IF U LIKE THE PAGE ,PLEASE LET OTHER PEOPLE KNOW:
Appearance
It was during the first snowstorm of the new year. The color green
was something you saw in pictures tacked to the wall or in a memory
from
what felt like years ago. I was living alone in a studio apartment in a
shitty section of west Cleveland. Everything was the same color in
that neighborhood, even in the summer. It was the kind of dirty grey that
gets swept up into the air of unfinished basements and cold storage
warehouses. There were no stairs to get to my apartment. I was as far
down as
you can
get without going under. I slept in the same room as the oven, but
I liked the smallness of it. When I was young my sister and I used to zip
each
other into suitcases. We would drag the suitcases up and down the stairs,
and
all around the living room, laughing hysterically.
That first morning I wrapped a scarf around my neck and lit the stove.
I tripped over my shoes on my way to the sink to fill the pot. I looked
down at them accusingly, as if anyone but me could have put them there.
I looked
up after kicking them across the room and that was when I saw him for
the first time. I wouldn't find out until later that he had been there for
weeks. Inches away from me as I slept. An arm's reach as I showered
and dressed each morning. He sat with me while I overcooked my eggs
and searched the internet for a cat to adopt, each time deciding against
it because I could imagine it snowballing into two or three until I became
one of those women.
The outside world that day, and every day since I had been living
there, was a white swirling mixture of ground and sky. Set against the
bright seamless backdrop was the outline of a man. He was fading in and
out with each gust of wind, like a Polaroid gone backwards. But I saw
him. I saw the tip of one of his pink fingers poking out of a hole in his
glove. His hands were up against his mouth which was covered in a thick
dark beard and his breath came in a long slow billow of white smoke,
like the mouth of a gutter under a frozen street. His hood was pulled up
over his head which made his eyes ever brighter in the shadow. I couldn't
tell what color they were, but they seemed to have a reflection inside
them like the round outline of a flashbulb in the eye of a magazine model.
I didn't scream. I felt nothing like adrenaline, or dread. Or that feeling
when your heart beats so fast it makes you want to throw up. Nothing like
that happened. If someone told me that they saw a strange man staring
at them through their window I would have expected to hear them say,
"And then I screamed and dropped my glass and it shattered and I ran to
the phone and dialed 911 and then I ran to my front door and pulled
the deadbolt across and then I hid in the bathroom with the door closed
and I couldn't stop shaking." But I didn't do any of that. I stood completely
still as if someone was holding me there, and I watched as the man I saw
so clearly disappeared into the endless white.
There was nothing in my apartment that anyone would want. My possessions were piled in and out of boxes and I didn't even own a real
bed. I had a mattress on the floor that tripled as a couch and dining room table.
I did own a laptop but I took it with me to work. I didn't own a TV, or a toaster oven, or even a decent pair of shoes. I just decided that since there was nothing for him to steal, and I was sure he figured that out if he took a
good look, that I would go on about my day despite his strange appearance outside my window. It felt less like a decision to ignore it, and more like
it didn't happen at all. Or like it happens all the time. And that is exactly
how it ended up. Each morning while I boiled water and ladled my mug
into the steaming pot, I saw him. I didn't own a tea kettle either. I didn't
see why people spent money on things like that when they could function perfectly well without them. But anyway, each night when I came home
from work and my apartment was dark and quiet and anyone would think
that I should be scared, I wasn't. There was no one waiting for me behind
the shower curtain. Nothing was ever out of place. There were never
any footprints circling my apartment, or scratch marks around my doorknob. I
came and went peacefully and each morning I shared a moment with a
stranger whose eye brows curled up like a puppy and whose fingers were
always bent across his mouth.
It went on for about a week that way. I continued to start my car ten
minutes early with the keys dangling in the ignition, so it could thaw. I guess in
hindsight that was a pretty stupid thing to do in west Cleveland anyway,
random man or not. But I mean I just lived my life normally, with the
exception of my gloomy window friend stopping by more and more often.
Once while I was watching TV late at night, something caught my eye at
the window. Of course it was him. I just kept on eating my popcorn until I
was full and there was still half a bowl left. I hated to waste food, and
I always felt bad for the little birds that hopped over the snow, and
wondered what the hell they ate in this neighborhood at twelve below.
