Downstairs, the neighbors are yelling again.
“Angel, what the hell is this mess?”
“It’s my homework.”
“Well, what the fuck is it doing all over the floor?”
“I’m working on it.”
“Not all over the living room floor you’re not! Pick this shit up, take it to your room.”
I try not to listen. I focus on scoring papers instead, watching red lines flow out of my pen as it dashes out spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. I turn around as I hear the door latch click. Michelle comes in and slings her purse over the back of the couch. Then she slings herself over it as well. She is momentarily silent as we listen to the vocal artillery shells blasting beneath us. “If they’re gonna scream all night like this again, I’m gonna need a drink.”
“Bad day?” I turn back to my grading.
“Aren’t they all?” She lifts herself off the couch and walks into the kitchen. I see the refrigerator light spill through the dark and listen as one, two, three blocks of ice clink into a tumbler, followed by three more. The walls shake; Angel slamming her bedroom door.
“Don’t slam that door!”
“Leave me alone!”
“I’m not done talking to you yet, Angel.”
The refrigerator light slips back into the dark. Michelle emerges with two glasses. “Gin and tonic.” She hands me one before she plops down in the armchair. “I saw Mike today.”
I gaze at her from over the tumbler as I take a sip. “Too much tonic.”
“I was having lunch at that diner on Garry. He came by and sat with me. Had a coffee.”
I sit quietly and wait for her to continue. Downstairs, Angel’s dad is still yelling. “Angel, open this door.”
Music begins pulsing through the floor beneath us. Angel’s stereo.
“Goddamn it, Angel!”
“What’d you have?” I ask.
“A BLT with extra mayo and American cheese. I was so hungry I scarfed the thing down before he could even finish his coffee. He must have thought I was a pig.”
“Cheating?”
Michelle raises an eyebrow from behind her tumbler.
“On the diet.”
“I get one cheat meal a week.”
“Huh.”
Angel’s dad pounds on the door.
“He’s got no rhythm,” says Michelle.
“Angel!” he screams.
“Clever,” I say.
Michelle’s eyes squint; “Fuck you,” Angel screams.
“He said I looked good.”
“Who?”
“Mike.”
“Oh.” I finish my glass. Michelle follows suit.
“More?”
“Sure.” I circle the score at the top of one of the sheets, put it in the finished pile, pick up the next sheet, and begin another round: “How’d he look?”
Again the refrigerator light creeps through the room. It settles itself on the arm of the couch. “You know. He always looks good. I don’t know how he manages to look so young.” I listen to the clatter of ice cubes. “This one’ll be better.”
“Thanks.”
“Mmhm.”
“Angel, I swear to God I will kick this door down. Open up!”
I sit with Tom at the diner next to the school. We come here over lunch period sometimes, partly to get away from the squawking of the teachers’ lounge, and partly because they are cheap and don’t skimp on the meats. We sit in a booth at the window. I always have to sit here, next to the window, overlooking the intersection outside.
When we first came here, I could tell that Tom wondered about it, felt like it was an unhealthy obsession, the need to see out of the building around us, always watching the street. But he tolerates it, says he enjoys sitting in the sunlight and being able to see everything in the room. Tom blows into his coffee.
Outside, the traffic lights blink slowly from green, to yellow, to red. I try not to hold my breath as I watch passing cars accelerate when the lights turn yellow. They pass through the intersection only seconds after the light has turned red, almost too late every time.
“How’s the new apartment treating you?” Tom asks.
“We have these terrible neighbors downstairs, a single father and his daughter. All they do is scream at each other.”
“That’s rough.”
“It’s pretty bad. I mean, I really like the place, and the price is right, but man, it’s almost not worth it.”
“What’s Michelle think?”
“Oh, you know. She usually gets home late as it is.”
“Yeah, talk about mixed blessings.”
I grunt in affirmation and have a bite of my sandwich.
“What are you doing over winter break?” I ask Tom.
