After my wife woke up, I lay in bed for a long while.
The door opens.
A large misshapen brute of a man enters the room.
Muscular and twisted, his hulking form loomed over the bed. Stripped to the waist and swollen with rage, he paced back and forth, stabbing a rusty handheld sickle down into the bedclothes as he muttered and growled at me.
We’re in the back bedroom, my wife and I. Fucking.
It’s hard sometimes to find the time, the moment. Children, work, day-to-day life — these things conspire and distract and exhaust.
But we find the time, when we can. We find the moments, synchronized, together. And it is good. Perhaps it is too brief, too short. But we know each other so well now.
Like tonight. Together in the bed in the back bedroom — my absent son’s bedroom converted to a guest room for the time being.
The room sits in the relationship corner of our home, according to my understanding of feng shui. So, I suppose, it’s good that we don’t leave it empty. It’s good we fill it, from time to time, with each other.
As we fuck, the window rattles — the expected ice storm has arrived.
Reaching the end, of our short time — doing my best to hold out as long as I can, to stretch the moment and the movement as long as possible — I look up at my wife’s beautiful face shrouded in shadow. A moment later there is a flash of light and she laughs, suddenly visible.
The bedside lamp has turned on by itself.
It flickers, then goes dark.
This happens, more or less, five or six times before we’re finished.
It almost seems to be an accompaniment to my wife’s final burst of lovemaking, a response to her rising and falling.
After she heads to the shower, I inspect the lamp. I try to find a reason for the erratic interruption. Nothing I do will replicate the odd flashing.
I unplug it, just in case there is a short.
For the rest of the evening, even now, I’m fighting the feeling that someone is just behind me — quiet, waiting.
Outside, the ice storm seems to have passed. It is cold. My hair is on end. I do not know if I will sleep tonight.
Pushing through the soft fuzz of the baby monitor, my daughter’s cries jolts me awake: “Daddy, daddy, daddy…”
I’m up and across the hall before I have a chance to clear the mist from my head. Standing over her crib, I pat her back and tell her it’s okay. Once she settles down I head back to bed.
I make the mistake of checking the time. 5am.
Just enough time to slip back to sleep before it’s time to get ready for work.
My wife curls around my back — familiar and comforting, this shape we make together.
Just as I’m drifting off, I hear my daughter again, fainter this time: “Daddy, daddy, daddy…”
I raise my head and listen.
Silence.
Then, again: “Daddy, daddy, daddy…”
I sit up, my wife asking me what’s wrong.
I can hear her calling faintly, as though from a distance . . . as though she’s moving further away.
“Daddy, daddy, daddy…”
The light on the monitor is dim. No sound but the white noise buzz.
“Daddy, daddy, daddy…”
Faster now across the hall, at her crib in an instance.
She lies there asleep, content. Safe.
I sit on the edge of the bed, trying to ignore the faint cry that still pierces in the air, just barely audible.
“Daddy, daddy, daddy…”
My wife asks me what’s wrong. I shake my head, embarrassed and apologetic for disturbing her sleep. She puts up with so much of my insanity. Too much.
“Daddy, daddy, daddy…”
I get up and go to the little window, just open a crack to let in the hint of spring.
Outside a bird calls, lonely in the early morning dark: “Daddy, daddy, daddy…”
I shake my head, kiss my wife, and head downstairs to get ready for work.