» Fiction

Please Pass the Flotsam

Matt Cashion

I didn’t like to think before coffee, but Dr. Death was coming for dinner, so my first thought of the morning had to do with the dread of the evening and my fear that I would behave quite badly. If I behaved badly enough, Maria promised a rapid divorce with zero custody. So I tried not to think about it. I walked into the kitchen and moved past her, seated at the table, eight months pregnant, phone in hand, and when I got to where my cup was supposed to be—the cup I rinsed every night to use every morning so I could save dishwasher space and reduce energy consumption—it wasn’t there, and she said, “Oh my God, they’ve had a shipwreck.”

“Where’s my cup?” I said.  

“Holy shit,” she said. “They almost died.”    

She had a tendency toward ambiguous pronoun usage when reporting news from her phone. It was irritating. I looked in the dishwasher.  

“They’re okay,” she said. “But damn—a shipwreck!”  

Before we married, ten years ago, I’d asked that our morning protocol forbid serious talk BC (Before Coffee). I meant to honor my side of the agreement. 

“I left it on the counter last night,” I said.   

“What’re you talking about?” she said. 

“What’re you talking about?”  

“Teri, Luke, and Lou,” Maria said, like I’d missed that part. “They’ve been in a fucking shipwreck in the middle of Lake Michigan.” 

“Are they okay?” 

“I just said they were okay.” 

Had she? Our friends Luke and Teri and their seven-year-old, Lou, were on the way to see us in Wisconsin, via Michigan, from Hawaii, where they’d moved three years ago. For jobs! Were we jealous? Of course. We threw them a going away party, and tonight we were hosting a welcome back party of sorts, though only one of their other friends was coming: Finn, aka Dr. Death, a depressed ex-science professor whose life’s-purpose was to make sure we kept our calendars updated for our upcoming extinction. He said we’d passed the proverbial tipping point, that civilization’s only hope was radical population control via mandatory vasectomies. At the going-away party, I’d caught him in the kitchen flirting with Maria, both of them drunk, heard him say something stupid like the species should go out with a bang. Which was when I approached and pushed his shoulder (a tad too forcefully) and invited him to go fuck himself. Maria called me a jealous child, the party dissipated, and I spent the night on the couch and the next three days apologizing, groveling. She said, “Just because he’s brilliant and sexy doesn’t mean I’d do anything; stop being so insecure. It’s gross.” Brilliant? I guess he’d agree. He talked a lot about himself, how he’d grown up in Germany, attended Berkeley for his PhD, joined an ecoterrorist group in Oregon, lived off-grid in his thirties, built a house in New Mexico from old tires and bottles (an Earthship!), then took a teaching job in Wisconsin and developed a cult following among students and colleagues. I didn’t like him. But Luke liked him, and I liked Luke, so I gritted my teeth and told Luke to invite him. Luke and Teri were solid and fair-minded Midwesterners, people I’d want on my jury should I murder Dr. Death.   

“Your coffee cup’s outside where you left it,” Maria said.

I pulled out a new cup, filled it, added almond milk. Six months ago, Maria announced we were going from vegetarians to vegans. I was trying.  

“Their boat capsized,” Maria said. “Luke’s father’s boat. Teri’s texting me on her mother’s phone. They’re really shaken up.”  

“Is a capsize the same as a shipwreck?” I said.  

“You just put the almond milk in the cupboard. I’ve asked you to stop buying it because—as Finn told us last time—it takes one gallon of water to produce a single almond and the water situation in California is fucked, except for the almond owners, as we’ve discussed.”  

