to this day I believe she knew—or sensed—exactly who was on other side of her windowsill. She’d probably known for years that Paul and I habitually spied on her, and she allowed us to believe we were always too clever to be noticed.
As she withdrew her head from the maroon, lime, and cobalt blue knitted noose, the expression on her face remained as calm as if all she’d chosen was raspberry jam over orange preserves. Sally stepped down from the chair and scraped it back under the dining room table, which housed her collection of empty, jewel-red, glass decanters. She took five dainty steps to the quilt-covered couch and exhaled slowly and fully, sinking deeply into the cushions. She turned the television on with the remote control. Johnny Carson. Studio audience laughter. Except for that one time on the chair, Sally never looked toward the window at all.
Wordlessly, Paul and I felt each other’s desire to pull away from Sally’s privacy. We walked along the side of the house rather than face the barbs of the juniper again, stealthily avoiding making any noise in the pebbled petunia garden. Sally’s gauzy window light grew fainter and fainter. When we reached our side of the valley, the fog had grown thicker. We looked back across the distance and saw the faint dot of window light from Sally’s house. The light flicked off.
Goodnight Sally.
It had gotten colder and damper. We snuck through the window to our basement bedroom. No sound came from Mom and Dad’s room. I guess we were mistaken about the direction that night’s discussion would take. Both cars were parked in front, no skid marks, no shattered bottles, no fuming mutterings. Two daddy longlegs traversed our orange hotrod track. I guess one had found a friend and invited it to come out and play. We crawled into the lower bunk together and watched the spiders dance until we finally fell asleep.
Would I have tried to save Sally as Paul did? I wasn’t the one who uttered “Don’t.” I wasn’t the one who saved her. But given another chance, would I? Or would I have preferred to witness the horrifying once-in-a-lifetime spectacle of the tutu hippo stretching the colorful knitted noose taut in a heavy, slow swing?
The Beached Whale’s head collapsed on the pillow in sleep, and her bowl of popcorn slid off the couch and dropped to the floor, spilling yellow.
No, Johanna did not know this lady as I did.
But so what.
Johanna’s point was she did not want to become the kind of New Yorker who fattened up on popcorn on a futon watching life through pixels, no matter what past experiences substantiated that kind of life. No matter where we’d been, we had choices to make now , and Johanna refused to allow herself to select the Beached Whale existence. She refused to allow me to select it either. How does one argue with that?
I could ignore all of Johanna’s shortcomings and adjust to her evolution as a New York chick in the pursuit of what she called “having it all.” I could authentically become a we for the first time since Paul and I wordlessly slipped out of each other’s lives. I could have a beautiful woman to share the day’s shit with as I donned the silk pajamas she would inevitably give me one Christmas day. I could clink a Pottery Barn porcelain plate of quiche Lorraine onto our marble kitchen island for her on Sunday morning as our own Perfect Little Hunter and Perfect Little Felicity ran around us in happy mindless frolic.
I could reach for that designer duplexed martini-clinking Manhattan star…
And yet…Marzoli had awakened something…something powerful. A fresh calling that was slowly tipping the scales toward something entirely different, unexpected, and weighty. The most surprising realization of all was that I was not as opposed to the labels associated with this leaning as I would have thought I’d be, even though I knew so little about it. What would the road that begins with a stubbled jaw brushing against another
As she withdrew her head from the maroon, lime, and cobalt blue knitted noose, the expression on her face remained as calm as if all she’d chosen was raspberry jam over orange preserves. Sally stepped down from the chair and scraped it back under the dining room table, which housed her collection of empty, jewel-red, glass decanters. She took five dainty steps to the quilt-covered couch and exhaled slowly and fully, sinking deeply into the cushions. She turned the television on with the remote control. Johnny Carson. Studio audience laughter. Except for that one time on the chair, Sally never looked toward the window at all.
Wordlessly, Paul and I felt each other’s desire to pull away from Sally’s privacy. We walked along the side of the house rather than face the barbs of the juniper again, stealthily avoiding making any noise in the pebbled petunia garden. Sally’s gauzy window light grew fainter and fainter. When we reached our side of the valley, the fog had grown thicker. We looked back across the distance and saw the faint dot of window light from Sally’s house. The light flicked off.
Goodnight Sally.
It had gotten colder and damper. We snuck through the window to our basement bedroom. No sound came from Mom and Dad’s room. I guess we were mistaken about the direction that night’s discussion would take. Both cars were parked in front, no skid marks, no shattered bottles, no fuming mutterings. Two daddy longlegs traversed our orange hotrod track. I guess one had found a friend and invited it to come out and play. We crawled into the lower bunk together and watched the spiders dance until we finally fell asleep.
Would I have tried to save Sally as Paul did? I wasn’t the one who uttered “Don’t.” I wasn’t the one who saved her. But given another chance, would I? Or would I have preferred to witness the horrifying once-in-a-lifetime spectacle of the tutu hippo stretching the colorful knitted noose taut in a heavy, slow swing?
The Beached Whale’s head collapsed on the pillow in sleep, and her bowl of popcorn slid off the couch and dropped to the floor, spilling yellow.
No, Johanna did not know this lady as I did.
But so what.
Johanna’s point was she did not want to become the kind of New Yorker who fattened up on popcorn on a futon watching life through pixels, no matter what past experiences substantiated that kind of life. No matter where we’d been, we had choices to make now , and Johanna refused to allow herself to select the Beached Whale existence. She refused to allow me to select it either. How does one argue with that?
I could ignore all of Johanna’s shortcomings and adjust to her evolution as a New York chick in the pursuit of what she called “having it all.” I could authentically become a we for the first time since Paul and I wordlessly slipped out of each other’s lives. I could have a beautiful woman to share the day’s shit with as I donned the silk pajamas she would inevitably give me one Christmas day. I could clink a Pottery Barn porcelain plate of quiche Lorraine onto our marble kitchen island for her on Sunday morning as our own Perfect Little Hunter and Perfect Little Felicity ran around us in happy mindless frolic.
I could reach for that designer duplexed martini-clinking Manhattan star…
And yet…Marzoli had awakened something…something powerful. A fresh calling that was slowly tipping the scales toward something entirely different, unexpected, and weighty. The most surprising realization of all was that I was not as opposed to the labels associated with this leaning as I would have thought I’d be, even though I knew so little about it. What would the road that begins with a stubbled jaw brushing against another
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