So sometimes I would throw food outside for them. Or for the squirrels. So I went to the window. I had never really…confronted the man. I stayed a
room's length away from him as he peered at me sadly. But that night I
guess I got brave. I got up and saw his outline like the moon must have
been fat and shining right behind him, casting a line of white around his
face. My eyes went to the top of the window to unhook the lock, and
when they returned to him there was only the snow. He had been erased by its
pale hand. I put my face into the cold, that kind of cold that feels more like
fire than ice, and I looked for him. The snow was covered in a layer of glass. I
threw the leftover popcorn and it rolled like dice across the ground. There
were no signs of his tracks. I noticed, as I pulled the window back down,
that there was no moon that night.
The next morning I saw the white grey billows of exhaust fumes pouring
out of a piece of shit station wagon in front of my apartment. I saw the
woman's eyes, and they were glossy and dull. I had seen her baby basset
hound eyebrows before, on the man at my window. She just stared at the
door as if she was waiting for someone to come out. I came out. She drove away.
It happened that way three times. Not all at once, but spread so far out across two weeks that I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn't a
déjà
vu, and that yes, this had really happened before. The fourth time I
decided had to be different. Something about her felt so much like the man
at my window, but maybe it was just her coming and going. And her
staring. And those eyebrows arching up. But her hands were not covering
her mouth; they were white and exposed even in this weather, and they
were gripping the steering wheel. So I could see that her lips were moving
tightly against each other, and on top of each other, pulling in and out of
her mouth. This fourth time she didn't drive away when I walked out onto
the ice. I stood waiting for her to do it; to drive away as she always had.
But she just looked ahead at the road, and then back into my face. Then
I saw her hand move to the door, and the window rolled down. I walked
towards her casually, not like someone who had seen her on three
previous mornings, but like someone who was going to ask her if she
needed directions. Or if she was alright. So I did ask her that, because
I wasn't sure what else to say.
The wind stole the words and spread them out across the trees and
the pavement and the kicked over silver trash cans. She said nothing.
She looked like she might drive away again. She put her hands back on
the wheel and looked straight ahead. But then she turned and looked past
me at my apartment. I looked back then too, like maybe I was missing
something. She was looking at the right side of the house, at the
space between it and the neighbor's fence, which was all of four feet.
It was the space where I saw my window friend each morning standing,
waiting to watch me curse at my hair for making me
late.
"Are you looking for him?" I asked. Feeling as soon as I said it, the
longing to take it back. I wasn't sure what I would say if she asked "Who?"
Oh, just that man who stares in my window every day. The one who for
all I know could be a serial killer casing out his next victim. I know that's
what people would think if I told them. But it didn't feel like that at all.
But she didn't ask me who, she didn't say anything for about a minute,
she just stared blankly back and forth between me and the apartment,
and I knew that I would be late for work again. She looked like she was
about to say something, her mouth kept moving and tears starting falling
into it from her eyes. I remembered the landlord speaking to me in
broken English, telling me how grateful he was that he didn't need to help
me carry furniture. I remembered him telling me that a couple had lived there before me. And he kept saying something in Spanish that sounded like
"tragic." And he kept shaking his head.
"Do you need help?" I asked, coming a little closer to the window.
She just kept crying, harder now. I squeezed my cell phone for the time
and saw that I was still early. I always turned my car on too soon, and
by the time I got inside it the snow was pouring from the roof like rain.
"You can come inside and we can have some tea if you want." I said,
imagining myself using a soup spoon to dish her out a ration of hot water.
"Or maybe you just want to talk? Is that why you keep coming here?"
I just kept talking. I didn't know what else to do with her.
"What's your name? I just moved here a few weeks ago, actually
I guess it's been more than a month. I don't know anyone. I work
downtown at a magazine. I do graphic design." She started to calm
down a little and looked at me.
"Amy," she said quietly.
"Hey Amy," I said, a little too cheerfully. "I'm Ellen. Is this where you
used to live?" I said, pointing back at my little faded blue apartment and
the trees, and the trash cans that were glued to the sidewalk now from
all the ice. She stared at the apartment and nodded at it, as if it had asked
her the question.
"Well, did you want to come in for a little while? I can't stay long,
I do have to go soon, but you can come in for a few minutes if you want.
I know when I moved from my first house I always wanted to go back
and see what they did to my old room. See if they painted it a different
color or anything. I didn't paint anything yet. Maybe I will in the summer." I
smiled at her, and she smiled back slowly, as if her face had forgotten
which muscles it took to pull up the chapped corners of her mouth. She
stared
at the house, and then at me and then back at the house again, and
without saying anything she unlocked her seat belt and got out of the car.
We were standing there in the middle of the frozen street, her car was
still running and dripping fluid, making a little puddle that was curling
and flowing over the cracks in the ice and the dirty solid snow that was
pushed up onto the curb.
"Did you want to…?" I motioned to the keys hanging in the ignition.
