Eavesdropping: A Little Novel

By J.C. Weil

When a speech therapist who loves words and real estate decides to stop talking, her world is neither quiet nor less complicated. Love, friendship, psychology, and imagination work as a team in Eavesdropping. This quirky, fast-paced book raises eyebrows and questions, making it an excellent book club selection. It prompts readers to ask themselves how they define crazy and not settle for an easy answer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 6, 2011
• ISBN: 9780984627615

Book preview

2000

CHAPTER 1

DEZZY

Something had begun to seem very wrong.

"We are through the Looking Glass, lost in the rye, groping our way through the Twilight Zone!" I shouted from our third story window. Again.

No surprise that no one answered me and no headline in the fact that I couldn’t make the world listen. Hell, I couldn’t even make Harry listen. The year 1999 was at its end, the world apparently at her nadir, and her people, becoming hysterical. The hysteria did’t let up much even when Y2K didn’t happen, although Harry was inversely composed, and I had millennial postpartum malaise. (I taped an anonymous note inside our elevator that asked the simple question: What is the matter with all of you? It was gone by the next morning. No one had left an answer.)

Of course I can’t blame it all on the millennium, but it was a convenient hangar and I was sick of the ballyhoo. Friday’s news promised a disaster on Monday; we would perhaps awaken to a world tilted differently in its heavenly rotation. At the very least, our cyberspatial lives were going to be a tangle of invisible snarls and mangled information, and commerce would be paralyzed by a nefarious technological virus. When the banks and cash registers and stock exchange went right on zipping and clipping and clanging, I felt a bit let down, as if Christmas had come with no presents and no apology from Santa. Surely, I should have felt relieved; the world (and, hence, presumably, my own) was saved!

You might be asking right about now, What is she going on about? I would ask, if it weren’t I writing this. I know what’s coming in a few paragraphs, and I know it will make some sort of sense to you. What seems important is that I explain how I reacted to the meshugas. The disaster that did not happen made me weary. So weary. In looking for comfort, I found occasional, intangible rewards. Primary, and the one that gave me the best mileage, was this: the year 2000 was not even the millennium, which added to my pique. Kubrick, now: Kubrick had it right. Years before, perhaps obliquely, he noted that two thousand and one was the banner year, the de facto millennial turn. He made a movie that scared us for awhile and no doubt provided the raw materials for more than a few college courses and doctoral dissertations; but beyond that, for most people, wasn’t it just a great film that got its math right? I know of no one who built a class around Kubrick’s math, but someone should have. Then more people would understand that their hysteria was a year early and perhaps postpone it awhile. I wanted to announce this from behind a wise, gentle smile, but so many people were enjoying their harmless ignorance that I kindly forbore running over it with an accuracy train: "Excuse me, which millennium are you discussing? Would it be the second? If so, it’s a year away. You’re free to celebrate this New Year without anything more than the usual guilt and resolutions!"

I consoled myself with my private superiority, but it did nothing for my ennui. The good mileage I got from this knowledge nugget really didn’t last long. As if the actual date even matters, I screamed in some padded cell of my brain. Whenever it occurs, this surreality, this überyear, the following day will still be one of seven days and will still contain approximately twenty-four hours. People will hope for good weather and go on as if it were, oh, 1957.

It did matter—to me, at least. The media, those sharks of chic, whether glitzy or grating, know how to whip up a frenzy. They could have waited to see if a true, honest-to-golly economic tornado would hit. Such an event would have supported a vast vat of video and ink, prime time and front page, at that. No, such restraint was not for the oh-so-au courant, obsessed and overcaffeinated marketing wizards. Used to manipulating our moods as well as our pocketbooks, they dictated a premature and potentially dire January 1. As if an ordinary New Year’s Eve celebration were not mawkish and contrived enough, the party planners and memento makers had clamored puppylike all over one another (and us) to arrive early for their share of the pompous circumstance. Enough. I was bored half-crazy by the endless talk talk talk of The Millennium, and so that may explain part of my decision. I was worried half crazy by my beloved country’s wacky foreign and domestic spending policies and my failure to reconcile myself to the fiscal-sociological tidal wave about to consume us. That explained the rest of my decision.

I was bedeviled by existential vagueness, like an itch I couldn’t locate and wanted desperately to scratch. I alternated like current between boredom and anger. So, I decided to stop talking.

