, howling with pleasure as the balls danced in the chamber. Susan smiled at her little girl’s happiness; Andrea, smiling too, laid a spidery hand across Susan’s upper arm.

  “Now, isn’t that the most darling thing?” she said. “My Howard, he just loved toys. He used to buy old ones and restore them, then we’d give them out at Christmas to the kids in the neighborhood. He had all sorts of hobbies, Howard did. Toys. Trains. Civil War. A man of wide-ranging and restless intelligence, my Howard.”

  “Sounds like he was quite the catch.”

  “Oh, forget it,” Andrea growled with sudden sharpness, waving her hand angrily, as if dismissing an unpleasant topic that Susan had brought up. “We don’t have to talk about him.”

  Whoa, thought Susan. What just happened?

  But just as quickly as the overlay of anger had entered Andrea’s voice, it disappeared, and the old lady grinned engagingly. “Anyway, I thought Emma would like the toy.”

  On cue, Emma crashed the push-toy into the kitchen wall, squealed with delight, and executed a wobbly three-point turn. “Thanks, Andrea. It’s really very sweet.”

  Andrea waved away the thanks. “Just one more thing. About the basement.”

  “I know. Stay out of the basement. We got it.” She needed to get Emma her lunch and put her down for a nap. The truth was, Susan felt like she could use a little nap of her own.

  “No, it’s just, I keep forgetting to mention. Go ahead and bring any biodegradable trash to the bottom of the stoop, or even just outside my door, downstairs. Fruit and veggie peels, eggshells, teabags, coffee grounds. I’ll take it down to the basement for composting.”

  “Sure, Andrea. That’s fine.”

  “And that’s just one more reason we want the little one to steer clear of the basement. Stinks something awful, it really does. Two big fifty-five-gallon drums of decaying trash. No fit playground for our little duck, right?”

  “Right.”

  After she had tucked Emma in for her nap, Susan paused at the window to close the shade and saw Louis on his hands and knees at the edge of the garden. He was hunched over and drenched in sweat, grunting with the effort of tugging free the weeds. She watched for a moment, to see if he’d look up, but he did not.

  Susan tugged down the shade, whispered “good nap” to Emma, and shut the door.

  6.

  Marni, no doubt shaken by Susan’s anger and thinking her gig might be on thin ice, showed up the following morning at 8:22 with a comprehensive vision for the day. “I thought, as long it’s still so hot, I could take Emma down to that park at the end of Atlantic Avenue, the one that’s got all the water slides and sprinklers?”

  “Sure.” Susan smiled at Marni’s puppy-dog eagerness to please. She hoped she hadn’t been too harsh with her the day before.

  “And we can get lunch out, if it’s OK?” Marni’s auburn hair was swept up in a thick pile on top of her head. “My friend Lucy, who sits for these twins in Park Slope,
told me about this place right on Atlantic called the Moxie Spot, where you can get grilled cheese, sweet-potato fries, that kind of stuff.”

  “Sounds good to me,” said Susan, brushing a tangle out of Emma’s hair with her Dora the Explorer brush. “Does that sound good to you, Emma Loo Hoo?”

  It sounded very good to Emma, judging by the speed with which she bolted up the stairs to get ready, Marni chasing after to find her swimsuit.

  “Lots of sunscreen, please!” Susan called up the steps.

  When the girls had gone, Susan put her coffee cup in the sink and stood motionless in the kitchen for a long moment, looking out the window. On Cranberry Street, the first leaves were beginning to turn, with striking bursts of orange appearing amid the clusters of green. A squirrel leaped daringly from an upmost branch to a telephone line, sending a shower of acorns down from the tree and a ripple down the line.

  This was it. There was nothing else to do. Small tasks, of course, still clung stubbornly on the to-do list: she needed a couple new coat hangers to replace those broken in the move, for example, and at some point she would need to dig out a flathead screwdriver and tighten that loose outlet cover above the kitchen counter, or get Alex to do it. But all the big things and urgent things had been accomplished. Their renter’s insurance policy and newspaper delivery and banking statements had been transferred to the new address; the shower curtains and mirrors had been hung; the furniture was in place and all the lamps had been reunited with their bulbs.

  Susan took a deep breath and strode down the long front hallway like a toreador. There was a single box still sitting unopened beside the doorway to the bonus room; inside were her brushes, rolled-up canvases, and a fresh tin of oil paints. She lifted the box, tucked it under one arm, and pulled open the door. A strong reek of cat piss, warm and cloying, came rolling out, and Susan coughed.

  “Oh, God,” she said, pinching closed her nose. “What the hell?”

  Susan put down the box and sniffed again, gingerly, then recoiled and clamped her hand over her face. It was urine, definitely, a thick gross cloud of pee-stink, coming in waves from the bonus room. How could she not have noticed a smell like that before? And then Susan remembered the fleeting moment when she had noticed it, when her powerful, almost supernatural tug of love for the apartment had been briefly troubled by a bad smell from this room. But it couldn’t have been as strong as this, could it? Had something happened since they moved in?