Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Gertrude and Ike: A Character Study
It’s a muggy early Fall Sunday afternoon. All along the residential streets the faded green leaves are clinging obstinately to their trees. Someone either neglected to take in the Sunday New York Times that was delivered to their doorway, or maybe the family is away upstate eating pies made from the barrels of apples they picked yesterday. It’s impossible to say. Either way, the proud typeface above the fold of the saturated-to-the-point-of-being-transparent newsprint gives notice that a massive bank bailout is imminent, or at least its immanence is imminent. It’s impossible to say which.
Gertrude and Ike emerge from the subway station. They are walking side by side, arms around each others’ hips. They are roughly the same height, or at least they appear to be from this distance. The wind shakes some raindrops loose, falling onto my head, my nose, my right eyelid. I wipe my face. The sun fights through the clouds and time falls still for a few heartbeats. Shafts of light pour down through the canopy of trees, individual drops of water are clearly visible as they fall. So foggy yesterday, so damned foggy – couldn’t even see the Statue of Liberty from my window, couldn’t see the harbor or the buildings just a few avenues away. Why is it that when it’s so damned foggy, when you can’t even see the Statue of Liberty from your window or the office buildings downtown … why is it that on those nights sound travels so much better?
Gertrude and Ike are about fifty, fifty-five. Gertrude’s gone gray, probably been that way for a decade, but it never occurs to her to dye it. She’s wearing a green-flannel shirt, opened over her navy blue tee shirt. Her jeans sit high on her hips, too high, it’s unflattering. No belt. Ike’s hair is thinning in an odd pattern, cheap no-name sneakers. They’re smiling. You can tell by looking at them that they’re good people, honest people, unpretentious and genuinely in love. They look ridiculous.
If they ever split, if one of them ever died, they would both have a real hard time finding another sexual partner. I wonder if they know that. I wonder if that truth keeps them together … that fact might be the best thing that ever happened to them, the secret of their bliss. They have each other to walk arm-in-arm with up and down the avenues of houses they could never afford, sagging trees that drop cold water on your head, under short gray skies, past bad omens, smiling their stupid smiles, telling lame stories, and even sometimes time stops for a few heartbeats.
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Gertrude and Ike emerge from the subway station. They are walking side by side, arms around each others’ hips. They are roughly the same height, or at least they appear to be from this distance. The wind shakes some raindrops loose, falling onto my head, my nose, my right eyelid. I wipe my face. The sun fights through the clouds and time falls still for a few heartbeats. Shafts of light pour down through the canopy of trees, individual drops of water are clearly visible as they fall. So foggy yesterday, so damned foggy – couldn’t even see the Statue of Liberty from my window, couldn’t see the harbor or the buildings just a few avenues away. Why is it that when it’s so damned foggy, when you can’t even see the Statue of Liberty from your window or the office buildings downtown … why is it that on those nights sound travels so much better?
Gertrude and Ike are about fifty, fifty-five. Gertrude’s gone gray, probably been that way for a decade, but it never occurs to her to dye it. She’s wearing a green-flannel shirt, opened over her navy blue tee shirt. Her jeans sit high on her hips, too high, it’s unflattering. No belt. Ike’s hair is thinning in an odd pattern, cheap no-name sneakers. They’re smiling. You can tell by looking at them that they’re good people, honest people, unpretentious and genuinely in love. They look ridiculous.
If they ever split, if one of them ever died, they would both have a real hard time finding another sexual partner. I wonder if they know that. I wonder if that truth keeps them together … that fact might be the best thing that ever happened to them, the secret of their bliss. They have each other to walk arm-in-arm with up and down the avenues of houses they could never afford, sagging trees that drop cold water on your head, under short gray skies, past bad omens, smiling their stupid smiles, telling lame stories, and even sometimes time stops for a few heartbeats.
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