Below the Window

She meant well. Until she didn't.

Jun 11, 2026

Hermann Lismann, *Girl in profile facing right, looking out of a window* (1899)

Below the Window

Moe leapt down from the closet’s roof onto the dresser, just as the rain began to fall. He snuggled next to Mary’s books, not without first knocking down a couple to make room for himself.

Mary tucked the one she was reading under her thigh, then rolled herself up to Moe.

“What is it, silly?”

She leaned over the armrest, as far as she was able to, but still couldn’t reach them.

“Guess it can wait. What’s so important, Moe?” She placed one mangled hand on Moe’s spotted back and caressed him.

In a mesmerizing game of hopscotch drops skipped giddily on the ledge of their window. Ripples spread then vanished, only to be replaced by doppelgängers, equally precise and effective in keeping a steady pulse that entranced both feline and human mind alike. A wet earthiness aroused them; it flared their nostrils and made their chests convex.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Mary sighed.

Below their window, a street lay invitingly vacant. Puddles made dwellings out of potholes and gutter drains turned to murky cascades under which fearless and feathered bodies landed to wash the windy miles off their wings. Moe shifted his weight under him: pulled back his shoulder blades and adjusted those telescopic sights on his face over his ancestral targets.

“Leave ‘em alone, Moe,” Mary said, but nothing else. Her mind now focused on the supposed dormant nerves in her legs. Were they twitching? She didn’t want to jump the gun this time; often she’d found out these awakenings to be only a figment of her evergrowing aggravation.

Further away, a mist of rain blanketed the park behind a curtain of pearly beads.

The abandoned playground stood guard, poisoned stream seeping into its bones, gnawing, biting, corrupting, while its metallic figures conjured happy images of Mary’s able-bodied past; her eyes widened too at the sudden flood of recollections.

“Wish you weren’t so scared of the water, Moe…,” she said, now seeing herself jump into the little pools on the street on her way to the slide then the teeter-totter then the swings, her legs exploding forward before her. “Wonder if cousin Jane would like to bring us to the park right now… I can put you under a blanket, you know. You’d be dry and safe, I promise. No, you wouldn’t like that? Come on, Moe! I’ll let you play with the birds, okay?”

Moe extended his limbs and struck a self-assured pose.

“Mary,” a shrill young voice called out from downstairs, “everything okay up there?”

Stupid Jane cooped up in here when she could be outside, thought Mary, suddenly jerked out of her reverie.

“Come on up, Jane!” she called back. “Please?”

Footsteps rang loudly on the wooden stairs.

Mary backed up and turned around, she took the book that had slid under her bottom and laid it open over her lap.

A knock and then the door swung open.

“What is it?” asked Jane, a note of irritation in her voice.

“Nothing, Jane,” Mary said. “I was just wondering… would you take me and Moe to the park?”

“Now?” Jane said, her smooth brow knitted. “Are you crazy? It’s pouring down. D’you wanna catch your death?”

“Don’t you like to get wet, Jane? It’s so fun!”

Hands on hips, Jane seemed to consider this for a second. Mary watched her. Beneath her pleated skirt, nimble limbs in white stockings tapered down into cute black shoes with block heels.

“No, I don’t,” she said. “Go back to your book. Draw or something.”

“Wait, wait. Please, Jane. Would you at least go out on the street?” Mary proposed. “Moe and I would like to watch you. That’d make us so happy, Jane. Please?”

“My God,” Jane said. “You really are a bother, aren’t you?”

“Please, Jane,” Mary insisted. “Just go out there and stand where we can see you.”

“Are you serious?”

Mary stared at her.

“All right, all right, don’t give me that I-want-my-banky baby look—I can’t stand it.”

“Thanks so much, Jane! You really are the best—and the prettiest.”

“Yeah, yeah… Just for one minute, okay. I have a date tonight.”

“One minute is perfect.”

Jane dashed out of the room and down the stairs.

Mary’s nerves sizzled with excitement. When the front door banged shut, she quickly rolled up to the window and parked herself next to Moe. She crouched low on her seat and her eyes narrowed.

The sky opened up to welcome Jane. Ducking her head, she skipped into the middle of the street then turned around to make sure Mary was watching.

Mary waved at her, and Jane took it as her cue to get back to the safety of her home. But just as she took a step forward, her foot sank. She tried yanking it out but just couldn’t.

She looked up pleadingly at the window, but Mary only waved at her one more time and smiled. Moe just watched.

“Better hurry, Jane,” Mary mumbled, a frozen grin on her face.

Then, a honk and the screech of wet tires.

She must’ve flown about thirty feet, Mary calculated.

From her mobile throne of metal frames and rubber disks, Mary looked at the scene below her window. Then turned away to hide her convulsing face.

“Poor Jane, Moe,” she said between fits of laughter. “Wonder what her chair will look like. I hear they have electrical ones now.”

Moe got up and stretched noiselessly, then leapt back up to his usual spot on the closet. Just as his weary eyes closed, the rain stopped.