Had we? The week before, she’d found a bag of frozen spinach in the closet. The day before, when I locked myself out of the house again, I said I should get tested for early onset whatever-you-call-it, ha-ha. I blamed my absentmindedness on her pregnancy, which didn’t go over well. It was partly true; I stayed distracted with worry. I was nearly forty, an unskilled and unemployed non-laborer, anxious over the world my child would inhabit if I didn’t kill her first by leaving her in a locked car. We squeaked by on Maria’s teaching job, and I had helped briefly by teaching fourth grade, first as a substitute, then as full-time temporary, but I couldn’t keep track of names, and one day when I corrected a kid’s grammar, he mocked my Southern accent, which led me to calling him a little shit, which led the principal to expel me. So I returned to being a househusband and tried to make Maria happy. Daily trips to Trader Joe’s for vegan food and eco-friendly cleaning products. Between shopping, cooking, and cleaning, I watched YouTube videos on how to install low-flush toilets (in progress) and ways to maximize energy efficiency, which led to great despair because I had no know-how, which led to hours on the Internet and another hour erasing my history. Lately, I spent my afternoons staring into the sinkhole in front of our house. City crews were working on it, running big machines that backed up and beeped, backed up and beeped—all day—stretching hoses down the street they’d plowed up. Our town was in the midst of a sinkhole epidemic. I couldn’t wait to hear Finn’s opinion on the topic.   

“Are you going to behave tonight?” Maria said.  

I pointed to my full coffee cup and didn’t answer. 

Dr. Death was anti-air-conditioning, and since his comfort was key, we’d be eating outside, where we’d enjoy another record-setting day over one hundred degrees. He’d developed an actual air-conditioning allergy (allegedly), claimed we should all be conditioning ourselves toward hotter times, that we shouldn’t fool ourselves into feeling comfortable while the planet burned. Meanwhile, the Wisconsin natives were going nuts. A middle-aged man beat an elderly man to death after arguing over a parking space at a home improvement store. A walker on a bike trail clotheslined a biker. Road-raging lunatics fired pistols. Everywhere, people seethed with anger, waiting for the smallest excuse to yell profanities and raise middle fingers.  

“Of course I’ll behave,” I said. “No problem.” And I hoped it was true. I’d agreed to take care of everything if Maria agreed to rest. I’d clean the backyard, arrange seating, fill coolers with ice, beer, water, set up fans, mosquito-fighting accessories, pick up food we’d ordered from the Co-op at great expense, be a pleasant host, make sure Dr. Death stayed happy.    

Maria got the long-handled duster from the cupboard, then stepped on an unstable chair to knock down spiderwebs.  

“That’s not safe,” I said, and went outside.  

When I went for the mower, I discovered my gas can had been stolen. These were the end times all right. People were desperate. When I reported this news to Maria, she came to the garage and pointed to the can sitting on top of the upright piano I’d salvaged last month.   

“Someone moved it,” I said, hoping she’d laugh, but she’d already walked away. 

I drove to the gas station to fill the can, forgot the beer and ice, returned, then mowed, then went out again for tiki torches, scented candles, an extra fan and extension cord, and when I next saw Maria, I was in a chair beneath our dying elm tree, near the bottom of my third gluten-free beer, a recipe that helped me discover I was not, in fact, allergic to alcohol and could therefore Drink Wisconsibly, as the T-shirts say.   

She said, “Did you plan to shower and pick up the food beforeour guests arrived?”   

“Of course,” I said, like I hadn’t lost track of time.  

Maria told me three times to make sure the Mediterranean bean dish entrée was not topped with cheese. It was. The youngster I dealt with fetched his manager, who came with a copy of the order and showed me the empty space beneath the “special requests” box, which meant it was my fault. I imagined Maria’s face and couldn’t bear the disappointment, then I imagined Finn accusing me of sustaining the dairy industry (in Wisconsin!) which was killing us because of the land required to grow cow food vs. vegetables, plus runoff from poop and pee, plus cow farts. They prepared a new dish.  

When I got home, Luke, Teri, and Lou had just pulled into our driveway and Maria was greeting them, sporting a nice (new?) sundress. For Finn? I wasn’t a jealous guy, normally, but I couldn’t forget the way he’d flirted with her. Stay cool, I told myself. Our friends were here, and I was glad. We welcomed them as if they’d returned from war.   

“We had a shipwreck,” said Lou. He was seven now, a smart kid.  

“I know,” I said. “Do you need a drink?” 