You have every right to wonder why, to argue that I was being childish, and to ask, Weren’t you maybe overreacting? Childish, maybe, but shutting up was less hazardous than holding my breath. At the time, that seemed my alternative. Ordinary fear was something I could reason away. I felt like I was coming down with something reason couldn’t touch, a new kind of fear: Chronic Abstract Terror. CAT.

On The Eve, I stayed home with my guy Side Meat (whose given name, you have already inferred, is Harry). We cozied up and solved a mystery jigsaw puzzle. I wanted to talk about the CAT that scratched at my frontal lobes but couldn’t muster the stamina. Side Meat was having too good a time being light and casual in defiance of the putative significance of Y2K. He was talk-talk-talking, but he was nonetheless endearing. He kissed the nape of my neck and told me I worried too much. Thus mollified, I caved. I hated that I caved. I was afraid it would ease me into a comfy, perpetual soft-focus view of the growing insanity around me. I was afraid of intellectual Novocain.

The next day, though no longer afraid, I felt cynical for reasons I chose not to analyze and began my search for the real and the intimate. I found it. I was encouraged. I found it again and kept on finding it. At home, though, where I had first shut up, I stayed shut up. It made no apparent sense, but I could not find within myself the motivation to care why. I figured that if I examined my motives too closely, I would analyze myself into even deeper neurosis. How much of that kind of depth could I stand? How much less could Harry Side Meat?

When he got home from the office, I handed Harry a small, perfumed envelope, which I had made myself of fine rice paper. Here, I said. Origami.

Harry looked at the gold dust paper square, turned it over, looked at me. He was holding the envelope away from his body, as if he were afraid it might explode.

Dezzy, origami is, well, I think the idea is for it to look like something else. Right? A flower or a crane or something?

This is practical origami, Harry. It looks like itself. I guided his hand closer to his chest. Read it.

From the look on Harry’s face, I guessed the contents were in fact explosive.

"You are going to what?" he roared, William Jennings Bryan in sectarian outrage.

You read it here first.

You are—

I didn’t let him finish. Yes, I know I am. But that’s how it is.

For how long, exactly, do you plan to be mute?

I don’t know. I know that you, as our resident attorney, would like a definitive answer. Haven’t got one. Won’t invent one to placate you. I sounded short, even to myself, so I gave him a gentle kiss to soften my edges. I don’t know much about why I’m doing this, either. It’s an adventure for us both.

"That is not the word that best describes what I think this is."

Whatever you’re thinking, Harry, it’s probably not kind to either one of us and not true, either. The only question is whether you’re going to freak out on me while I figure this out for myself. Because if you think you are, then maybe I should pack a bag. As soon as I said the words, I felt like I was in a rowboat on nine-foot swells. Harry’s face looked the way I felt. Okay, no. I didn’t even give you a chance to say anything.

His shoulders sagged under their navy pin-striped pads. I can do this, Dezzy. I have a lot to keep me busy, you know. I will be just fine.

It might even be fun!

That probably is unrealistic. But I figure you will figure this out, and I want to be there, like the modern guy I am, and I will be … fine.

Of course you will! And don’t rule out fun. I touched the tip of his nose with the tip of my index finger. You never know with me.

Must you be so chipper?

We learn by example! He had said this to me often, in one context or another, so he smiled, even if he would have preferred a studied dour expression.

Hey, I’m going to run to the market for something great. To celebrate! I heard him mutter celebrate with a question mark and an exclamation point just before the door swung shut.

Markets, especially supermarkets, are among the most intimate of places. In a few minutes, if you spend less time reading labels than you do reading people, you can learn a lot about them, the people. Their guards are down in markets. Boredom does that; so do hunger and fatigue. Long hours, growling stomachs, discontents of all sorts often make for a defenseless demeanor. Even a carefully self-monitoring person with social paranoia and tight shoulders looks exposed in the frozen foods section. I just passed one of those: Slight stoop, forward-sloping shoulders, uneven hem, a very large handbag. A cart full of TV dinners and wine coolers. Probably a third-grade teacher with a headache.

For a moment my eyes linger, but no, I want someone less depressing, although I still remember my own third-grade teacher as a beautiful angel who furtively held hands with another of my favorite teachers. They were both short and had big grins; lots of very white teeth showed. Today I can guess why. The grins, not the dimensions of their teeth. Even as a dopey kid, I saw how happy they were and wondered every day why they kept such rapture a secret. He looked taller when he stood beside her and seemed always about to introduce her, as if she were royalty incognito and not merely someone with good grammar and chalk on her cuffs.

