» Nonfiction

The Other

Sven Birkerts

I am here in my room upstairs, at my desk, and she is here with me—Andy, the painter. She’s just outside the window. I’ve been working, trying to carry on amid the sounds of scraping, hammering, long extension ladders being notched, trying to ignore the scratchy shushing sound of primer being applied, and Andy’s flat gray buzz cut which every so often comes into view in the bottom of the window to my right.

It’s strange—this person utterly unknown to me maybe six feet away, her labor utterly unlike mine. She is so high up, so intent on what she’s doing, that I feel my work is no work at all, privileged idling at best, and if she were to step one rung higher, she would see me, elbows on desk, forehead cradled in the fingers of both hands, staring at the illuminated patch in front of me.

Whatever I was planning on writing has been redirected, sent back, because the only thing I can think of now is Andy right there, the stranger at my window. She is a stranger in that she is someone I don’t know. But her look and demeanor make her stranger still. She is tall and sinewy, aged anywhere from forty to sixty, old blue tattoos running the length of her arms. She wears glasses and has an intensely quizzical way of looking at me when we talk. Her face is long, drawn, but when she smiles, I see a mouthful of huge teeth. She has earbuds in and listens to who knows what all day long. And here she is now, the flat gray top inching up—forehead, eyes studying her brush, immersed in a private world that I can’t even conceive of.

There is always the matter of otherness, which starts close to home with the otherness of family, and ultimately encompasses the whole great world. What is my wife thinking right now, my son? With family, long familiarity allows some illusion of knowing, assumptions not countered because they are seldom voiced. But here, now, with this woman at my window, I have nothing to go on. Is she married? No sign. My guess, unfounded and based on visual stereotypes, is that she has a partner, a woman. When she takes her lunch break, I see her sitting hunched over on the porch step, talking into her cell phone with private animation. Partner, lover? When she talks, she appears heated, possibly arguing.

I don’t know where she lives. I haven’t asked. She could live anywhere in the area. She mentioned to Lynn in some context that she used to be a chef in a restaurant. Is that possible? I can’t see it. On another occasion she asks Lynn what she does. Lynn answers that she works as a therapist. Andy nods enthusiastically. She does too, she gives therapy on Zoom.

With some puzzles, though the pieces are scattered, you trust that with enough patience and skill a picture can be assembled. I don’t have that trust. Each new bit of information is confounding, unconnected. For one thing, she is vigilant. No matter where she is working, she keeps track of the other painters. It’s as if she thinks they are talking about her, but just out of earshot. On the carpenter’s last day, I gave him a bottle of whiskey, and Andy somehow found this out. The first thing she said the next day was, “So, Kevin got a big bottle of Jack Daniels…” He did, I said. Then, scrambling, I asked, “What’s your poison?” She didn’t hesitate an instant. “Tito’s.”

It’s what philosophers call ‘the problem of other minds.’ Each a kind of black box that can never be retrieved. I would enlarge that, in this case, to include ‘the problem of other lives.’ I can only make guesses. A small house near one of the towns north of here, a fence-in yard with dogs? I’m full of classist clichés. Maybe she has an apartment in Northampton, or Greenfield? Maybe she goes home, changes, and gets to work in the kitchen. Chicken? Poached salmon? Or did she pick up something from Subway? Does she turn up the music in the car when she drives? Would it be metal, or country, or opera? Later at night: nightly news, CSI, or a documentary on fly-fishing, her passion?

I’ve been told I ask a lot of questions, sometimes with insinuations that I snoop. I do, both. I realized just now, writing this, what it is I’m doing. I am making pictures, connecting things—what my daughter and I used to call ‘detectiving.’ As if by imagining aspects of a life, I can get purchase. Sometimes I feel that I do. But watching this woman, her gray flattop right here at window level, I know I have not the slightest idea.