“What’s going on here?” Teri said, pointing to our sinkhole, the stretched out hoses, the yellow backhoe parked in our street.  

“More of a boating accident,” Luke said, and laughed that hair-trigger laugh of his.     

“We’re installing a swimming pool,” Maria said.   

“I’ll take a drink,” Lou said. “Water with no ice, please.”   

We led them out back to chairs in front of the two fans I’d arranged to create enough breeze to discourage mosquitoes and break the heat. It was nearly 7 p.m. by then, temps moving from unbearable to uncomfortable. The fans surrounded scented candles, and tiki torches surrounded the fans. They exhaled, happy to be free of cars and boats, roads and water.

Maria slapped her neck.  

“Your blood type is attractive,” said Lou.  

“Thank you, Lou,” Maria said, and we laughed. 

It was easy to laugh with them. We’d missed doing so for the past three years. Maria and Teri met when they found themselves volunteering with the urban gardening task force, the homeless task force, the hunger task force, a save-the-marsh task force, etc. They had us over, we had them over, found it comforting to be in their calming presence, which I hoped was mutual, though I suspected we clung to them more than they needed us, and when Lou was born, they clung to him, as you’d expect, just as we would soon cling to whatever came out of Maria. Other universities recruited Luke; he got offers his department couldn’t match. He narrowed his choices to a big university in Alabama (more money, light teaching load, top-shelf labs) and a college in Hawaii (less money, heavy teaching load, poorer labs). They came for drinks and dinner, asked our opinions.  

“Neither,” Maria had said. “You can’t leave us stranded here.”  

“Did I hear you say,” I said, “more money to teach fewer classes? That’s a no-brainer.”  

They took less money and more work to live in Hawaii. A year later, when we saw the footage of lava explosions flooding streets and flattening homes, we kept calling and texting to see if they were okay, but we never heard from them. Teri was out helping people, and Luke was conducting drone-based research on the lava. When the lava-rivers cooled enough for Teri to finally write, she said, “We’re fine. Luke says we’re lucky to be here in the middle of all this, but it’s traumatic, explosions every thirty seconds. I’m getting used to the dinosaur-sized roaches who sleep with us. More later.” They’d survived the lava, got nicked by a typhoon, and now they’d survived near-drownings, and seemed, still, to be the ones worth clinging to.  

I wanted to hear about Hawaii, ask about their guest bedroom, fish for an invitation to visit, but before I could say much at all, Dr. Death came strolling around back wearing his bike helmet and backpack, wine bottle in hand, a T-shirt that featured an image of an hourglass with a circle around it. Luke and Teri raced to him for hugs. He handed me the wine while staring at Maria. He put one hand on her bare shoulder and one hand on her bloated stomach.   

“How did this happen?” he said. “You decide to bring a child into this dying world?” 

“She’s going to save the world,” Maria said, and everyone laughed, even little Lou. 

“We had a shipwreck!” Lou told him. 

He sat next to Maria, of course, his left knee nearly touching her right. He kept his biking helmet on, unfastened. When I asked politely if he’d like beer, wine, liquor, or water, he said, “Yes!” Everyone laughed. A real comedian.  

“More of a boating accident,” Luke said, and giggled. 

When I handed him a beer, he didn’t thank me. He lofted it into the air.  

“A toast!” he shouted.   

Of course. I wished I’d beaten him to it.  

“To death,” Finn said. 

“Beautiful,” I said, and Maria shushed me. 

“Our proximity to extinction,” he continued, “is a gift from deep time that provides us a glimpse of the sublime, which invites us also to embrace the unknowable scheme of the universe.” He paused, on the verge of tears. “Which is to say, we feel profound awe that you are here, to make us also feel so very much alive.”  

“Yes,” Maria said, nearly singing. She clinked her wine glass against Finn’s beer, and they looked into each other’s eyes. I clinked my beer against Lou’s water.  

“It was frightening,” Luke said. He described how his father had taken them for a ride in his boat equipped with two motors, a small one for fishing and a big one to get through Lake Michigan’s shipping channels.  

