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Karen (Al & Karen from Pittsburgh) Jan. 21, 2020, 8:00 a.m.
For weeks, my husband and I have been sniping at each other about windows. Our disagreement isn’t about drapes versus curtains or blinds versus shades. It centers on whether the window coverings we already own should be open or closed. If Al had his way, every window would be blocked like Britain during the blackout. I wouldn’t mind if we had no curtains at all. I mean, who cares if someone looks in our windows? All they’d see is a couple of seventy-plus fuddy-duddies doing nothing remotely interesting.
For the most part, I’m happy during our winters at B-Bird (official name: Beautiful Bird Over-55 RV Park), but the shut-in feeling of a trailer gets to me. Tiny rooms. Miniature closets. Sidling alongside the bed to reach those closets. It helps my mood to have the blinds up and the curtains open. Once we’re dressed each morning, which is always early, I like to go around and let the light in.
Al objects. As I maneuver around his oxygen machine to reach pull-cords and turn tilt wands, he mutters things like, “People don’t need to know what we’re doing.”
“What are we doing that’s so secret?” I finally asked one day. “And why do we care if they know?”
He sniffed before replying, “Someone might see you in your underwear.”
That made me chuckle. “Then someone will get exactly what he deserves: an eyeful of a dumpy seventy-two-year-old in granny panties and a full-figure bra.”
Al’s brow formed furrows that betray stubbornness. “It ain’t right.”
“No, it isn’t right, because your fictional ‘somebody’ shouldn’t be peeking in windows.” I finished the task, and the argument, with, “I don’t parade around in my underwear, so it won’t happen anyway.”
After several slightly adversarial conversations, Al started closing the living room curtains as soon as I went to the kitchen to start dinner. The first time, I watched as he lumbered from window to window shutting the place up like Fort Knox. When I came out to set his ration of pills beside his plate I asked, “Nobody’s allowed to know we eat?”
His reply came in a tone that said further argument was pointless. “I like privacy.”
The low-level, long-running discussion followed the path we’ve taken for decades. There’s no outright fighting, but we each make comments over time to underscore the “rightness” of our opinions. I started mentioning that spending so much time in the dark made me feel like a mole. Al hinted at the possibility that I secretly enjoyed treating the neighbors to a peep show.
Dumb, but after fifty years of marriage, that’s how we roll.
On a Tuesday afternoon in January, Al stumped into the house, his cane beating a faster tattoo than usual, and dropped a zinger. “We got a Peeping Tom in the park.” There was a strong hint of “I tried to warn you” in his tone, which I ignored for the sake of household peace. A strong wind could blow my husband over these days, so I don’t take after him with a frying pan, even when I should.
“Who told you that?” I was pretty sure I knew the answer. Hank Edmonds, Al’s friend and the park’s leading gossip, rides around on his bike like a town crier of old, picking up bits of information at one spot and passing them on at the next. Though Hank’s not a bad guy, I often remind Al not to take everything he says as gospel. To enhance the drama of a presentation, Hank flavors facts with embellishments from his imagination.
“Hank heard it from Del,” Al said. “At least three people have seen a stranger peeking in windows.”
Since we’d had a murder at B-Bird only a month earlier, those sightings sounded more sinister than they would have before. “Did anybody ask the guy what he was doing in the park?”
“I don’t think so. Clarence from Pelican Street called the office to let George know, but it was after five, so he was gone for the day.”
“The sign at the entrance is clear about residents and guests only after six,” I said. “Clarence should have called the police and reported the trespasser.”
“Maybe he should have,” Al said patiently. “I’m telling you what did happen, that’s all.”
“I hope people don’t blow this all out of proportion.” I was stirring chocolate to melt it for ice cream sauce, and I turned the heat down a little. “Remember when everyone said Riley Smith was dead?”
Al chuckled. “Yeah. First we heard he got killed in a car accident.”
“Next, someone told us he was struck walking along the highway and was barely alive. A few hours later someone said he’d live but would be a paraplegic.”
Al finished the story. “And then a few days later he came walking down our street with his arm in a sling, not dead, not at death’s door, and by no means paralyzed.”
B-Bird is like many closed communities in Florida, and I’d bet it’s true in other places as well. Our residents are packed in close, so everything that happens draws notice and comment from the neighbors and anyone who might be passing by. In many cases we know each other but don’t know each other, if you get what I mean. With three hundred sites, we see people every day but might not know their names, especially last names. As a result, people get confused about who is who. When someone tells a story, it’s easy to picture the wrong person as the main character.
In addition to that, our residents are mostly retired and often idle. They’re almost desperate for excitement, which is how information gets twisted and rumors get started. In the case of Riley Smith, I’d been interested enough to track down the source of the rumors. It turned out that the local news had reported that a resident of a completely different trailer park was killed in an accident on the highway. B-Bird resident Dennis Riley had mentioned in conversation that he’d almost been hit by a car as he crossed a busy street the day before. And Riley Smith had actually slipped in his own driveway and dislocated his shoulder. Only showing up in person was enough to prove that the rumors of his death were “greatly exaggerated.” Mark Twain put it like that once when it happened to him. At B-Bird it happens all the time.
“As far as this Peeping Tom goes,” I told Al, “we should wait and see what’s true and what’s imaginary.”
“It wasn’t Hank making stuff up. Other people have seen the guy and reported him to the office. George is trying to figure out what to do about him.”
George, the park manager, is pretty level-headed, so I had to admit there was something to Hank’s report. Trying not to sound grumpy, I said, “Maybe closing the curtains is good, but can we at least wait until it starts getting dark outside?”
“Fine with me.”
Disagreements between Al and me are rare, and as soon as one of us admits he might be wrong, the other turns magnanimous. The rest of Al’s comment revealed the real reason for his yen for privacy. “I don’t like people gawking in when I take my breathing treatments. You have to watch me suck in Albuterol like a dope fiend, but you’re stuck with me. I’d rather not have anybody else watching.”
