There was something about the pile at the end of the curb that seemed like something more than the usual spring cleaning trash. It looked haphazard and hurried. Maybe it was the size of the pile: four feet high by about ten feet long and a few feet deep or maybe it was the guitar amp that seemed to be added as a last-minute fuck you, but the whole thing had a “throw all his shit on the lawn and kick his ass out of the house” vibe to it. The car on the corner that hasn’t been moved in weeks, maybe months, had an acoustic guitar and a tire in the back seat and a stereo receiver under the left front bumper. Paint-chipped and sun-bleached metal and plastic toys littered the yard.
A few days earlier he stood on the corner screaming “you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” The woman shouting back, short with long hair and baggy hoodie, stood in her driveway by the open door of her car, hand on hip, smoking a cigarette. In one form or another, we’ve all seen this scene, this couple. They’re young and volatile and everything seems in disarray. The man, lean and a little shifty, the guy mom never cared for because he couldn’t seem to hold down a job, can sometimes be seen tinkering on the cars. The few times I’ve seen the woman, she’s seemed mad and in a hurry – the way fury gives speed to purpose.
Watching the fight play out, I felt bad for their neighbors, a family with a young baby. What is probably a very thin wall separates the two homes in the single-story side-by-side duplex. Experience tells us that what gets said behind closed doors is always louder and worse than what gets said in public, and these two screamed at each other in the open-air afternoon. The trash gets picked up on Monday. Tuesday, after the pile at the curb was gone, a patrol car idled outside of the house. A police officer stood in the front lawn talking with the man – six or seven feet between the two of them – socially distanced in this new pandemic norm.
The lobby of the Hotel Lewistown was dark and dusty, but might have once been elegant. It had that David Lynch cinematic feel to it – shag carpet, velvet tufted sofa, mauve and red fabrics and dark woods. The bargain rate should have tipped us off. Behind the front desk, the wall was lined with wooden mail cubbies for the weekly, monthly, and semi-permanent guests who at some point become residents. The night clerk who greeted us had a wandering eye and slightly crooked smile. As he handed us the skeleton key to our room, he told us we had the good room – the one he sneaks in to watch TV when no one is staying in it. The hallway carpet was green an matted down. Towards the end of the hallway near the bathroom a metal shopping cart angled towards the wall. Thankfully, our room had it’s own bathroom. Everything in the room was institutional – perhaps hand me downs from a renovated dormitory. The toilet seat was grade school black, the bare light bulbs were without fixtures. The twin bed was little more than a thin mattress on a metal spring frame – it squeaked and groaned with every shift in weight. Crowded close and feeling tilted and uneven, my wife and I wouldn’t sleep much.
At some unlawful hour, we woke to screaming in the hall – a man and a woman cursing, pushing, shoving, hitting, chasing. We were dazed and terrified at the same time. We weren’t sure if we should call the cops, break it up, or just mind our own business. I can’t remember how it ended. I know we checked out extra early in the morning – the Financial Times had just been delivered – which seemed out of place given what we knew of the clientele. the night clerk seemed surprised when we told him we didn’t need the room for the second night.
I was sitting in the corner booth at one of my favorite bars. I don’t remember which band was playing. The guy at the table next to me was acting up. He was demeaning his girlfriend or wife. Calling her stupid, and a dumb bitch. Telling her she can’t get anything right and her family is dumb too. She was meek and took the abuse. Everyone around knew something was off. The waiter, a young guy with wild curly red hair and who always smiled cut the guy off from drinks. The guy blamed his girlfriend – said she was causing a scene “now look what you did – your so stupid. I should just leave you. You’ll never find someone as good as me.” I wanted to hit the guy. The table on the other side of them nervously and protectively paid attention. I was texting with a woman I had gone out on a date with the night before. I started to tell her what was going on, and she replied by asking if she told me what type of counselor she was… she was a counselor for abused women. She sent me a few links and coached me on how to handle the situation. I asked the waiter to take the guy out back – to tell him he wanted to talk to him about why he had been flagged, but to be careful to not mention his behavior towards the woman. When he did that, I asked the woman if she felt safe, and if she wanted me to contact someone who could help. The people on the other side of her asked similar questions.We all offered to stay, to wait with her, to make sure she has a safe place to go. She said she was fine, “he just gets this way sometimes.” He came back to the table, had another beer, and the two of them left.
Yesterday morning, after a big breakfast and brisk walk with the dog, I settled in on the sofa with a second cup of coffee, a notebook, and the book of poems I’ve been reading. The last poem I read, “Foreign Correspondence” ended with the lines “The walls are thinner here. / I woke to the sound of a man / beating his wife.” Discord and violence – what’s the tipping point from one to the other? How many times have we seen it in various forms? How many times have we witnessed the lead up only to worry about what happens after… For some, perhaps many, this is what relationships look like: police in the night, complaining to friends what an asshole or bitch the other one is, cursing in the street, physical fights, shit out on the lawn, storming off, hotel stays, the all-too-routine upheavals. I suppose every relationship has challenges and you often here that couples need to learn how to fight. When I read about relationships and how we should show kindness and grace to the ones we care about, how we should never resort to calling names or raising voices and then juxtapose that with what I see, I sometimes wonder if the well-mannered and cordial couples just do a better job of hiding it. I think about that pile of possessions at the curb… maybe that’s just how they handle things. It’s a world I don’t see often – unfamiliar like a foreign country in a bitter civil war, and I’m just a correspondent.