Ah. Here. I’ve got him in sight. A man in silk Hawaiian shorts—baggy ones with too many florals—scoops Hostess products by the pawful into his basket. He has a couple of days’ growth, the kind that is attractive on hunky film stars and tends to signal unemployment or sloth in anyone else. He wears a baseball cap, not backwards, a golden chain that brushes a mass of chest hair visible between the mostly open front of his zippered, sleeveless sweatshirt. He’s preposterously tanned—another sign of his having too much free time for anyone with ambition.

Mr. Permanent Leisure makes his next stop at the dairy section—Got milk?—and paws two gallons of whole milk. Despite the apparent fat-and-sugarfest, I notice he has a very flat belly. So, I mumble, surprised at the sound of my own voice, he works out while he collects his unemployment. I look around. An elderly lady wearing a striped red and white tee with too much silver jewelry, especially at the throat, appears to have heard me. She’s moving away rapidly with her half-and-half; her hair appears to be getting whiter.

At this point, I’ve frankly forgotten what else I’m supposed to be buying. Side Meat’s envisioning lamb chops for dinner, even though he knows he won’t get them, since there is no way this side of senility that I’ll cook any part of a lamb. Not even for him. Turkey cutlets are already a concession to the flesh needs of him Whom I May Consider Loving. At one time, before I developed a more favorable relationship with vegetables, I craved sausage patties and bacon. Their succulence is nearly irresistible, and so is his own. So, while Harry seems to like his given name, I think calling him Side Meat is the highest of compliments. He knows I recoil from the name Harry for reasons that may or may not lurk in the darker regions of my mind. We agree that it doesn’t warrant therapy.

Yes, memory stabs its index finger into my temple: I’m buying items de dinner. Turkey. What goes with turkey piccata? I consider asking Permanent Leisure, whom I have now followed to the produce section, which harbors no turkey. When he grabs bananas, I grab bananas. He tests the pineapple; so do I. Between the kale and the spinach, I venture a smile. He smiles back. I see we both like bananas, he says. Involuntarily, I check my cart. I’ve got three bunches of Chiquitas, perhaps eighteen greenish fruits.

Yup, I say with astonishing wit. Um, have you ever fixed kale? I mean, how does it go with lamb? Chicken. Well, turkey, actually. I have two bouquets of kale, one in each hand. I drop them effortlessly on top of the bananas.

I’ve never tried it, I’m afraid. Till right now, I’m not sure I’ve known anyone who’s tried it. Mostly I think of it as a garnish. Before this, I haven’t thought of it at all.

Oh. Well, thanks. Known anyone who’s tried it. There it is: intimacy. Supermarket intimacy—the word "known" used so casually by someone I’ve never met.

Have you asked the produce expert? Permanent L. is speaking. I’ve been counting the bananas; I have seventeen.

Produce? I blurt. "Oh, expert! No. Is there—? I don’t see …"

P. L. is looking around. There’s usually at least one, you know, with a cart, stocking up the fresh corn and what have you. He smells clean. No hint of suntan oil. Maybe he uses a tanning bed. My name’s Harry, he says, extending his hand. For a long second, I study the hand, the dark hair curling from his wrist to a prominent vein. Then, of course, I laugh. Taking his hand, I’m laughing like someone too long deprived of sleep.

"Harry? Harry. Harry, I’m Dizzy—Dezzy. Short for Desirée."

Now we know each other’s names, and I, with very few words, know his eating habits, his style sense, that he is not partial to strong scents, that he doesn’t care if his slightly bowed legs show from midthigh down. That he likes his chest and now, as he takes off his baseball cap, that he is not bald but has a lot of dark hair with a tuft of gray off a left-handed, uneven part. His teeth are in good shape. He once had dental coverage.

Hot in here, isn’t it? P. L. asks, but I don’t really hear. I’m aware that I can’t think of him as a Harry. It’s possible that I can’t think of any man as a Harry, especially if his actual name is Harry. Aren’t supermarkets usually cold? he interrupts my remoteness.

Sorry? Oh, cold. Markets are, yes, I attempt a philosophic tone, but only in the frozen foods section. And you’re wearing a sweatshirt.

It is hot, then? Man, I’m burning up.

"No … and yes. I’m not, um, hot. I mean it’s—the temperature is—the store’s not