A Few Imperfections
Grey water dripped down the window, leaving behind streaks where Andrew Carter had scrubbed the dirty glass. He dipped his hand back into the bucket and wet the rag again, the icy water stinging his chapped knuckles. A small voice inside his head insisted the window would never be clean.
It was a cool day, and, although the sky was blue right now, Andrew had noticed a distant line of dark clouds. The gentle breeze blowing through the fields earlier was now interrupted periodically by strong gusts of wind, each one blowing leaves off the trees scattered around the property. It had been a beautiful autumn, colour-wise- the trees had been every shade of red, orange, and yellow; now, weeks in, most of the leaves were lying on the lawn. He'd have to get the kids to rake them up before it snowed. Of course, he would help- the thought of jumping in the leaves, seeing them fly up and float back down on top of them all, the dog chasing the leaves and the children, made him smile. So did the thought of burning the piles afterwards, carefully, in small sections, the fire the colour that the leaves had been on the trees. Or, if they had any in the laundry room, he could add some Borax to make the flames green- the kids always begged for those tricks.
But first, he had to finish cleaning this window. It was beautiful- a large, single pane of South-facing glass that kept his wife's plants alive and the house warm. His family watched from it, supervising play or waiting for a missing parent to return. Even the dog loved it- the nose prints on both sides of the glass were a testament to that, as was the frequency with which they had to sweep up the hair on the sun-bleached floor inside.
The window had taken a beating this year- the late summer had been dry and windy, and dust had pelted against it more days than not. Dirty cobwebs decorated the upper half of the frame, as though helping to hold it in place. It occurred to Andrew that the window had never been quite so grungy, and perhaps it was a signal of everyone growing comfortable. They'd lived in this house for six years now, and some chores didn't seem as important as they had in the first few seasons. Priorities had shifted, so slowly that he hadn't really taken notice until little moments like this one.
As he worked, glass squeaking under the cloth, he listened to the voices of his children playing in the yard. He didn't register as their voices morphed, getting deeper, becoming the familiar voices of men he hadn't seen in years. Without registering it, he began to scrub in smaller circles, as though the window was another one he was familiar with cleaning- this one with 6 fragile panes of glass looking into, or out of, a very important office.
The memories of Stalag 13, the prisoner-of-war camp he'd spent so many months in, had been becoming more mundane, and more frequent, as the years since they'd been liberated passed by. They used to be frequent, conscious thoughts of the other prisoners- missing the eye-roll from the Englishman, Newkirk, when he said something particularly silly, or wanting to tell the Frenchman, LeBeau, when he ate something particularly tasty. Wondering what Kinch, or Hogan, both fellow Americans, were doing on any given day, especially as their communication became less frequent as time went by. Sometimes, he thought of prisoners he wasn't as close with but thought he should reach out to. And, more often than he perhaps ought to, he hoped that Sergeant Schultz, the prison guard who had done so much for them by doing nothing, or Kommandant Klink, whose supposed iron fist had remained more-or-less open through the duration of his posting, were doing alright.
Missing the other men had gradually gotten easier, and after he stopped thinking about them on a daily, then weekly basis, he had started to think of other things. Working on his car reminded him of Klink's- once, his brother-in-law had only just stopped him in time to prevent cutting a brake line. He'd gotten so caught in memories of sabotage and mind games that he'd become almost convinced he was still in Germany, wreaking whatever havoc he could on the enemy war effort. Other memories were more day-to-day– like smelling coffee and almost hearing German voices coming through the coffee-pot radio Kinch had rigged for eavesdropping. Or last week, walking in town after his daughter's first piano recital, when he'd found himself rambling about how nice it was to walk under streetlights without worrying about someone behind them, watching.
"It's about to rain!" one of the voices nearby called, accompanied by footsteps pounding against hard ground. Carter didn't mind- rain was a break from all the snow Stalag 13 had in what felt like perpetual winter. He kept scrubbing the window, certain there was a good reason, until a hand touched his elbow. He turned, a grin on his face, towards it. The grin faltered as he saw not a man in uniform, but his wife, her brown hair pinned back and her green apron protecting her dress.
"Andrew," she said. "It's raining."
He blinked and looked up at the sky, which looked largely the same no matter where in the world he was. The clouds he'd been watching earlier had arrived, and the children's voices were no longer calling to each other, background noise as he worked. He must have missed as they ran inside, away from the foreboding sky to wash up for dinner.
The grin returned to his face. "Maybe it'll clean this window. I tried everything, but it's still a mess."
She laughed, a genuine laugh that always made him feel warm, and wrapped her arm around his waist. "I think it looks fine. I don't mind a few imperfections."