“I had my doubts right away,” he said. “I saw how the weight was distributed—the big motor weighed down the back of the boat, plus a big gas tank sitting in the rear, and he’s a big guy. Maybe 250 pounds. I told him I didn’t like it, but—”  

“Dads are dumb,” Maria said. 

“I was dumb too,” Luke said. “I should’ve been firmer. All that weight’s in the back of the boat, and we’re speeding out through the channel and hit a big wave at a bad angle, and the front end flew up and sent us flying.”  

“The boat was standing!” Lou said, holding his palm up to demonstrate.  

“And we’re all in the water,” Teri said, “and Luke’s dad is yelling, stay calm—stay close to the boat, and I’m like no way dude, because the boat looks like it’s about to fall on top of us, so we swam away and watched the boat go down. It took thirty minutes. Then we’re just hanging out, floating there by ourselves in the middle of Lake Michigan, clinging to flotsam. I’ve always wanted to use that word, flotsam.”  

“You were wearing PFDs, of course,” Maria said.   

“All but my dumb dad,” Luke said.  

“He shared my piece of flotsam,” Teri said.  

“Was the water cold?” Maria asked.     

“What’s flotsam?” Lou asked. He sat on the edge of his chair, eager to participate, fully on track to becoming a mad scientist or a tortured mathematician.  

“More like forty-five minutes,” Luke said. 

“What’s the difference between flotsam and jetsam?” I asked.

“It was freezing,” Teri said.   

“Remember the end of Titanic?” I said. “Was Leo clinging to flotsam or jetsam?”   

“What is the difference?” Maria said.  

No one reached for their phones. It was impressive.  

“Flotsam,” Finn said, “typically represents debris from wreckage that remains afloat. Jetsam is what might be discarded to prevent or delay sinking. Flotsam and jetsam are produced and owned by humans. These chairs. Candles. Fans. Extension cords. Tiki torches. Tables. Lawnmowers. Gasoline. That garage, the cars inside it, that house and everything it holds. Shingles. Everything you own, which now owns you as one ensnared in a capitalist trap.” 

I reached for my phone. I said, “There’s a rock band called Flotsam and Jetsam.”      

“A giant freight ship almost saved us,” Lou said.  

“It started to turn around,” Teri said. “Which was amazing. Something that big, it was going to take a while. A radical act of kindness.” 

“What were they hauling?” I asked.  

“Jetsam,” Finn said.  

“But then this fisherman came along,” Luke said. “He helped us climb into his boat and called the Coast Guard or rescue people or whoever.” 

“The water tasted like oil?” Finn said. “Shipping companies spend billions on devices to reroute pollution from the air to the water to hide it better. Open-loop scrubbers they are called.”  

Finn’s voice made me want to drink. I got a new beer from the cooler, crumpled my empty can, and considered hurling it at his head.  

“The rescue people kept getting mad at the fisherman,” Luke said. 

“There are twenty-two known carcinogens floating in most water supplies,” Finn said. “Arsenic. Radionuclides such as uranium and radium.” 

“For not saying ‘over,’ or ‘copy,’ or ‘roger,’ and the fisherman was like, ‘Look, I’ve got these people in my boat, what should I do with them?’ And they wouldn’t answer, and the fisherman would be, like, ‘Hello? Are you there?’ And they’d get mad again because he hadn’t said ‘over.’ I felt bad for the guy.” 

“The only ships should be Earthships,” Finn said.  

“Anyway,” I said, trying to reroute the Earthship lecture Finn was queuing up. “Flotsam is what you were clinging to while waiting to be rescued.” 

“What’s an Earthship?” said Lou, the little shit. 

“Didn’t you build your own Earthship, Finn?” said Maria.  

And he was off, lecturing at great length about the house he’d built from bottles and tires and assorted garbage, how each drop of precious New Mexico rainwater got used three times, how he grew his garden in his living room, how he lived in a suburb of Earthships where neighbors pooled their resources and survived with zero electricity, needing nothing. 