“Oh, visiting relatives, as always. We gotta drive upstate to see my Mom, then back down to see my Dad. Then her parents. I hate the holidays. Always leaving and going. You never feel like you really get anywhere; there’s always somewhere else to be.”
“Yeah. I know. Same thing for us. Just visitations.”
“Visitations. That word makes it seem like you’re attending funerals.”
“What’s the difference?”
Tom smiles halfheartedly and sips his coffee. Outside, a sports car rips through the intersection. We can hear the engine scream as if in defiance of the changing light. Or perhaps in objection to the driver’s foot against the pedal. Tom turns around and whistles as he watches the car disappear behind the oncoming traffic. “You know, people really do take this light a little dangerously considering there’s a school right on the corner.”
“It’s a high school. It’s not like there are small children running around on the playground, a bunch of little, pudgy balls of liability, likely to throw themselves into the street at any given moment. High school students are old enough to scare people. Teenagers are dangerous. They smoke pot. They join gangs. They graffiti public property and make lewd gestures at your young wife.”
“You’re saying people don’t care.”
I shrug. “Probably not. Maybe the ones with teenagers at home, the ones who actually stop at the light for the sake of some kind of provisional empathy. But the others, well maybe they take the light so fast because they want to get away from the school, the faster the better.”
“Huh. Well, if teenagers are so feared in the public eye, what does that make us? Shouldn’t we be getting better pay, or some kind of death-by-teenager clause in our life insurance package?”
“Nah. We’re suicidal. Asking for it. It’s like building a house on a fault line, or walking downtown alone at night. Working as a prison guard.”
“Or wearing a short skirt to a frat party.” Tom laughs. “You’re always so fatalistic. But still, maybe you’re right. Hell, if so, maybe they are.”
“Maybe.” I watch the cars surge through a green light, turning right and disappearing behind rows of blinking turn signals.
Tonight I have to attend a PTA meeting. I call Michelle’s cell to remind her that I’ll be late, but she doesn’t answer. I leave a message. I sit in the teacher’s lounge and write out my lesson plan for next semester, trying to decide whether Death of a Salesman or The Great Gatsby better compliments Hamlet. Finally I decide that it doesn’t really matter. I choose The Great Gatsby because I like it more. It’s not like the kids are really going to fully appreciate any of the things I assign them. Most of the kids won’t read them anyway. I sit back and reminisce about how I had thought it would take longer than the five years I’ve been teaching to become so disillusioned. Then I sigh to myself and get up to refill my coffee mug.
PTA meetings are awful. Every other meeting some stay-at-home mom gets up with a proposal to reinstate the lord’s prayer and the pledge of allegiance into our daily routine, and every time the teachers, school board and some of the more progressive parents, most of them professionals—lawyers, financial planners, college professors—politely vote it down. The disgruntled mother argues with no one in particular for twenty minutes after the vote before she sits down, and we don’t see her again until the next semester.
Next, we get into the normal swing of things. The administrators give their reports: we will be adding low-sugar desserts to the lunch menu; Coca-cola renewed their contract with us this year; standardized test scores rose one point; faculty, please stop asking the nurse for contraceptives, she’s running out and needs some for the students. I can see the heads seated in front of me bob up and down as people begin to nod off and have to shake themselves awake. The whole stupid thing adjourns at nine and I drive home with an empty pressure beating against the back of my skull.
Michelle is home, curled up and fast asleep on our couch. The TV murmurs, flashing in the dark. I set down my bag and slip into the kitchen. The refrigerator light creeps over the tiled floor as I reach in and pull out a box of leftover Chinese food. I grab a fork from the dish rack and sit down in the armchair that sits perpendicular to the corner of the couch. I watch the unfamiliar sitcom Michelle has left on for about five minutes before I lose interest. I scan the dark room for the remote. Michelle is clutching it in her hand, partially buried under her pillow. She’s wrapped in her bathrobe, her hair is still damp from the shower. I trace the curve of her bare legs with my eyes, following it to where her skin disappears behind the white cotton resting against her hip. The robe is untied, and it has fallen off her shoulder, almost exposing her entire left breast. I think of gently lifting the rest of the robe off of her and touching her exposed skin, caressing it until she begins to breathe heavily, waking aroused as I climb overtop her. My imagination sends my heart pounding. I stand up and flick off the TV.
