Elouise Lambert stared out the window observing time in the shifting of the light and shadows that stretched across the alley. She’d just awakened from an arduous dream so fraught with detail she was certain the dream had been crafted by her husband. To say that Jerry Lambert was a perfectionist had never been true. But recently, to those who didn’t know any better, he appeared to have taken up the mantle.  

To look at the spotless and meticulously organized interior of their small ranch home, one could easily brand it as perfect. Though given the old paradigm that sticks like pine sap (as so many do), Elouise was often credited for this. After all, is not the inside of the home a woman’s domain? If any question remained about Jerry’s seeming sense of perfectionism among the more conservative-minded, however, those doubts were obliterated upon observing the front yard. Everyone knew this was where the man of the house staked his claim. And the Lambert’s front yard was something to behold. 

Red and orange flowers stood in line at attention like highly disciplined Chinese soldiers, carefully bred to attain the same height and girth with not a single anomaly. Deep emerald green bushes shaped in geometrically accurate spheres and cubes were positioned along the periphery of a lime-green lawn so lush and uniform it could be rivaled only by astroturf. Those who walked by stopped to stare and/or take photos. Those who drove by slowed their cars, fingers pointing out the windows. 

Elouise had grown tired of the spectacle. She’d grown tired of it all. Then, in the same breath, carried terrible guilt for this feeling.  

Among the neighbors, she was forbidden by Jerry to share with them the secret of those gorgeous hues of green. For they were not birthed by nature. It was Jerry who was the proud father. He had conjured up a serum in the bleak grey days of winter to give the bushes and the lawn their false verdancy now. He even had a precise procedure for preparing the formula, which included compounding part of it in the utmost secrecy every morning in his basement – an action Elouise felt was over-the-top and unnecessary. But by the same token, she understood.

The formula wasn’t perfect. First, it smelled horrific for at least an hour after formulation – driving Jerry to install an exhaust system in the basement that betrayed his secret to anybody who enjoyed a 3am stroll outdoors. Fortunately, this was a non-existent population where the Lamberts set down their roots. Second, the serum was also caustic in that first hour so Jerry had to be extremely cautious when handling it, lest he suffered painful burns. Finally, it was toxic to the earth. There was no saying what was happening to the ground beneath his yard. And this oversight was not part of the trademark behavior of a perfectionist. It was more that of a sociopath. But just as he wasn’t truly a perfectionist, Jerry was also not a sociopath. 

Elouise rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and moved to the window that overlooked their ‘perfect’ yard. His ‘perfect’ yard. She yawned and thought of her dream. How convoluted it was while simultaneously making perfect sense in experiencing it. She understood how dreams have lives of their own. And that perhaps more than any other phenomenon in one’s life, they are completely private, subjective, and unique. Yet since his diagnosis, she and Jerry had begun to share dreams. Right down to the last detail. It was eerie. And this most recent one was all his. She was seeing the world as Jerry did. Not as a perfectionist. Not as a sociopath. But as a man who knows he’s in the final act of his life. She now understands implicitly how the fear of death does wonders to focus the mind, heighten the senses, and inspire creativity. And it seems unfair to her. 

On so many levels.