The Intruder

It was a dark January day, rain mixed with snow.  I looked out my bedroom window wishing for something better.  Across the street, workmen tossed trash into a large dumpster.  I wondered who was doing so much renovation.  There on the sidewalk was a kitchen cupboard, green enamel with a cream colored interior.

In the dumpster, a table with the same colors rested next to a twin size mattress, bags of clothing were thrown in, mingling with everything else.  I could not figure out where the endless stream of refuse was coming from.

Then I noticed two open windows on the top floor of the house.  I always admired the balcony in that house and envied the person living there, as each year, someone put plants out on the ledges.  Early December every year, someone placed a red plastic wreath in each window.  I thought unkindly of it, as I felt that it was a bit tacky.  The man in the dumpster began breaking things apart with a sledgehammer.

Suddenly, I remembered an incident of a few years before.  While I wandered the aisles at the local supermarket, a small gray-haired woman approached me, asking me to help her get a box of cereal from the top shelf.  She said, “I do not mean to intrude, but I suppose you know me.”  I was trying to figure out where and when we might have met.  “I have been living across the street from you for ten years.  I just want you to know, I am not snooping, I just look,” she said.  “My name is Fanny, we should have tea sometime at my house.”  She said she admired my amaryllis flowers in the window during the winter.  “I used to watch your husband every morning, waving good-bye to you on his way to work.”  I never saw or heard from her again.

The sound of the sledgehammer went on, the dumpster was filling up.  The red plastic wreaths were laying on top amongst her treasurers.