A Fire Burning Brightly

The wandering lady is only a block away now, stomping toward me, her feet hitting the sidewalk painfully it seems, the tangles of her hair trembling with each step.

She never looks at other people, at the houses, the lawns, the flower gardens she passes along the way, never. She isn’t interested in being sociable. She’s busy trying to find her way.

My neighbor, Mr. Siminski, spots her as well. He startles me.

“She smells of shit,” he says as we watch her approach together. She’s less than a block away. He recounts how he crossed her out on this very sidewalk last week, unaware that he’s about to deride the woman I love. “Look at how she moves,” he continues, his eyes focused on her feet, the way she lurches forward with each step, snapping the lifeless rags she’s wearing. I can sense he’s tense, ready to turn and run back into his house at a moment’s notice. I want him to leave. I want to be standing here alone at the end of my driveway when she arrives.

I raise my hand to shield my face from the sun’s glare until I hear Mr. Siminski mumbling about having something to do inside. He sounds frightened. Good, because I can smell her now. She’s on fire, the sun at her back lighting up the knots and split-ends of her hair so I can’t look away.

I’ll tell her it’s a lovely day, putting her at ease, speaking as if we’ve already discussed other days.

***

My wife is so angry, and I can only imagine how she must have struggled to get out of her car without dropping her paperwork, her keys, her cell phone, the strap of her purse clenched between her teeth, trying not to show too much of her legs as Mr. Siminski’s baggy crotch addressed her by her given name, afternoon, Evelyn.

It’s Mr. Siminski’s fault she’s upset, but I’m careful just the same.

“Where the hell could she live?” my wife asks me, still incensed at being ambushed as she pulled into our driveway. She’d always been careful not to encourage the neighbors, turning away or slipping into the house if they approached, if it seemed an interaction over the property line, the chain link, seemed inevitable. Fuck that, she’d mumble, rushing her glass of white wine through the billowing curtains of the open French doors she’d coveted as a way to bring the outside inside, never once considering that she was leaving me behind, that I might not feel up to discussing the weather for the both of us.

“Why our street? Where does she go? She can’t be working. That idiot, Siminski, says she smells awful. Who’d hire her?” she demands to know as we sit down for supper, her head still full of steam because Mr. Siminski hadn’t been aware of her rule number one. She needs to be enveloped by silence her first half hour back home from work. “I decompress,” she’d said at the top of our marriage, “in that first half hour,” her hands in the air like a double karate chop. “Half an hour, that’s all I want.”

She asked for my opinion on the wandering lady who’s whipped up Siminski, but she can’t wait for me to reply. She’s already jabbing at the salad between us. She’s picking and choosing, trying a bit of everything, the white palm hearts I’d spread evenly in and among the Heavenly Garden Mix so we’d both have a taste. She’s aggravated, mindless, the different salad greens shredded and plastered across her perfect teeth. I want to say something, motion with my fork, pretend like I’m picking at the spaces between my own front teeth.

“I don’t think she lives anywhere,” I lie, straining my ears against the crunch, crunch, crunch. “She’s homeless.”

She seems surprised at the sound of my voice. She neglects to swallow before speaking again. “But that can’t be,” she says, pointing her fork at me, the slaw in her mouth tumbling like laundry. She wants to know if there are any shelters close by.

“No.”

“There must be,” she says, turning her attention back to the salad. “Why else would she walk the same route through our neighborhood every day?” Her eyes tell me she’s onto something. I hold my breath. “You could write a story about her,” she says finally, her nostrils flaring briefly.

“I don’t think so,” I say, relieved, my own fork hovering over that last white heart so she shuts her mouth in a pout. “You missed one,” I say, smiling, thinking she could have it all if it’ll avoid a fight.