Introduction

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Excerpt

One down and two across, there she was again, a lone woman in the window, pressed close to the glass. For several days, she had been there on and off, standing in front of the window, on crutches, as if wanting to be seen.

Inside her own apartment, Nina stopped to watch. She was disturbed by the young woman’s presence, proprietary on behalf of the middle-aged couple whom she’d come to expect in that window, reading contentedly on their couch. The couple rarely talked to one another, but neither of them seemed bothered by the silence. Sometimes the husband disappeared from view, returning with two mugs in hand. Occasionally the wife stretched her legs toward her husband and he absentmindedly grasped her feet. But once Nina had looked out as the wife started to walk away and the husband stood and pulled her closer. Caught off guard by the gesture, the woman had nearly stumbled, and to steady her, he pulled her into an embrace. To everyone’s surprise, he twirled her, and for a few minutes before resuming their quiet nightly routine, they had danced.

Nina’s living room window offered no sweeping city views, no glimpse of the river or the sky, only the ornate pre-war building across the street. She and Jeremy had lived in this Upper West Side apartment for five years but still hadn’t gotten around to buying shades. Even though she looked into other people’s windows, she’d convinced herself that no one was, in turn, watching them. At nine in the evening the windows across the street were like the rows of televisions in an electronics store, all visible at once. Nina’s eyes flickered back and forth, imagining other people’s lives. But she inevitably returned to watching the same square, waiting for the couple to reappear, their quiet togetherness stirring her desire to ride out of her apartment into theirs. Hoping to find them there again, hoping that this might be the night in which they looked up from their books, she didn’t move, not until she was pulled away by the scream of a child.

The interminable cycle of sleeping and waking had begun. In his bedroom, her three year old son Max was thrashing, yet asleep. His eyes were open but he saw no way out of his nightmare, no path to outrun whatever pursued him. “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” she whispered into Max’s ear and his crying subsided. An hour later, it was Lily. From the bassinet in their bedroom, Nina picked her up to nurse. As soon as Lily latched on, her crying ceased. For the moment, there was nothing more her daughter needed.

Before either of the kids woke again, Nina went back to the window, hoping to see not just the outrageous or the extraordinary, but any truthful moment of small ordinary. During the day, every feeling came shellacked with protective plastic coating. The only language spoken was certainty. Outwardly, she was reciting the maxims along with everyone else: The kids were always delicious and she wouldn’t miss this for the world, and there was nowhere she’d rather be, and yes, it did go so fast. On the faces of other mothers, Nina sometimes caught the rumblings of discontent, but their inner lives were tucked away. Like them, her hands were always occupied, but while she was making dinner or bathing a child, while pushing one of them in a swing, rocking the other to sleep, her thoughts had begun to rove.

In the window across the way, there was still no sign of the couple reading. Once again, it was the young woman on crutches looking out and Nina was tempted to wave. But that would end the illusion. Curtains would be pulled shut, lights switched off, the city’s windows suddenly empty and dark. Instead, Nina stayed hidden and from the shadows, she watched as a young man dressed in jeans and a black T shirt emerged from another room and joined the young woman. Wide awake for the first time all day, Nina craned her neck, watching as the couple began to argue, their gestures sharp, their bodies taut. The man tried to hug her but the woman wriggled from his grasp, put her hands over her face, shielding herself from what he was saying.

The woman turned away from the man, but he wasn’t dissuaded by her anger. He came up behind her and pressed against her. He took her crutches from her and supported her body. She leaned into him as he entangled his hands in her long dark hair, he ran his lips down the nape of her neck, he cupped her breasts in his hands. Nina felt the woman’s resistance subsiding and she wished there was a way to draw closer to them still.

Surely they realized they were before an open window; surely, Nina realized, that was part of the pleasure. Could they see her breathing their every breath, feeling their every touch? The woman turned around, her back now to Nina, as the man carefully helped her to the couch where he knelt in front of her and unzipped her pants. As their dark clothes unpeeled, giving way to pale flashes of skin, Nina was inside her own body yet inside theirs as well. The woman’s earlier reluctance was gone. She wasn’t held back by her injured foot. Her thin body wriggled out from underneath and she climbed astride him. Her back arched, her body bare, she turned her face to the window, looking directly at the spot where Nina was standing.

She saw the look of defiance. She understood the exhibitionist plea. But it was something else that made her want to press herself to the glass pane and move closer still. She wanted to reach her hand across, so that this woman could set her free from the constraints of her own self as well. The city had cracked momentarily apart, a slivered opening in the larger night. Nina’s loneliness lessened momentarily. She might be home with her kids, another interminable night with Jeremy at work, but she was also outside, part of the thrumming city. Nina waited for the reading couple to emerge from some back room where they’d been hiding and join the younger couple intertwined on their couch. She waited to see everyone’s inner thoughts transmitted in flashes of light long and short. For every apartment in every building to light up. For neighbors everywhere to strip down, lay themselves bare. For the couples across the way to raise their windows and invite her in. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. “At night, Nina went outside and looked at the houses beyond the fence. From here it was hard to know what really went on in people’s lives” (p. 135). Nina has a history of curiosity. What draws her to other people’s stories? Do you think this type of curiosity will continue?

2. “Sooner or later, someone would always know. Fifty blocks from home or five hundred, privacy was generally an illusion” (p. 154). Why does Leon think this? Do you think privacy is an illusion? Considering certain current events surrounding privacy online and the NSA’s intrusion on citizen’s privacy, how do you perceive privacy now? How do you keep your private life private?

3. “How wrong she had been to think she could gaze out unaffected” (p. 177). How does watching other people change Nina?

4. “Why for so many years had she tucked away the feeling that she was invisible?” (p. 205). Why does Claudia feel invisible? What does Claudia hide from those around her, and what does she only think she hides? How does this affect her relationships with those she loves? Do any of the other characters do this as well?

5. In this book, change is necessary, liberating, but it can also be a betrayal—not just for the characters, but also for the neighborhood itself. Why is it sometimes easier to orbit around the lives of others than to inhabit the center of one’s own world? Also, when we make permanent situations that are based on only partial truths, what happens when other truths start clamoring for recognition?


6. When Nina visits Leon’s apartment, he says “we’re much closer” (p. 137) to the construction. To Max the building going up is a source of endless fascination; to Claudia it is an appalling nuisance. Leon welcomes it even as he recognizes what it will mean for the status quo. Jeremy’s relationship to it is at first much more practical and hands on and of course undergoes the most radical shift. What does each character’s reaction to the new construction reveal about himself or herself?

7. Visible City is full of forbidden spaces, from Jeremy’s explorations to Emma’s story of the night zoo and Nina and Leon’s relationship. What draws the characters to these spaces?

Weblinks

»	Author Tova Mirvis' web site
»	Publisher's Book Info

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