I noticed the gnome at eight-fifteen in the morning, although in fairness I had no reason to be looking at it. Mrs Jenkins keeps several garden gnomes among the flowers outside her apartment near the shared courtyard, and over time they have become part of the scenery in the same way as the shrubs, the walkway, and the little solar lights she insists on placing at intervals precise enough to suggest she measures them. I don’t particularly like the gnomes, but I know where they are. The one with the red hat stands near the planter, the one holding the fishing rod stands closer to the walkway, and a third one with a wheelbarrow occupies a position near the flowers that Mrs Jenkins apparently considers important enough to correct whenever someone nudges it. This morning the red-hat gnome was standing beside the fisherman. I stopped at the living-room window and stared at them. There was nothing dramatic about the change. Nobody else would have noticed it. I probably shouldn’t have noticed it. But I did, and once you notice something that shouldn’t be where it is, you have two choices: ignore it or determine why it moved. I was trying very hard to become the kind of person who chooses the first option.
Pandora walked through the living room carrying a cup of tea and noticed me standing at the window. “What are you doing?” she asked. I told her nothing, which was accurate because I had not yet technically begun doing anything. She followed my line of sight toward Mrs Jenkins’ garden, looked outside for perhaps half a second, then looked back at me. Something changed in her expression. It wasn’t alarm and it wasn’t guilt. If anything, it looked suspiciously like amusement. Then she took a sip of tea and continued toward the kitchen without saying anything. I turned away from the window and watched her leave. That was the moment the gnome stopped being a landscaping irregularity and became a situation. I want to be clear that I did not immediately assume Pandora had moved the gnome. That would have been irresponsible. There were dozens of reasonable explanations. Mrs Jenkins could have moved it herself. Someone could have bumped it. Wind was theoretically possible, although the gnome looked heavy enough to survive weather events that would require us to evacuate. A maintenance worker might have moved it. A child might have moved it. An unusually determined squirrel might have moved it. I was considering all of these possibilities when Mr Whiskers jumped onto the windowsill beside me, looked directly at the garden, and sat down.
After everything that had happened over the previous several days, I had made a conscious decision not to assign meaning to the cat’s behavior, so I simply noted his arrival without interpretation. Then his tail flicked once and Pandora called from the kitchen, “Leave the gnomes alone, Hal.” I hadn’t said anything about the gnomes. I turned toward the kitchen and asked what she had said. “Nothing,” she replied. I reminded her that she had very clearly said something about gnomes. “No, I said leave them alone.” I considered this for a moment. “That’s actually worse.” Pandora laughed. This was becoming difficult to dismiss, so I went into the kitchen and found her making toast as though she hadn’t just demonstrated unexplained knowledge of an observation I had made silently from another room. I asked how she knew I was looking at the gnomes. She said it was because I had been standing at the window staring at Mrs Jenkins’ garden for several minutes with “that look.” Naturally, I asked what look. Pandora buttered her toast and said, “The look you get when something has moved three inches and you think civilization is collapsing.” I objected to the characterization, mostly because I hadn’t measured the distance and therefore had made no claim that it was three inches. Pandora looked at me for a moment and said, “Please don’t measure it.” I told her I had no intention of measuring anything. This was true at the time.
The problem was that Pandora knew the gnome had moved. She hadn’t asked what I was looking at. She hadn’t gone to the window and searched for something unusual. She had immediately understood that the gnomes were involved. That suggested prior knowledge. Prior knowledge suggested involvement, or at minimum awareness. I wasn’t accusing her of anything. I was simply following the information where it led, and unfortunately the information was leading directly toward my girlfriend. I asked whether she knew why the red-hat gnome had moved. Pandora took a bite of toast and said, “Maybe Mrs Jenkins moved it.” I asked whether she knew that or was speculating. She said she was speculating. I asked whether she had seen Mrs Jenkins move it. Pandora put down the toast and said my name in that particular way that indicated I had reached the boundary between a conversation and whatever she thought I was doing. I recognized the tone and terminated the interview, which I should emphasize had never officially been an interview.
