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Takeout comes. I convince Lily to come sit on the couch with me, where we both fit. We watch TV and, as we do, I ask her about her day and she asks me about mine. She’s quieter than usual tonight. I do most of the talking. I’m a market research analyst, while Lily teaches high school algebra. We met in college over of our shared love of math. When we tell people that, it makes them laugh. We’re math nerds.
When it’s time for bed, Lily goes up to the room before me. From downstairs, I hear the sink run as she washes up. I clean up from dinner. I throw the takeout containers in the trash. There is a package waiting on the front porch. I step outside to get it, where the night is dark, though the sky is clear. It must be a new moon.
Lily is standing at the top of the stairs when I come back in. She’s there in the upstairs hall, standing in the dark, backlit by the bedroom light. Gone are the maroon sweats she wore earlier. She has on my flannel shirt now. Her legs are bare, one foot balanced on the other. Her hair is pulled back, her face still wet from washing it.
“Don’t forget to lock the door,” she says down over the railing, patting her face dry with a towel.
I wouldn’t have forgotten to lock the door. I never do. It’s not like Lily to remind me. I turn away from her, making sure the storm door is shut and locked, and then I push the front door closed and lock the dead bolt too.
Our house sits on a large lot. It’s old on the outside, but has a completely revamped, modern interior. It boasts things like a wraparound porch, beamed ceilings, a brick fireplace—which Lily fell in love with the first time she laid eyes on the house, and so I knew I couldn’t say no despite the price—as well as the more modern amenities of a subzero fridge, stainless steel appliances, heated floors and a large soaker tub that I was more enthusiastic about. The house is aesthetically pleasing to say the least, with an enormous amount of curb appeal. It practically broke the bank to buy, but felt worth it at the time, even if it meant being poor for a while.
In the backyard, the river runs along the far edge of the property, bound by a public hiking and biking trail. We were worried about a lack of privacy when we first moved in, because of the trail. The trail brought pedestrians to us. Strangers. People just passing by. For most of the year, it’s not a problem. The leaves on the trees provide plenty of privacy. It’s only when they fall that we’re more exposed, but the views of the river are worth it for that small sacrifice.
“Done,” I tell her about the locks, and she asks then if I set the alarm. We’ve lived here years and hardly ever set the alarm. I’m taken aback that she would ask.
“Is everything okay?” I ask.
Lily says, “Yes, fine.” She says that we have an alarm. We pay for it. We might as well use it. She isn’t wrong—it’s just that she’s never wanted to before.
I set the alarm. I make my way around the first floor, turning off lights. It takes a minute. When I’m done, I climb the stairs for the bedroom. Lily has the lights off in the room now. She stands at the window in the dark, with her back to the door. She’s splitting the blinds apart with her fingers and is looking out into the dark night.
I come quietly into the room. I sidle up behind Lily, setting my hand on the small of her back and asking, “What are you looking at?” as I lean forward to set my chin on her shoulder, to see what she sees.
Suddenly Lily reels back, away from the window. She drops the blinds. They clamor shut. I’ve scared her. Instinctively, her hands rise up in self-defense, as if to strike me.
I pull back, ducking before I get hit. “Whoa there, Rocky,” I say, reaching for her arms.
Lily’s hands and arms remain motionless, suspended in air.
“Shit, sorry,” she says, knowing how close she came to impact. The realization startles us both.
“What was that?” I ask as I gently lower Lily’s arms. Lily isn’t usually so jumpy. I’ve never seen that kind of reaction from her.
She says, “I didn’t know it was you.”
“Who did you think it was?” I ask, as a joke. She and I are the only ones here.
Lily doesn’t answer directly. Instead she says, “I didn’t hear you come up the stairs. I thought you were still downstairs.”
That doesn’t explain it.
“What are you looking at?” I ask again, gazing past her for the window.
“I thought I heard something outside,” she says.
“Like what?”
She says that she doesn’t know. Just something. We stand, quiet, listening. It’s silent at first, but then I hear the voices of kids rising up from somewhere outside. They’re laughing, and I know there are teenagers clowning around on the trail again. It wouldn’t be the first time. They never do anything too bad, though we’ve found cigarette butts and empty bottles of booze. I don’t get mad about it. I was a stupid teenager once. I did worse.
I go to the bed. I pull the blankets back. “It’s just dumb kids, Lily. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Come to bed,” I say, but, even as she turns away from the window and slips under the sheets with me, I sense Lily’s hesitation. She’s not so sure.
NINA
Imust have fallen asleep with the TV on. Whatever I was watching has given way to the ten o’clock news, which glows garishly in the darkness of the house, the volume obnoxiously loud. Lying on my side on the sofa, my eyes half-open, I watch it. Today, a midrise apartment building in the city caught fire and collapsed. There was a shooting on the south side. It’s all bad news. The news puts this on because it’s what people want to see. It’s a sickness. It’s not that the world is innately bad or that bad things happen more often than good things. It’s that we’re drawn to bad things. Death sells. I turn the news off. I hate watching it.
I push myself upright on the sofa, into a sitting position, rubbing at a kink in my neck. I must have been lying on it funny. Despite the nap, I don’t feel any more rested. If anything I feel more tired. I just need to carry myself up to bed, but Jake isn’t home yet and I don’t want to go to bed before he is. I want to talk to him. I want to talk things out. Things got heated last night and I feel bad for it now. Looking back on it, it was mostly my fault, but, in the moment, I was being stubborn. I didn’t see it that way. I said things I shouldn’t have said and it’s been eating at me all day. I thought over and over again about calling him at work to apologize, but I didn’t want to interrupt him because he’s so busy when he’s at work, doing things that matter, like saving lives. He never likes it when I call him at work.
The papers I was grading are fanned out on the coffee table; I only got through a few of them before nodding off. They’re for my honors English classes. We’ve just finished reading1984and the kids were asked to write about ways in which our modern society is Orwellian. I love reading their responses. I didn’t mean to sleep for as long as I did. I told myself I was just going to close my eyes for a bit, and then get back to grading, but I must have slept for hours. I feel guilty now because I promised the kids I would have them graded by tomorrow. They put so much work into them and are anxious to know what they got. The honors kids are hard on themselves. But now it’s dark outside and I’m tired, worried about what happened with Jake and needing him to come home so that we can talk.
