Chapter 16
The interview went well.
Henry is feeling rather buoyant as he drives home. He parks his car at the curb outside his parents’ house.
And yes, they did ask for references. “Shoot us a couple of references in an email,” they said after he’d firmly shaken their hands, before he walked out the door of the conference room in the high-rise office building downtown.
The office space was modern, all glass and clean lines.
It’s a newer consulting company, looking to expand its IT department, and Henry’s hoping they’ll be less discerning than an older, more established firm.
“A couple of references” means only two.
Usually, people asked for three, and he’d have to dig deep for a third—back to an internship he’d had during his sophomore year of college.
And when he sent the names, email addresses, and phone numbers, the interviewer would cross-check them against his résumé, and they’d be puzzled by the fact that he didn’t include anyone from his most recent employer, where he’d worked for three years.
They’d notice that employment had an end date rather than saying to present.
Which raised the stark and unavoidable question as to why no reference was provided.
But the two men who interviewed him had seemed genuinely excited about his experience and responses. As a candidate, he has red flags; this is undeniable. Suspicion will almost certainly niggle like a loose tooth. But perhaps he will finally get lucky and they will give him a chance.
Maybe soon he’ll be parking outside this house as a visitor rather than an unwelcome resident. His mother makes him feel like a squatter. Her own son.
No, he decides. Once he’s able to leave, he won’t come back.
Henry shifts his car into park and turns off the engine.
He’s about to fling the door open when he notes movement to his right.
It’s her—the wife. She’s stepped outside, through her front door, and climbed down the porch steps, a green plastic watering can dangling from her right hand, and he can tell by the lopsided and lurching sort of way she’s walking that the can is quite heavy, quite full.
She tilts it over the flowers she planted a few weeks earlier.
While her back is to him, Henry is free to observe her, the delicate curve of her spine.
Her dark hair is gathered in a low ponytail, and under the high summer sun, there’s a gold sheen to it, like a stream of coffee as it descends into a cup.
There have been other women he has watched, followed, approached, punished, who were more beautiful than her, but he never felt a pull toward them quite as strong as the pull he feels toward the wife.
The watering can is empty now, so she turns, unburdened by its weight, her head still tipped forward. She carries it into the house, back through the front door, which is strange. The garage, he thinks, would be a better, more logical place for it.
As the door closes behind her, Henry notices that her feet are bare.
She didn’t spare him or his car even a glance. Sometimes she seems like a prisoner, as though the husband is in the house, waiting. “You have forty seconds,” he says. “I want you back in here in forty seconds.”
It’s almost noon on a Wednesday, yet she’s home.
She might be employed, could have a job where she works remotely.
He could see her as a graphic designer, something techy and artsy.
If he knew her name, he could search for her online.
He could look for a professional profile or social media accounts.
But he doesn’t want to know her name. He doesn’t want to slip when he finally meets her, to say something he shouldn’t already know. Besides, he knows enough.
He thought his mom might mention their names, the husband and the wife. He knows she met them shortly after they moved in. “We have new neighbors,” she told Henry and his dad as though it were breaking news. “Nice young couple.” She was looking at Henry. “Reminds me of Laurel and Dan.”
Which was ridiculous because his sister looks nothing like the wife.
She’s not nearly as beautiful. And last time Henry saw Laurel, he was shocked by her sudden softness.
She’d become excessively fleshy, skin milk white, since having the baby, like a soft and floured dough version of her former self.
Henry’s buoyancy has faded. He feels like a prisoner himself.
He’ll send off his references when he gets inside, and they’ll raise those familiar red flags. He’ll never hear anything back, or he’ll receive a curt and tactful rejection email in a couple of weeks.
His mom must have been standing in the foyer, waiting for him.
He can picture her frowning, the parentheses bookmarking her mouth deepening, watching him sit in his front seat and observe the wife. What’s he doing, sitting out there?
“How did it go?” she asks brightly, frown gone, as he steps inside. She must have put on her Good, Caring Mom mask while he was walking to the door.
“It went great,” says Henry, trying to conjure some of the optimism that had flowed only minutes earlier.
But his tone is flat, and his mother smiles a smile that is tight and concerned, because they both know that interviews have been “great” before and they’ve yielded nothing but disappointment.
Henry now fears this one will be no different, and his mother has removed her mask.
“I’ll be right back,” he murmurs, retreating to the basement.
As though she cares. He goes into his bedroom and changes out of his suit, shaking it out, smelling the jacket, before hanging it back up in the closet.
His thoughts trail away from his mother, away from the interview, back to the wife.
He wonders what she’s doing inside her own brick-front colonial, which has more space than she needs.
He pictures her padding through her own bedroom, into her own closet, changing out of her sweat-dampened T-shirt, her bare feet slapping against the hardwoods.
She was too far away; Henry couldn’t see her toenails, but he’s sure they’re red.