Delilah

Delilah Singer and her husband and her daughter moved to the neighborhood that all families wanted to move to, but they moved into the wrong house. It was the last one on the corner of the street that led to the grocery store and to the movie theater—the one that everyone had to pass on their way to anything. Modern in all the ways that didn’t fit in with the historical character of the rest of the pentagonal, faux-historic capes—the long gleaming windows, the strong, flat boughs of the roof. Dated in all the least charming—no dishwasher, too few outlets for anything but a rickety toaster oven and, in the morning, the iron. It made the rest of us feel lazy for using our garbage disposals, our state-of-the-art seltzer infusers.

Nonetheless, when Delilah and her husband and her daughter arrived they picked out a door frame on which to mark their growth, put several frog statuettes on the mantle, and felt at home. Now that they lived there, in that neighborhood that was sprayed with lilac smell and had an exclusive pool club and all the shimmers of affluence they were looking for, they could get down to the business of being a real family. Delilah and her successful husband and bespectacled daughter arrived after residents had developed a reputable public-school system and vigilant neighborhood watch programs, after car pool schedules had been distributed, and drapes color coordinated with the shutters. For this, we despise Delilah.

We first meet Delilah at the park. This is by no means the first time we have seen her.  How could we help noticing her and that tall-but-ill-proportioned man and that unnerving, well-behaved child through those excessive and uncurtained windows? Delilah, it seemed, was everywhere. At the post office sitting in her parked car balancing her checkbook by hand, contemplating sorbet laced with sprinkles at the ice cream parlor, and once, even, reading a pamphlet on female pleasure at the gynecologist’s office. We are repulsed by the crinkled tabs of flesh around her thick neck, the wiriness of the braid running down the center of her back. We titter at her un-plucked eyebrows. Watching her emerge from the town pool becomes a topic of discussion at book club.

Like a Medusa in her crotch, our leader informs us. We cackle and exclaim. You’re so bad. Like an exploded vacuum cleaner, says another who declares she was also there at the pool at the same time Delilah does laps, and our laughter jumps in octaves and hate. If we really cared we would tell her what we think—we think peer pressure has always gotten a bad rap. How else are we to know how disgusting we all are, what is to be fixed and improved upon? We all know where she is, what she has eaten, the color of her comfort-smart sandals, without even being interested in her.

At the park, our representative reapplies her lipstick and uncrosses her ankles in preparation for first contact with Delilah; Delilah, half reading a brickish paperback, half watching her daughter as she waits for our rambunctious sons to vacate the swings. Little does she know, our sons do not take turns.

Our representative says Hello, did you just move into that beautiful house on the corner of Evergreen? It does not take much to draw Delilah in. Soon she is talking, talking too much, more than we ever wanted to hear about how long it took to find the house, how many other houses they looked at, the koi pond at the nursing home her parents now lived in, how much she misses their house in whatever little other not-our-town place they moved from but how excited she and her actuary husband and second-grade daughter are to get to know all the folks here, meaning us. The representative shows her teeth in something like a smile. We feel the interruption more than we hear it

How nice. We look forward to getting to know you, too. 

The rest of us, watching from the table closest to the slide—the one with the circular notches that that are the exact circumference of our “recreational” wine glass bottoms and keep them from tipping: our table.

An invitation to their housewarming party is secured that easily. Bring everyone! She says, waving to us. Saturday? Five o’clock? Feel free to bring the kiddos? Our representative gives a prim curtsy on all of our behalf and we offer a toast of Pinot Grigio to her back. We know Delilah would say more, but suddenly her daughter has run over, cheeks hot with tears, glasses fogged and smudged from being pushed against her face by someone bigger than her, and Delilah is holding her head to her chest. What happened? Are you hurt? She asks. 

Her daughter hiccups and sniffles as she shakes her head. We know she will grow up to look just like her mother, we can see the ruddiness on her and the lack of grace in her neck and even though she is a child we hate her, too, for carrying on this legacy of plainness in its unrightful place. She will never be one of the girls who receives a prom-posal from our sons, or daintily sips a vodka and cranberry during a homecoming game. She will join the Academic Quizbowl team or Habitat for Humanity and live her whole life not knowing how very ordinary she is. The woman who is our representative asks if we can bring anything, even though none of us will.

Of course not, just your company, right peaches?

She musses her daughter’s hair, but doesn’t notice the hard look she gives across the playground, an intense gaze that is mismatched with the  doughy-ness of the rest of her and it settles first on our sons, who we will buy ice cream for making her cry, even though we won’t tell them that’s the reason for it, and then on us. We wave.

