My downstairs neighbor moans himself quiet each afternoon. My headphones can’t drown him out, so I wait patiently for his common-law to arrive. She quells the noise.

I have a special place for the loveless. It’s the stuff of first marriages. You do whatever works, whatever gets you by, eking as much of yourself into each day as your clock will allow. When I run out of myself, I play furious piano. I write. My neighbor waits.

Two propellers take my thoughts. At the pool this summer, I assumed these low-fliers were peering into my unspectacular cleavage, that inescapable line to nothing, visible even from under my wide-brimmed hat. Of course, the planes were not focused on me. They never are focused on me. But my husband chastised me nonetheless for wanting across the complex with not much more than a bottle of water and my wide-brimmed hat. What about the neighbors? I promised to cover up, kissed him goodbye to work, and crossed towards the pool—with a bottle of water, my hat, and a beach towel over my shoulder. It was almost enough.

My husband is sensible and keeps me in check. He wears standard-issue shirts and works like the devil. Not the devil. He is a good person, always quick to help. His gift, his loyalty. I work hard, if you call this work. I over-buy clothes—to cover up. “A clothes horse like your mother,” my father called out.

My father was a sensible if not simple man. He refurbished cars and resold them, sometimes at a profit. “There’s an ass for every seat,” he liked to say. But really, he just loved cars. His love of cars was his undoing, but it wasn’t his reason. Just a trick of his mind, the same trick that taught me, that all questions had one answer, work.

My father loved my mother more than he loved cars, which was a lot. They spread equal helpings of attention on each other, themselves, and the Lord. They experienced religious awakening when they fell in with a group of religious nobody’s soon to be local cable television program programming somebody’s. Our family’s work ethic was astounding. Even the kids got in and helped. We put on plays with giant Styrofoam props, cars, tennis rackets, and we made puppets from old dance costumes and outgrown toys. My Little Orphan Annie wig became Sizzle Frizzle’s mop, and my brother’s Nerf ball became a round-enough head for Father Fright. Some things were not for kids, my parents were clear. My mother laid hands on the sick. My father healed the possessed. My brother and I . . . pretended to pray.

We had a neighbor who was possessed all the way from Spain. At the moment he was healed, my father saw a white light. In the basement, my friend and I turned the lights off to tease our younger brothers. My brother bawled uncontrollably “I see eyes! Eyes!”

“The gift of sight—” marveled the priest. My parents were impressed. I knew I was sunk.

My brother and I watched a mystery cartoon on Saturday mornings that scared us snotless with its show of disembodied eyes hunting down our daring teenage sleuths. And I was the remarkable one, anyway. I was the genius, the prodigy. Just ask my grandparents. Just ask my husband. Knowing it’s not true . . . a difficult realization that didn’t come easily, certainly not in school, not at work.

As for my brother, he was content to spend time with the long line of priests who made a resting place of our home. He was content to ride in Father Sal’s airplane, a low-flier that waved “hi” while my mother and I sunned in the backyard. My brother was content to be normal, undisturbed. For that, he was in fact, remarkable. He was as sensible as a standard-issue shirt.

I never flew in Father Sal’s plane. I wandered fearfully into adulthood, reading to avoid myself. Computer books, mostly. But also Sexton, Irving, Atwood, and Plath. I worked long workweeks for little reward, except to feed my ego with a job superiorly done. I was better than everyone, in my opinion, the best. I was high on accomplishment and hooked on stress. I bought an old farmhouse, I adopted nine cats. I found myself in others. I found myself wrong.

Then one day, God spoke to me. He said Colleen, piss off. So I stopped working quite so hard. I stopped reading so much and got to writing. The writing surprised me. The writing was smart. It knew what I didn’t. The writing knew me, and when I was done, even I knew. I was real, and God was a trickster, a bender, a hoax. And me? I was as dilapidated as the house we called home.

My sensible husband arrives home and reminds me plainly that our neighbor plays bass. The noise, reverberation. With this, the day unravels, on time and with purpose, and its usual deceit. I check the mirror for blind spots and see only myself. I lean in closer, and I see. Airplanes. Gifts. God. I see me.

Colleen Totz Diamond