knew I cared, but she also knew that I would ask questions like how her day was before I was ready to listen. My wife was honest and forthright, but only when she could tell that the questioners were genuinely curious for an answer. She read people impeccably and so if she could tell someone was asking a question for politeness’s sake, she would often not answer, throwing all notions of courtesy out the window.
She could detect even the whitest lies with great ease as well and she had no problem bringing the error to the attention of all involved in the conversation. Often people were astonished at my wife ’s capacity to notice even the slightest alteration of a story.
My wife was, for the most part, uninterested in making the stories she collected more audience-friendly. She wanted the truth, not the entertainment. My wife thought people who catered their stories to their audience preposterous. She was amazed at how people sought to impress insignificant her with a silly story.
My wife paid attention to the way people spoke.
Even if she had never met a person before, a few moments of speaking with them gave her all the information she needed to know. It was in these encounters that her little talent proved the most disconcerting, both because of how easily my wife caught on and also how often it seemed people tweaked information in the first strains of conversation. Everything is a bit altered in the hopes that this person might appear at his most attractive and desirable. Everyone wants to continue talking.
My wife would point out every glitch.
My wife would raise one of her infamously skeptical eyebrows.
The person she was talking to would pause, testing her with their eyes, admit defeat by revising, and carry on with their story.
With a smile, my wife would thank them for their honesty, letting them know she thought nothing less of them for attempting to adjust the story for her benefit.
All of this with a look.
My wife, who spent so much time focusing on the verbal and the vocal, said all of this with her face.
And after these people had jumped that first hurdle with her, they would talk to her for a long time. My wife made them feel they had earned something and they’d turn that something over to her.
20.
O NE LEG PROPPED UP in the window frame, my wife looked at the view.
We had no view from this apartment. A book lay ripped beside the foot that remained on the floor.
She had a cigarette in her mouth. Her hands were a fistful of pages. She was sending them out the window one by one. She crumpled some, sailed some flat and free.
She sent out a puff.
I had just opened the door. I was coming home from work. It was summer, year four and the sky was still light.
This didn’t make me nervous, but instead excited. She looked over her shoulder when I came in the door, mumbled a hello from her cigarette-pinched mouth. She turned back to what she’d been doing and threw the cover of whatever book it was down the several stories.
I walked over to her and sat in the chair near the windowsill. “Bad book.?”
She smiled, conspiratorially. “Great book.”
I knew there was some sort of method behind her madness and I knew she wanted me to ask, so I did. “Why tear it to pieces then?”
“My hope is that people will find a page and read it. I hope they’ll fall in love with it and look for the book. The author and the title is printed on each page, on either side.” She folded a page into a smallish paper airplane, flew it out and away.
I was fascinated, disturbed, intrigued, but not surprised. Wasn’t this exactly the type of thing she’d come to make me expect? Hadn’t it been little constructed acts such as this that had drawn me to her? When we met, didn’t I think the banks of cassette tapes had to be the tip of some insanely creative iceberg?
“What’s the book?” I asked. I would read it that night. I would figure out what had made her so mad with passion.
She gathered the pile of
She could detect even the whitest lies with great ease as well and she had no problem bringing the error to the attention of all involved in the conversation. Often people were astonished at my wife ’s capacity to notice even the slightest alteration of a story.
My wife was, for the most part, uninterested in making the stories she collected more audience-friendly. She wanted the truth, not the entertainment. My wife thought people who catered their stories to their audience preposterous. She was amazed at how people sought to impress insignificant her with a silly story.
My wife paid attention to the way people spoke.
Even if she had never met a person before, a few moments of speaking with them gave her all the information she needed to know. It was in these encounters that her little talent proved the most disconcerting, both because of how easily my wife caught on and also how often it seemed people tweaked information in the first strains of conversation. Everything is a bit altered in the hopes that this person might appear at his most attractive and desirable. Everyone wants to continue talking.
My wife would point out every glitch.
My wife would raise one of her infamously skeptical eyebrows.
The person she was talking to would pause, testing her with their eyes, admit defeat by revising, and carry on with their story.
With a smile, my wife would thank them for their honesty, letting them know she thought nothing less of them for attempting to adjust the story for her benefit.
All of this with a look.
My wife, who spent so much time focusing on the verbal and the vocal, said all of this with her face.
And after these people had jumped that first hurdle with her, they would talk to her for a long time. My wife made them feel they had earned something and they’d turn that something over to her.
20.
O NE LEG PROPPED UP in the window frame, my wife looked at the view.
We had no view from this apartment. A book lay ripped beside the foot that remained on the floor.
She had a cigarette in her mouth. Her hands were a fistful of pages. She was sending them out the window one by one. She crumpled some, sailed some flat and free.
She sent out a puff.
I had just opened the door. I was coming home from work. It was summer, year four and the sky was still light.
This didn’t make me nervous, but instead excited. She looked over her shoulder when I came in the door, mumbled a hello from her cigarette-pinched mouth. She turned back to what she’d been doing and threw the cover of whatever book it was down the several stories.
I walked over to her and sat in the chair near the windowsill. “Bad book.?”
She smiled, conspiratorially. “Great book.”
I knew there was some sort of method behind her madness and I knew she wanted me to ask, so I did. “Why tear it to pieces then?”
“My hope is that people will find a page and read it. I hope they’ll fall in love with it and look for the book. The author and the title is printed on each page, on either side.” She folded a page into a smallish paper airplane, flew it out and away.
I was fascinated, disturbed, intrigued, but not surprised. Wasn’t this exactly the type of thing she’d come to make me expect? Hadn’t it been little constructed acts such as this that had drawn me to her? When we met, didn’t I think the banks of cassette tapes had to be the tip of some insanely creative iceberg?
“What’s the book?” I asked. I would read it that night. I would figure out what had made her so mad with passion.
She gathered the pile of
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