It is Saturday and we arrive late—5:30. For any other party we would wait until 6:00, but we don’t plan to stay long. The first wave of desperation hits us and we suck it in like nectar when she greets us before the doorbell has even echoed all the way through the house. Too eager, and we can feel her regret as she takes us all in—our round, clean skirts and waist cinching belts and matching husbands and complementary, golden children. She tells us we all look lovely, so pretty and fresh on this hottest of hot days that makes her and her ridiculous crystal-cut punch bowl of sangria sweat visible half circles but makes us dewy and our skin sharp. We shoo the children outside to play on the swing set and tree-house in the yard. How quaint, says our representative of the new tire swing. Our sons quiver with the anticipation of running and jumping and shoving. Delilah’s daughter tries to hang back, clutching her father’s leg with one hand and a merengue cookie growing slimier by the second in the other, but they send her out after them and she goes with a pleading glance.

And there is the food, far too much food, decadent food and we feel the hate begin to swell up anew. Cheese with grape reductions. A spinach-tomato-feta frittata we agree is to-die-for. Luscious steak kabobs and tabouleh. Fresh baked blueberry hand pies. We squirm at the lack of hot-dogs, at how hard she tries. 

What will the children eat? Did you cook all of this? We ask. 

And she says no, blushy forearms even blushier with pride as she gestures to her sheepish husband, the secret chef. He is bashful and his chin weak like a turtle as he holds a philo-dough tartlet between paunchy fingers. 

It was nothing, he says. It’s how my wife and I spend time together.

None of us will quite agree on the moment things got out of hand, whether it was when we began to get uncomfortably full, stomachs swelling against our belts, the harsh slant of sun  penetrating the living room like a blade, as we realized, with horror, that though we thought we were pulling a trick on her by observing her pathetic life through her window, it was really her and her awkward, potato nose, connoisseur husband that could look down on all of our lives from where the house sat atop a small slope. Or maybe it was the moment that her husband, in his awful khakis and bulky sneakers and tucked in red-stripe polo shirt, clearly bought and pressed for this occasion, put his arm around his wife’s lack-of-waist and kissed her on the lips without shame or checking to see if anyone was watching. And she swooned and smiled with her filling-rimmed teeth of effervescent grey smudged with lipstick. And we felt it, all of it, and froze next to our husbands who continued to talk about their consulting firms and their Bitcoins and pointing out the unique carpentry they had never noticed before, not aware that the integrity of our neighborhood as we knew it could either be saved, right then, or poof, vanish, in a cloud of confectioners sugar.

The first glass of red wine sangria drops to the ground without a sound. The brand new, off white wall-to-wall carpet is thick enough to absorb its impact, and of course, the wine itself. And without as much as a moment of conspiratorial eye contact, there is agreement: we must all drop the wine. Where? On the white carpet. And so the second falls. A third. And then the carpet is the floor of an orchard, soaked in dark red and littered with fruit that will begin to ferment on contact: new wine on old wine. Soon we begin to drop our plates, one by one, Oops, clumsy us, so sorry. They clutter the ground like giant river stones. We continue to converse, complimenting the painting of a vaginal-looking flower over the couch as we grind our heels into the salad dressing and the wine and the exfoliating beads of quinoa until it all squelches beneath us. 

At first it seems Delilah and her husband think this is all a clever joke. The first spill is but an inconvenience: they inform us over the carpeted thump of porcelain that they have some very au-then-tic oriental throw rugs he’s collected on business trips to India they can toss over the stain. They say they will not accept a dime as payment for the accident but they are fools because why would we ever offer them anything? When our husbands have mounted the couch, shoving handfuls of stuffed grape leaves between the cushions, tearing into throw pillows with their teeth, Delilah and her husband’s smiles begin to take hold like masks. They do not know how to sate us other than by standing perfectly still, but it is their very presence that drives us to smear our names on the windows with hummus even as we register our delight over the perfect view of our oh-so-very special neighborhood. Isn’t that right dear? Before them, we know they not only see a room that needs remaking, no, they see a future that is as lonely as it is newly wealthy, no pool invitations or Sunday dinners or shared orange slices at soccer practice. They will be just as alone as the rest of us, but more so because we will make sure of it.

Two things happen. First, their daughter, wretched little thing, clambers into the house. This time her tears are not silent. She wails and blood streams from her mouth, but we cannot see it fall as it mingles with the rotten earth of the rug. Her first big girl tooth has been knocked clear out. 

