Prose
Window on the Boulevard
Fee Calder hadn’t seen the woman in the modern house across the street for months. Fee initially watched the house because she didn’t like it; it didn’t fit the style of their neighborhood in Indianapolis, known for its wide, tree-lined roads and Federal and Italianate homes. Who would choose a place on their block with an asymmetrical roofline and too much glass, of all the choices in the world? Fee monitored the comings and goings of its pair of occupants, particularly the brisk woman with what Fee’s grandmother would’ve called good birthing hips and an almost devotional care of her rose bushes. The bushes were admittedly quite nice, and the woman appeared to take much pride when pedestrians stopped to admire them. Fee herself had once told her she liked them.
What really grabbed Fee’s attention, though, was the couple’s tendency to gesticulate rather violently in argument. She’d even seen a police car parked in front of the house after one such argument. Last month, the woman left the house crying, which did not match her milkmaid air of efficiency. The man brought several large trash bags out to his car alone late at night then drove off in a hurry. After that, nothing of the woman.
One morning, Fee watched for signs of her neighbor while brushing her teeth when she slipped on a wet patch and fell hard onto the bathroom tile. Despite knowing it wasn’t fair, Fee blamed her neighbor for the fall and the angst to follow.
Fee knew immediately she’d broken her ankle because it couldn’t bear any weight. She lay for several hours, shouting for help until she was hoarse. She was only 40. It couldn’t end like this. Her husband, Craig, travelled for work, so she lived alone during the week. He’d asked her to stop working as a concierge at the Ritz when they married, so she had no coworkers to worry about her absence. Her pest control guy, of all people, found her. He had his earbuds in and screamed when he saw her at the top of the stairs where she’d dragged herself in her pajamas and her untamed hair like an overgrown little orphan Annie trying to get to her phone.
The doctor gave her a walking boot to her knee. The boot velcroed up the front, with a pneumatic button to add cushioning and stabilization. The bottom was heavy and solid. She worried the boot was doing more damage, her muscles straining to haul her leg from room to room. She mentioned this to Craig the first night he was home after her fall, before he left to meet his sales team for drinks. He ran a hand through his dark hair that had not changed at all with age, and said starting the next morning, he’d hired a gal to come in to help with the chores and to check on Fee, so she could just take it easy. The caregiver came recommended by someone from Craig’s work, or something like that.
God forbid Craig stay home to take care of her himself. In fairness, his job at the firm, Barnum and Sons, was very stressful, particularly in the past few years, and she was glad to be kept out of it. And at least Fee wasn’t running from the house in tears like her poor neighbor across the street.
The gal Craig hired was named Lynne. She was bosomy, as Fee assumed all caregivers were, and had a sharp tongue like her old nanny when she was a girl. Fee couldn’t tell how old she was, but after Fee asked her if she had grandchildren, Lynne said her husband, teenagers and she had just returned from a cruise to celebrate her 50th birthday.
At first, Fee felt like she had a warden. She played solitaire and scrolled Instagram for hours and avoided Lynne. She read mystery novels until she found one about a woman confined to her bed who’d been forgotten and starved to death. Fee switched to romance.
This quiet existence was not wildly different from her life before the accident. But at least before she got out for errands and the occasional coffee with women from church. Those encounters never went anywhere toward real friendship because the ladies usually had children that dictated their social schedule. Fee couldn’t relate to a lot of the things they wanted to talk about, unless she could get them onto church gossip.
Now, Lynne was the only person she saw, and she enforced Craig’s preferences for Fee’s care in absentia. Chiefly, Craig was certain Fee was better off in the wheelchair than walking around in the boot. Fee’s cane stayed propped in a corner in the foyer with the others, which led Lynne to ask about them one afternoon, breaking their customary silence.
“These are lovely,” Lynne said, lifting one of the ebony ones from the floor vase.
“They irritate me.”
Fee was mouthing off, though it was true. She told Lynne the house had been her grandmother’s, which she gave to Fee as a newlywed ten years ago, with the unspoken stipulation she not change much about the place, to which Fee happily adhered. Craig was less happy about this requirement, but they were getting a house for free, so his argument died quickly. He moved in, bringing the canes from his parents’ travels, and Granny moved into an apartment where she was comfortable. Fee visited every week for lunch until Granny’s death three years ago.
