Each house is a different channel on his remote control. Though most of what he watches are re-runs he has seen a million times before. The house on the corner has the elderly couple in it. The wife caring for her bed-ridden husband, who lies there, mouth opened as she feeds him dinner with a spoon. The TV is always on, but the volume is low. Dancing images creating dancing shadows on the yellowed walls.
The house directly across the street houses the college kids with their parties and dorm-room chic furniture. The dining room table is bar with two barstools. The small living room is completely engulfed in the light of some cinemaplex-sized television broadcasting ESPN through the night. He notices the feet of one of the myriad girls pressed up against the screen window and the beer bottles with beer swill left on the window sill from parties long since forgotten and probably never remembered.
The divorcee, or at least that is the life he had created for her, is alone again in the unassuming house diagonally across. He cannot help but notice that she is beautiful but utterly alone with popcorn or pretzels in a bowl on her lap. She is watching The Jeffersons. How awkward that a white 40-ish, possibly divorced, beautiful woman is watching a re-run of a show about the first successful images of a black family we ever saw on TV. He thinks he hears her laugh at the shenanigans of that crazy maid, because in the big picture, we laughed harder when black characters were acting like the black characters we envisioned in our heads.
As he passes each house, he does not stop. He never stops. Because that is the difference between being an observer and being a pervert. No one can call the police when all he is doing is walking. No one can tell him where to put his eyes. The windows are only 5 feet off the sidewalk. It would almost be physically impossible to not look into a window while walking.
But, he is not interested in the shadow of the girl taking off her bra in her bedroom. He would not dream to become excited by this. She is behind closed shades. In his mind, if the shades are up or the window cracked open, or if someone did not understand the concept of venetian blinds and angles, then they were giving him permission to look. But if you couldn’t afford light-blocking shades, or an air conditioner to keep you windows down, then he would not feel comfortable with the intrusion.
But today, he stops. Tonight he cannot turn away. Because though in one house, there is a couple snuggeld together on the couch as only non-married couples can do, in the house next to it, there is something that shocks him. He stops, without thinking. He looks, without blinking.
The movements alone tell him something is wrong. The hands flailing, bodies, bracing themselves against the other. The husband is being held back by his wife. She is pleading with him. He breaks through her feeble hold and enters the child’s bedroom. The boy, equally angry, but with the additional emotion of fear, jumps into his bed. A position he has probably assumed many times before. The bed as an oasis. The sheets as shield. The father hovers over the boy and with a hand like a bear claw, grabs the boys legs spinning him around, forcing his son to listen. The boy is crying, trying to find the courage to express his disgust at being manhandled, but never being able to match the sheer power of this enraged man. The father wags his finger in the boys face, spit flying from his mouth as he practically goes forehead-to-forehead with his son. The boy’s face showing only fear. The father screaming something that no one can hear. The boy turning away, fetal. The mom, unable to control the disaster unfolding in front of her can do nothing but pound on the father’s back. The father father, pounds his chest, silverback style, as he slams the door and leaves to go to another part of the house. The child launches himself into his mother’s arms and they collapse into a tear-filled and sweaty pile on the bed. She rubs his head and shhhh’s him. The father is probably in his room, nostrils flaring, but with a hint of guilt as the realization sets in.
He doesn’t like this channel, like some episode of Law and Order. He decides it is time to turn the TV off.