The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories by Jonathan Carroll Page B

around a long way before you actually saw anything. The “gatehouse” came first, although it guarded no gate. No car was parked near her house, and, from what I could see, none was at the big house either. I felt like a thief casing the joint. I am not a thief or a snoop, but I decided to snoop. I would do it in plain sight, however, so if anyone happened to come up, they’d see me at it. But I did have every intention of looking in whatever windows were there and finding whatever clues were available.
    Snow had begun to fall, but it was light and playful. The whole feeling of what I was about to do lightened my mood. It was so out of character for me—so nosy and so none of my business to peek in a stranger’s windows. I couldn’t help smiling, although I was still pretty riled.
    Flakes began to stick and melt on my glasses. I had to take them off for a wipe before spying in earnest. Specs in hand, I looked around and realized what an utterly beautiful scene it was. Acres of lawn, dark trees on the edges, the green-brown stillness of the lake behind the fat floating snowflakes ...
    Beenie’s house was nothing special. A small Cape Cod saltbox the colour of silvery tree bark—from the outside, it appeared cosy and a good place for one person to live, two at most. Pink gauzy curtains framed the windows. From afar, I looked through and saw a couch covered in a large flower print. Eyeglasses back in place, I went to the window that looked into her living room. Typical stuff: appropriate furniture, a few throw rugs, dull pictures on the walls. For no reason, I looked at my watch and then chuckled. I’d seen too much TV. Without realizing it, I was spying the way they did it on television—check your watch a lot; check over your shoulder constantly; don’t spend too much time looking in a window before moving on to the next. Check that watch again—you have only so much time. I had no idea how much I would have before someone noticed me peeking in windows, and came over or called the cops, and I would get myself into big trouble.
    Moving slowly around the house, I passed a kitchen with the remnants of breakfast left out—a knife on a plate filled with breadcrumbs, a coffee cup tipped over on its saucer. Something touched my mind, but didn’t come into focus until a few minutes later. A small window into a bathroom. Standing on tiptoe, I could make out a yellow shower curtain and a rumpled towel tossed across the sink.
    I was a step towards the next window when it registered.
    “It’s messy!”
    Her whole house was messy. Beenie Rushford, Queen Terminator of the dust speck, Grand Wielder of Mop and Broom/Look-Out-Dirt-Here-I-Come, lived in a house with wet towels and strawberry-jam smudges on her tablecloth? It was not only hard to believe, it was nigh on impossible. I know—people are a giant admixture of contradictions, and nothing should be surprising in life, but if you had seen the results of this woman’s work, you would fully understand why it was inconceivable for her to live like this.
    Still dumbfounded, I walked to the last window and saw dead Annette Taugwalder sitting on Beenie Rushforth’s bed, reading a magazine.
    It was a trick, a joke; I was drunk; I was insane. She was dead. She could not be there. But oh, she most certainly was. Twenty-years’-dead Annette flipping the pages of a magazine. Without realizing it, I put my head on the glass, because the world was suddenly a new place for me.
    “Annette?” I put a hand on the glass, too. It was cold. I felt that. She looked up and smiled. I was fifty-five years old and thought ... Forget what I thought. I was wrong.
    She stood up and walked out of the room. I kept my forehead on the glass, and kept looking at the tangled bedspread where she’d sat. I had never in my life been so close to the answer, but I was petrified. Everything inside me howled and screeched and shook the bars of their cages. Let us out. Let us run away. The fire’s close