“I was watching that,” she mutters sleepily.
“Sorry.” I flick the television back on and retreat to the bedroom.
I wake up to a crack loud enough to make the bed shake. I sit up quickly when I hear voices shouting, but soon realize that it is the neighbors going at it again. Light streams in through the windows, and for a moment I panic, wondering why I didn’t set the alarm. Then I remember that today is what they call a ‘teacher planning day,’ essentially an excuse for a paid day off. I pull myself up and wander into the living room. Michelle is already gone. I call her cell phone.
“I’m having breakfast.”
“Oh.”
“Mike called me this morning, suggested we have breakfast before work.”
“Did you come to bed last night?”
“No, I couldn’t drag myself off the couch. Been hard at work, you know.”
“Oh, I know.”
There is a pause. “Well, I have to run. Can’t be late today.”
“All right.”
I hang up the phone. Downstairs, Angel’s music is blasting, but her father isn’t yelling at her anymore. I shower and cook myself breakfast. The floor beneath me shakes as if trembling in fear of the war raging beneath it. I dress, grab a book from the bookcase, and leave the apartment.
Outside the air is fresh and the wind is cool and crisp. I zip my jacket up and try to ignore the noise issuing from the neighbors’ apartment as they begin screaming again.
“You’re not listening to me!”
“Why should I, you never listen to me!”
The sky is clear, an ever-deepening blue sinking into itself, except for where the sun bleaches it out as it rises in the east. I walk up the block for several minutes before I come to the little cafe that I’ve been frequenting since we moved in. I order my usual and sit next to the windows. I pull out my book, Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and try to read, but I can’t seem to focus. I stare out the window instead.
Across the street there’s a little park, and I watch as a young father sits chatting with his daughter on a bench. She is too short for the bench, her feet don’t quite reach the ground, and she watches her legs swing back and forth as if unsure that she’s actually the one making them move. For the most part she seems to be chatting away, her father only making little glances at her, asking some little question perhaps, or making an idle remark before turning back to the street with a patient smile as she continues rambling. I wonder what they’re talking about. Is he divorced? Has she started school yet? She looks like she should be starting kindergarten, if she hasn’t already. She holds herself in that familiar child’s posture, the one they take when they are aware that adults are around, unselfconsciously tense, like her limbs are about to fly away at any moment if she doesn’t hold them steady. All except for her swinging legs.
I want to know about them, about their lives, but I’m sure that any kind of fiction I concoct would be some kind of transgression. Still, I watch them and I’m sure that they are perfect, that she’s a little rambunctious but adorable when she rambles, and that he spoils her rotten with daily trips to the toy shop. He spends all year saving, six months for her birthday presents, another six for Christmas. I decide that he’s still married to her mother. They have one of those domestic relationships, where the passion has begun to fade, but not the love, their mutual adoration for their daughter tying them together in intimate moments that no longer inflame their bodies, but instead drift like a warm, heavy blanket over their hearts, holding hands as they watch their daughter run around in mad circles with her neighborhood friends, chasing the family dog in the park, clapping along to some sing-along on her favorite TV show, anything at all.
Soon her father taps the little girl on her shoulder as he stands, and she hops to her feet, grasps her father’s hand, and swings her legs in big strides to keep up with her daddy’s as they round the corner and disappear behind the walls of houses. I turn back to my coffee, no longer steaming, and leave my book untouched as I take cold, bitter sips.
Michelle doesn’t come home that night. I call her three times before turning in at two, aware that tomorrow is Saturday and she may have went out with her colleagues to the cocktail lounge where they like to celebrate when they close on big accounts. Aware, but skeptical. I lay underneath my cold sheets for a few hours. Around three I get up and walk to the kitchen, pour myself a gin and tonic, and slump down on the couch.