And behind her, our representative, eyes glistening, jazzercise-toned arms straining, lifts the massive vat of sangria above her head. The lights seem to surge brighter around us as we turn to her in a single wave of motion. There she is. The star. Our locus. Like a weightlifter, she holds it above her, an absurd sloshing dumbbell at its height. Here it comes, we all think. We tense at the expectation of the reckoning flood.

But it is heavy. A big bowl in its own right, and still filled nearly to the brim. Our representative is a small woman. There is a tremor, her eyes widen in surprise that despite her power she is overwhelmed by the weight of the thing. One elbow relents and the wine spills in a waterfall of red. And then down comes that giant grandmotherly crystal careening to the ground. The crash is deafening against the tile of the kitchen. An explosion of diamond shrapnel and the spell is broken. The world snaps back into clarity and we smooth our skirts with our hands, check for food on the corners of our mouth.

This is our cue to leave. Our representative apologizes for the mess, but her eyes are gleaming and insane and she is crouched picking glass from the top of her foot. She tucks the front bang of her bob back behind her ear because she has lost her bobby pin. Delilah and her husband do not say we should do this again sometime. They do not say anything to us at all.

 How rude, comments our representative, limping, and we agree, chiseling out the beets from beneath our fingernails. 

We don’t offer to help her out the door because that would be to admit that our cruelty had twisted and perhaps broken in two. Our husbands collect our boys. We watch through the window as Delilah picks up one of the frog figurines hit from the mantle and holds her daughter to her hip. Her husband retreats to the darkness of the backyard, to search for a pearl of a child’s tooth in the soiled mulch beneath the slide. From outside, the house looks scorched, as if doused in a wet fire.

We walk and drive home with our husbands and our sons, not talking about anything in particular, all pulsing with adrenaline. We discuss going to the beach over the weekend, and whether we should stop by the farmer’s market for corn on the cob to put on the grills we will fire up in one another’s yards. But we do not talk about Delilah. Even when we get back to our own houses and start up old arguments and watch the same network news channels until we are almost too tired to stand up and go to bed. We curl our toes into the depths of our own carpets and feel their comforting, warm dryness on our sore feet. Our representative calls to invite us over to swim tomorrow at her pool, in-ground. Someone asks if she should go to the hospital, the cuts looked deep, she’s a nurse, and she is mocked into submission. Someone jokes we should invite Delilah. We all laugh.

We do not think we could loath Delilah more, but we realize that this loathing is infinite and we could, if given the chance, destroy every room in their house and prey on every bit of hope they have left for this neighborhood and this life. But, we decide it would be boring after this.

Years pass. The neighborhood changes hands. We join houses of prayer; our husbands are elected to office; we have more babies who need bigger houses; we are foreclosed upon and vanish. We start affairs. He is not a man we ever saw ourselves falling in love with, let alone letting put his hand up our skirt in an Italian restaurant a few towns over. We meet because our sink is broken—it spews water from the joints of the pipes and our husband is, for all intents and purposes, useless with learned male incompetence. Our son is at sleep away came for the whole summer, so we have no one to talk to until the plumber sets his toolbox down on the floor. We offer him some lemonade mixed with white wine, and he takes it.

Even though everyone else is doing it with everyone, we like to keep this to ourselves. We keep his homely, soap scrubbed hands, scrabbled beard, and distended stomach off the record because he finds us irresistible, and that alone is enough. We will get a divorce with our husband, divide up the furniture and the time of our sullen fifteen-year-old son, and our front yard will become a part of the pasture of for sale signs that that neighborhood has become. We will depart for new frontiers; a town closer to the ocean, a house so new it feels as though it is built on a foundation of packing peanuts. Over the years, our address books will narrow and the spines will crack in protest. One day, we will find that we have fallen behind in corrections and cross-outs and forwarded mail. The holiday cards we send out will be returned to us, and we will stop receiving them in due time.

Where did Delilah go? We do not care. As soon as we left Delilah to do the impossible of repairing her home, her delusions about the neighborhood, and her daughter’s tooth, she ceased to exist. We did not know her and her sad-browed husband or her orthodontically equipped daughter had gone away and moved until their house on the corner was transformed into a nail salon and cross-fit gym. Somehow, Delilah will remember us forever, and retell the story to new neighbors and old therapists alternatively in tears or stitched up with laughter.

• 0