“I was the logical grandchild to inherit. The others are raising their own families in Texas and in Seattle. Not that Craig and I have a family beyond the two of us. We tried, for sure. That didn’t work out, despite some effort.”
More than some effort. Years of the old-fashioned way, to the point Fee wondered if she’d missed an essential lesson in middle school Health class. Then more years of doctors’ visits and shots, until Craig said they needed to give up. The house kind of sealed up afterwards, keeping her in it. And Craig mostly out.
“He kicked over the canes in a fit of anger after our last, failed, fertility appointment,” Fee told Lynne. “The vase cracked as did several of the canes inside it. I suggested we get rid of them.”
Craig had gotten angry, like purple in the face and balled fists, which hadn’t exactly scared her, but was a side of him she’d never seen before.
“He said they were the only part of him in this godforsaken place, and he’d leave with them,” Fee couldn’t quite believe she shared that part with Lynne. Every time Fee passed the patched vase with the handles sticking out like a denuded tree, she thought of that argument.
“So, no, I don’t like the canes.”
Lynne nodded and backed out of the room to prepare egg salad for lunch.
Maybe Lynne figured enough out about Fee with the whole cane outburst because the next day, Fee caught her looking out the window, pivoting her head to follow someone in their house. After that, Lynne and she mainly talked about the neighbors and what Fee wanted to eat, which worked well for them both.
By late October, they had adopted a new ritual—surveilling the street. They spent a considerable amount of time speculating on the modern house where there was no longer a sign of a wife. They’d dubbed the house “The Rose Bowl,” because it was glassy and spherical, and a gardener now attended to the beautiful bushes several days a week. Fee felt betrayed on the other woman’s behalf, with someone else caring for her roses. Apart from the gardener, there was hardly anyone there at all. Once, the husband arrived at the house, walked through the lamplit living room, and then left in a black car with two large suitcases. She didn’t want something to be wrong at the house, necessarily, but their domestic trouble did give her a thrill she didn’t want to examine too closely.
The other house of interest was the two-story brick where the kids played dangerously close to the road. The kids were red-headed and laughed about seemingly everything; an older girl and two younger boys. They were good about putting their bikes away in the evening. The husband traveled, like Fee’s. But the other husband traveled even more than Craig. The mother’s voice carried when she called the children in for supper, but never loud enough for Fee to hear when she talked to the other neighbors. She had left Fee a ham on her doorstep after her fall.
Halloween fell on day seventeen of Fee’s incarceration. The decorations this year were out of hand. And all posted on Instagram. Skeletons in front yards taller than the roofline and entire outdoor haunted houses, complete with machines emitting spooky noises and wafting dry ice.
Should she do more to decorate? She sometimes felt silly living in this house without kids. Fee still wondered if any of her frozen eggs might take. Or even someone else’s eggs, but Craig told her it was time to let it go. Of course, he’d say that.
It got dark early. Clusters of families paraded the sidewalk and spilled into the wide streets lit by lampposts. The front doors of the houses opened like an advent calendar and reluctantly enthusiastic adults presented buckets of candy to costumed children as they scurried up the steps with their ready bags.
The night was bracing but not unpleasant and the visitors were frequent. They kept the door open, Fee in her chair with the bowl of Sour Patch Kids and Lynne shuttling to and from the kitchen to refill it. Fee had grown to like Lynne and appreciated the company. Too much quiet and Fee would start to fill in her own gaps with God knows what.
After about half an hour, the woman and her kids who played in the road approached Fee’s house.
The kids grabbed fistfuls of the little yellow bags. Their mother did not appear to notice or care, but Lynne did and said gently, “how about just a couple,” which the children respectfully did.
“Hi Fee, I’m Ione from across the street.”
“How’d you know my name?” Fee said. She’d always been Fee, to anyone who knew her at all. But most people who first met her called her Phoebe, since that’s how she was listed in any directory or on Facebook.
“Oh, I asked Lynne,” Ione said.
“I didn’t know you’d met.”
“I used to help out with her kids at a daycare,” Lynne said. “She introduced me to Craig. When he was looking for help.”