I don’t turn on the television. Instead, I stare into the darkness until my eyes adjust enough to penetrate its depths, and when they do I continue to stare in the same direction, my eyes downcast, thinking about what lies beneath the floorboards. It’s late, and the neighbors are asleep, quietly resting for the morning’s argument, I’m sure, perhaps planning out their next attacks, analyzing earlier arguments, scouring their memories for fresh ammunition, beating themselves up over come-backs formulated in retrospect, filing away new complaints for later use.
What really happens in the minds of those people, behind the barricades of their eyes? What history lies behind them? What stories do they tell about themselves when they go to parties, get drunk at the bar? What does the girl tell her boyfriends, the father tell to the women he never brings home, always insisting that they stay over at her place? How do they explain their lives to others, to themselves?
I give up on waiting for her. I stumble back through the darkness and into bed, where I keep my eyes closed the entire night, but when morning begins to bleed in through the blinds, I’m not sure if I’ve slept at all.
Tom calls around nine. He wants to meet at the diner for breakfast. I tell him to give me half an hour. I wait fifteen minutes before sliding out from under my sheets and spend a half-hearted ten more in the shower. I close my eyes and stand under the spray, feeling the tiny drops prick like needle-points against my face. I throw on the jeans from the day before and a sweatshirt before evacuating the house.
“You’re fifteen minutes late.” Tom tells me at the diner. We sit at our regular table.
“Sorry. Not much sleep last night.”
“Argument?”
“Not quite.”
“Huh,” Tom grunts. “What happened?”
“She...” I’m interrupted by the sudden screech of tires from the window beside us. We turn our heads in time to witness an SUV smash into a little blue compact. For once, I had not been watching the intersection. I had forgotten it completely.
Everyone stands at once, and the entire place empties out to the sidewalk. The driver of the SUV gets out of his vehicle and runs to the other car. Tom pulls out his cell and calls 911 as several of the diner patrons and I run out to the middle of the street.
Afterwards, as the last police car pulls away from the curb, we watch from our window as two city workers sweep the shards of shattered glass and plastic scattered across the road. They sweep right over the dark stains on the pavement, leaving behind smudges clinging jealously to the cracked cement. I wonder momentarily what they talk about while they work, and in the next instant I feel my breath catch in my chest.
Tom turns away from the window and shakes his head. He looks at me. “Are you going to be okay?” He says it like a statement, like he already knows the answer.
I turn my eyes to his and open my mouth. I can’t. I have no words. All that fills my mind are memories of another day’s sirens, and I know already that nothing I could say can be heard over their shrill, insistent screams.
I was determined to tell her everything. Ask all the questions I had been putting off. I was ready for the answers, the excuses, the indictments, the exhausted sobs. I imagined myself standing calmly in judgment, listening to her plead her case. I would uncover everything. I was going to tear up the floorboards of our silences, reveal everything that had been lying beneath. I was going to break the surface of our casual circumventions, the sidestepping dance of our polite evasions. I was ready to confront the sirens echoing persistently in our past, the crimes, ignored for so long, being committed in our present. And when everything was over, all the lies documented, the confessions put on record, the cases made, I would pass my judgment. I saw it clearly in my mind. I would enfold her in my arms and kiss her softly on the head. I would let her stay.
When I get home she isn’t there.
Instead, I find sheets of notebook paper stapled together, hanging from a magnet on the refrigerator door, my name scribbled in her careless handwriting across the top sheet.
I do not read them right away. Instead, I look around, bewildered, wondering what seems different about the apartment. Nothing has been moved, nothing is missing. She has not taken anything that I can see. Yet somehow the apartment seems unfamiliar, alien. Something is glaringly absent.
Then I realize. Downstairs, the neighbors are silent.
By Lee A. Flamand