“But listen,” I said to Luke. “While you were clinging to flotsam in the freezing water, did you tell your dad I told you so?” 

Luke laughed, as if I’d meant to be funny. “No,” he said. “That would’ve been counterproductive. I tried to keep things positive.” 

“He’s always trying to keep things positive,” Teri said, like this habit was testing their marriage. “Even after the boat went down, he was like, ‘Would someone please pass some flotsam? Who’s got some flotsam?’”  

“Our best teacher arrives in the form of death,” Finn said.  

Maria swatted a mosquito. Finn pulled a small bottle from his pocket and passed it to her. “Vanilla extract,” he said. “It will work for ten minutes. Soon, winter will be here, thank God.”  

“I miss Wisconsin winters,” Teri said. “How it kills the creepy crawlies.”  

“Except ticks,” Finn said. “Ticks burrow underground and return with greater immunity.”  

“Our neighbor has had Lyme disease three times,” Maria said.  

“My brother got a tick bite that gave him a meat allergy,” Teri said. “Every time he ate meat, he vomited.”  

“Excellent,” Finn said. “We must breed that species of tick and drop them into meat-eaters’ yards. Then take them into heavy beef-eating countries like Argentina.” 

“An opossum eats 10,000 ticks per week,” Lou said. “Like M&M’s.”  

“Do opossums eat termites?” I said.  

“When we were in Albania,” Teri said, “the termites were so bad in this place we stayed that we could hear them in the next room eating the wood. It kept us from sleeping. Then one night we heard a crash, and we went to look and saw the dining room table had collapsed. They’d eaten the legs right out from under it.”   

Finn laughed and clapped. “In an Earthship, there are no termites,” he said.  

Luke said, “After we boarded a plane from Albania to New Zealand, a flight attendant came down the aisle with a spray bottle she held over everyone’s heads and sprayed us, without warning, without telling us what it was or why, which freaked us out. We covered our faces. We thought we were being gassed. Then afterward, like a genius, she got on the microphone and explained that she had just sprayed the plane to kill whatever we might be carrying on our clothes or shoes that could be invasive.”  

Maria swatted a mosquito. She said, “Please pass the vanilla extract.” She touched Finn’s forearm, I noticed, then offered her palm, into which he placed his vanilla extract.  

“Where are the bats when you need them?” Teri asked. 

“The northern long-ear is endangered,” Finn said. “Also, wind energy kills too many bats and birds. Also, bats only reproduce about one pup per year.” 

“Reproduce only,” I muttered, correcting his misplaced modifier. 

“Over 2,000 animal species vanish each day,” Finn said. “State birds are evacuating their states. The loons of Minnesota. Purple finches of New Hampshire. Brown thrashers of Georgia.” 

“It’s so hot in Qatar, they’re air-conditioning the outdoors,” Teri said.  

“Do bats eat ticks?” I said. 

“The ruffed grouse of Pennsylvania,” Finn continued. “The goldfinch of New Jersey.”

“We had a bat in our bedroom last week,” Maria said.

“There are three billion fewer birds than fifty years ago,” Finn said.  

“He killed it,” Maria said, pointing at me.  

“I tried to shoo it out with a box lid,” I said. “I didn’t want to kill it. Last week, I freed a bat from a mousetrap.”  

Maria gave me a horrified look. Everyone else looked too, awaiting an explanation.  

“I found it like that,” I said, then explained how its wing had gotten caught in the trap I’d placed on a basement ledge, how it had fallen to the ground, trap and all, so I scooped it up with a dustpan and carried it outside, opened the spring with a screwdriver, then watched the bat scuttle away. Maybe a stronger man could have killed it so it wouldn’t die a more painful death from starvation, but I couldn’t do it. I gave it a sporting chance.  

“I released it,” I said. 

Everyone looked at me like suddenly I was a bigger party pooper than Finn.  

“You can get traps that won’t hurt mice,” Luke said. “Then take them out at dusk and toss them in a thick patch of grass for owls to feed on.” 