Lynne seemed embarrassed and Fee wondered if Lynne had been hard up and eager for work. Lynne and Ione knowing each other explained why the children were so responsive to the older woman. And why Craig had found someone to help so easily, if he’d just asked around the neighborhood. She wondered if he’d spoken to the guy in the Rose Bowl.
The name “Ione” suited her. The name was narrow and clean, and so was the woman, like she waxed off all her body hair.
Ione handed her a bottle of wine. Fee didn’t drink anymore. She stopped when they were trying to get pregnant, and her sobriety stuck. Recently, Craig had walked away from her at a party when she asked for a Perrier. In the car on the way home, he said her pride in her teetotaling was becoming obnoxious. She didn’t think it was fair for him to call a trait of hers obnoxious when he was hardly home long enough to notice who she was at all.
“Have you been going crazy?” Ione said. “If I was hurt, I’m sure I’d be doing a lot of online shopping. Buying things we only sort of need, like washcloths.”
“Yes, actually. Or Ziplocs.” She’d bought those in bulk. For whatever reason, Ione seemed determined to make Fee her friend.
Lynne gasped.
Fee nearly dropped the candy bowl. “What?” she said. She counted, Ione’s children were still there, though even with mouths stuffed with sugar, wearing incredibly bored and impatient expressions.
Lynne pointed. “The Rose Bowl has entered the chat.”
The exterior light above the front door lit up the walk. A lamp switched on in a front room and then a bathroom on the second floor.
“They’re never home,” Lynne said.
“Never home,” Fee and Ione said in unison.
The three women exchanged a knowing look.
“Kids,” Ione said to her children. “Let’s go that way.” Ione pointed to the Rose Bowl. “We missed one.”
The kids stood quickly and shoved wrappers into their bags. “Finally,” the tallest boy said, under his breath.
Fee and Lynne watched the kids ring the bell, the poor little canaries in a coal mine. After a minute the door opened, and Ione shook hands with the husband and the wife. The wife! She now had a tight cap of dark hair, as opposed to the long blonde of before, and was more petite than Fee remembered. He was very tall and broad, like a former athlete.
“The wife looks uneasy,” Fee said.
The Rose Bowlers chatted for only a minute or two before Ione reached into her pocket and typed quickly into her phone. Fee looked at her own phone like Ione might somehow have her number and send a critical message. The conversation across the street appeared normal, except the husband gestured behind him a few times, toward the house. The kids skipped back down the steps toward their own house leaving their mother behind.
“Ione’s husband’s coming. Looks like he’s got the kids.” Lynne said.
“Is Ione going inside?” Fee said.
Ione glanced once over her shoulder, Mr. Rose Bowl shutting the door behind them.
Fee pulled out her binoculars.
Ione and Mr. Rose Bowl passed in and out of the frame of the windows on the first floor and the open door. He pointed upstairs, and Ione shook her head. He put his hand on her arm and nodded his head in the direction of the stairs again. Mrs. Rose Bowl still poured drinks in the living room.
Fee didn’t like him touching Ione, alone. “She’s got to get out of there,” Fee whispered.
Trick or treaters arrived at the Rose Bowl. Mrs. Rose Bowl didn’t have a free hand and Mr. Rose Bowl apparently couldn’t be bothered with the candy, so Ione passed small packets to the kids at the door. When the trick or treaters ran off to the next stop, Ione spoke to the Rose Bowls briefly and left across the lawns to her own house.
Fee was disappointed. She needed to know what happened.
Three minutes after Ione’s door shut, the lights went out at the Rose Bowl and Ione hurried back across the street to Fee’s.
Fee and Lynne ushered her inside, turning off the outdoor light.
“It’s a different wife,” Fee said before she even shut the door.
“Maybe it’s an affair,” Lynne said.
Ione shook her head. “No, he introduced me to her as his wife.”
“Did he hurt you?” Fee asked.
“What? No,” Ione said.
“Oh, I thought he grabbed your arm.”
Ione shook her head. “I think he’s just one of those touchy guys, you know?”
Fee was a little embarrassed she’d leapt inaccurately to violence, but she carried on. “The previous wife was never very nice to me.”
“I didn’t really talk to her. I was always with the kids. We chatted a couple times,” Ione said.
Fee didn’t like the nagging feeling of a mismatch with the other facts they’d collected. It made her even more nervous.
