The Tea Bags On My Balcony

I did not smile. I would like to tell you I did not enjoy it, and that would not be true, but I did not smile. I stood by the table with my hands at my sides and let them have it.

Fred cleared his throat.

“I’m going to say something as chair,” he said. “Craig, I have known you a year, and I have appreciated that you show up. I have appreciated the agendas. But I have sat here and listened to a room full of people tell me what you did while hiding your name, and I’d like to ask you one question, and you can answer it or not.” He leaned forward. “Did you throw those tea bags?”

Everyone looked at Craig.

Instead he picked up his folder and said, “I don’t have to answer that.”

And Fred nodded slowly, like a man looking at the last thing he needed to see.

“Then I’ll make a motion,” he said. “That item four be tabled and withdrawn. That the committee send a formal written notice to unit 4B, under paragraph twelve of every lease in this building, which prohibits throwing any object from a balcony. That any further incident be treated as a lease violation. And that the vice chair step down from the committee.”

“Second,” Eddie said, before Fred had finished the sentence.

“Second,” said Edith, a half beat after.

It carried by a show of hands. I did not turn around to count, but I felt the hands going up behind me the way you feel warmth when a door opens. Thirty-three, and one that did not rise. Craig sat with his arms folded and his jaw set and stared at the flag.

“Meeting’s adjourned,” said Fred, and he did not bang a gavel, because we do not have a gavel.

What Was Left

People did not leave right away. That surprised me. Folding chairs scraped, but nobody went for the door. They stood in clusters with their coats on, talking low, and Ginny put her hand on my arm, and Trish asked if she could hold one of the egg cartons, as though it were something sacred. Edith had Duane help her over to me.

“I’d like to buy you a cup of tea,” she said. “Real tea. The kind that stays in the pot.”

I laughed. I could not help it. And Edith laughed too, a cracked, tired laugh, with her hand on her cane, and then Eddie started up, and then half of the room.

Craig left by the side door. I watched him go. He did not slam it either. He closed it with that same gentle click, the sound of a man trying to leave without being noticed, and for the first time I understood that the click had never been calm at all. It was the sound of someone who needs a door to be the last word.

I took the egg cartons home that night. I put them in the back of my closet, on the shelf, behind the Christmas wrapping. I did not throw them away, because I am not a person who throws away records. But I did not take them out again either.

The next morning I sat on my balcony at 6:45 with a fresh cup of coffee and my husband’s cushion in my lap, the stained green one, and the sky over the water tower was clear and cold, with a bit of frost on the rail. I waited for 7:04.

Nothing came down.