Another pause. Finn looked into the darkening sky, suddenly somber, as if he were about to pray, or say something profound. Maria looked at the same spot as if she were seeing what he was seeing. I finished another beer. 

“I would like to see one more eclipse,” Finn said. Then he talked of how wonderful it had been the previous August when he’d met Teri, Luke, and Lou in Nebraska so they could experience two minutes and forty-two seconds of totality. So beautiful, he said. Which made me jealous. Why hadn’t we been invited?   

“It was like a sunset turned inside out,” Finn said.   

“Major chills,” Teri said.  

“Like we ingested dawn,” Finn said.  

“This old guy in a long beard and black robe kept running around yelling, ‘The Messiah’s here, the Messiah’s here,’” Luke said.   

“Did you film it?” Maria said.  

“No,” Teri said. “But everyone else did. Later, we saw a clip with our faces on it. The filmmaker panned around to capture the faces looking at the eclipse, and there we were. We saw our faces like we’d never seen them before. It was weird.”

“I doubt I’ll be alive to see the next one,” Finn said.  

“Jesus H. Christ,” I blurted. I had heard enough. “What a fucking buzzkill,” I said. “You make me feel like pouring gasoline on myself and lighting a match. Remind me in a few months to invite you over so you can tell our child that he shouldn’t bother leaving the crib.” 

“She,” Maria said, and giggled, trying to cut the tension.  

Teri said, “Finn, would you be comfortable sharing your news? 

“I have pancreatic cancer,” he said. “Stage 4.5 or something.” He looked at me and laughed a lips-closed kind of laugh. “I might miss the next eclipse,” he said. “But also the apocalypse. Win some, lose some. But, please, no pity. Death and I are friends.”  

His face was pale, I noticed then. Dark rings around his eyes. Thinner than I remembered. Pointy cheek bones. A skeleton with acne scars. Maria studied his face more closely too, in a way that suggested (or so it seemed) that he was more attractive now. Which I almost understood. Of course, I felt like shit. Maria looked at me like I should feel worse. 

I stood. I said, “I’m sorry, Finn. That was—I’m sorry.”  

“No pity,” he said. “Let us act toward each other as if all of us are dying soon. Let us surrender to the wonder that is the incomprehensible mystery of deep time.”  

No one said anything. We wanted to honor the pause.  

“A toast,” I said. I tried to think of words. “To friends,” I said. “Especially Lou, who has time to save us. No pressure.” I went to clink my beer against Lou’s water, but he was gone.  

“Where is Lou?” Teri said.  

We scanned the yard. It was nearly dark now, dark enough for the alley light to have come on. Teri went inside and came back out, said, “Nope.”  

“I’ll check the sinkhole,” Luke said calmly.   

When he said this, I broke into a run. It was my sinkhole. I felt responsible. I got there quickly, but it was empty. The others arrived, and we stood on its periphery, hands on hips.   

“The city is sinking,” Finn said. “Like Venice.” 

We looked up and down the street. Luke called for him, loudly. 

“I’m going back,” Teri said.  

Everyone followed. It was a small backyard, fenced, twenty-five yards of space between house and garage. The garage door was cracked, so I moved that way. As soon as I did, I heard piano music. Something familiar and energetic.  

“Lou found my piano,” I said.  

Everyone looked toward the music.  

“He’s taking lessons,” Teri said.  

I explained how I’d found it two months ago at the end of a driveway, an old upright. I’d hit a few chords, and an old man ventured out, said he’d tried to sell it in his yard sale the day before, marked it down from $100 to $50 to $25 to $10, then put it on the curb with a “free” sign attached. It had belonged to his dead wife, and he was preparing to move into assisted living. I offered him twenty bucks, but he waved it off. I called Two Men and a Truck—one man with a philosophy degree, the other with a history degree—and they delivered the piano to my house, carried it up the street around the sinkhole and into the garage. I hated the idea of it going to a landfill. I plunked away all night that first night beneath a single bulb, then stored gas cans on it.  

“Jetsam,” Finn said.   

