Building a Home with My Husband (19 page)

Of course, they already knew about my quirky habits when it came to my walk every morning. I’d long ago admitted to them that the grandeur of the Parkway so reliably washed away my despair that I’d invented mental amusements to make my thirty minutes even merrier. I memorized the identity of the flags that snapped in the breeze. I timed myself, trying to set new records to reach the Rodin Museum every day, where I’d check my watch against the huge clock on the distant billboard for the Stroehmann Bakery.

Today’s secret plan was a new game—which, unlike my other games, required another person. Over the months of forging my routine, I’d noticed that although most of the other walkers I saw proceeded in the same direction as I, a handful of pedestrians walked against the flow, away from downtown rather than toward. There was the bushy-haired man I often saw near the Art Museum, where foot traffic was scant. There was the familiar-looking fair-haired man I’d see blocks later, close to the fountain of Logan Square, where the crowd grew denser. My plan was to arbitrarily select one of these salmon swimmers and start saying, “Good morning.” With luck the stranger would say it back, and I’d have one more early-morning treat to enliven my life-deadening day.

And lo! Everything
was
going according to plan: as soon as I passed the Art Museum, I saw the bushy-haired man. As always, he was walking toward me. As always, no one was on the sidewalk but us. He also looked exactly as he had for months: he wore jeans, a brown jacket, and a stern expression. His arms moved stiffly, as if he was disinclined to reach his destination.

I strolled toward him. I glanced at him. I opened my mouth. His eyes glared ahead.

I walked by.

Chicken,
I scolded myself
. Good thing you didn’t tell anyone your plan.

The blocks passed. The flow of pedestrians picked up. I engaged in my usual pastimes—acknowledging the flags of Spain, Nigeria, Finland, Chile. I timed myself at the Rodin Museum. I watched the pigeons roost at the Free Library. I crossed to the south side of the Parkway at the Franklin Institute, and looked up to the majestic, three-statue fountain in the center of Logan Square.

Then I entered a catwalk around a large construction site. Eventually a four-star hotel would rise at this location, but at the moment it was a hole in the ground, and a throng of pedestrians was passing along the walkway, just wide enough for a single file in each direction. In among the crowd surging toward me, I saw the fair-haired man. As always, he wore more professional clothes than the other one, and as always he also possessed a hint of humor and originality: his tie was unusual, he carried a shoulder bag rather than a briefcase, and his face was boyishly cute. The aura of familiarity I’d always felt when I passed him had convinced me that he must have been in one of my college classes. How else could I be so well-versed in his face? This was why, I suddenly understood, I had initially selected the bushy-haired man. The rules of the game were, apparently, that I speak only to a stranger. Yet I had not been able to address the first man, and I now understood why. He had looked uninviting, perhaps even hostile. The fair-haired man wore openness on his face, and carried tenderness in his eyes.

We reached each other on the catwalk, me on the right, him on the left. His eyes were ahead. My eyes were on him.

“Good morning,” I said brightly.

He glanced at me, startled. For a moment he stopped, then gave a small smile. “Good morning,” he mumbled back, and we walked on.

I felt triumphant. I had a new game for my mornings! It would be my little secret. Mine, and the fair-haired man’s.

For seven months, the good mornings continued. I grew accustomed to knowing I’d see him, though sometimes we missed each other if I left early, or he passed on the south side of the Parkway before I’d crossed over from the north. But always, when I caught sight of him, I called out a boisterous, “Good morning!” He replied in kind, his tone matching my own. Every so often I’d add, “That’s a fine tie.” Sometimes he’d say, “That’s a fine skirt.” We always smiled broadly as soon as we saw each other. But we exchanged no other words than that.

At last I was offered a new job. I was not excited about becoming a secretary, but I accepted the offer, knowing that it would remove me from the void of purpose I felt at the law firm. There was, though, one significant problem: my soon-to-be employer was located in my neighborhood, so my morning walks down the Parkway were about to come to an end.

For the two weeks before I left the law firm, I grieved all that I would lose: the distinguished museums, the towering trees, the man with the tender eyes. Though we’d never said more than hello, I had long since accepted that we’d never met before. He looked familiar, but there was no logical reason why. I did not even know his name.

On the morning of my second to last day at the law firm, I stopped him. In the middle of the sidewalk, as crowds flowed past, I told him that tomorrow was my final day at that office, and I asked his name. Hal, he said. I told him mine. Then, mindful of our time sheets, we thanked each other for adding a lift to our mornings, and continued on our separate ways.

The entire day I kicked myself. How could I not have asked for his phone number?

The next morning—my final morning at that job—I timed everything carefully to ensure that I’d see him. I walked at just the right pace. I crossed early to the Hal-side of the Parkway.

Then, just as I was passing the Art Museum, something happened that had never happened before: a car pulled up beside me. I looked over at the smiling woman inside. It was a friend from college! Exactly the sort of connection I’d been longing for seven months ago, but which now felt very much in the way. “Hey, want a ride?” she asked.

Not wanting to be rude, I got into her car. But as she pulled into traffic and cruised down the Parkway—“I’ll take you right to your office”—I felt I was betraying myself. So I finally, and hastily, revealed my secret to another person. As she looked at me in mild horror, I let her know that today was my last opportunity to do more with this Hal than have a sweet little memory. She started filling me in on her life, but my eyes were on the sidewalks. At last, near the heart of the downtown, I saw my good morning man at the far end of a block. I seized her steering wheel and yelled out, “Stop here!” and almost stomped over the gear shift to the brake.