For the next hour I made a sincere effort to forget about the gnome. This became substantially harder when Mrs Jenkins appeared outside with a watering can. I happened to be near the window when she came out. I was not waiting for her. That distinction matters. She watered the flowers, adjusted one of her solar lights, and walked directly past the misplaced gnome without moving it. I watched carefully. If Mrs Jenkins had deliberately rearranged her gnomes, there was no reason to expect her to correct anything. On the other hand, Mrs Jenkins was the kind of person who straightened the welcome mat after delivery drivers stepped on it, so her failure to react to the gnome suggested either that she had moved it herself or that she hadn’t noticed. Both possibilities were reasonable. Neither explained Pandora. Mr Whiskers appeared at the window again. “You need to stop doing that,” I told him. He sat down. I looked toward the garden. He looked toward the garden. I moved slightly to the left and his head followed something outside. I moved right and his head moved right. For approximately five seconds, I thought this was significant until a bird flew past the window and Mr Whiskers made the small clicking sound cats make when nature presents them with something they desperately want to murder but cannot reach. Fine. The cat was watching a bird. I was actually pleased with myself for identifying the innocent explanation immediately. Personal growth should be acknowledged when it occurs.
Then Pandora walked into the room, saw the two of us at the window, and started laughing. I asked what was funny. She said nothing. I pointed out that she kept saying nothing despite clearly finding something amusing. “Because nothing is happening,” she said. I asked why she was laughing if nothing was happening. Pandora shook her head and walked away. There are circumstances in which laughter is reassuring. This was not one of them. John stopped by that afternoon, and I decided not to mention the gnome. This was partly because I wanted an independent observation and partly because John had recently become resistant to participating in what he called my “operations,” despite the fact that I had never formally designated anything as an operation. We sat in the living room talking for nearly twenty minutes before he happened to glance out the window. I watched his face. Nothing. He continued talking. I finally asked whether anything outside looked different. John glanced toward the window again and said no. I told him to look more carefully. He looked. “Mrs Jenkins has flowers.” I asked about the gnomes. John stared at them for a few seconds. “What about them?” I asked whether the red one had always been beside the fisherman. He shrugged and said he had absolutely no idea. I believed him. John possesses many admirable qualities, but maintaining a mental inventory of neighboring garden ornaments is apparently not one of them.
Pandora came into the living room while we were talking and immediately understood what was happening. “Don’t encourage him,” she told John. John held up both hands and said, “I’m not involved.” There it was again. Not involved. People had been using that phrase around me with increasing frequency. I asked what exactly he wasn’t involved in. “Whatever this is,” he said, pointing vaguely toward the window. Pandora laughed again. I looked from John to Pandora and experienced the increasingly familiar sensation that everyone around me had been issued several pages of information I had somehow missed. By late afternoon I had established three facts. First, the red-hat gnome had moved. Second, Pandora knew I would notice. Third, Pandora found my concern about it amusing. I had deliberately excluded Mr Whiskers from the evidence because his only confirmed activity had involved attempted bird surveillance, and I was trying to maintain reasonable evidentiary standards. I also excluded John because he clearly knew nothing about the gnomes and appeared genuinely disappointed to have learned that I did. Mrs Jenkins remained a possibility, but if she knew anything, she wasn’t showing it. That left Pandora. I didn’t believe she was participating in a conspiracy. I had grown as a person since yesterday. I merely believed she possessed information she was withholding from me for reasons I did not yet understand.
