Vodka Yonic features a rotating cast of female writers from around the world sharing stories that are alternately humorous, sobering, intellectual, erotic, religious or painfully personal. You never know what you'll find here each week, but we hope this potent mix of stories encourages conversation.
At first, I only see her from afar. Her, 40-ish and brunette, in a blue Nissan Pathfinder. (Well, not really, but this is a real case, so I have to change some details.) Me, 40-ish and blond, surveilling at a safe distance in my beat-up Honda CR-V — a lousy surveillance vehicle in most settings, but nearly invisible in McMansionland and Momville, as long as nobody gets too close a look at the rust and the hail damage.
In yoga pants and a mini-SUV, I fit pretty seamlessly into her world of beveled glass, cul-de-sacs and shopping malls. I shadow her for days. Follow her to Zumba classes and nail salons. Nothing.
Everything about this woman seems normal, except for the texts, which her husband had recently spotted on her phone: a text-based flirtation with the kids' soccer coach. Maybe it's going somewhere, maybe it isn't. He wants to find out.
And then one night, the husband calls. The wife is headed out. I catch up with her in a desolate suburban strip-mall parking lot. She ambles into one store, then another — no hurry, no mission. And then, she climbs into her car and waits. Through the window, I can just make out the circle of her face, illuminated by the glow of a cellphone screen.
She waits. I wait. For what? I can't say. After an hour or two, she gives up, pulls out of the dark parking lot and drives home. There's something painfully bleak about all this, even though I'm not sure what I've just seen. I do have a few guesses.
The first time I see her up close is at the kids' soccer park one sunny afternoon. I melt into the scrum of parents waiting for practices to end. When I pass by her, she's gazing through the fence at one of the coaches. Tall and broad-shouldered, he doesn't see her watching him. He's smiling and talking to someone else, another mom. But this mom, my subject, has a certain look on her face. Hers is a lovely face with delicate features, full of sadness and longing, gazing through the fence unseen.
I see a fragile line of connection between her and him, a thin line breaking. In my mind, there's another shimmering line between the coach and this woman he's talking to. I imagine more and more lines, gossamer and illusory, between him and various lonely, bored moms who just want to be seen by someone.
My subject turns away, her eyes empty.
Soon, her son and daughter run to meet her. Connecting lines appear from her to them; those aren't fragile. They're solid. Her face comes to life.
There's nothing here, I think, heading back to my car. This line she's chosen to see is a distraction, an ersatz connection, a stand-in for the one that once tied her to the big beveled-glass house. I don't know what will become of that connection, whether it will sever or be repaired, or whether it was always just another elaborate delusion. Plenty of relationships are, even the ones we believe in.
The truth is, I've never really enjoyed this kind of surveillance work. When my husband Hal launched his private investigations company years ago, we took any job we could get, just to keep the doors open. Being a PI is Hal's dream job. But it took years for him to become who (I think) he was meant to be: a criminal-defense investigator, the guy whose superpower is finding people who don't want to be found, coaxing out information that doesn't want to be coaxed, and crafting a narrative that just might tip the judicial balance in favor of his client.
But in those years it took to build up to The Big Adventure that is Life With Hal, sometimes we needed to camp out in a 105-degree car, watching a garage door remain closed for 10 hours or so, ready with the long lens. Sometimes the watching felt exciting and meaningful — like the time we helped the police do a sting on a serial thief, or that afternoon I hid in my car and shot footage of a guy picking up his kids from camp, right after Hal had captured video of him knocking back tequila shots at a bar across town.
But trolling for cheaters?
For me, peeking into people's private lives is a big downer. I don't really want to know what's going on behind the beveled glass. Anything I see through the night-vision viewfinder is only part of the story, anyway. And who am I to judge people's furtive snogging practices?
All I want is maximum transparency in my own world — for my life and the people I love to be exactly what they seem, with no dark secrets lurking. I'm not sure if that's realistic, but still.
I drive back to my neighborhood. There are no cul-de-sacs there, just sidewalks and porches. Not much beveled glass. And when Hal gets home, I hug him so tight he gives me a look. And then he laughs at me just a little. His laugh is big and solid. It's the real thing, and so is he — as far as I can tell.
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