Big Brick Buildings

At the time, I was complaining about being in love. It’s hard to think about much else when you think you’re in love. So my sister told me a story our neighbor, Mrs. Becky, told her. She was an art teacher. In college, all she could think about was her boyfriend, who I've only ever known as her husband, Mr. Jody. She painted a building, and in every window, she painted his face. It was hard to imagine that anyone could be in love with Mr. Jody. I never saw the painting, but I’ve always pictured a big brick structure, perhaps with a looming metal fire escape, with lines and lines of Mr. Jody in the windows. Lines and lines of arms posed just a little differently each time, lines of blue and green sweater vests and a psychologist's thin-rimmed spectacles— and a serious faces, half obscured in shadow.

Mr. Jody has scared me ever since the day he turned me out of his house for dipping my finger into his daughter’s bowl of strawberry yogurt. I was only eleven when it happened. That kind of thing sticks with an eleven year old, especially one like me. The image of Mr. Jody lurking behind a hundred windows haunts me like one of those ghost stories that you don’t really believe, but that makes too much sense to write off altogether. I’ve never really been able to picture anyone in love with Mr. Jody. But what do I know about love?

I’ve not got any tenants these days, no one in residence in the space between my ears. And I don’t mind, really. Except for the shadows. Black forms moving listless across my eyes, making me seem dark and the world seem dark and we’re all in this together aren’t we? But it doesn’t really feel like it. It doesn’t feel like our world; it feels like someone else’s, like rented space. There’s no way to belong in a world like this. I don’t know a thing about love.