The sound started low, the way bad things sometimes do, before announcing themselves fully. I was on the arm of the couch, not doing anything in particular, when I heard it — a flat, grinding roar from somewhere outside the house, rising and falling like something enormous clearing its throat. I have heard the vacuum. … Read more
There are now eleven small orange eyes along my windowsill, and none of them blink at the same time, which I have decided is the most unsettling part. She brought them in coiled around a cardboard spool, a long black cord with these little plastic bulbs spaced along it like beads, and I assumed, reasonably, … Read more
There are three knocks a person can give at a door, and I have sorted all of them. There is the soft, apologetic knock of someone who already suspects they’re not wanted. There is the brisk double-knock of someone with somewhere else to be. And then there is the knock that happened today, which I … Read more
She started with the closet door, which meant something, because the closet door only gets opened all the way like that — pushed flat against the wall so it stays — on days that matter. I know this because on ordinary days she takes one thing off one hanger and shuts it again before I’ve … Read more
She came into the living room holding something small and black between two fingers, the way you’d hold a bug you weren’t sure was dead yet, and said my name in the particular tone she uses right before something is about to happen to me that I haven’t agreed to. I have learned to recognize … Read more
She came in this afternoon carrying a paper bag with something heavy and round in the bottom of it, and I want it understood that I was there for the whole thing — the bag set down, the rustling, the moment she reached in and produced it and set it in the middle of the … Read more
She has a path through the kitchen when she’s cooking something that takes a while, and tonight I watched the whole thing from the doorway without once getting up, which I consider a genuine accomplishment given how long it went on. It goes: stove, counter, sink, back to stove. Sometimes the fridge gets added in, … Read more
There is a closet in this house I have never once been invited into, and tonight she opened it and pulled out a hard black case I did not know existed, shaped like nothing useful, with a handle worn pale where a hand has gripped it many times before mine ever touched this house. I … Read more
There is a particular rectangle of floor near the baseboard in the living room, between the leg of the bookshelf and the edge of the rug, that has been mine on good mornings for as long as I can remember paying attention to such things. Today it did something I did not care for. It … Read more
She came in through the kitchen door already moving wrong. I don’t mean unsteady. I mean wrong in the sense of not matching any of her usual patterns, the ones I have spent considerable time cataloguing — the keys-then-bag-then-shoes sequence, the particular weight of her steps when she’s tired, the way she usually stands at … Read more
