The Woman

There is a woman who lives near the end of a short, dead-end road. Lots of different homes inhabit this road, some small-scale Victorian's, more than a few traditional red bricks. Even a few stone homes with wide front porches rumoured to have been built from the original brewery a century ago on this very street. She lives in the oldest, though. Her new neighbours cut away half of her yard to build a large new home with palladian windows and a rock garden. People told her to mind, but she didn't really know how. Besides, this new house cast a long shadow over her little cottage. She was now nearly invisible to the naked eye, just as she hoped.
This cottage is in the perfect situation for her, actually. It is small and grey, with a little gabled roof above and an inconspicuous porch before. Inside are her prized possesions. Walls painted in old, faded english pastels, in smooth stone, leafy green and buttery yellow. Her candles are there as are her warm throw blankets, small pieces of Da Vinci knock-offs, some vintage posters for soaps and many journals. But for this particular woman, her most prized possesion, if one could call it that, is her picture window. In her small warm parlour painted smooth pink stone, with bookshelves and pictures and mismatched throw pillows, there is a large picture window with a white seat beneath. Outside the window lays a path through the forest. A path for runners and dog-walkers and lovers. It connects to the street behind her little cottage, which some would consider of a loftier value than her street. The lawns are mowed in neat, vertical lines like the racing lanes in a swimming pool. All of the dogs are purely bred, incestuous snobby little beasts that they are. This woman's mongrel of a dog is of an unsure origin and, like her mistress, feels a certain sort of mislaid disdain for their considerable neighbours. Her cat feels disdain for both herself and the dog.
When people are invited into the cottage - as they very rarely are or ever will be - they comment on this graceful picture window. "The drapes are just marvellous!", They tell her, secretly shocked considering the rest of her untidy home.
"And these cushions! Decadent!"
She smiles her secret smile, willing them to leave so she can be alone again. So she can feel the exquisite loneliness tumble over her like icecubes in a martini. So she can spy on the humanity outside her window with tea cup or wine glass in hand depending on the time of day. In her pyjama pants at any time of day, watching the people who feel unwatched. And she can inhabit them for a small while, all of them. She can feel in them what it must feel like to be a real person, to have conviction, right or wrong, enough so to leave the house. What in the world motivates them one and all?, she often wonders. How do they get out of bed every morning, make breakfast, clean their houses, go to work, make dates and do drinks and have lunch meetings?
She is fascinated by each one seperately, the happy, the sad, the ruined. Notices every detail, the woman who walks her dog every morning with a grocery bag in her heavy woolen mitten, her steps long and full of purpose. This woman always wears the same thing - tight black running pants, a Columbia purple sweatshirt, a thick bubbled vest over, outsized sunglasses (regardless of the weather) and a warm headband over her neat ponytail. Her dog looks thin and expensive, as does his fancy leash. He does his business in the woman's side yard every morning, and his owner dutifully retrieves it in her grocery bag. She seems very in control, the woman thinks. As though she wants everything to seem perfect to the world, even when no one is looking. Does she wander home to her husband, scruffy and in his pale blue boxers and rumpled white t-shirt, getting her a coffee? Does she frown at his naked toes, noticing the little hairs that he refuses to have trimmed? Do they plan drinks with friends for the weekend because they can't stand the idea of being alone, because their marriage seems so much better in front of an audience? Or does she live alone with her dog in a neat, softly lit home, carefully clipping pictures out of Bride magazine in case her boyfriend of 13 years ever asks her to marry him?
Not everyone is so careful when they don't know they're being watched. Teens eating Twix candy bars throw their wrappers into the brush. Runners in aero-dynamically designed shorts pausing, knees almost buckling, doubled over to catch their breath. One unfortunate woman walking with her own arms wrapped around her abdomen, then stopping short to sob, body rocking back on her heels. What on earth could have happened to her? The woman wonders. Because it's a very specific type of sobbing - a shocked, scared sort of cry. When it comes out as a cough in the beginning. The woman's first thought is, oh, perhaps someone broke her heart. But no; there's a maturity to her crying, a helplessness that is frightening. She doesn't even try to cover her mouth, just shakes with silent screams. Someone must have died. Someone young, that she didn't expect to die. It couldn't be a child; perhaps a friend? Someone she doesn't feel she should grieve publicly but still manages to feel lost without.
Hours go by every day. The woman, aging slowly in her robe, sits in her window. She reads there when there is little traffic, eats there when the first flush of spring comes to the forest. She leaves her home less and less. And then one day, when she is especially intrigued in the goings-on, someone notices her.