It was alright for me to leave my car running, but if hers got stolen
I would feel pretty terrible.
"Oh, yeah, thanks," she said softly. I watched her lean into her car and
shut it off, pull the keys out and put them in the pocket of her coat. When
she turned to face me again I smiled a sort of awkward, ok right this way
, kind of smile, and turned to walk to the apartment. She followed me
hesitantly and I heard her take in a deep breath. The cold air must have
stung her lungs because she started coughing.
"You ok?" I said, turning to look at her over my shoulder as I opened
the door and walked in. She just nodded, and I saw her eyebrows start to
go higher, and her lips start to pull into her mouth. I wasn't sure if this
was such a great idea after all. What was I supposed to do with some
strange sobbing woman? I remembered that I didn't have anywhere for her to
sit, and it felt like an even worse idea. I took in a deep breath of the frozen
air as we walked into the apartment.
She was my first guest and I was suddenly a little self conscious about
my housekeeping. I scooped up the cold soggy tea bags from the counter
and threw them in the trash, and moved a few things around so I didn't
look like a slob.
"Do you want some tea? Or hot chocolate maybe? I don't have a
coffee maker." I grabbed two mugs before she could answer, refilled the
pot that was on the stove, and started it to boil. She didn't say anything,
and I looked behind me to see her standing in what I guess had been
her living room, looking around the apartment like Dorothy when she came
out of her little spinning cabin.
"I think I feel like some hot chocolate," I said, trying to break her from
her daze. She stared at me as if she had forgotten where she was. "Sure,"
she said finally.
I attempted small talk, mostly to myself, while the water boiled.
I asked her questions and got a nod here and there. Finally I had two cups
of hot chocolate and I stirred at them violently trying to get the lumps out.
"I wish I had some of those tiny marshmallows. They're fun," I said,
smiling awkwardly as I handed her the mug. It was from some rest stop
in the Redwood Forrest, Paul Bunyan and his big blue Ox. I wished I
would have noticed and given her the one with the Dalmatian instead.
That would have seemed a little less awkward. My mom sent it to me
because when I was little I loved Dalmatians. I tried to explain to her
that, thanks to Disney, lots of little kids liked Dalmatians and that the
phase was over, but she still kept sending me mugs and birthday cards
with black spots.
"I guess you could sit…on my bed if you want? I'm sorry, that's pretty creepy but I don't have any chairs yet." I looked around at the empty
walls and the posters rolled up on the floor and told myself I would hang
them up tonight. But I knew I wouldn't. She walked over to my bed and
sat down on the corner. I pulled up a box full of books and sat down on it.
I sipped at the hot chocolate and got a big chunk of powder. I hoped I
had stirred hers a little better.
"So, you lived here before me?" I asked quietly. Hoping not to start
another round of hysterics; she had finally seemed to calm down.
"Yes."
"Did you live alone?" I squeezed the hot mug, already feeling like
I knew the answer. She must have been part of the couple the
landlord attempted to gossip with me about. Maybe it was a really
bad breakup. Maybe he was still looking for her, still stalking her.
I thought of the man who I guess was stalking me. But he didn't seem
like he would hurt anybody. He was too sad, too cold and lonely.
"No," she said, and then she breathed into the steaming mug, and
I waited, hoping that maybe she would tell me her story so that I didn't
ask the wrong question and make her cry.
"I lived with my fiancé, Eric. He was a musician." She tried smiling.
"We had rugs and towels hanging all over the walls," - she pointed to
the tiny holes, the ones I never noticed - "and his friends would come over
and practice."
"Band practice in this place? That must have been crazy." She smiled
bigger now. I was sure she was transporting herself back there, and
I pictured four or five guys with guitars huddled around the bed where
she sat and listened, maybe a drummer with his chair stuck inside
the bathroom. She stopped talking and stared down into her mug.
We sat in silence and then my eyes went to the window. He was back.
Amy noticed the way I looked at the window suddenly, and she looked too,
but nothing happened. She didn't see him. He walked closer to the window
and cupped his hands around his face to peer inside. Then he looked
sadder than he ever had. His cheeks pulled up and his forehead wrinkled
like an old man. It looked like he was shaking. He put his palms flat on
the window and I could see what looked like frost forming where the tips
of his fingers touched the glass. I realized in that moment, what I knew
I couldn't say out loud. Either I had a tumor growing in my brain that was
making me see this man that she couldn't, or he was a ghost. He was
her ghost. Her fiance's ghost.
