Silhouettes
What is the weight of a decision?
What is the weight of a decision? Meaning actual physical mass. The space it consumes. Jasmine Walker’s was:
164.7 lbs.
39” at her widest.
5’ 6” tall.
It blocked the egg fridge of a grocery store in Lenox Hill, arm jutted out just right to dissuade shoppers from all but the leftmost cartons.
Those only went to the lucky; Sophie Pereira had to contort in mad shapes to reach a deeper one. Broke a pair of buck-fifty eggs trying to squeeze it through a narrow door gap. Ten would have to do. Not worth another attempt.
Angelo’s birthday was coming up, that’s four. Cookies for the museum potluck made six. Four left for breakfasts. She could have squeezed a couple more meals out of them with enough milk, but it wasn’t a milk week, and what little they still had was for the birthday cake.
Guy at the counter rung her up slow. Can’t blame him. Anything to take the mind off one of them looming over your shoulder. You see it all over the city. Superblack void mannequins manning cash registers and never clocking out. Businesses were obstacle courses for employees and patrons alike.
She offered her usual thanks to God for a grocer on the corner of her block. The walks home from work had become so exhausting. It was already an hour each way at the best of times. The bobbing and weaving between stopped pedestrians was strenuous now that the number of them steadily increased by the day. It was ridiculous, even for New York.
Crossing the Queensboro Bridge wasn't so bad. At least there all the Silhouettes were gathered at the edge, tiptoed on the railing, eternally peering over the fence and pondering how hard the water really is.
Sometimes the subway was an option, but their budget considered it a luxury. Except, weren't luxuries supposed to feel luxurious? Nothing opulent about it when you had to stand crushed by countless angry elbows. The seats were always taken. Taxes went up every year to buy new, empty train cars. They'd hit the tracks in January, and be full again by the end of April.
Driving was out of the question. A non-starter out the gate, because this was NYC after all, but the congestion had gotten staggering. Cops had to be hired specifically to guide traffic through stoplights clogged by seated, hovering simulations of former motorists. More taxes. More taxes.
Headed home, she passed a statuesque queue looking to pick up the Sunday edition from a newsstand that shut down maybe two or three months ago. The guy who ran it went all street artist on the day he bugged out. Took a pile of unsold newspapers and some glue from a toolbox and wallpapered the outside with headlines.
Epidemic! Collapse! The End is Nigh!
An arresting piece at a glance and as sensationalist as the news used as a medium. Painted the picture of a rapid, shocking fall from grace. But society limps through all things. No exceptions.
Shadows cast from rooftop pickets haphazardly cut the sidewalk into mismatched portions. Sophie stepped over dark lines to stay in patches of light where no stains marred the pavement. She waved to Greg, a more permanent fixture on the stoop of her building than he had ever been before.
The five flights of stairs drove her to laughter that day. It was totally clear of Silhouettes. She'd been up and down those steps hundreds of times. Couldn't imagine how, of all things, the trudging never broke at least one person.
The first thing she saw when she entered their studio apartment, as every time, was The Escape Artist. Angelo didn't want to give it a name, didn't want to acknowledge it at all. For her, it was the only one of those shades that she liked. It sat cross-legged on their fire escape just outside the front windows. Presented a fire hazard, but that's never bothered a landlord before. Didn't bother Sophie either. Not when it meant a few hundred bucks knocked off the rent.
She abandoned the groceries to dote on her daughter, who was all smiles and happy claps to see mom approach her crib. Sophie bounded about the room bouncing the bundle of joy in her arms as Baby Daniela cooed and giggled and tugged at hair.
"Hello there! How is little Dani? Did you enjoy your time with Daddy today? I bet you did! Yes, you did! And where is Daddy?"
Angelo rolled into view from the kitchen nursing a freshly poured, half-drunk glass of cachaça. "Hi."
Sophie could have let her expression get the message across, but reading faces wasn’t his nature, and biting tongues wasn’t hers. "Bit early for that."
Baby Dani pawed at her mother's lips, examining why they looked less fun all of a sudden.
"Yeah." Angelo sank into a dining room chair looking straight through his wife and child.
"Spill it."
Why should he? Saying it would make it real. She didn’t want the real. He stared at the ugly gold color of the liquor against the ugly brown of the table sitting on the ugly kaleidoscope rug. Ice clinked, idly spun in the tumbler.
"Angelo, talk to me."
"I got laid off today."
"What?"
