You Can Walk, but You Can’t Hide

We have been the subject of neighborhood gossip. I knew it was going on. You could hardly avoid it.

We’d be walking down the street, my husband and I, and people would come to their windows and point and whisper. I mean it.

Once, when we were going by a house, a cherubic 4-year-old girl came to the window, and we could hear her scream, “Mommy, Mommy! Here they are!”

There are several things you can do when you realize that strangers are talking about you behind your back and spreading rumors. You can confront them. You can let it bother you. Or you can just keep walking. This is what we chose to do.

Most of us live among strangers, so-called neighbors. We act as if we don’t notice each other until something happens. Then, one day, a man takes an assault rifle, enters a public building, starts shooting, and when captured he says that his name is Asteroid and that a tape recorder in his head contained a recorded message from God telling him to kill anyone wearing green. The police search his home and find a small arsenal, 50 cats and 200 Slim Gourmet microwave dinners.

And what do the neighbors say? What do the people say who have lived and slept every night for five years not 200 feet from this man? They say, “He seemed perfectly normal to me.”

Lady across the street: “He was a nice man. He never bothered anybody.”

Guy down the block: “He was a good neighbor. He kept to himself.”

When we see people who live in our neighborhood, we invent little scenarios, little capsule categories for them, in lieu of actually knowing them. Usually all you get is a glimpse of a person going from house to car. He’s the one who likes Porsches. She’s the cat lady. They’re the family with lots of trash. Those are the boys with all the beer cans who recycle.

And things go on this way for years, until someone shoots up a building or someone you actually know meets someone from your block. The latter is how we found out the truth. We were able to ignore the fact that people were gossiping about us as long as no one actually said anything.

Let them point. Let them gather at the window. Let them whisper. But once it’s said to your face, you cannot run from it.

So it was my friend Victor who said to us: “I met a lady who lives on your block. She described you perfectly. She said that everyone always notices you two because you go for walks together every night. She said, ‘Wow, she must really love her husband to do that with him every night.’ ”

I, of course, immediately got defensive. “Look, nobody walks in our neighborhood. They get in their cars and drive or they jog or they bike. There’s a pool in our neighborhood some people belong to, and I’ve even seen people get in the car and drive two blocks to swim in the pool. Just because we walk doesn’t mean anything. I wouldn’t read anything into it.”

But now the walks have been ruined. We still go, but I know they’re out there and I know they’re talking about us. They’re sitting there smugly saying: “There they are--the walkers.” They’re assuming we enjoy each other’s company. Gossip can be so cruel.

What will they say when I’m arrested? “I always thought there was something funny about that woman--the way she spent all that time with her husband. The way she, you know, walked .”