Prologue
The complex sat off the road and was fenced in wrought iron all around. The gates opened and closed slowly, moaning and creaking as if attached to a rope, a turnstile, and one beleaguered person walking round and round. They opened at 6am for the day and remained agape and the complex accessible until 6pm when they slowly slid shut. Even then they were more for show than anything else. If you waited at the gates long enough, someone was bound to drive up with their magic pass and as the gates slid open, you could slide in too.
The buildings themselves were made of various brown bricks and tan siding and were so neutral and non-descript that they easily faded into the trees, the pool, the neighborhood. The parking was adequate, the landscaping was green and abundant; its flowers changed out seasonally so gradually that no one was really sure when they had changed.
The complex was a mile from a school and as such, had an abundance of teachers living within it. They complained that the rent was a stretch but that you couldn't beat the commute. You saw their cars dotting the parking lot, school parking passes hanging from the rearview mirror. You saw them hurriedly walk from those cars to their homes trying to not talk to students on the way.
During the colder months, most occupants of Le Ecole, as this complex was named, stayed indoors; their patios empty save for the diehard smokers who didn’t fear cold or lung damage as they stood and smoked and quickly went back inside. It wasn’t until the days grew longer and the air suddenly spoke of summer that you saw what was normally kept indoors.
The early morning hours of a Saturday or Sunday were ripe for people at their oddest. Half-dressed occupants scratched at their bellies as they stood bleary-eyed letting their dogs sniff and paw at the grass. Couples’ voices raised up and over their privacy fences about what went wrong last night, five years ago, the day they got married. More often than not, you could also witness the awkward goodbye of a night no one had planned. Men in their boxers walking down women in their yesterday clothes. It was too painful to watch as these men turned their lips and let these hopeful women kiss their cheek instead.
In the middle of all this lay the complex’s pool, shimmering in varying shades of blue, depending on the day and the chemicals swimming within it. The pool was surrounded by its own fence, no lock, and many signs warning that there was no lifeguard on duty, no glass was allowed, no pets at the pool. What it didn’t warn about was the people who would trickle out of their homes to gather around. People one didn’t know lying in the sun, swimming with their children, and bringing with them glimpses into the world that went on in their apartment. If you were very quiet and uninterested in making friends with your neighbors, you could learn a lot by sitting quietly and pretending to read. Often, what you saw at the pool was more interesting than what was printed in any book.
Chapter One
They were quiet and kept to themselves. They were not here to make friends and they didn’t even feign pleasantries to the other people around them. The man was stoop-shouldered and small as if he had spent his life cowering and hoping not to be noticed. He moved quietly, spoke in a whisper, and never raised his head or even his eyes in passing.
The woman was different. She was quiet in an angry way. Her long, orange hair erupted from her head as if it was trying to escape and she never walked; she took long, punishing strides every time she stepped. She would look straight through anyone who attempted to catch her eye and had no issues with walking too close to someone and not acknowledging them. She would walk by her neighbor’s window ten, fifteen times a day, trampling the grass and ignoring the walkway three feet away.
When you saw their children, you had hope that a child’s natural curiosity would force them to look up, to smile, to acknowledge the dog walking by them. However, the children had been warned with harsh words and angry tones about strangers: strangers would take them away, dogs would bite them, other children would bring them to adults who would take them away. They played only with each other and spoke only to their parents. The girl was a replica of her mother with angry orange hair and eyes that never once looked anything but cold. The boy was a sturdier version of the man, his preschool body belied by the way his eyes watched but never seemed to wonder. Often, you would hear them exclaiming in their language with childish enthusiasm and for a moment think that they were just like the other children in the complex. Your unreturned smile and their look of cold indifference soon reminding you that something just wasn’t right.
The man was terrible at parking his car and that might have been enough of a nuisance to talk about. He was forever backing up over the lines one way or the other and making it impossible for the cars next to him to open their doors. It wasn’t his inept parking that had people talking though; it was the sheet that hung in the back seat windows obscuring any view into the rear of the car. People found this odd because their children weren’t babies. Were they allergic to the sun? Neighbors wondered this aloud to one another until the day they saw the entire family ribbon dancing in the grassy area by the pool. Watching the ribbon dancing removed any remaining doubt that this family was not quite right. It was the parents who took turns ribbon dancing while the other filmed and the children busied themselves in the grass and with rocks as children do. It was a beautiful sunny day and many people were out to enjoy the sunlight but were steadfastly ignored by the entire family. They danced too close, their ribbons sailing over the head of others, the kids pushing past anyone in their running path. Never once did they acknowledge anyone else on the grass. They had eyes and ears only for one another.
