IM PROPPED AGAINST the headboard with three pillows behind me, sitting up in the

dark. It is just after one in the morning. Ive been checking the time by the analog clock on
the far wall. Our digital clocks are dead. The fridge is dead. Everything is dead. The
power went out around two in the afternoon.
Cora is lying on her stomach with her head down over the side of the bed, looking at
something on the floor. She has a cup of water down there.
Try to think about something else, I say. Itll come on when it comes on.
She says nothing, but I hear her breathe in the darkness. She moves her hand on the
quilt. The quilt is yellow and stitched with rustic squares of brown and green. When you
look at it from far away, it looks like a vine.
I think youll feel better if we turn on a flashlight or something, I say.
Ill feel worse, she says. She says it with her chin set against the edge of the bed.
Okay, I say. Its useless. She feels how she feels. My arguments, my deductions and
conjectures, are irrelevant. Okay.
I sit back and listen. I cant hear the wind anymore, but things are still moving. Branches
claw back and forth on the walls, the eaves. I feel a knot in my neck from sitting up, and I
try to rub it out.
Cora moves her hand on the quilt, hard, like shes trying to hold on to something.
#
Cora is afraid of the dark. I knew about this going in, and we got married anyway. I
agreed to the rituals. The bedroom light must stay on, and I must stay awake, until she has
fallen asleep. Its a syllogismif either of the premises is unmet, the conclusion cannot
follow.
I can get some good reading done during this interval, Ive found. Sometimes I grade
papers. But part of me is concerned that weve been married five short months and Im
already reading myself to sleep most nights. This, I think, is unhealthy.
It says something about us, I told her. This was a month or so after our wedding.

She was pacing in the room, rubbing her face. She does this sometimes to make herself
feel sleepy. She stopped and looked at me. What does it say?
Were not close enough, maybe, I said. Or we dont do things together. Maybe we
dont have sex enough.
You think it says that?
I shrugged. I said nothing.
She stared at the carpet. I thoughtI thought we did it a lot.
No, no, I think we do, I said. I felt like I had to talk fast, like I had broken something on
accident and had to explain my actions. We do. I guess I just mean, if I told someone
about all this, they would think
Oh, she said. They would assume.
Yes.
In that case, she said, we shouldnt tell anyone. She grinned.
That was her solution. Simple. And who would I tell, anyway? I sat back and wondered
why I felt the way I did.
She was wearing one of my shirts. It was big on her. I hadnt thought my clothes were
that big. She pulled the collar away from herself and peered inside. I can see the floor,
she said.
Youre wide awake.
She laughed. She looked at me. Im sorry.
No, thats fine, I said. I adjusted my stack of pillows and rubbed my eyes. Its not like
we dont have all night.
#
Im not sure what to do for her with the lights out. I sit for a while and listen to the trees
outside. Cora lies beside me, tucked away in her own space, keeping to herself. I think she

must be working things back and forth in her mind. Shes very thin. She doesnt need
much room.
I reach across the bed and run my hand along her back. She stiffens.
Is that you? she says.
Yes, I say, though its a strange thing to ask. There is no one else here. We should
probably have some ice cream. I just thought of it.
She doesnt move. Oh. Silence. I guess I would like some in here.
I get up and go to the kitchen for the ice cream. I have to feel my way along the walls.
Our house is huge in the darkness. Each step gets me half the distance it should, and I
figure this is my bodys natural reaction. But the whole way I feel like Im going nowhere,
like I should be further than I am.
I get some bowls down and open the freezer and scoop two helpings of vanilla ice
cream. Then I take them back to the bedroom.
Cora lifts her head when I come in. Is that you? she says.
Its me, I say. I put the bowl in her hands, and she flinches as she collects the weight of
it.
I love you, she says.
I love you, too, I say. But I dont get back into bed. I stand at the window, a rectangle of
dark gray set in the wall. I stand there and peer through the blinds and try to catch a
glimpse of anything moving.
#
Our headboard is a section of picket fence from Coras grandfathers homestead in
eastern Canada. Its not something you can lean against. When I sit up waiting for her to
fall asleep, I fill the gaps with pillows.
Cora thinks its funny. I brought the pillows home one day from a bed and bath store
downtown. Cora was on the kitchen floor, cutting things out of construction paper for her
kindergarten class.

