Looking Through Windows

Sadie

Sadie might have been bothered by the scalding hot water her dishes were soaking in if her head hadn’t been pounding the way it was. The kids were in the living room, playing one of the video games their father had had his secretary order online for them. They were supposed to wait to open gifts until he came home, but the kids had gotten antsy the second he walked out the door to check on a few things at the office, and as the clock ticked on – very loudly, she might add – she knew there was no point in waiting.

Now, the kids were fed and showered – both with actual water and with gifts – and there was nothing left to do but clean up the mess. She needed an aspirin. Or five.

As she was reaching for the pill bottle in the cabinet to the right of the sink, a movement caught her attention and she looked out the window. The people who had built the houses on this lane must have been drunk when they drew up the plans, because who would want to be staring into their neighbor’s kitchen window while doing the dishes? She sure didn’t. Every look over there was a reminder of what might have been. Instead of doing dishes alone with two kids absorbed with their game in another room and her husband working another late night at the office, she could have been laughing and joking with Peter while he did the dishes.

Peter. Just thinking his name made her heart squeeze. One unguarded moment and he had slipped into her heart and mind, refusing to leave. He was doing dishes right now, too. She could tell from the way his muscled arms moved. He hadn’t noticed her. Or, if he had, he pretended not to. Acting the bigger man, the stronger character, the loyal husband, the perfect man. But what was perfection if not just a façade? It was the invisibility cloak you threw on when the darkness threatened to overwhelm you. At least she owned her imperfection. Peter was a fraud.

Then he looked up.

Warmth stole through her cheeks, seeking out her limbs and correcting the temperature so that she could no longer feel the warmth of the water running over her hands.

He smiled.

Sadie willed herself to smile back, but it came off as more of a snarl – at least if the reflection in the window was anything to go by. She didn’t want to play the friendly neighbor. She wanted him to hurt the way she did.

He’d been perfectly neighborly the first time they’d met, making polite chitchat, offering the loan of his tools if ever she needed something fixed around the house, talking about his wife, the social worker who spent all her days trying to make life better for kids everywhere. What a saint. And what had she had to offer in return? ‘Oh, my husband works long hours to make sure we have everything we need – except for a husband and father, that is.’ No, that’s not what she said, of course. She couldn’t even remember the platitudes that must have left her lips that day. Lies, all of them.

Then they’d run into each other at the supermarket, and the farmer’s market, and the fair, and the neighborhood’s garage sales, and so on. He was a columnist for the local paper, mostly working from home, and when their kids were in school and their spouses at work, they’d taken to sitting in the back yard drinking lemonade and talking on a regular basis. It would be three years now since they first met. It took a year for them to form a friendship, two years to form a deeper connection, but only one sweltering hot day for them to ruin it all.

She should regret that day. The day when it was too hot to sit outside and her air-conditioning wasn’t working properly. His home office would be cooler, they’d decided. It wasn’t. The moment they were away from prying eyes, the cloaks of perfection came off and they bared every last part of their beings to each other. Afterwards, Peter was remorseful, ashamed, mortified. All the emotions she should be experiencing but didn’t, he expressed without reservations. Without thinking that she might feel judged by him, labeled a tart or whatnot. He only cared about the perfect exterior, about his standing in the community, about his loyal and trusting wife. He didn’t care about her. She’d been a fool to think it. She should regret that day. But on some twisted level, she didn’t. Instead, she held on to the hope that he would one day realize that he’d made a mistake. One day, he would realize that perfection is just an illusion.

One day.