groceries.
“I can manage,” she said.
There was another awkward moment, during which she sniffled back a snot globule and finally blinked. It was as if the blink somehow reset her. She exited into the kitchen with her groceries.
The warmth of their unit was making my pulse drop and my feet felt incredibly thick. Sweat was now also forming at my temples and soon my beard would start glistening repulsively. Something beyond the embarrassment of having been caught nosing around in one of my tenant’s apartments, something beyond the clammy humors of shame, was overwhelming me. Something sad and heavy and haunted.
I could suddenly smell freshly cut apples. And Mary Bunch was putting groceries in the fridge. I imagined it filled with doubles and triples of things. Jars of mayonnaise and bottles of ketchup. Four-packs of butter. Eight quarts of whole milk, most of which would never get drunk. A dozen misshapen grapefruit. Overbuying to compensate for their missing child. Little dimple-cheeked Bethany with her baby teeth and her impossibly large blue eyes, her wheat-colored hair.
Once she knocked on my door. She was wearing only a saggy cloth diaper and holding a dinner fork.
“Hi, Bethany,” I said.
The flaxen hair, duck-curling at the base of her neck. Her tiny pink hands. “Fork,” she said, thrusting the utensil high in the air. The word was a perfect note, almost pure oxygen. I wasn’t sure if the fork belonged to the Bunches, if it was mine, or if it was one that had been randomly left in the stairwell.
“Thank you,” I said, taking it from her.
She then plugged her mouth with her thumb and headed back down the stairs, all on her own. I remember being vaguely troubled that it was the beginning of December and the Bunches were letting their daughter wander around the house unsupervised, wearing only a saggy diaper.
When Mary reentered the living room she’d removed the ski vest and anorak and was now wearing a Phish concert T-shirt, too large, probably her husband’s, with a long-sleeved black T-shirt underneath.
“You think we did something,” she said. “To her.” Her voice was still congested, and I had the strange impulse to go to a knee, to actually genuflect; perhaps out of some expression of abject, confusing shame for trespassing in my own house, or worse yet, for being a completely neutral human who exists mostly in wool camping socks.
Still standing, I said, “Did something to who?”
“Our daughter.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t.”
Mary Bunch was surprisingly attractive in her Billy Breathes T-shirt, and our proximity, likely tweaked by my recent extended lack of female companionship, felt weirdly romantic. Was there a sudden charge between us? A little ionic landlord/tenant valence? Whatever it was had taken me by surprise.
I quickly fantasized that she was trapped in a bad marriage, that her lack of blinking was in fact a dry-eyed cry for help, that behind her retinas a home movie was playing that featured Mary being emotionally terrorized by her husband, Todd, with his invisible braces and inescapable circus strongman holds, and that I was the only one who could save her. I would invite her up to the attic and we would simply spoon in my boyhood bed. And then I would wash her hair in a basin of water, frontier-style.
But what about little Bethany? Was she actually alive, being held captive by her parents, gagged and duct-taped, locked in a closet somewhere?
Mary Bunch’s nostrils were gluey with snot. I got the sense that it was more than just a cold, that she was somehow spiritually congested, that her soul was heavy with some unnameable guilty paste. She wiped her nose with the back of her wrist. I realized that, like me, she didn’t appear to have showered recently. Her face had a film. The hair sneaking out from behind her ears was matted and dirty. I wanted to smell it. I imagined the sharp odor of her unclean scalp embedded deep in the fibers of her gnomic ski
“I can manage,” she said.
There was another awkward moment, during which she sniffled back a snot globule and finally blinked. It was as if the blink somehow reset her. She exited into the kitchen with her groceries.
The warmth of their unit was making my pulse drop and my feet felt incredibly thick. Sweat was now also forming at my temples and soon my beard would start glistening repulsively. Something beyond the embarrassment of having been caught nosing around in one of my tenant’s apartments, something beyond the clammy humors of shame, was overwhelming me. Something sad and heavy and haunted.
I could suddenly smell freshly cut apples. And Mary Bunch was putting groceries in the fridge. I imagined it filled with doubles and triples of things. Jars of mayonnaise and bottles of ketchup. Four-packs of butter. Eight quarts of whole milk, most of which would never get drunk. A dozen misshapen grapefruit. Overbuying to compensate for their missing child. Little dimple-cheeked Bethany with her baby teeth and her impossibly large blue eyes, her wheat-colored hair.
Once she knocked on my door. She was wearing only a saggy cloth diaper and holding a dinner fork.
“Hi, Bethany,” I said.
The flaxen hair, duck-curling at the base of her neck. Her tiny pink hands. “Fork,” she said, thrusting the utensil high in the air. The word was a perfect note, almost pure oxygen. I wasn’t sure if the fork belonged to the Bunches, if it was mine, or if it was one that had been randomly left in the stairwell.
“Thank you,” I said, taking it from her.
She then plugged her mouth with her thumb and headed back down the stairs, all on her own. I remember being vaguely troubled that it was the beginning of December and the Bunches were letting their daughter wander around the house unsupervised, wearing only a saggy diaper.
When Mary reentered the living room she’d removed the ski vest and anorak and was now wearing a Phish concert T-shirt, too large, probably her husband’s, with a long-sleeved black T-shirt underneath.
“You think we did something,” she said. “To her.” Her voice was still congested, and I had the strange impulse to go to a knee, to actually genuflect; perhaps out of some expression of abject, confusing shame for trespassing in my own house, or worse yet, for being a completely neutral human who exists mostly in wool camping socks.
Still standing, I said, “Did something to who?”
“Our daughter.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t.”
Mary Bunch was surprisingly attractive in her Billy Breathes T-shirt, and our proximity, likely tweaked by my recent extended lack of female companionship, felt weirdly romantic. Was there a sudden charge between us? A little ionic landlord/tenant valence? Whatever it was had taken me by surprise.
I quickly fantasized that she was trapped in a bad marriage, that her lack of blinking was in fact a dry-eyed cry for help, that behind her retinas a home movie was playing that featured Mary being emotionally terrorized by her husband, Todd, with his invisible braces and inescapable circus strongman holds, and that I was the only one who could save her. I would invite her up to the attic and we would simply spoon in my boyhood bed. And then I would wash her hair in a basin of water, frontier-style.
But what about little Bethany? Was she actually alive, being held captive by her parents, gagged and duct-taped, locked in a closet somewhere?
Mary Bunch’s nostrils were gluey with snot. I got the sense that it was more than just a cold, that she was somehow spiritually congested, that her soul was heavy with some unnameable guilty paste. She wiped her nose with the back of her wrist. I realized that, like me, she didn’t appear to have showered recently. Her face had a film. The hair sneaking out from behind her ears was matted and dirty. I wanted to smell it. I imagined the sharp odor of her unclean scalp embedded deep in the fibers of her gnomic ski
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