When We Were Animals(80)

*



I promise.

I don’t like to think about it. I don’t like to write it. Outside, our neighbor’s sprinklers just switched on by automatic timer. It must be nearing dawn. He has told us that early morning is the best time to water your lawn. There is no other sound to be heard. I have been listening to silence for so long.

I promise.

I would erase it if I could. They say you can’t hide from truth. But you can’t hide from lies, either. You can’t hide from anything, really.

So why do we keep trying?

*



Helena, my husband’s pretty colleague who jogs around the park, discovers me behind the school, where I watch Jack through his office window.

“Ann? What are you doing here?”

“Oh,” I say and smile too widely in deference to her. “I just came to drop something off with Jack.”

“Ugh. I know,” she says. “Everybody’s been so preoccupied preparing for the parent night tonight. Isn’t this a nice place just to sit and contemplate? I like it, but nobody ever comes out here.”

“It’s very nice.”

“Say, what do you think about that woman, Marcie Klapper-Witt, and her brownshirts cleaning up the neighborhood? I’ll tell you something—I’m not sure I like it. When people get zealous, I keep my distance. That’s my policy. Oh—but you’re not close with her, are you?”

“My son bit her daughter,” I say, shy and proud.

Helena laughs and touches my arm.

“Ann, I’m making a prediction—you and I are going to be best friends. Mark my words.”

I would like to be best friends with Helena, but I’m afraid I don’t know how. I don’t know if I’ve ever been best friends with anyone—especially someone like her, who is so merry about life, whom people enjoying being around. I worry that I don’t possess the spirit required to uphold the friendship of someone so vigorous. What manner of research is required for such a prospect?

That night, while she and my husband are occupied at the parent event at school, I drop my son off with Lola and walk through the neighborhood. It’s empty and quiet, and a dog barks somewhere, and somewhere else a peal of distant laughter escapes from an open window. I am aware of the sound of my own feet shuffling against the sidewalk, so I walk differently—heel, toe—so that I add no noise to the night. When a car comes, I move quickly aside and hide behind a tall bush, compelled by some instinct I shut inside myself a long time ago.

Overhead the night is cloudy, and there are no stars. If it weren’t for the street lamps on every block, you could get lost on these lanes. Everything is a jungle when the light is gone. Something in my chest longs for a blackout. And then my eyes would readjust to the night, and then I could see all the helpless residents wandering, lost, feeling their ways. And I could watch them and be unafraid.

At Helena’s house, the porch light is on, but all the windows are dark. I would like to get a look at her fiancé, so I put my face to the glass of the front windows, but the house looks empty. I can see the dim outline of the furniture in her living room, but the glare from the street lamps is too great. I go around the side of the house to the back, where one of the kitchen windows is open a crack. There’s a fine smell coming from the kitchen, as though many healthful meals have been prepared between those walls, so I lift the window all the way, carefully remove the screen, and climb inside. Once in, I am conscientious in refitting the screen back into the window frame.

I am accustomed to dark, empty houses. I know how to navigate them. You rely on your senses. You trust your widened pupils, your outstretched fingertips, your animal nose.

I go upstairs. In her bedroom, I discover a picture of Helena and her fiancé in a frame by the bed. The picture is taken against the backdrop of some wide, forested valley—as though the only mountains worth climbing are the ones they climb together—and he is a very handsome young man with good eyebrows and an authoritative smile. She wears a baseball cap in the picture, and I wonder if I should get a baseball cap—though I would not know which team logo it should bear.

I lie down on the bed and smell the pillow and try to imagine what it is like to see, every night, the moonlight cast its particular shadow dance over the contours of this room. I imagine what it is like to be pressed under the body of that imposing man in the picture.

In her closet, I find her running shoes, set neatly beside each other, the laces tucked inside. When I put one of them to my nose, I smell nature, ruddy and bountiful. Her toothpaste, I am pleased to see, is the same brand as mine, though all the lotions and shampoos in her shower come in bottles that I’ve never seen on the shelves of our local grocery store. There is a little nest of her hair in the drain of the shower.

But I am drawn again downstairs, to the kitchen, because that is where I suspect Helena truly lives. The refrigerator is filled with produce, with small cartons of yogurt, with milk on the edge of souring. There are no dishes in the sink. From the smell of it, the ones in the dishwasher are clean and ready to be put away. I run my fingers over the deck of china plates standing there proudly.

In one of the cabinets, I find a jar of wheat germ that announces itself as an excellent source of folic acid and vitamin E. It suddenly feels like a tremendous oversight that I have never had any wheat germ in my house. It is clearly the source of so many good things. Wondering what new splendors might grow from the germ of wheat, I decide to take the jar with me. This will be essential to my friendship with Helena. This is what I have been missing—the key I have been looking for, the one that will unlock more conventional relationships with the world.