A love story

7

Can you check me for ticks?"

Sam switches on a light, picks me over, stopping at each freckle. How lucky I am to know such love, to momentarily remember what it means to have the body of a child, ignorant of age's humiliation. "O.K.," he says. "You're all clear."

"Thanks. Should I check you?"

"Nah. I'm good. There's no Lyme disease in California. Not really." He switches off the light and now it's night.

•

What's the scariest sound a person can hear?

In a quiet country house where the closest neighbors are pretty far away, the scariest possible sound is a man coughing outside at night. Because why is there a man standing in the dark, studying the sleeping house, licking his lips, coughing? Why would someone be so near to my home, to my children, in this place that is not the city?

I know the sounds of this house intimately. I know the difference between the mailman and the UPS man, the garbage truck, the school bus, the washer-­dryer in the basement. I know each door. I know the sound of a man outside coughing.

"What was that?" But Sam is already asleep. "Wake up." I whisper so that the coughing man won't know we're onto him. "Wake up, hon. Someone's outside."

"What?"

"Sh-h-h. I heard something."

"What?"

"There's someone downstairs. Someone's outside."

"Who?"

"A guy. Please."

"Please?"

"Go see."

"See?"

"Yeah."

In the dead and dark of night, I send away the only man who has sworn an oath to protect me. I must be an idiot. I must be really scared.

Sam disappears in his underwear and bare feet, leaving behind the retired baseball bat he once thought to stow under the bed for just this sort of occasion. The soft pads of his feet go down the top few steps and then there's no more sound. He's so gone I have a sense our entire downstairs is filled with stagnant black pond water through which he's now wading, swimming, drowning, trying to stay quiet so the bad guy, whoever he is, doesn't hear him, find the staircase, and tear our tiny world apart.

•

The uncertain position we all maintain in life asking when will violence strike, when will devastation occur, leaves us looking like the hapless swimmers at the beginning of the "Jaws" movies. Innocent, tender, and delicious.

"Sam?" I call softly, so the bad guy won't know we're separated.

There's no answer from downstairs. Why is it taking him so long to come back?

•

I hold the night the way I would a child who has finally fallen asleep. As if I were frightened it will move. I am frightened it will move. I am scared my life will suffer some dramatic, sudden change. I try to hear deeper. I try not to shift at all, not to breathe, but no matter how still I stay there's no report from downstairs. What if Sam is already dead, killed by the intruder? What if the bad guy, in stocking feet, is creeping upstairs right now, getting closer to my babies, to me?

Part of me knows that he is. Part of me knows that he always is and always will be.

•

Where we live there are squirrels, rabbits, all manner of wild birds, foxes, mountain lions. There are rednecks getting drunk at the sports bar three miles away. There are outlaw motorcycle clubs convening. There are children dreaming. Other living things still exist in the night. Sometimes it's hard to remember that.

Sam is probably fine. He's probably downstairs on his computer. Barely Legal, Backstreet Blow Jobs.

Night ticks by.

"Sam?" There's no answer and the quiet becomes a dark cape, so heavy I can't move my legs. I can't move my body. I am only eyes, only ears. The night asks, Who are you? Who will you become if Sam has been chopped to bits by the guy downstairs?

This is a good question. Who am I? Who will I be without Sam? Without kids? I can hear how well-intentioned people at Sam's funeral will say, "Just be yourself." But there is no self left. Why would there be? From one small body I made three new humans. I grew these complex beauties. I made their lungs and noses. It took everything I had to make them. Liver? Take it. Self-worth? It's all yours. New people require natural resources and everyone knows you don't get something for nothing. Why wouldn't I be hollowed out? Who can't understand this math?

The strangest part of these calculations is that I don't even mind. Being hollow is the best way to be. Being hollow means I can fill myself with stars or light or rose petals if I want. I'm glad everything I once was is gone and my children are here instead. They've erased the individual and I am grateful. The individual was not special in the first place. And, really, these new humans I made are a million times better than I ever was.

•

The bedcovers look gray in the dim light of chargers, laptops, and phones scattered around our bedroom. In this ghost light I am alone. The night asks again, Who are you? Who will you be when everyone is gone? My children are growing, and when they are done I'll have to become a human again instead of a mother, like spirit becoming stone, like a butterfly turning back into a caterpillar. I'm not looking forward to that.

Who are you?

The answer is easy in daylight. But the night's untethering almost always turns me into someone I'm not. I spend nights thinking about the different women I become in the dark. Where am I keeping these women when the sun is up? Where do they hide, these women who have breached the sanctity of my home, who know things about me so secret even I don't know these things? Maybe they are in the closet. Maybe they are hiding inside me. Maybe they are me trapped somewhere I can't get to, like in the DNA markers of my hormones, those proteins that make me a woman instead of something else.

You may ask, Are these women who bombard me at night real, or do I imagine them? You may eventually realize that is a stupid question.

I think about fidelity. To Sam, to myself. The light is still gray. The night is still so quiet. I let the women in, an entire parade of them, the whole catalogue, spread out on the bed before me. Sam is gone and these women keep me company. Even if they terrify me. I let the other women in.