crowded. People bumped into us. My wife looked at me like I had offended her deeply.
“Well, come on!” I said. “That was so cryptic. You can’t say something like that and expect me to roll with it. Did that mean anything? Did you want to avoid answering my question?”
My wife was furious. “Let’s hear your answer to the question. Would you rather be blind or deaf?”
“Deaf, but I don’t focus my life around listening to people’s stories, and recording them on cassette tapes!”
My wife’s expression shifted to one of triumph, “You’re right about that. You most certainly do not listen. I’m sure it would be quite easy for you to give that up. I’m not saying I want to be deaf. You made me choose; I chose. You can’t tell me my choice is not my choice. It’s mine. Does it drive you crazy that you have no control over that?” My wife broke through the crowd of people passing us, to get to the staircase leading down to the el station.
I stood for a moment, watching her, astonished. When my wife had disappeared out of my sight, I started after her, pushing through the sidewalk traffic. I tried to race down the stairs, but I got caught behind a slow, elderly woman. By the time I had scanned my card, I heard a train pulling up and raced toward the track down another staircase. As I arrived on the platform, the train was already pulling away.
My wife was gone.
17.
T HIS WAS THE YEAR MY wife had a wall of calendars.
The fourth wall of our bedroom was covered in them. There was no furniture up against this wall, calendars from floor to ceiling.
The wall was not decorated with wall calendars alone, there were day planners affixed to the wall and clipped open day-by-day calendars, and a couple of those vast grid calendars businesses make for some unknown reason. There were even some of those little card calendars that have only the number of the days, almost too small to see printed in little squares of the months.
This wall was one of my wife’s rituals. It was another system that helped her make the transfer from day to day. They helped her make it between days when the stories were stalled.
I rarely saw my wife marking the days, but when I did, it was like watching a dance.
She began at the left side of the wall. She had a small stepping stool. The calendars reached to the ceiling, so she had to stand on the stool to reach the highest ones. She took a permanent marker and put an X through the previous day. If today was Monday, she marked off Sunday. She only ever marked off the day she had just woken from.
She made precise and weighty Xs through the days.
If she knew I was watching, she silenced me with the palm of one of her hands flattened in the air as she tore off the page of a day-by-day calendar.
She Xed out horizontally wide days in the day planners.
My wife made delicate tiny Xs through the small cards’ numbers.
My wife would work her way down the wall, kneeling on the floor to X out the calendars lowest to the ground. Then she would scoot her stool over a few feet and climb to begin at the ceiling again.
When she was done she would cap her marker. She’d take the time to read the new day’s day-by-day information. She had a word-of-the-day calendar. She had some cartoon calendar. She had a calendar providing a random fact each day.
On the days when I watched my wife perform this ritual of marking out the passing of another day, she would share something with me.
She would read me a particularly unusual definition.
She would sit down beside me and show me the punch line of the cartoon.
She would say, “Can you believe this?”
I would raise my eyebrows with surprise, smile and laugh as she threw the slips of paper away.
Most days she slept later than I did, but on the odd weekend morning when I stayed in bed, I enjoyed watching her dance against the wall, up and down her one-stepped stepping stool, boosting her already long body to the ceiling, arm extended with a marker
“Well, come on!” I said. “That was so cryptic. You can’t say something like that and expect me to roll with it. Did that mean anything? Did you want to avoid answering my question?”
My wife was furious. “Let’s hear your answer to the question. Would you rather be blind or deaf?”
“Deaf, but I don’t focus my life around listening to people’s stories, and recording them on cassette tapes!”
My wife’s expression shifted to one of triumph, “You’re right about that. You most certainly do not listen. I’m sure it would be quite easy for you to give that up. I’m not saying I want to be deaf. You made me choose; I chose. You can’t tell me my choice is not my choice. It’s mine. Does it drive you crazy that you have no control over that?” My wife broke through the crowd of people passing us, to get to the staircase leading down to the el station.
I stood for a moment, watching her, astonished. When my wife had disappeared out of my sight, I started after her, pushing through the sidewalk traffic. I tried to race down the stairs, but I got caught behind a slow, elderly woman. By the time I had scanned my card, I heard a train pulling up and raced toward the track down another staircase. As I arrived on the platform, the train was already pulling away.
My wife was gone.
17.
T HIS WAS THE YEAR MY wife had a wall of calendars.
The fourth wall of our bedroom was covered in them. There was no furniture up against this wall, calendars from floor to ceiling.
The wall was not decorated with wall calendars alone, there were day planners affixed to the wall and clipped open day-by-day calendars, and a couple of those vast grid calendars businesses make for some unknown reason. There were even some of those little card calendars that have only the number of the days, almost too small to see printed in little squares of the months.
This wall was one of my wife’s rituals. It was another system that helped her make the transfer from day to day. They helped her make it between days when the stories were stalled.
I rarely saw my wife marking the days, but when I did, it was like watching a dance.
She began at the left side of the wall. She had a small stepping stool. The calendars reached to the ceiling, so she had to stand on the stool to reach the highest ones. She took a permanent marker and put an X through the previous day. If today was Monday, she marked off Sunday. She only ever marked off the day she had just woken from.
She made precise and weighty Xs through the days.
If she knew I was watching, she silenced me with the palm of one of her hands flattened in the air as she tore off the page of a day-by-day calendar.
She Xed out horizontally wide days in the day planners.
My wife made delicate tiny Xs through the small cards’ numbers.
My wife would work her way down the wall, kneeling on the floor to X out the calendars lowest to the ground. Then she would scoot her stool over a few feet and climb to begin at the ceiling again.
When she was done she would cap her marker. She’d take the time to read the new day’s day-by-day information. She had a word-of-the-day calendar. She had some cartoon calendar. She had a calendar providing a random fact each day.
On the days when I watched my wife perform this ritual of marking out the passing of another day, she would share something with me.
She would read me a particularly unusual definition.
She would sit down beside me and show me the punch line of the cartoon.
She would say, “Can you believe this?”
I would raise my eyebrows with surprise, smile and laugh as she threw the slips of paper away.
Most days she slept later than I did, but on the odd weekend morning when I stayed in bed, I enjoyed watching her dance against the wall, up and down her one-stepped stepping stool, boosting her already long body to the ceiling, arm extended with a marker
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