Chapter 3-The routine

The coffee machine made its noise at six forty-seven.

I didn’t move to pour until it finished. I stood at the counter with my hands wrapped around nothing and listened to it run. That sound. The only sound in the whole house. The specific quiet that exists when you are the only one awake and have not slept and are trying very hard not to think about why.

I had watched the ceiling go from black to grey to the pale white of a morning that does not care what the night before contained.

I poured. Held the mug with both hands. Looked out at the garden.

The hedges stood in perfect rows. The gardener came Thursday and trimmed them without asking what I wanted because nobody ever asked what I wanted about the garden. Or the kitchen. Or the house. Or the dress.

Nothing in this kitchen was mine.

I heard Donald upstairs. The wardrobe. Hangers. Then the drawer that always stuck. Then his shoes on the floor, steady and unhurried, a man who had already decided exactly what every minute of his day would contain and was simply moving through it.

He appeared in the doorway already suited. Already finished with the morning before it had properly started.

“Have you seen my…” He opened a drawer. Closed it. Checked the counter. Opened it again.

“Counter by the toaster,” I said. “Left side.”

He found it. Something in his face settled.

“Right,” he said, and pocketed the cable.

“There’s coffee,” I said.

“I have a seven o’clock.”

He picked up his briefcase without looking at the coffee. Without looking at the garden. Without looking at me for more than the second it took to confirm I was present and accounted for.

The front door opened and closed.

I stood in the kitchen.

Long after his car faded. Long after the house settled back into silence. I stood there holding my mug and looking at the straight hedges and turning the same four words over in my head.

How are you, Anita. Actually. How are you.

I put the mug down. Went upstairs. Showered. Got dressed. Came back down. Picked up the phone. Put it in my bag.

I did not answer it that morning.

At 2:17 in the afternoon I was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea that had gone cold when my thumb moved before I finished deciding.

Me: Different brand. I switched.

I stared at what I had just sent. Three words. I had spent the whole morning telling myself I was not going to. Then I did it anyway.

The reply came in four minutes.

Kelvin: Different how.

I read it twice.

I could hear exactly how he said it.

I put the phone down. Got up. Wiped a counter that did not need wiping.

At 3:40 it buzzed again.

Kelvin: You don’t have to answer that.

I sat back down.

Me: Then why ask.

Kelvin: Because I wanted to know. And because you deserve someone asking.

I read it three times. Then I put the phone face down and pressed both hands flat on the table and just sat there.

The kitchen was very clean. I had noticed that about myself somewhere in the second year — that I cleaned things that did not need cleaning, straightened drawers that were already straight, maintained surfaces that were already fine.

From the outside it looked like someone who simply took care of things.

It was not that.

I turned the phone back over.

Me: I’m fine, Kelvin.

Kelvin: I know you are.

Then, after a pause long enough that I had almost put the phone down:

Kelvin: That wasn’t what I asked.

I sat with that longer than I should have.

Donald came home at half past seven.

“Smells good,” he said, already moving toward the stairs before he had finished saying it. Already somewhere else in his head before he had fully walked through the door.

I had checked the phone at six. Six twenty. Seven. Nothing from Kelvin. The last message on the thread was still his.

That wasn’t what I asked.

Sitting there unanswered.

Which was its own kind of answer.

Donald came back in a light grey shirt. We sat down. We ate. He talked about the Westfield acquisition and I watched his hands cut the chicken and heard his voice without hearing the words.

He did not know what brand I smoked.

The thought arrived clean and flat while I was lifting my fork. Four years and I could not remember a single time he had looked at what I was lighting. He looked at figures. Calendar entries. The cable by the toaster. He looked at everything that needed to be in its right place.

I was one of those things.

“The Aldermans want to do a dinner,” Donald said. “I told Margaret we’d confirm by Friday.”

“Fine,” I said.

He nodded. Already moved on.

After dinner he went to his study and I cleared the plates and stood at the sink with warm water running over my hands.

From behind the study door came his voice. Low. Then a laugh. That same warm, easy laugh I had heard him aim at someone through the glass at the gala. Private. Unguarded. The laugh he kept for rooms I was not in.

I stood very still.

My hand found my phone on the counter before I told it to.

I unlocked it. Went to the thread. Read his last message again.

That wasn’t what I asked.

The laugh from the study again. Something light. Something that had nothing to do with me.

I typed.

Me: I don’t smoke on terraces anymore. That was the old version.

I pressed send before I could think about it any harder.

The reply came fast.

Kelvin: The old version knew exactly what she wanted.

My throat closed.

From his study Donald said clearly:

“I’ll be there. Don’t worry about it.”

My phone buzzed again.

I turned it over.

Kelvin: Forget that.

I stood there holding the phone. Two messages. I did not know what to do with either of them.

Then I heard it.

Donald’s study door.

His footsteps in the hall.

Steady. Unhurried.

Coming toward the kitchen.