American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,170

at least end the day well? Was that so much to ask?

It probably was. Things have not been very good with Dale in a long while. Perhaps since they got married: Dale was not exactly a catch, but at the time he was kind enough, and he owned a mechanic’s shop, and Margaret, who had always been very bad at talking to men, was happy to receive the attention and the security his favor offered.

She wishes now she had thought about that more. About that choice, and about herself. She wishes she’d realized why she was so bad at talking to men, and why she preferred the company of her few close girlfriends; she wishes she’d realized that, throughout her friendships with other women, she was often trying to peripherally approach some silent, forbidden subject, hoping to tempt both herself and her friend into a revelation so illicit she could not even admit to herself she was doing so. It was not until her wedding night, with all the awkward, sweaty fumblings, some of which were pleasant but quite a few of which just hurt, that she realized what she’d done, and regretted it and hated herself for it.

In Wink, boys like girls and girls like boys, and no one ever, ever gets divorced. That was part of the rules. When They first came, all those arrangements were made: We offer you a good life, a wholesome life, and all you must do is live it. And to so many in Wink the life They offered seemed good, and wholesome, and safe, and they agreed. And perhaps some of them are happy.

But here Margaret is, weeping in the backyard. Yet unlike some in Wink, she knows exactly what is missing. She will get a little taste of it tonight, enough to keep her going for a while.

A light goes on in the top room of the house next door. Margaret stops weeping, and looks. The light goes out, then comes back on again. Then it goes out.

Her heart trembles at the signal. She sniffs and wipes her tears away. Then she stands on her tiptoes, looks around over her fence for any watchers (But would I even see them if they were there?), and walks to the fence that runs between her house and the house next door.

She stands beside the fence—exactly in front of one fence board with a large hole in it—and she waits.

She has been waiting for this moment all month.

She hears the back door of the house next door open and close. Feet crunch through the grass. The person comes to stand just on the opposite side of the fence from Margaret, and Margaret longs to look through the cracks, but she cannot bring herself to.

A woman’s finger extends through a hole. It is not an unusual finger: it is longish, with dark red nail polish, and it has a few freckles on the last knuckle. But new tears spring to Margaret’s eyes at the very sight of it, like she is a pilgrim finally reaching her shrine.

Her hands quake, but she manages to extend her own finger and curl it around the one poking through the fence. The finger curls as well, embracing Margaret’s, and the two squeeze each other tight, so tight it hurts.

She is so, so lucky that she happens to live next to Helena. And she is so lucky that she happened to look up one fall evening nearly two years ago when she was raking leaves, and see the wife of her next-door neighbor watching her with a strange, distant look in her eye: a look of longing, of quiet grief, and of awe. It took her a moment to understand this look.

Helena, her next-door neighbor of nine years, thought she was beautiful. It was likely she’d thought Margaret was beautiful for a long time.

Margaret turned away and pretended she had seen nothing. But she kept that moment close to her heart, as if that one look were a burning ember that could keep her warm no matter what happened.

They pursued their relationship without ever admitting they were doing so. They spoke in glances, in nods, in tiny, insignificant gestures invisible to the rest of the community: a certain audaciousness in Christmas decorations, a sudden predilection for listening to Bach on the radio outside at night, and, most importantly, a tendency to go to their fence one night once a month, poke a finger through the fence, and revel in one