It was a song anyone should recognize—the Vince Guaraldi “Linus and Lucy” tune from the Charlie Brown Christmas show, the frenetic left hand doing its bass roll for a couple measures before the right hand kicks in with that manic melody that makes every stiff corpse feel like dancing.  

“It’s out of tune,” Finn said.   

“The piano has been drinking,” I gargled, channeling Tom Waits.  

“He played this at his recital last month,” Teri said.  

“Charles Schultz was manic-depressive,” Finn said. 

“He got a standing ovation,” Luke said.  

Maria threw her head from side to side and jogged in place, flapping her arms like Lucy, drunk on the music. I danced in a circle, high-stepping, and soon enough everyone was doing a silly dance. What would a passing group of aliens think, observing this gang of humans moving like this on a hot August night as if we were shaking off insects? Maria danced in front of Finn, encouraging him to move, which he began to do, clumsily, without self-consciousness. It may have been his first time dancing. When Lou finished, Finn stepped to the garage.  

“Once more, maestro!” he yelled. “Molto allegro!” 

Lou obeyed, and we danced again, circling Finn. I didn’t care how silly I looked. I wasn’t drunk, but it felt like it. Some electric charge hovered and bounced between bodies, and I got lost in the music Lou was making. Maria lifted her arms over her head, and Finn put his hands on her stomach as if to support the bouncing baby. I told myself that I would tell her the following morning how beautiful she looked, how her eyes shined, how the smile Finn returned to her was also oddly beautiful. The air around us turned cool. It was darker now, the stars more visible, even with the alley light. I didn’t want the night to end.  

When Lou finished, he came out, and we all made a fuss over him.  

“It’s out of tune,” he said, and we all laughed loudly.  

In a few minutes, before anyone had time to sit again, Luke said they should call it a night. They needed to get up super-early and drive their rental car to Chicago and catch their plane to Hawaii.  

Teri said, “Finn, where are you staying?” She explained that he had sold his home and given away everything he owned, keeping only whatever essentials fit in his backpack.  

“Stay here,” I said. “If you’d like to, I mean. We have a foldout couch.”  

“He can’t do air-conditioning,” Maria reminded me, a little too harshly. “You can have our backyard though, if you’d like,” she said. 

“I prefer the riverside,” he said. “There is a community there who brag about their waterfront property. But tonight? Yes, I am tired and I will sleep in your yard.” 

“Okay,” I said. “Sure.”   

“Can we get you anything?” Maria said.  

“No, please. I have everything.” He pointed to his backpack and the sleeping bag tied to it. Luke, Teri, and Lou took a moment telling Finn goodnight. Luke invited him to Hawaii, and I was not jealous. Maria kissed him on the cheek, and I didn’t mind.  

We showed Luke, Teri, and Lou to their rooms and went to bed. Maria went to sleep quickly, and except for a brief dream in which our bed turned into a raft that floated down flooded streets, I didn’t sleep. I rehashed all the conversations of the evening, wanting to remember every detail. I thought about the life of our child to come, she who would enter the world in another month. I tried to imagine myself evolving into an adult like Luke, Teri, and even Finn, courageous people who were more alive than I.  

By 5:30 a.m., the birds were up—the same loud birds that just the day before I’d found annoying—so I gave up on sleep and went downstairs. I looked out front for Luke’s rental car and saw that it was gone. I didn’t believe I hadn’t heard them leave based on how lightly I thought I’d been sleeping. It occurred to me that I might never see them again. I looked out back for Finn, thinking I would take him a cup of coffee, but he too was gone. He’d left no trace of having been there at all. I opened a window, felt the soft summer morning, and sat awhile, still without coffee, staring into the backyard full of tiki torches and coolers and fans. I stared at the space where we had danced to Lou’s piano. The empty yard was unsettling. I felt an urge to return to our bedroom, to look in on Maria to make certain she was there. Such silly thoughts I had while I stood so still in the middle of the kitchen. I stayed there awhile longer, staring out the window. I wanted to remember that silence and take it with me everywhere.