I jumped out of her car, and she roared off. Hal approached from the far end of the block, a broad smile on his face.
How will I ask him?
I thought.
How can I just say, Hey, who are you?
As he neared he whipped out a little black book. “May I be so brazen as to take your phone number?” he asked.

 

Now, after I return from Detroit, with Hal as my husband of four years, we stride into a home improvement store. I am still thinking about whether there is a grand architect who brought us together. Hal is still thinking about acceptable kitchen cabinets.

“I can’t imagine that the cabinets here are sustainable,” I say.

“They aren’t.”

“Then why are we doing this?”

“You were right when you said we should go shopping. We just can’t wait.”

Still, he winces as we walk around the displays. Not only will these cabinets off-gas formaldehyde, and not only is the wood probably from a clear-cut forest, but they’re ugly. Also, when Hal opens some drawers to see how they’re constructed, he says, “Man, this is really cheap. It’s butt-jointed, see? It won’t last. Also, the hinges are weak.” He pulls out a shelf. “Look at this—the underside is unfinished. That’s really the sign of junk.”

“All of these cabinets? Even the ones Dan recommended?”

“Yup. Plus, they’re all costing way more than they’re worth.”

I lean against a display stove. “It would be stupid to buy these.”

“But the Woodstalk’s been discontinued.”

“Was that the only option?”

“There
is
a similar product, Primeboard. But look how long it took to set everything up with the Woodstalk. There’s not enough time for all that before Dan needs the cabinets.”

“So we buy something that we consider inadequate—and that doesn’t have your careful, made-for-us design—just to accommodate the calendar?”

“It’s that, or we finish the house without kitchen cabinets.”

“So?”

He pauses. “
So?
”

I realize from the look on his face that I’m saying something completely outlandish. I guess it’s almost as weird as going to an airport early just to stand in a pedestrian tunnel, or finding your husband in a mass of strangers on a city street.

I say, “So what if we finish the house without the kitchen cabinets?”

He blinks, then smiles. “As long as we have a place for the dishes, a cardboard box or something, then the cabinets
could
be installed later. We could do it.”

“Then we could use your design,” I say.

“That would be so nice,” he says, his eyes gleaming.

“Then let’s,” I say.

“I’ll call Dan in the morning and tell him to take the cabinets out of the job.”

We walk outside, holding hands, swinging our arms. The sun is setting, and Hal’s inventing some pirate skit on the spot, and I’m laughing at his bad jokes. It’s the kind of love I longed for in the house with the shag carpet. The kind of love that, in all those years of watching him sink into despair about his career, I never believed we could have. The kind of love that makes me wonder if there is a Listener of Prayers.

The next day my sister Laura says, “I can’t think of anyone who would agree to move into an unfinished kitchen and use cardboard boxes for their dishes.”

“It’s not really a big deal,” I say.

“It would be to most people. You two are lucky you found each other,” she says.

I am just about to leave the tunnel for my plane when I see her: a woman, positioned hundreds of feet away, her back to a column. She is fiftyish and wearing an opal pendant and earth-toned scarf, and she, too, is doing nothing but watching the colorful cascade. Thousands of pedestrians have passed through the tunnel in the time I had been here, and except for a few snaps of cell phone cameras, not one person has stopped. But she has settled in.

It’s too late for me to approach her—I have a plane to catch. I grab my carry-on and roll it toward the escalator, and as I do, I notice that she is hoisting her bag to her shoulder and moving toward the escalator as well. I step on, and then she gets right behind me, and as we begin our ascent, I turn. She isn’t staring into space, or preoccupied with an iPod. She’s looking at me.

Should I say something? Should I find out if we were in the trance together?

I gesture behind us to the tunnel. “Isn’t it beautiful?” I say.

“I love it,” she says—the words I’ve wanted to hear. “I travel through this airport just to see this tunnel. I think it’s the most extraordinary work of public art that I’ve ever seen.”

We are beaming now, strangers brought together by design.

I say, “I’ve been watching, and I’m amazed that no one else seems to notice.”

“I saw you when I came down. I went back to the other end of the tunnel and returned, just to see if you were still there, and when you were, and you were watching so intently and happily, I knew you had to be a kindred spirit. So I was waiting to talk to you.”

“I’m so glad.”

“It’s nice to know you’re not alone,” she says. “I think that’s important. To know someone else is looking, too.”

 

After Hal and I return to the rented house from the store, aglow in a feeling of closeness, I decide to take the risk. I say, “Can I show you something online?”

As we sit at my desk and I type possibilities into Google, he says, “You probably want my definition, right? Of design?”

“Sure,” I say, clicking on Web sites.

“It’s matching to human need or desire the function of objects and the means of production, and doing so as economically and elegantly as possible. For instance, the design for a drinking glass is about fitting it to a hand
and
having it make sense for manufacturing
and
making sure it’s durable
and
making it pleasing to the eye
and
taking the production of the materials and end use of the product into account. All of that’s important, though each designer might emphasize one of those aspects over the others.”

I look from the screen to him. “Users might emphasize one aspect, too, right? Like, you might drink from that glass while thinking of whether it was made from recycled materials. I might think about my friends with mobility impairments and if they’d find the surface slippery.”

“Right. But ideally, the designer wants all the aspects of design to work, even the ones the user isn’t noticing.”

“It could go the other way, too. The user might perceive some aspect of design that isn’t actually there.”