Envy by Kathryn Harrison Page A

whatever I do or feel, I come here and tell you all about it. So you might just as well be there with me. Then you could see exactly how stupid and shallow I am.”
    â€œDo you think you might like to have someone with you all the time? Someone to watch over you?”
    â€œWhy would I want that?”
    â€œIt’s not so unusual a wish. People get lonely.”
    â€œI’d like to be lonely! I’d like to have a minute to myself. But you make it impossible for me to have any privacy even when I am alone. I told you, it’s uncomfortable. It’s not something I enjoy. It’s like I have a built-in peeping Tom.”
    â€œBut Maria, it’s you who’s invented this, the idea of my secretly watching you. And you who imagines that my observations are judgmental.”
    â€œOmniscient,” she says.
    â€œOmniscient?”
    â€œYes. Because you’re in my head, too, so you can see what I’m thinking.”
    â€œGo on,” Will says when she falls silent. But she says nothing, and he finds himself feeling impatient. He looks past the couch to the dance studio across the street, through whose windows he sometimes watches the students, children mostly. Today it’s a group of little girls about the same age as Samantha, although he can make out a boy or two. Beginners’ ballet, he guesses, a lot of antic warming up followed by a halting review of the basics. The teacher, a young woman in black leotard and tights with red leg warmers, stands at the front of the class, holding a position until the three rows of would-be dancers have assembled their limbs in an approximation of her own. Then she goes painstakingly from one child to the next, nudging feet, realigning arms, a process that requires her to stoop and squat, patiently doing again and again what she must have done countless times before. From across the narrow street, Will can see her wide smiles of encouragement. Her energy and enthusiasm make him feel tired, even old. What—if anything—distinguishes his work from hers? Does he not spend hours each day nudging and straightening, supporting mostly doomed attempts to approach an ideal from various points of stubborn individuality? After each position, the teacher has the class jump up and down and shake their arms and legs, presumably in an effort to dispel energy and make them pliable enough to attempt the next.
    â€œYou’re just,” Maria blurts, “I don’t know. It’s what I said—as long as I’m going to tell you, you might just as well be there. In my bedroom.” She stops there, and Will is silent, waiting. “It feels the same as when I used to get in trouble and my mother would make me wait in my room until my dad got home,” she says.
    â€œWhat does?”
    â€œYour watching me.”
    â€œHow? How does it?”
    â€œBecause. It just does, that’s all.”
    â€œDo you think perhaps you’re feeling angry with me and would like to punish me?” Will prompts, unusually direct, but over the past five years Maria has proved herself someone who can get stuck on a topic for weeks, marching the two of them over and over the same territory.
    â€œAngry about what?”
    â€œWell, I remember that you were upset with me last September, after I had been away during August. We spoke about your feeling abandoned.”
    â€œBut why would that make me want you to see into my private life? Stuff like with my boyfriend—stuff that’s intimate. I mean, why would I want you to see me naked or having sex?”
    â€œTell me if this sounds possible,” Will tries. “You’d like to believe that my life is boring, empty, and doesn’t include intimacies like those you share with your boyfriend.”
    Maria lies still on the couch, says nothing.
    â€œWouldn’t it be that much more gratifying if I were to witness your interesting life? And know that my own was comparatively