THE HOUSE ACROSS THE STREET

THE HOUSE ACROSS THE STREET

 “The great flying tragedy of life,” he grumbled.  “How could that sort of thing been going on all this time?”  He sipped his coffee and buttered his toast, pushing his glasses back with his thumb as he began to read again.  Turning the page of the newspaper, he came to the editorials and glanced first at the cartoon, which showed a desert scene with three old men on camels following a star, the one lagging in the rear complaining, “By the time we get there, Viagra won’t help!”  Unphased, the commentary he then began to read was yet another shrill diatribe about corruption and a future without honor, condemning the loss of principle in the White House.  In the photo, the columnist wore a bow tie.

     “God!” he said, in spite of the fact that he had seen that photo a thousand times.  “I hate them, I hate it all.”

     “You’re getting irritated, again, Philip,” his wife, Jeannette, wearing a white turtleneck with a heavy gold chain hanging on her chest, remarked casually as she sipped from her own cup.  “Is it the coffee or the news?”

     “Why do you say that?” he retorted irritably, pushing his glasses back again.

     She cocked an eyebrow as he looked at her over the page.

     “I’m not irritated,” he insisted.

     “Oh.  You’re just acting irritated,” she said, getting up and taking her cup to the sink.

     He put the paper down and rose with his own cup and saucer.  Placing them in the sink, he went to the bathroom.  When he came out, she said, “What’s the ‘flying tragedy of life’ these days?”

     “The Daily’s carrying the story about that guy across the street.”

     “So?  What’s the ‘flying tragedy?’”

     “Those things happening and nobody, not one person around here, knowing anything about it.  Don’t you think that’s weird?  Don’t you think that’s tragic?  Right under our noses?  It makes me feel like we’re all to blame.”

     “Are you conscience stricken over that?  Is that it?  Why?” she asked indifferently, as her voice trailed off, smoothening the front of her black slacks, looking down at her stomach as she sucked it in.  “How could anyone have known?  Besides,” she said now in a directed tone, fixing her attention on him, “how come all of a sudden you have a conscience?”

     “Don’t start that again,” he whined as he grabbed up the newspaper.

     “I’m just asking a question.”

     “Well, what if it were you?  In that house,” he said, shaking the paper at her.  “Jack Mallek right next door, me across the street, the Haugens on the other side.”  He was getting more and more irritated as he spoke, but there was something more in his voice than irritation.  There was, also, a rising tone of condemnation, which, when it creeped into his complaints about the world, drove her crazy.  “And you, there, knowing what was going to happen.  How would you feel about that?”

     “Pretty damn hopeless.  I’d feel like anyone would feel.”  She was wary, trying not to provoke him.

     “Yea, hopeless,” he repeated, throwing the paper on the chair she had vacated.

     “Forget it, Philip,” she said, in her often-practiced motherly tone, which usually calmed him.  “It’s over.  Nobody’s at fault but that man and his son, and they’ll pay.  Let’s get to work,” she said, changing her tone, becoming now commanding, urgent.  “I hate it when we leave five minutes late, always rushing through traffic.”

     They put their coats on and, locking the door behind them, left for the day.  They were a childless couple, married thirteen years, and preferred to drive to work together rather than take separate cars.   As they drove out of the neighborhood, he remarked in a moody, black sort of way that everyone in the end gets what he deserves. 

     She looked at him and didn’t respond.  They drove in silence, stopping at the light on First Street.  When he neared her building on Main, he pulled up to the curb.  She looked at him again as she opened the door to get out and saw that he still had a gloom in his face.  She said, “You make me laugh, Philip.  You’re going to spoil your day.  I just know it.  I don’t want to hear anything tonight about how God’s going to punish us all.  Damn it, Philip.”  She slammed the car door and turned her back on him, walking to the entrance of the bank where she worked.

     He looked at her back, her coat stretched tightly around her hips as she stepped across the pavement.  She was tall and good looking with short wavy black hair.  He caught her reflection in the glass door as she approached it, and in the instant she appeared there before she yanked it open, he saw her catch her own reflection.  Her eyes roved over her image approvingly, and then, strangely, the two sets of eyes seemed to lock upon one another.  He paused a moment, staring at the door after she had gone in, then drove away with her double image engraved in his head.

     When he pulled into his parking spot in the alley behind his own office building, he sat in the car, letting it idle, thinking about her.  He sat there for a long time.  Her approving glance at her own reflection in the door upset him, and as he thought about it, he felt more and more agitated.  He didn’t know what it was about that glimpse that irritated him—the vanity of the once-over look she gave herself? or, perhaps, the unconscious intensity in the locked eyes?  He tried, before turning the key in the ignition, to think about something else and so get out of the car in a different mood, because he knew she would be impossible that evening if he lingered through the day in the state he was now in.  But all that came to him was the house across the street and what had been going on there. He imagined her in that house.  He couldn’t help himself.

     He put his forehead on the wheel and closed his eyes.  Then, as though in a fit of sudden decision, he turned the key and the engine died.  But still he sat.  He stared through the windshield at the side of the building in front of him.   For a moment, it blocked out everything else.  Then, as though waking for the first time, he shook his head, opened the car door, and got out, humming “Joy to the World” as he dropped his keys into his coat pocket.