Their language sounded harsh and impersonal even when the mother was softly talking to one child or the other. No one could quite figure out what they were speaking and this led to even more confusion. Where were they from? Was this haughty indifference a cultural thing? Was their inability to make eye contact some sort of xenophobic superiority? German and Israeli were ruled out as their words didn’t sound guttural enough. Some swore it was French, but it was too guttural to be French. Russian? Pennsylvania Dutch? All countries and known dialects were offered but no one except the four people in that family knew what they were speaking.
They celebrated unknown events on odd days. They dressed in white T-shirts and white baseball hats and stood outside their door clapping and laughing, their excitement drawing you in even as the man’s hunched shoulders and the woman’s dead-eyed stare said to stay away. Was it a religious holiday? What was that object on the door? They huddled together on their stoop and smiled and sang until someone dared to pass by. They drew even closer together, each parent touching one of the children, everyone silent until the stranger had moved on. Once alone, they stayed close but smiled and resumed singing.
Singing was a big part of whoever they were. People were shocked when strangers stood in a circle around their door singing lustily one day. They know people? This question answered when their door flew open and the family stood there and joined the others in singing and laughing and even more shocking when they stepped back to admit the singers into their home.
The woman knew, and the man quietly knew too, that they were getting too many looks, too much interest generated in their small family. They laid in bed and spoke in hushed tones as to not wake the children sleeping on a small mattress at the end of their bed. The man sat up, his weary shoulders supported by the wire-framed headboard behind him, and rubbed his tired temples with his fingertips. The woman lay on her back, her orange hair spread out like a wildfire on the pillow. We have to go, he said. I know, I know she whispered, even an apartment is not anonymous enough. Oh, but he was tired of moving, of leaving, of changing, but as he glanced at his love in the bed, and the children softly snoring and moving in their sleep, he knew he would move a thousand times if he had to.
Over the next few days, the woman strode by windows faster, more hurried, more purposeful than ever before. She marched the children to and from the car and back carrying bags and boxes and items no one could see behind their packaging. The man moved slower, more carefully, his shoulders seemed to bow even farther forward as if every step he took required him to push the air ahead, shoulders first. His mind was running with too many thoughts to keep noticing how he was leaving the house. He didn’t mind the glasses perched cautiously on the end of his nose and he even left the house in his love’s lavender shorts and didn’t notice until she told him much later that day. He looked down and laughed and she laughed with him and as they hugged in the emptied kitchen, he felt calm for the first time in days.
The children knew something was happening despite the woman’s best plans to keep them busy and occupied. She planned picnics and swimming and crafts but she was preoccupied and absent-minded and their questions became too much. She yelled, harshly, and they cried, copiously, but she couldn’t stop worrying in her mind. Her heart threatened to explode with love for the man and these children but there was just so much to do between then and now. There was no time to think of love and no time to spoil these children. She put them to work cleaning corners and blinds and they fell quiet with their questions and expressions.
Friday night the man came home driving a large camper. How is he going to park that, the neighbors wondered? He parked it crookedly along the fire lane and left it there for two days. The children ran in and out of the apartment and camper, calling to one another in words no one understood. The woman marched belongings to the camper and marched herself back to the apartment to retrieve more.
Early Sunday morning, the man and woman woke early and carried the sleeping children and the last few belongings to the camper. They would get coffee on the road and let the children sleep as long as they could; there was no reason to say goodbye to this home when a new one would be waiting. A new one would be waiting whenever they wanted now. The camper was their new home and they could move it anywhere they wanted and whenever they wanted. The anonymity they craved and fought for was here on this small home with four wheels.
The man looked over at the woman and smiled. She touched his hand lightly and laughed a soft laugh of relief. Their eyes met and as he looked in them he remembered how much he had always loved her. He loved her now in their family years, and he had loved her in their twenties when they had come to America broke and desperate to share their lives together. He had loved her in their teens when they were forbidden to love and determined to love at the same time. He had loved her when they were children and he would love her until they were too old to remember anything but each other. He started the camper and inched it slowly away from the curb. He glanced at his love one more time and knew that he always had and that he always would love this woman. He would protect and defend her and their children and no man, no law, no religion could ever keep him from loving her; this woman, his wife, mother of his children, his best friend, and his sister.