“What happened to the first wife?” Fee asked. “It’s a pretty quick turnaround to find a new wife. He was probably having an affair.”
They all nodded. That was the logical answer.
After the weekend, Fee sat in the kitchen with a puzzle at the table. Craig was home on a Monday, which was highly unusual.
Lynne arrived and found her. “What are you doing back here?”
“Craig suggested I try to not be so nosy,” she said in a whisper. “Would you bring me back to the front of the house?”
Lynne hesitated but did as she asked and wheeled her to the windows facing the street.
Fee removed her binoculars from the pocket of her wheelchair to check on the Rose Bowl.
“Watching the birds?” Craig said with amusement. She hadn’t heard him come into the room.
She didn’t respond.
“OK, I’ll be more direct. Why are you spying on the neighbors?” he asked.
“They’re up to something.”
“Are you sure? Things aren’t always going the way you think they are,” Craig said.
“People can be strangers, within a few feet of you,” Fee said. She gestured across the street. “His wife is missing.”
“You two gossip an awful lot,” Craig said, shaking his head.
If you would actually talk to me, maybe I wouldn’t have to.
“We are just passing time,” said Lynne and Fee really loved her for that. Then he left again, back to his computer or his hobbies, or whatever he did inside this house where they both lived.
Over the next few mornings, after her children got on the school bus, Ione came over to Fee’s for coffee with her and Lynne and to discuss the neighborhood. They always started on other topics but ended up speculating about the Rose Bowl and what had happened to the first wife.
“Derek and Heather Davidson bought the house together four years ago” Lynne read from her phone. “Public record. But Heather Davidson came off the deed a few months ago.”
“Around when she vanished,” Fee looked at her own phone and shook her head, like she’d read it wrong. “Heather worked at Barnum, where my husband works.”
“Oh, that’s funny. Did he know her?” Lynne said.
“He’s never said so.”
“Perhaps she’s gone back to her maiden name, or her middle name, like McKenzie Scott.”
“The new wife is definitely named Jules,” Ione said. “She introduced herself.”
“Could Jules be Heather’s middle name and the one she goes by? And she just lost a ton of weight and dyed her hair?” Lynne said.
“And shed 20 years of age? I don’t think so,” Ione said.
“I don’t see anyone coming up with the name ‘Jules Davidson’ that isn’t a teenager in Florida or a middle-aged woman in New York,” Fee said.
“Could it be spelled J-E-W-E-L-S?” Lynne angled the phone to them.
A woman Fee recognized more by her outline rather than her features posed with her lips parted slightly. Jewels Davidson had a carefully curated, public, Instagram page; photos featuring her in exaggerated lighting.
“Are there any pictures at the Rose Bowl?” Fee asked.
Lynne flicked her thumb against the screen. “Not many. The first one I see is from two months ago.”
“Whoa,” Fee said. “Timing lines up, with the other wife disappearing.”
“Before that, it looks like Jewels lived in San Francisco,” Lynne said.
“He travelled a lot.” Fee said.
Ione looked uncomfortable.
Fee wanted to ask Ione if she also wondered when a person reached the point where they settled into their life. No more travel, no more seeking.
“He showed up in her pictures about a year ago.” Jewels had tagged all of her locations.
“So, Jewels is a different woman,” Ione said.
“I really think so,” Fee said. “But what happened to Heather? I never saw a moving truck.”
“Neither did I,” said Ione.
“Just the police, right?” Lynne said.
“And the night he took the big bags out,” Fee reminded them.
They were all silent. Fee’s stomach trembled with fear. Something very wrong had happened over there, and they all knew it.
“Look.” Lynne held out her phone again.
The latest post was from yesterday, Jewels holding a passport and a glass of champagne in a wide leather airplane seat with a man’s hand on her bare, narrow thigh.
“Disgusting,” Lynne said.
“I mean,” Fee said in a whisper, “did he kill the older wife to get her out of the way for the new model?”
Lynne shook her head. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Anyone who stumbled on this page would know this clearly wealthy couple wasn’t at home. It was practically an invitation.
No one needed to say it. Ione did anyway. And being the one brave enough to put the words into existence, she committed to being the one to do it. “We have to go in.”
