Building a Home with My Husband by Rachel Simon

Author:Rachel Simon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.

That spring morning as I dressed for work, I had a secret plan. It was a very small plan, but I’d decided, as I’d formulated it over the previous weeks, to keep it to myself. I’d said nothing to the two friends with whom I was renting a Philadelphia row house. Not that they’d have laughed at me, but the plan had been giving me something to look forward to, and since I had precious little of that in my life, secrecy seemed a way to preserve that feeling. Plus, if my plan amounted to naught, which seemed highly likely, I wouldn’t have anyone to report back to.

Like my roommates, now eating breakfast as I grabbed my jacket, I’d graduated from college the year before. Unlike them, I felt miserable in my job. I was a paralegal, a position for which I was terribly mismatched. I also felt lonely and aimless when I returned to the house at night. My only pleasure was my brisk half-hour walk into the downtown every morning to reach my office, but at all other times I despaired that my life, which mattered to no one and was accomplishing nothing, lacked the tiniest semblance of meaning. Sometimes one roommate and I even debated meaning. Sitting on the green shag wall-to-wall carpet, I argued that meaning could be found through love—soul-merging, time-transcending, misery-busting love. My roommate scoffed that love was a Hollywood construct. Maybe meaning could be found, maybe it could not. But each of us, she said, was alone in the universe.

So I’d kept my plan to myself. Why emphasize any more than I already had that I harbored a fanciful view of reality?

As I’d hoped, when I stepped outside that morning onto my residential street, I felt uncommonly energetic. Yes, my little plan was foolhardy, but it was already elevating the day. This feeling continued, even though I was only tracing the same route I’d walked every weekday morning for the last seven months: down two blocks, make a left, and cross over to my favorite part of the trek: the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

Anyone familiar with Philadelphia would understand why the Parkway was the highlight of my walk. One of the most photogenic avenues in the city, the tree-lined Parkway was based, as even I knew, on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. With its eight lanes of traffic, generous green medians, world-class museums, larger-than-life fountains, green-domed cathedral, and flags from around the world, the Parkway spans a diagonal stretch from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, two blocks from my house, to the center of the city, City Hall, two blocks from my office. I always felt a spring in my step when I turned onto the Parkway, and that day was no exception. All my senses seemed happy: the air smelled of March seedlings, the cars roaring down the Parkway seemed less noisy than usual. I felt as lithe as a ballerina, despite my sneakers and wraparound skirt. Such is the power of anticipation, I thought, and I was glad I hadn’t tinkered with that by hinting of my plan to my roommates.

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