There are certain words and phrases in the English language that seem to
have an immediate and universal emotional impact. Much, I suppose, in the
same way that I'm affected by a crying baby; I've heard that others are
affected similarly. When I think of the words themselves, of the context in
which I heard the words, I know, intellectually at least, from where their
impact comes; but knowing doesn't convince me. The words remind me of
prayers, mantras, and the meanings seem unimportant compared to the
phonetics, long vowels and sharp spit, hard and soft th's, spells from a
distant age, memorized names of dead gods that work their magic on a
thousand glands long before their waves vibrate their way through my
cochlea. The first I learned when I was taking care of my grandma before
she died. "Help" once and something twitched in my chest, twitched just
long and hard enough for it to take me a moment to realize the definition,
piece together the word and react to it, and then that twitch was gone,
forgotten. But Grandma, ruthless, wouldn't settle for me to be swung by
denotation only. "Help" twice and I realized the word, powerful as people
always knew words to be, and walls swung up in my head, drawbridges raised,
defcon 4 we are under attack, and I was hardened, prepared myself
unconsciously with distance, fighting it with my own mantra, counterspell to
spell: "What do you need. What do you need. What do you need." "Help" a
third time and I was crying, my counterspell was sputtering out of my lips,
its syllables twisting up and breaking down. Three times to make me hers
forever-three times. Read some fairy tales: you'll know to beware a ritual
performed two times; you'll know not to let it happen a third. I've
discovered more of the words since that time but my defenses aren't any
better.
There was a woman in the booth behind me as I sat with my book, my coffee,
the soggy leaf of kale that was all that remained of my lunch. Despite the
fact that she (or rather, the words she spoke that afternoon) is the focus
of what I'm interested in talking about, I have to admit that I have never
so much as nodded to her as we passed on the street. I have never been
introduced to her, have never heard her name called out by someone wishing
to attract her notice, have never (God forbid) followed her to her car to
see what kind of car she has (if any), to her work to see what she does for
a living, to her home to see if she has a family. I've wanted to-I've
wanted to walk up to her on a street corner, shake her hand and introduce
myself, or better, greet her like the old friend I feel her to be. I know
there's no reason for it, no good that could come of it. I know that it's
crazy. I imagine (perhaps only to save my self-image) that what seperates
the insane from the less-insane isn't owning crazy ideas, but acting upon
those crazy ideas. The truth is, before that afternoon in the cafe, I had
never seen this woman before. Or at least I had never noticed her. I
suppose that she must have slipped in the back door to sit behind me because
I never saw her walk down the hall to sit in the booth behind, and I ought
to have noticed her if she walked past me. Not because she was so
impressive, not in one way or another, not impressive in any way-I ought to
have noticed her because she would have been carrying a cardboard box
slightly smaller than a shirt-box, its top swathed in yellowed masking
tape, a box rattling with all the cardboard jigsaw pieces inside.
I really can't imagine why I never noticed her before that. Afterwards, I
would see her crossing the street (with the signal), at the Fair, peering at
the menu pasted to the big plate-glass window of Jim's Chinese-American.
Not often-just occasionally, in the normal places for strangers to exist.
How many people are there that I see daily but never register? How many
faces remain strange to me even after years of inhabiting the same streets?
When I first wondered that, I answered it as simply as possible: maybe she
just moved here. Then I realized that I don't know who my neighbors two
doors away are. It's true, as I've said, she was fairly unimpressive, maybe
a little on the tall side and a little on the plump side. I don't remember
what she wore that first time I saw her (that detail didn't stick), but
since I've seen her in blue-jeans and t-shirt and bright green skiing jacket
a few times but more often in light, cheap-looking blouses and dark pairs
(or pair?) of slacks, low-heeled dress shoes, a little bit of makeup.
Shoulder-length straight brown hair, brushed behind her ears when she was
wearing jeans. She strikes me most as anonymous. Couldn't she be anyone?
I wonder if I want her to be anyone, everyone, all the people I've never
met. There's a reason that I don't follow her, linger to hear the way she
spoke to the little girl with balloons that she walked with at the fair, and
it's not politness, it's not the fact that I'm busy. Is it because I want
her to remain forever anonymous?
I should've mentioned what I overheard her say a long time ago. I didn't
mean to foreshadow. I'm afraid that now it will be anticlimactic, a
let-down. It's nothing, really. Before I ever saw her, I overheard her
say, "I tried, I tried so hard." That's all.
I heard it, of course, from behind me, and it was just the barest whisper,
more an exhalation of breath than a sentence. If the jukebox wasn't
in-between songs at that exact moment, I wouldn't have heard it at all, I'm
sure. It knocked the breath out of me, a sonic bullet, and I sat for a
moment, shoulders shrugged, gazing at the reflection of the ceiling fan in
the face of plate. I faintly remember wiping the mustard off the plate with
the kale in order to see more of the ceiling. I turned to see who had
spoken and she was there, her head down so that her hair spilled over her
forehead and her eyes, pouring hot water from the decanter to her tea mug.
In front of her was the tangled mess of a jigsaw puzzle, one which surely
couldn't be solved. Most of it was still in the box. Of the pieces on the
table, there wasn't a single edge or corner piece that I could see. There
were polygon pieces like the kinds in kindergarten puzzles, squares and
triangles. There were black and white pieces and vibrant colored pieces,
pieces that couldn't have been to the same set. There was even a horseshoe
shaped piece, iridescent like a hologram sticker. In the middle of all of
these unshoed shapes were several hundred pieces that had been forced to fit
each other In places, the fits were truly terrible, and pieces overlapped,
or warped bits of the puzzle up into the air. The holes were all the size
of cracks, but they were everywhere. At first sight, I thought I saw a
picture in the puzzle, a picture that would justify this forced-fit, but an
instant later I realized there was nothing, just chaos, piece after piece
shoved into each other wherever there was a peg and a hole. Some of the
pieces were upside-down; either that or the glossy surface had ripped off of
them, revealing the cardboard beneath.
I turned back to my book quickly but I couldn't read. I didn't want to be
responsible for overhearing. She sat there for another half hour while I
faced the door and then she gathered up her pieces into the taped box and
left through the front door. She must've left her money on the table
because she didn't stop at the counter with a bill and now I can't stop
noticing her. The fact that everyone tried so hard doesn't make it any
easier and now I can't stop noticing her.