They decided to go at night. Ione could go around the back from her house. It was easy enough, unless the Davidsons had a Ring camera or other security.
Ione called at 8:30pm as arranged, after her children were in bed, and Fee put her on speaker. “OK, I’m going now,” and they could just make out her shadow along the back yard, lengthening up to the bushy alley between the houses. Fee waited for the sound of an alarm or sirens, but neither came. Then, the flick of a light, just from the back. Ione was in.
A car slowed in front of the Rose Bowl. And pulled down the driveway. “Someone is coming,” Fee said.
Ione swore. “Did I trip some wire?”
The Davidsons got out of the car and went in the front of the house. Where was Ione? Fee could see the Davidsons moving through the rooms they illuminated in their path.
“They’re coming upstairs,” Fee said.
In the background of Ione’s end of the line, she heard Derek Davidson say, “what the—?”
Rather pointlessly, Fee said. “Ione they are outside the room.” Ione hung up on her.
Lynne wheeled Fee away from the window and ducked down beneath the sill.
“How did I end up here?” Lynne muttered. “I’m a nursing assistant.”
“What is happening?” Fee hissed. “Should we call the police?”
“She’s the one who broke in!” Lynne said. “I can’t risk my job over this, I really can’t. This has gone too far.”
“But what if he pushes her down the stairs?” Fee said.
“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Lynne said.
After an eternity, Fee’s phone rang. “Are you OK?” she asked, as she answered and put it on speakerphone again.
“Yes, I am, but I couldn’t risk coming over there,” Ione said. “They weren’t on vacation. That must’ve been an old photo.”
“What did you say to them about what you were doing there?”
“They aren’t going to press charges,” Ione said. “I sort of convinced them I thought I’d heard them say to come in when I knocked. I said was looking for an earring I’d dropped on Halloween. After he said his brother was on the Indianapolis police force.”
“But what about Heather?” Fee said.
“I have to go, but I’ll explain.”
It took three days before Ione came over again. Fee’s anxiety ratcheted up, speculating wildly about Heather: that she’d never been real, that she was Jewels’ mother, that they held her prisoner inside the house. Lynne told her maybe she should take a break. Craig wasn’t home, and he wasn’t answering his phone, so she couldn’t ask him if he knew Heather from work. She played cards with Lynne and resumed her romance novel to take her mind off the Davidsons and their marriage.
When Ione finally rang the bell, Lynne wheeled Fee out to the front porch.
“Fee, you should see this.” Ione gave Fee her phone.
Fee’s hands shook. Jewels Davidson had posted a picture of the front of Fee’s house on Instagram a few days ago. A figure was clearly visible in the window, holding a pair of binoculars, leaves on the ground in her yard. The caption beneath the photo of her read, “Spooky Season.” Fee only read a few comments: “Creep alert,” and “OMG that is insane,” and “Single white female,” before she handed the phone back.
What would Craig, master of denial, say?
“I was bird watching,” Fee said.
Because they were her friends, they nodded in agreement. “Of course.”
“She wasn’t his wife,” Ione said. “Heather. She was his sister. It was their parents’ house, and they’d been sharing it.”
This couldn’t be so simple.
“Well, what about Jewels?”
“Derek and Jewels got married and Heather, the sister, sold out her portion of the house to them,” Ione said.
“OK, but there was screaming,” Fee said.
“I think it was just a sibling argument.” Ione paused. “I might’ve exaggerated the screaming.” She blushed. “Maybe if we’d spoken to her—.”
“Oh, that’s ridiculous,” Fee said. “She had no interest in me. I tried so many times.”
Craig had just, finally, returned from his trip and came into the room then. “The big woman across in the modern house? You did try to talk to her. You told her you liked the roses.”
“Thank you, Craig,” Fee said. “You’re right, I did try.” She was feeling gracious to him and didn’t want to irritate him, but she had to ask. “Say, did you know her from work?”
He blanched and gave the other women a confused look as if they could explain. “Why would I?”
“The internet says she worked at Barnum.”
His face relaxed. He shrugged. “Nah. I never got a good look at her, though, so maybe I just didn’t put it together,” he said.
