LIttle Beautiful Moment

I knew I had found a kindred when she sheepishly confessed, "I once let my dishes pile up so badly that I ran out of dishes entirely, and I had to wash them in the bathtub."

I was thinking of that today while I scrubbed my plates and bowls, beautiful blue glass plates and bowls and cafe mugs. I bought the set when I had mononucleosis and I realized I had what Steve Martin calls "college-girl mismatched dishes." They're probably the prettiest things in my apartment.

I stared dully at the snow falling out on the dirt outside my kitchen window, debating whether or not to turn on the radio toaster for background noise. My wet, pruny fingers made the choice for me as they slipped on the dial. I resigned myself to silence and made a mental note to guerilla-plant some snapdragons outside the kitchen window this summer. My landlord hasn't spoken to me in over a year. I pay my rent and that seems to make him happy enough to leave me well alone. I can't imagine he would notice or care if I planted yellow snapdragons outside this crumbling brick building.

I had gotten so tired of looking at a large white plastic spoon, permanently yellowed from once touching tomato sauce, so tired of digging steel wool into its slots. Every time I washed it, it seemed to taunt me with its tomato dinginess. I don't know why I had never done it before, but I felt so wonderful as I marched over to the kitchen trash can and gleefully tossed that damned spoon, still dirty, inside.

I was drying the dishes that wouldn't fit in the dish rack, which is almost all of them. I had to buy the smallest, cheapest plastic dish rack if I expected to fit it and a microwave on my two square feet of counter space. My little white cat sat up on the stove, watching me thoughtfully with blue and green eyes as I stared at the snow falling and dully wrung out a Halloween-themed college-girl mismatched dishtowel.

And then I heard the singing.

My noisy neighbor Henry was singing.

Henry's not really all that noisy; I don't suppose it's his fault that the walls are so thin. He's in his forties and lives alone in the apartment across the hall. I think of him as noisy for two reasons. First, he has some kind of permanent sinus problem. I lived in my apartment a month before my horror of my constantly farting neighbor subsided; it took me that long to realize he was blowing his nose. Secondly, Henry comes home every afternoon from his job as a hotel housekeeper and immediately dials his landline phone and spends half an hour loudly talking to someone far away.

I like to listen to his half of their conversations. I used to think it was a brother, but now I think it's his mother. I have never seen anyone but him go inside his apartment. He never misses that phone call.

Henry had a sweet little golden retriever puppy for a while. He named her Nancy and kept her for about a month. I never asked him why he got rid of her.

I was standing alone in this dim little basement apartment. The sun was behind a solid wall of clouds, but it was still too early in the day to merit turning on any lights. The moisture comes up from the ground and my cookie sheets rust, my saltshaker clogs up, my clothes hang on the drying rack in the living room for eighteen hours before they dry. The person who lived here before me painted the kitchen Tuscan red to hide the water stains that still show on the wall separating it from the bathroom; I have carefully peroxided the living room walls to clean off and keep away the mildew that started appearing at the baseboard.

But Henry, lonely Henry who averts his eyes during small-talk, scraping-by Henry who drives a beat-up truck until the weather warms and he can get his beat-up car to start, Henry is singing, nasally but tunefully singing hymns across the hall.

I walked into the living room, curled up in the orange armchair that sat in my grandmother's house thirty years ago, and my big white twenty-three-toed cat climbed into my lap. He purred, and we spent half an hour listening to Henry sing.