by Christopher Woods
She lives alone, just up the street. No question about that. But why she lives alone relates to a time before when she lived with someone. Years ago, long before I ever laid eyes on her. Some man, a grease monkey I’ve been told, had her for a while. Maybe he wasn’t much, and maybe he was. But the fact is that she had never been with a man before. Holding hands through the night. All that.
It seems they weren’t too far into things when he began taking swipes at her. In the air around her head, more and more connecting with her face. She took it, she didn’t know any better. Nothing to compare it with, you understand. Those little bird bones in her face cracked and hurt.
Time passed, as they say. After enough of this, she wanted to be done with this guy. She told him to leave. But the problem was that he wouldn’t go. Wouldn’t budge. He hung on like a lingering flu. And his swipes in the air got deadlier too.
He didn’t have a job. Fact is, he hadn’t worked since the day she took him inside her house like a stray. He never worked a lick. In time, I’m told, his grease monkey fingernails looked like new.
He drank beer and ate whatever she cooked for him, and in the afternoons he watched the soap operas through bleary eyes. Late afternoons, things got special. Late afternoons, he’d crawl between her designer sheets and wait for her. She was coming home from work for that. All that. God knows there wasn’t a lot of glory in it. Mind you, that’s not my opinion, just what I’ve been told. It’s probably true, though.
After a while, even Mr. Grease Monkey got tired of this. He left one day while she was away at work. He left and took most things of worth with him. He didn’t leave her much, maybe some stains on the Calvin Klein sheets. Not a lot, by most standards. She must have sat around sad in that house, across town from here. She was trying to decide what to do next, you know. I’d do the same thing. ‘Course, I’d never get myself in such a jam, and neither would you, but that’s another matter.
It was about then that she moved into the little house up the street. She started all over again, on her lonesome, though. And you have to give her credit. She could have put her head in an oven or something, I don’t know. Sometimes, when things turn bad, people go straight to hell. It happens. You know it too.
But she’s made the best of it, as far as any of us can tell. In the time she’s been on our street, she hasn’t brought home any more strays. It’s anyone’s guess, but I figure she’s learned her lesson on that score.
Does she hate herself for what happened to her? Well, for sure she hates that grease monkey, no matter where he went, no matter whose sheets he’s soiling tonight. But she doesn’t tell us how she feels. She stays to herself, and that’s how we like it around here. The neighbors think she’s off, and I have to concur. There’s no evidence to the contrary, you see.
She drives like a banshee down the street when she’s coming or going. Get the kids and cats and dogs out of the street, she’s coming through. Fifty miles an hour on our little street. Maybe she thinks she’s being watched. Maybe she’s afraid that grease monkey will try to follow her home.
No one’s seen him around, though. I figure he’s warming someone else’s sheets about now. That stuff, it’s habit for some. He’s probably toasting his toes and waiting for the time to move on again. No matter where he is, he’s still got some kind of grip on her. She’s really not in her right mind, it seems to most of us. She’ll never look you in the eye. Makes you feel like you’ve done something wrong. Makes you think she’s expecting you to crawl in her window one night with a knife between your teeth.
It’s creepy, sure. And there’s the wigs, too, each of them another fact of the matter. She has a half-dozen, all colors, and she rotates them. She’ll be out watering the azaleas, a long brown wig swaying this way and that while she’s looking up and down the street for something.
But here’s the worst. One day, she came walking up the street this way. In a blonde wig, and carrying a full-length mirror. I don’t know where she was going. None of my business. But it was strange because she kept that mirror facing away from her. She wouldn’t look into it. Wouldn’t take that chance, I guess.
I watched her from my window when she passed down below. I saw clouds and blue sky reflected in that mirror. She carried it over her shoulder, like Jesus at Golgotha. The same mood. You know? The grim stuff. That was it for me.
Will it get any better for her? No, it’s probably too late. Can it get worse? Sure, there’s always plenty of time for that.
Christopher Woods is a writer and photographer who lives in Texas. He has published a novel, THE DREAM PATCH, a prose collection, UNDER A RIVERBED SKY. His novella, HEARTS IN THE DARK, was published in an anthology by RUNNING WILD PRESS in Los Angeles. His monologue show, Twelve from Texas, was performed recently in NYC by Equity Library Theatre. He has received residencies from The Ucross Foundation and the Edward Albee Foundation, and a grant from the Mary Roberts Rinehart Foundation.
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