Haint That a Shame Part XIV

I didn't even want to write about this one. I waited a few days. This one felt different. It happened when both of us were completely awake and in the same place. It happened early in the evening on a school night. The lights were on. The TV was on, some insipid fare like "Man vs. Food," I believe. I don't know for sure, because I was seated on the left end of the couch, absorbed in a novel (Russell Banks's The Lost Memory of Skin). The arm of my halogen floor lamp was swung at eye level over the book on my lap. A couple feet to my left, at a 90 degree angle to the couch and along the other wall, sits a love seat. My wife was standing in front of the love seat and facing it, folding laundry into piles and stacking them on its cushions.

Between the couch and love seat sat a folding wooden TV table. It's not a luxurious item by any means but it's sturdy and pretty well-made--Crate and Barrel perhaps? At any rate it's solid wood. Upon this table sat a pint glass filled nearly to capacity with seltzer water. Just next to the pint glass was a tumbler with limeade in it. I'd glanced at the table several times, my eye just able under the glaring lamp of the halogen arm to look at the cold tumbler and consider taking a sip of the limeade. It's not worth the reach quite yet, I'd thought. I'll finish this chapter first.

I'd just glanced at it, in fact, and returned to my novel when the table moved a bit more than half a foot in my direction. There was a substantial noise, the table moved, and I glanced up at Cha, thinking she'd bumped it with her hip while folding clothes. She was staring at me a bit oddly, but I thought that was because she'd almost knocked over a couple glasses, the contents of which were currently sloshing back and forth. I went back to my book.

"Geoff," she said. "That table just moved."

"You bumped it with your hip," I replied. "You were bending over to stack T-shirts and you bumped it with your hip."

She made an incredulous sound with sudden air in the back of her throat. "Look where I'm standing. There is no way I bumped that table."

I did look over; I pushed the arm of the halogen lamp aside and looked over. Cha was a good two feet away from where the table had until recently been positioned. Even her marvelous and substantial badonka-donk could not have bumped the table. She began probing with her foot along floorboards to see if a loose one might have rocked the table. "It didn't rock, it scraped along the floor," I said.

"I know."

We both saw and heard it. We both witnessed it at the same time and in the same way. We were completely awake--involved in tasks, yes, but totally cognizant of surroundings, half-watching TV, etc. etc.

This is the first incident inside the new house.