"Amy, what happened to him? To Eric." I halfway hoped she would
say, "What do you mean? He's at work." But then that would mean that
I had a tumor, and I couldn't afford a tumor. I didn't have health insurance.
But she didn't say that. She just looked at me as if she didn't care
how I knew, or what I knew. As if I wasn't even there. She stared into
the air and her mind went somewhere else again. This time it wasn't
somewhere happy at all.
"He killed himself. Right over there." She pointed to the cramped bathroom. The yellow tiles. I pictured the man at the window, staring into
the tiny mirror over the sink, with a gun inside his mouth. I thought
about what questions were appropriate, if any. And what do you ask first?
Why or how? I guess how was the less complicated one so I went with that.
"Pills. He swallowed the whole cabinet full. I found him lying on the floor
all curled up." She stopped and squeezed her eyes shut hard. I guess she
was seeing it again. Seeing him. I looked at the window and he was
squeezing his eyes shut too.
"What was he like?" I tried changing the subject a little. I stared out
the window at him as she spoke.
"He was," she paused, "quiet. I never knew what he was going through.
In his head. He just wouldn't tell me. He lost his job and they kicked him
out of the band. They said they didn't need three guitar players, they said
they looked stupid on stage with that many people. My parents never
liked him. They didn't want us to get married. They said he looked like
he belonged in a homeless shelter. But he loved that beard. I loved it...
" She trailed off and looked down at her shoes, which were making a puddle
on the wood floor.
"I'm sorry, I don't know why I keep coming here. I just feel close to
him here I guess. I never got to say goodbye." She sighed and looked
around at the empty walls. I was sure now that the man at the window
was dead. That he was Eric. That he was coming here for her. I guess it
didn't sound as crazy to me as it should have.
"I think he's been coming here too." I said, bracing myself in case she
flipped out. She didn't. She just stared at me and squinted her eyes like
she was trying to read the fine print across my face.
"Someone's been coming to the window. I thought maybe he was
homeless or, I'm not sure what I thought. But maybe it's him. He's there
right now actually." I expected him to disappear as soon as she turned
her head to look out the window, but he didn't. He stared into her eyes.
She turned back to me.
"There?" she said, confused, pointing to the frozen glass.
"Yeah. He's looking at you. He seems really upset. Maybe he didn't mean to
do it." I wasn't sure what I was doing. Being an interpreter for the dead?
She looked at me at first like I was crazy, and I understood. But she didn't
get up, she didn't throw the hot brown liquid in my face and run screaming
for the door. I think she must have wanted this, deep down. She must
have driven here needing to find something. Needing this to be real. Her
face softened and she looked back at the window as she spoke. I looked
back too and of course, maybe to make me look even crazier, he was gone.
"Does he…talk?" she said, and I could hear the sane part of her trying to win out over whatever part believed it all.
"Well he's gone now. But no, he doesn't talk. Not to me."
She snapped her head back towards me, the fastest movement she had
made so far.
"What do you mean, he's gone?" She got up and went to the window.
She looked out of it a little frantically, and then closed her eyes and took a
deep breath. She stood there with her eyes closed for a long time. Just
breathing.
Finally she turned and looked around the apartment again, this time
with the softest edge of a grin. She looked down into her mug and then
up to me.
"Thank you for this. For letting me come back."
"You're welcome."
"I'll let you go now. I don't want to make you late." She walked to the
sink and put her mug down next to the dirty plates and cups. I followed
her to the door as if it were still her apartment. The sun was so bright
against the snow that I had to shield my eyes with the half empty
Dalmatian mug.
"It was nice meeting you." She said, smiling so that now I could see
the row of white teeth that I never imagined existed.
"Sure. I'm glad I could…help?" I said, searching for the words to describe or
explain what just took place. She turned and walked back to her car,
seeming almost a little embarrassed for having been there at all. Then to my left, from the side of the house came at first a shadow, and then a man.
Eric. Now he had a name. I watched as he walked with his hands down
from his face now and at his sides. He stopped and looked at me, right into
my eyes, for a few seconds that seemed to stretch out longer than any
other few seconds of my life. Then he walked forward again, catching up to
Amy.
"Amy!" I wanted to tell her that he was right there, he was right behind
her. But I stopped. She turned to face me and she was really facing him.
He was between us looking right into her face, close enough to touch her.
"You're welcome to stop by anytime." I said, feeling like it sounded
less genuine that it was. I guess I really did mean it. She got into the car and I
watched as Eric got into the passenger's seat.
"Thanks." She said, looking back at the house. I knew I would never
see her again by the way she looked at it as she drove off, like she was
saying goodbye.
No comments:
Post a Comment