Look at you, she said. You with all your pillows. Like were rich.
I plan to retire with these pillows, I said. I set them inside the door. They were still
wrapped in their sterile plastic, like bedding for astronauts. I didnt like that I had bought
them.
Cora laughed. I get it. Retire.
I sat beside her on the floor. Sunlight from the window made a pool of heat around us.
She was cutting out black cloud shapes. What are these for? I asked.
Its a science lesson, she said. Were making galaxies. She clipped another one and
laid it with the others. Fat swooshes of black paper.
They look like clouds, I said.
Youre not a teacher, she said. But she was happy. She was happy at that point.
I got to my feet and went to the window. October was doing its thing outside, and
across the street, someone was taking a mattress down off the top of a car. I looked at the
sky. The moon hung like a dead bulb in the blue, like unfinished construction.
Hey, she said behind me.
I turned. Hmm?
We should get in bed.
Now?
Before it gets dark.
I watched her. She grinned. She stood and started toward me, but a thought flashed
across her face and she went the other way, to the bedroom. I followed her. Of course I
did. Who wouldnt have?
Later that night, when we went to bed for real, she fell asleep fast. Five minutes and she
was out. I barely got through three pages of Poe. It was wonderful.
#

Ive begun to worry about my back. My spine. I look at the future and I see myself
sitting against our headboard every night for the rest of my life. I think about all the ways
this could damage my vertebrae, my plates and discs and whatever else in in there.
I see myself hunched over, my neck bent and bowed from too much reading alone. Old
before my time. Thatll be me.
#
I finish my ice cream and stay at the window. The clouds are gone from the section of
sky between the maples outside and I can see stars. One of them moves, too slow to be a
plane. A satellite, I think. A lonely mechanism counting off long, rational sequences up in
the cold, orbiting forever until it sinks and burns. It flickers in the night. I lick my ice cream
spoon. The satellite is lit. It can still see the sun from up there.
I turn to Cora. Are you done? I ask.
Yes, she says.
I take her bowl and return to the kitchen. She stays there on the bed, frozen in place. I
cant imagine what shes feeling, trapped in the dark with the power dead. I try to feel it,
too. I stop at the sink and put the dishes in. I stand there and try to conjure up fear out of
the shadows. I stare at the wall above the sink. I wait.
After a minute or so I rub my neck and rest my hands on the counter and inhale. I smell
soap and wood and hard water. Familiar things. I touch the faucet, the handles, the block
with our knives in it. I touch a mixing bowl left out on the counter. A bag of flour. The cord
of the toaster.
In my mind I see Coras galaxy cutouts. She had the kids draw stars on them, stars and
planets and burning suns. They all drew a sun, she said. She didnt tell them what to draw,
but they all drew the sun anyway, and most of them drew the other planets tooas many
as they knew. Like space wasnt space without all those things in it.
I open the cupboard above the sink and grab a flashlight. I keep it turned off and head
back to the bedroom.
Cora stirs atop our earthy vine quilt and looks at me. Honey? she says.
Right here, I say. Come on. Get up.

What? she says. Why?

I have a flashlight, I say. Come on.
A flashlight just makes it worse, she says. You dont understand.
No, I do understand. Again I feel I have to talk fast, like if Im not careful Ill shatter
some delicate thing. I do understand.
I click the button and the flashlight ignites. A bright swath of light cuts the room in half.
I see Cora on the bed, her eyes wide and glistening. I see the thin frame of her body under
the t-shirt, her bare legs. I want to go to her and run my hands from her feet up to her
neck, skin the entire way, pushing warmth into every part of her. But I wontnot now. I
see the clock on the far wall. Half past one.
Come on, I say. Youll feel better.
She gets to her feet, eyes darting into the corners and the dark hall behind me. But shes
standing. The shirt shes wearing reaches halfway to her knees. My clothes are huge, I
guess. Or she is very small.
This is fine. We can start small.
I take her by the hand and lead her into the darkness. I shine the flashlight onto the
walls and the floor. I move it slowly back and forth. I pull her forward.
This is our house, I say.
END