The Window

Here is a novel that I have started writing:

The Window
A single rain drop, a single footstep would snatch her from her sleep, and the closing of a mailbox or the snip of a hedger would draw her attention from her studies. She watched people so closely she sometimes felt as if she was living their lives, or knew them personally, though they’d never spoken. She could predict people’s next actions, or sometimes if she was bored, plan out Mrs. Hendrickson’s predicted day activities, almost always right on target. She could tell you when Mr. Frier took out the garbage, depending on what mood he was in, and imitate the exact way little Paula Lou poured her puppy Skipper’s dog food on Mondays, as well as Wednesdays. If you asked what kind of flower was growing in Miss Turner’s kitchen window sill, she could easily tell you it was a bright golden sunflower or a miniature yellow rose bush, every other year.
Each and every person, family living in her cul-de-sac lived their lives so unobservantly, never knowing just how closely they were being watched. It was all a bit creepy, yet strange and magnificent in such a sense that I’m quite sure many of those neighbors would have enjoyed sitting down with her, and having her tell them all she knew about their lives. I’m sure she would have done quite well at a job of ‘Watch Woman’ and guarding people’s houses, or a secret agent letting the police in on every act of criminality in the city. Yes, she would have done quite well at those jobs indeed. But she had no need for work – she never did like associating with people, and in 1960 she inherited one of the biggest fortunes known to man.
Now a normal person would have spent this fortune on each and every pleasure they could imagine, filling their numerous houses with books and clothes and dolls of all sorts, being so greedy and selfish that pretty soon they wouldn’t be able to stand living with themselves. But no. This woman was much quicker and slyer to fall into such a trap as fame and fortune. She tricked old Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jackson, looking back at her on that filthy green paper and those chalky scraps of metal. Because she had a rare thing among people now-a-days – she had an imagination.
I’m not meaning to say that this woman never spend her darned money on anything, no. She spent it alright, but on books and antiques and strange pieces to build up her imagined mechanisms. She filled her little cottagey house with such things that would make you believe you were walking in a dream, beholding the wonders of a genius. You might say she was Einstein’s second cousin, or George Washington’s great, great niece – but you’d be wrong. Her ancestors were never spoken of by her, and she had removed herself from everything and anything to do with her relatives. Her father had been a carnival worker, as a fire-eating clown, and her mother had chose to stay home and learn to skip rocks on her pond and such things rather than go to school. They’d married after two days together, and after having a child, killed both themselves robbing a bank unarmed in broad daylight. Their baby rotted away in an old city orphanage for years, until her great-grandfather died riding his motorcycle off a canyon at ninety eight years old, after hearing that he would soon die of a painful family cancer. All of his money saved from winning the Olympics countless years in a row was given to her at the age of eighteen, and she didn’t share with any of her stupid relatives, leaving them to stop relying on other people for their livings. How she was so ingenious, nobody knew – but we figure that after so many generations of stupid, something clicked and an amazing baby was finally born.