Smile by Cathleen Calbert

3/12/2012 6:30 a.m.

Black sky. One streetlamp, bright as the moon. It might as well be midnight. Fauns could frolic among the graves.

6:37 a.m.

Dawn (weakly). Who the hell gets up this early? What are we—milkmen?

9:00 a.m.

White window shades. A couple of cars pass by the neighborhood cemetery. On a few stones, small American flags flip in the wind. 

10:04 a.m.

Hey, that’s my car! I’m leaving . . . This is oddly thrilling to see  as though I’m in a movie. (Which I am.) Where am I going? CVS? The Y? A mid-morning tryst? 

10:20 a.m.

Nowhere for long—it can’t have been fascinating.

11:16 a.m.

The lens is shaking. The surveillance guy must be excited. Finally, he zeroes in. He sees (I see) my knitted hat and green bomber jacket. Good God, how many crumbs can I brush off the seats? Then my darling dogs, younger, appear. They’re still able to jump up, so they hop in the car. 

11:30 a.m. 

He’s glued to the house. I’m assuming “he.” A man a bit on the fat side—because of all the sitting. And sandwich-eating. It’s tedious, for sure: waiting and watching. What will the “male subject” do when the “female subject” leaves? Run out to grab a bottle of whiskey? Jog around the grassy square, home to the old and newly dead? Wave madly from the other side of the graveyard, where C.D. Wright and Forrest Gander live? We’re poets, squared. (If anybody cares.) The house offers up nothing.

11:36 a.m.

Home already. Probably a quick trip to Barrington Beach, meaning a trudge around a crumbling parking lot. We’ve moved back to Rhode Island, and everything is a compromise, an in-between. We’re in a house but renting. There’s a beach, but dogs aren’t allowed. I’d thought the graveyard would be okay. Our new landlords didn’t correct me; signs to protect the departed did. People here are serious about their dead. Families decorate headstones with plastic flowers, and at Christmas a few boast twinkle lights. That’s where he’s parked—among the graves.

12:25 p.m.

There’s my guy, at last. Cute with shorter hair. Blue jean jacket, white shirt, a cane. I click open the car for him, and he descends into the passenger seat, becoming a blackish blob, his seat pushed back as far as it can go. The lens, also waiting for me to re-emerge, takes in Aronson, Herbert. Below that, Herbert’s wife, Grace. 

2:27 p.m.

I pull into the garage, then come out to pick up a package from the stoop. Drab hair, same green jacket. Jesus, is that I how I look? Looked? I’d sworn off blowouts and appear a good ten pounds more than I should be. Can’t I at least make an effort? What if someone were to film me? 

4:00 p.m.

Shadows lengthen. The days are short. He packs it in. 

3/13/2012 6:59 a.m.

Dawn, lamplight, white light of the sky.

9:12 a.m.

A green truck! Trash. Nothing. 

10:29 a.m.

Who’s that? A man! Mail delivery. Still nothing. 

11:51 a.m.

I’m crossing towards him. I don’t look in his direction, don’t even see him. I’m smiling though no one is watching me (though someone is). It’s a genuine smile, not my usual camera-awkward smirk. I must be happy to see the dogs happy. In all the other footage, I’m slightly frowning. Always sad? Or is that just how my face looks when I’m thinking?

4:00 p.m.

A freezing rain falls, and the sun leaks away. He calls it quits. 

3/14/2012 6:00 a.m.

Wow, the earliest yet. We’re sleeping, honey. Or lying awake worrying over our lives.

10:30 a.m.

I’ve switched to black stretch pants and a red leather jacket. I’m gathering broken branches from the driveway. Black-clad ass goes up and down. Look at that ass. Yes, he’s trained on it. He is probably laughing his head off, bits of mayonnaise and lettuce flying from his sandwich. He’s messy, for sure. Sitting in a car all day, you’d have to be. I know I would be. 

2:30 p.m.

Finally, I am properly attired: long wool coat, white tights, contacts in. Mind you, I don’t care how I seemed to some gumshoe. I’m just happy to look less schlumpy for once. 

The image jumps. 

Where are we? In the parking lot. At my college. Where I teach (taught). Is he allowed to follow me here? Did he think I’d end up someplace more interesting? Maybe The Foxy Lady (which offers Legs and Eggs) to gather up my wayward husband? At least, that man doesn’t shoot inside. Not at my office door. Not in my classroom. Not where I’m trying to show people how to write poetry.

3/15/2012 6:30 a.m.

Rain drizzles down the lens as though it’s crying. Nothing’s happening. He must get this by now. My guy really doesn’t go out unless he has a doctor’s appointment. I really do take care of everything, even gathering branches after an icy rain. 

I mean, I did. We’ve moved back to California, and I take our dogs for shorter walks now, then go for longer ones by myself along this rocky shore. My husband remains largely invisible to the outside world; I think our new neighbor suspects I just talk to my pets a lot. 

After we left the East Coast, I heard that C.D. Wright died in her sleep on their end of our graveyard. I wish she and Forrest had come over for drinks. We could have traded stories from both sides of the tracks: Ivy to the state college by the strip club. 

I wish that P.I had captured my husband and me naked in the cemetery, drunk and humping like kids who feel good in their bodies, who don’t care if anyone’s watching, who don’t think someone ever would. All he got was trash cans, newspapers, dogs. A smile, a cane, a waiting car. The most boring love story in the world. 

But a love story. 

Cathleen Calbert’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. She has published four books of poems: Lessons in Space, Bad Judgment, Sleeping with a Famous Poet, and The Afflicted Girls. Her awards include a Pushcart Prize and the Sheila Motton Book Prize.

17 February 2022