At dinner I decided to approach the matter directly. “You know why the gnome moved,” I said. Pandora looked up from her plate and asked, “Do I?” I told her that her reaction that morning suggested prior knowledge. She asked what reaction. I reminded her that she had immediately told me to leave the gnomes alone despite my never mentioning them. Pandora smiled. “Maybe I know you.” This was evasive enough to be practically an admission. I pointed this out. She told me it was not an admission. I asked why she kept laughing whenever I looked outside. She tried not to smile, which made everything worse. Finally, I put down my fork and asked, “Pandora, what happened to the gnome?” She lasted approximately three seconds before she started laughing. Mr Whiskers, who had been sitting beneath the table hoping one of us would experience a catastrophic loss of motor control involving dinner, looked up at her. Pandora wiped her eyes and said, “Fine.” I waited. “Yesterday afternoon, Mr Whiskers got out.” I looked down at him. Mr Whiskers looked away.
Pandora explained that she had opened the door to bring in a package, and Mr Whiskers had slipped past her into the courtyard. He hadn’t gone far. He had immediately discovered Mrs Jenkins’ garden, investigated several plants, chased something beneath a shrub, and knocked over the red-hat gnome while attempting to get back out. Pandora had retrieved him, picked up the gnome, and put it beside the fisherman because she couldn’t remember exactly where Mrs Jenkins normally kept it. I stared at her. “You moved the gnome.” She said yes. “And Mr Whiskers knocked it over.” Yes again. “And you knew this morning that I would notice.” Pandora started laughing again. That part bothered me. I asked how she could possibly have known. She looked at me as though the answer should have been obvious. “Because you’re you.” I sat back in my chair. This was considerably more serious than I had anticipated.
For most of the day I had assumed Pandora was hiding information about the gnome. I had been correct about that. What I had failed to consider was why she was hiding it. She hadn’t been protecting Mrs Jenkins. She hadn’t been coordinating anything with Karen. John had nothing to do with it. There was no coded arrangement of ceramic lawn ornaments. Pandora had simply known that if she told me Mr Whiskers knocked over a gnome, I would ask where it had originally been standing, why she put it beside the fisherman, whether Mrs Jenkins had noticed, whether the cat had behaved strangely afterward, and possibly whether the gnome itself had sustained damage consistent with being struck from the left or the right. Rather than participate in any of that, she had decided to wait and see whether I noticed. “You were testing me,” I said. Pandora stopped laughing. “I was not testing you.” I pointed out that she knew I might notice. “I knew you would notice.” I told her that sounded remarkably like a test. “That sounds like knowing my boyfriend.” I had no immediate response to this.
Mr Whiskers walked out from beneath the table and headed toward the living room. I watched him go. Pandora saw me watching him and told me to leave the cat alone. “He started this,” I said. Pandora reminded me that he had merely knocked over a garden gnome. “Exactly.” She said that was what cats did. I told her I didn’t think that had been established. Pandora gave me the look. I let it go. Mostly. Later that evening, Mrs Jenkins was outside watering her flowers again when I noticed her stop beside the gnomes. She looked at the red-hat one, then at the fisherman. She stood there for a moment, clearly considering something, before bending down and moving the red-hat gnome back beside the planter where it belonged. I watched from the window. Pandora walked up behind me and immediately said, “Don’t.” I pointed out that I hadn’t said anything. “I know,” she replied.
There it was.
She knew.
Mrs Jenkins finished adjusting the gnome and went inside. Mr Whiskers jumped onto the windowsill and sat beside me while Pandora rested her hand on my shoulder. For several seconds, all three of us looked out at the garden. Then Mrs Jenkins’ curtain moved. Just slightly. I leaned toward the window. Pandora tightened her grip on my shoulder. “No.” I started to object, but she said it again. Mr Whiskers’ tail flicked. I looked at him. He looked at the curtain. Pandora pulled me away from the window. Fine. The gnome had moved because Mr Whiskers knocked it over. Pandora had put it back in the wrong place. Mrs Jenkins had finally noticed and corrected it. Every part of the mystery had been explained completely and reasonably. Except for one thing. Pandora had known from the beginning exactly what I was going to do, and I was starting to think that was much more concerning.