Fee tried to find Heather Davidson online, but without luck beyond that initial hit on LinkedIn. Ione didn’t know where she moved. Fee wanted to know if she were taking care of a new garden of roses. Her old ones really were beautiful. Maybe Heather would come back before the house was sold, to transplant the bushes to wherever it was she went.
“Do you think it’s time we moved on?” Ione said one day, gently, over tea.
Fee thought it over. The pursuit of Heather was a dead-end and she’d embarrassed herself enough. The wild ideas she got in her head. The danger of being home alone too much. The other two looked at her with expectancy. “Yes, of course, of course. I’m sorry I’ve dragged it out so long.”
“Almost like that new restaurant in the triangle building,” Ione said, laughing.
“God that did take forever,” Lynne said.
Fee startled. “But that’s an office building. Craig’s building. How’d you know that?”
There was a long pause and none of the women looked at one another.
“Well, I worked there, too, for a bit,” Ione said.
“Where?”
Ione hesitated again and cocked her head, an unreadable look in her eyes. “At Barnum and Sons.”
“I didn’t know you’d worked with Craig,” Fee said.
“Sure, you did. Remember, he asked me for a recommendation, and I reintroduced him to Lynne,” said Ione quickly.
“Wait, Lynne, did you work there, too?”
“Um, yeah, I was there in the onsite daycare just for a bit, then switched to private work. Clearly.”
Fee’s head swam. She suddenly remembered Lynne recalling what Heather looked like and the difference with Jewels. “You know, Lynne, Craig is on his way home. And I have a headache. Do you mind if I—.”
The two women clucked to interrupt her. “Get some rest. No, of course we don’t mind.” They made sure she was all settled, very solicitously, casting glances at one another when they thought she wasn’t looking.
There was so much to think about. She tried to tie all the pieces together and one thing stuck out: Ione went over the Davidsons, which was inevitable, or so it seemed at the time. She volunteered so readily. But what if, oh my god. What if they’d all been in on some scheme against Heather, and Ione wanted to warn Derek that Fee was onto them.
When she was certain they were long gone, Fee googled, realizing she’d left this part of the search to the other women, and never thinking she’d have to check. He was easy to find on LinkedIn. A cold pit of dread opened when she confirmed what she feared. Derek Davidson had worked at Barnum, too. Both Davidsons. And all at the same time.
She kept going. There was some whistleblower situation, an unnamed woman calling out other people unnamed in a lawsuit, some of whom were reprimanded, some of whom lost their jobs. Fee remembered Craig being incredibly frustrated at that time and being accused of something he didn’t do.
Oh, no, that was the IVF treatments. She thought he’d been so upset about the fertility issues, but what if that was just a good cover for this work nightmare?
Was Heather actually Derek Davidson’s sister? Or did they make that up for her?
No, no, no. This was all wild coincidence, just like everything across the street. She was afraid to look for more information, afraid to keep going.
But she couldn’t escape it. Craig, Ione, Lynne. Derek. They all knew Heather. She possibly had something on all of them. And now Fee was pretty sure she did, too.
“Fee? Honey? Where are you?” Craig’s voice called.
“I’m in here.”
“Where are your ladies?” he settled his bag on a kitchen chair and reached for his whiskey.
Was he smiling oddly or was she imagining it?
“You know what? I think we should sell the house after all,” she said in her nicest voice, doing her best to give nothing away.
“Where’d that come from?”
“Just too much time in the house. But, you know, my grandmother is long gone, no one else would care.”
They stared at each other a long time. He shrugged first.
Craig said, “Nah. I want to see who moves in across the street.”
Fee stared at him again. “Oh, are the Davidsons moving?”
He laughed and sipped his whiskey. “I didn’t know you knew their names?”
“Just found out recently.” She poured herself her own small shot.
“Yeah, I think I heard something about that. New wife, new life, kind of thing.”
She drank the whiskey in one swallow. “I think we should move.”
Claire Bezdek Gochal studied with Joyce Carol Oates as an undergraduate at Princeton and more recently with Gotham Writers’ Workshop. She has work published in the North Dakota Quarterly, and was a semi-finalist for the 2023 Story Foundation Prize and an Honorable mention in the 2023 Adele and Robert Schiff Awards at the Cincinnati Review. Claire lives on the coast of Massachusetts with her husband and two daughters.