He downed the drink searching for an answer written on the bottom of the glass. "Apparently, remote guidance counselor is a dead profession–"
"No, no, no, no…"
"Waste of resources, they called it."
"You can't be fired." Sophie paced a rut in the floor. The frenzy agitated Baby Dani. "What are we supposed to do?"
"I don't know—“
"Did you get severance?"
"Not much—“
"We can't get by on my paycheck."
"I know that—“
"My hours are getting cut in half. No one is coming to the museum! Nobody wants to look at modern art when it's littering the streets already!" Infantile whines filled the room. Sophie rubbed the baby's back, abrasive as sand paper. "Shh, shh, shh. It's okay. Mommy's okay."
Baby Dani settled, but only just. She fidgeted and squirmed and clocked the lie as well as any adult.
"Have you applied to new jobs yet?"
"What, today?"
"Yes, today."
He shook his head. "I just need…" Angelo massaged his temples hard enough to pop eyeballs. "Can I have a day to process this?"
"No, Angelo! Rent is due in two days! The hospital bill in five! After that we're broke!"
"I know that!"
The glass careened and shattered against a wall. That’s how Angelo had to see it. Not weakness dressed up as indignation, but something outside of himself. Something happening to them. Added to pile of things happening to them to disappear beneath the worst of it.
Baby Dani exploded into shrill, heaving wails that split heads and killed souls. The levee had been filling since the conversation started, and now it had broke. For her and Angelo.
“Nice, Ange. Really fucking nice!” Sophie begged the baby to calm down. Ricocheted around the apartment bargaining with God to make a teething ring or a pacifier appear.
Angelo shambled to the window, unblinking eyes fixed on the Escape Artist. He hated that its back was turned to him. Always looking outward. Toward what? Were their sad, little lives too boring for it? Was it jaded by its glimpse of the beyond? Or enraptured by it?
Sophie collapsed on their bed, breathing heavy, listening to Baby Dani sucking quietly on her pacifier. The bedding smelled sour. The building laundry machines were predictably inaccessible, and laundromats weren’t much better. Barring bedbugs, blankets were low in the priority order.
Maybe that was the problem. Clean sheets were a small comfort. So was a deep breath in silence. They’d forgone so many small comforts in the pursuit of security. Death by a thousand cuts. They could change that. There was room for comfort even in this world if they worked at it.
Angelo joined his family on the bed. Swallowed them in his arms. Buried his head into his wife’s neck. “I’m sorry. I flew off the handle.”
She ran fingers through his thick, brown hair. Found herself nostalgic for the feeling. Another small comfort denied. Had it really been so long? “I’m sorry too. I should have given you a chance to breathe.”
Angelo made a big show of inhaling, a bigger show of exhaling. “There, I’ve breathed.”
Sophie laughed. Electricity coursed through her skin. So much of her laughter was reserved for gallows humor. Detached irony. Denial. Sincere laughter had become a drug, and she craved to chase the high.
“Hey, what if we…went away for a few days? Find somewhere cheap upstate and put it all on the credit card.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?”
“No, but I don’t care. We’ll figure it out later. I think we need it.”
Angelo melted her with the coy half-smile she fell in love with. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. Let’s go upstate.”
Their starved lips hungered to bond. Came together for a few moments to make of them one being with strength to rise and rise again. Sophie ached for it to last forever, but rumbling stomachs bid her to end it.
“How about I get dinner started, let you and the baby enjoy yourselves for a bit?”
She handed Baby Dani to Angelo and skipped to the kitchen. He lifted Dani up into the air, flew her around like an airplane, made noises to sell it. The most beautiful little girl in the world and his to boot. He could hardly believe he was ever worthy to bask in her perfection.
A trip upstate was the right move. It would be a good reset for the relationship. Their previous vacation plan was put on hold last June. The plan the September before that, as well. This one would go well, surely. A few days, that’s all they needed. A weekend in a new context to rest and relax. Then they could discuss the future.
Their future.
The world’s future.
Dani’s future.
“Hey, I meant to tell you…” Sophie shouted from the kitchen, her hammering knife strokes into the cutting board making a racket. “Mei tried out that new Indian spot we were talking about. Said it’s fantastic. A bit pricey, but the entrees are big, and they don’t care if you split them. Maybe we could go next week? Add it to the vacation tab? What do you think?”
“Honey?”
“Angelo?”
She dropped the knife and went searching for a response she’d never get.
Angelo and the baby were gone.
She was all alone.
But the Escape Artist was not.