214 Palmer Street(16)
I was nothing to her, but that didn’t really matter to me. My eye was on Kirk Aden. As soon as I made eye contact with him at that dinner I could see that he was twitchy. Easy to startle and to catch off guard. Like a man with something to hide.
I was a virtual stalker at first—googling from the comfort of my home was my favorite mode—but that only satisfied me for a while. Cyberstalking gave me information, but not the day-to-day details I craved. At some point I began tracking both Kirk and Sarah in person—actually venturing out of my house and watching them in real life. I knew I was spiraling down a dark hole, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. If only they weren’t so damn public with their bliss. That was what set me off initially, the fascination turning to contempt, and from there, the act of watching began to feed itself. The more I knew, the more curious I became. I wanted to know everything—what they did in their free time, who they socialized with, how much money they had, what they talked about when it was just the two of them. But most of all I wanted to know if this young woman had any idea what kind of man she’d gotten involved with.
I thought of warning her, but women in love don’t usually listen. If I had attempted to talk to her, Kirk would have painted me as a lunatic and she would have believed him.
My obsession actually started before they’d married, when I read an article about their impending nuptials in the local paper. They used the word “nuptials” like they were in Bath, England in a Jane Austen novel, and not in a small town in Wisconsin. After the article, the nightly news channel featured a segment on them as well. A local citizen profile piece, they called it. How they were chosen to be featured was beyond me. If you must know, the whole thing really pissed me off. People got married every minute of every day. Since when was this news? The expression “must have been a slow news day” was created just for this kind of thing.
Turned out that Kirk’s bride had experienced a lot of tragedies in her young life. She was from the east coast originally, New Jersey to be precise. Her parents had died in a car accident when she was in college. There’s never a good time for something like that, but she was only twenty-one and in the middle of her senior year, which admittedly had to be difficult. Even so, she continued with her studies, graduating on time with honors, then moving with her boyfriend to Wisconsin where he’d gotten a job with Kimberly-Clark. Then the boyfriend died of some kind of fluky heart problem, of all things, at the age of twenty-four. He’d had this heart defect since birth, but never knew it. They were both home when it happened. She’d left the room for a few minutes and came back to find him lying on the couch, eyes still open, but no longer alive, the televised football game still in progress. I imagined the scene: his head propped up on a pillow, legs crossed, the remote control balanced on his abdomen. I pictured her coming out of the kitchen with a tray of snacks and drinks and finding him nonresponsive. From there would be the 911 call, and the teary pleas to the paramedics begging them to save him. Even thinking about it made me miserable. There’s so much pain in the world it’s a wonder all of us keep going the way we do.
The story went on from there. Instead of returning to the east coast after this tragedy, she’d stayed in Wisconsin. “I was paralyzed with grief,” she’d said by way of explanation.
As much as I had it out for Kirk, my empathy for her was grudgingly sincere. She walked onto the stage in the third act and had no way of knowing what came before.
Of course the interview used the boyfriend’s untimely death as a jumping-off point for the real story—the happily-ever-after of their upcoming marriage. At thirty-six, Kirk was ten years older than Sarah, and he explained his bachelor years by saying, “All those lonely nights make sense now. I was single for so long because I was waiting to meet Sarah.” He had his arm draped around her shoulders and had pulled her in closer, smiling down as he’d said these words.
Oh, puke.
Is it petty to begrudge evil people happiness? If so, I’ll readily confess to being petty.
At first, I was just curious about this particular aspect of their lives—it wouldn’t help me much with what I wanted to do. I checked out their bridal registry online and read over the pages on The Knot website. The story of how they met, which was supposedly in the waiting room of their therapist’s office. Who’d admit to such a thing? The interviewer thought it was adorable, though. Other notable items on the wedding website? The listing of the names of the wedding party, which was small to say the least—each one having only one attendant. Sarah’s sister, Maren, was her maid of honor and Kirk, predictably, had Gavin as best man. I could have guessed that one. What I couldn’t have guessed was the size of the wedding. Considering the enormous diamond ring on her finger and his family’s wealth, a gathering of one hundred people might be considered modest. They called it a backyard wedding, but who were they fooling? I knew plenty of people with backyards, but none of them had room for a hundred guests, a gazebo, a constructed-for-the event dance floor and linked tents housing enough tables and chairs to serve an elegant dinner for all of the attendees.
Please. This was no backyard. It was an estate.
Would you think it was creepy if I admitted to driving by his parents’ house the day of the wedding? I couldn’t see much since the house was so far back from the road. Still, I parked nearby and watched as the guests arrived in their shiny, expensive cars. Not a dent or rust spot on any of them, which made my car stand out. I didn’t care. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. It’s not against the law to park on a public street.