Inadvertent Eavesdropping

The time is 9:01 pm. I step out onto the back deck of our house to smoke cigarette number 18 of the day. The darkness is all around me, and I walk from the memory I have imbedded in my brain of the deck. I see something glisten ahead of me. I stop and feel as if I can go no further without tripping over something. I wonder then when I drew these imaginary lines around myself, lines that I have been careful not to cross. I hear a woman’s voice somewhere to the west of me. “Afraid?” she says, “You’re calling me afraid?” I light my lighter to see what was glistening on the deck before me, and into view comes my daughter’s shiny red boot, left abandoned there from her earlier playtime outside. I am disappointed somehow; not exactly sure what I thought would be shining before me. I make my way to the bench, and wearing just a tank top and my sweats, I lean against the house and let the coolness of the siding comfort my tired muscles. “I’ll show you afraid”; the voice says again, “I love you. How’s that for afraid?” I feel torn between my inadvertent eavesdropping and my desire to smoke before I head back inside.

It is only I, another victim of the urban sprawl we city dwellers must come to accept, packed in tightly we live, in houses and apartments, never meant to be built so close together. We are packed into homes with bedrooms that were meant to be closets and attics with ceilings so low we must be constantly aware of the threat of smacking our heads. “I love you, I love you. I’ve loved you for a very long time.” I recognize the sound of tears in her voice. I hope that the person she is talking to has put their arm around her. I can see the marigolds I planted in circles around my tomato plants, “to keep the bugs away”, I told my kids. They are showing me their yellow blooms. I can hardly see them, but I know they’re there. The neighbors behind us have a sensor light set up in the backyard. It goes on and off with every passing person, and cat. My peonies are almost ready to burst into bloom again, and part of me wants to put off the moment, for the anticipation is sometimes more beautiful then the moment itself.

“Do you know what?” the voice in the night asks, “I saw a picture of you as a little boy in your mother’s bedroom yesterday, and I fell in love with that little boy too.”  It is then it occurs to me that this woman is talking on the phone. Tonight the arm of the one she loves will not wrap around her as she proclaims her love to him. “Why did you have to move away?” she asks, sobbing. I stand and smash out my cigarette, leaving it to visit as a lonely butt in an ashtray with its former brothers and sisters of the pack. I could just as easily be that woman, I know. She is the faceless voice of someone whom I will not recognize tomorrow if we pass on the street. She possesses something I do not, the courage to express her feelings. I guess that I am not ready to cross that imaginary line just yet.