Tightness, or A Life Not Lived
The entrance to their home was less-than-perfect, Dana concluded. She was sitting on a chair, balanced on the concrete walk that led up to their otherwise fabulous brownstone in the 'burbs. One wall - overgrown with roses, and tamed by a hastily-installed trellis - met the other by means of a large wooden door, with a portcullis-like criss-cross pattern down the cedar monster. It was as if there was too little wall to go around; there was too much empty space that that door had to cover, and with it all came the illusion of tightness. She already felt restricted. Here she was, at 35, and just a housewife. Her one ambition in life had been to work in art designs - she imagined red or velvet-shaded matte coverings on the dusty tomes of academia, or coffee table - but life had led her around the block too many times. We no longer need you, said the perfect teeth behind the oddly uncluttered desk at Hughes Publishing and Media. Ka-ching went her eyes the next day, when she met a morose millionaire at Elway's Club on 19th. He was nursing a gin and tonic, she a Cosmopolitan. They bonded over the muted blacks in his studio apartment. But that was three years ago, and all that she had to show for this new millennium (it was New Year's Day, 2000) was a husband in early retirement and too depressed to leave the enormous (dark cavern-like space arbitrarily called the) master bedroom, as well as a 3-year old lovechild who preferred the crazy lady who routinely let her dogs "relax" on their front lawn every morning to her mother. Even the mailman got baby air kisses once in a while. It was choking, like the creepers up and down that wall. She imagined roots extending to the depths and clenching at the foundations of her house, their house, bought for millions and worth less. People moved away from the suburbs when there were too many people. Mass migration back to the cities. Like all the beautiful flowers in her front lawn, chased away by pernicious dandelions and smug bindweeds. The gardeners were long gone, fired for blistering a hornet hive with a mixture of poison and concrete, and the ugly mixture proved to be an eyesore to the missus one angry day in May. From her seat on the driveway, she could see every feature of her life that she would want to see. Henry, upstairs, drinking himself into oblivion, his Prozac scattered along the windowsill. Baby Marcus, cooing at his nurse, and ignoring the stranger outside the glass. Her nails scratched messages on the side of her plastic-covered aluminum chair, and one hand idly flicked at a mosquito. She blinked and closed her eyes, willing the colors to come and open her up once more. The light was beautiful.