Peep Show by Martha Keller

We weren’t supposed to talk about what we saw when we looked through the neighbors’ bedroom window. We weren’t supposed to kneel side-by-side in the tree house, or press our faces against the unfinished pine planks, ragged with splinters that burrowed into our soft cheeks. We weren’t supposed to peer through the gap in the window where the curtains didn’t touch. We weren’t supposed to know about the crucifix above the bed, or the gray wool blanket across the man’s legs, or the way the woman climbed in bed next to him and placed his head on her left breast.

We weren’t supposed to sneak out the screen door at twilight when our father was asleep  from too much Old Crow to drown the memory of our mother who’d finally decided she didn’t want to spend another day with us. We weren’t supposed to know that the woman in our neighbors’ house took her shoes off, that she took her glasses off, that she rubbed lotion on the man’s neck and chest. We weren’t supposed to see them laugh at the television or watch her read Robert Ludlum novels and the newspaper and letters from people who never bothered to visit.

We weren’t supposed to notice that she scrambled to the chair and pushed her arms through her cardigan whenever she heard the engine in the driveway. We weren’t supposed to know that the man’s face fell when the woman packed her bag and switched places with his wife, who turned off the television and tugged at the curtains that never quite reached. We weren’t supposed to see his wife flicking the ash from her Virginia Slim on the front porch while staring up at the moon or the stars or the indifferent darkness. We weren’t supposed to wonder if he’d last the summer and the fall and the winter when it got too cold for us to keep a daily vigil. We weren’t supposed to skip school the day the ambulance came, and the room became a shell with folded sheets, an empty bed, an empty chair, and half-squeezed tubes of lotion scattered on a table next to a useless army of prescription bottles. We weren’t supposed to watch his wife curled up in his bed, her head on his pillow, her fingers caressing the hollow space beside her. We weren’t supposed to count the cars that came to say goodbye. We weren’t supposed to look at the girls giggling at the lunch tables and the park and the mall and wonder if any of them would ever climb in bed beside us or linger on our memory long enough to smoke a cigarette.

We weren’t supposed to know that much about love.

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MARTHA KELLER — Martha’s (“Marty”) work has appeared in Fictive Dream, Fractured Lit, Milk Candy Review, Lost Balloon, Cagibi Literary Journal, Midway Journal, Bridge Eight Literary Magazine, Brilliant Flash Fiction and elsewhere. Her stories have been nominated for the Pushcart, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions anthologies. Over the years, she’s worked in strip malls, skyscrapers, and high school classrooms. 

Art by SOPHIA EISENBART MACIAS — My paintings explore transformation- the alchemy of transforming the ordinary. I work intuitively, layering paint, paper, and found materials to create interesting compositions that embrace imperfection. My aim for a painting is for it to become a “Proof of Existence,” capturing traces of time, memory, or emotion. Based in Clarksville, Tennessee, I create to preserve fleeting moments and inspire others to find beauty in the imperfect. See my work at artofthebart.net and @seisenbart on Instagram.