Tomorrow
It was morning, meaning Rob made his way to the kitchen to sit and make coffee and wait for the inevitable light to slip up across the window and reveal the room.
Cars rushed by, and, from down the street, a garbage lid crashed and then crashed again.
Inside, the house was still.
When the phone rang, their machine, the one she’d bought years back, it announced the calling number, all 10 digits, in a loud voice, a woman’s voice, and then it announced the numbers again before offering a long pause and a loud click, and there was no message, though the phone rang again right away, and Rob took himself to the farthest room of the house, so he wouldn’t have to hear.
Rob knew anything important would come through the mailman, who still stuffed the box with catalogs and fliers and credit card applications and who, the day before, or a few days, rang the bell and then rang again and knocked and knocked and knocked, as if, he knew, the mailman did, that someone was home, sitting out of the line of sight, hiding from the mailman, who was only trying to do his job, to deliver something, it turned out, that couldn’t be left without a signature, a signature from Rob, who only wanted the mailman to go back down the steps and take himself away for another day when Rob would be ready to open the door and nod and receive whatever seemed so important.
A huddle of kids passed on their way to school, laughing, and then one boy on a scooter, and, after a while, a young mom pushing an empty stroller with one hand and with the other tugging at a little girl delighted at the whirligigs and tinkling mobiles and little statues of pigs and mushrooms and birds and frogs filling every corner of Rob’s garden; the mother was saying it wasn’t their yard to play in, and Rob tapped at the window and waved to say it was okay, it was.
When afternoon heat filled the house, Rob moved onto the back porch, because there was a small breeze there in the shade around his chair, and it was still too early in the day for neighbors to be home from work, waving, when they saw him, maybe wanting to mention the high grass on his lot or the leaves from last fall still blown up against his garage.
A flurry of small birds pecked through the grass.
Sun and shadow met across the floorboards of the porch.
Wind turned the leaves on the large maple, which they had planted as a sapling over the grave of their first dog.
A beech stood in the corner of the yard, also over a grave, as was the oak toward the side of the house, but Rob had asked the vet to cremate their last dog, whose ashes he kept next to the bed in a small, wooden box.
It had felt wrong not putting the old girl with the others, but the decision had come to Rob, in the moment, in the vet’s office, and he had chosen no digging and no tree and no final words; he took, instead, the doctor’s suggestion and signed what needed signing and paid in advance and, in a week, took the remains home and held them in his lap until he felt he could call the kids and let them know without crying.
Rob heard hammering; the old guy on the next block was at work on his house, on siding that needed to be replaced or new porch railings or painting touch-ups here, there, and everywhere or emptying gutters or washing windows or spraying screens, always something, every day, and now that the old guy’s wife was gone, he tended her gardens, too, the beds of tulips and the zinnia and the daisies and dahlias, the marigolds, and Rob knew without seeing that the inside of the man’s house was tidy and ordered; and it made Rob think of the things he didn’t want to do, to work on his house, inside or out, or mow the lawn or weed flower beds or between the arborvitae along the edges of his property; he didn’t want to vacuum or dust or wipe the dirt and debris off the fraying deck chairs he sat in on days like this one, and the thought of building something out of wood, which he had in the past, or piecing together a puzzle, which he hadn’t, or going for a walk or even just driving a few blocks to be served a hamburger, he didn’t want any of it.
Later, the sun drove Rob from the back porch to the front, where he watched his neighbors arrive home from work, one by one, car by car, to pull into garages or park in their driveways or on the street, some alone, some with spouses, and others with kids hauling backpacks and lunch boxes and hard instrument cases, or at the one house the next block up, the kids were already home, in the driveway, shooting baskets and moving first for one car and one parent and then a second, until the day felt too long done for dinner, but still his neighbors drifted home, relieved, it seemed, or distracted, or even exhausted as they hauled plastic bags from the grocery store or just a briefcase or purse, until the one last person, the neighbor who was always last, delivered herself home in the smallest car, white and in need of a wash, and popped out, in her usual scrubs top and bottom and practically danced up to the front door, whose window, like the front windows on the house, glowed yellow and opened onto more light and a family Rob knew was already home, to whom the woman shouted something, smiling and smiling, as glad to be home, maybe, as Rob was glad for her.
Rob turned the TV on in the living room and the radio on in the kitchen and the ceiling fans through the house and found some leftovers, which he warmed and ate at the counter, before drifting back and forth between the living room and dining room over the hardwoods gritty with dust, until, eventually, he lowered himself into the sofa and checked his cell, where the kids had texted, like they did, to hope he was having a good day, and that all was well, which he sent right back, thinking, though, that their days should be more than good and that their lives be better than well.
A friend had told Rob a life undergoes transformation every 28 years, and if he, himself, wasn’t living proof, the friend had said, before he wasn’t living at all anymore, still more than a dozen years from his third transformation, Rob thought, giving into the late hour and locking the front door and back and lowering the blinds and shutting off the TV, the lights, and checking the burners on the stove, even though he hadn’t used them, before heading up the stairs and looking in on all the empty rooms, lights on briefly and then off, before the other usual things, washing his face and brushing his teeth and putting on sweatpants that passed these days for pajamas and laying down in bed, in the almost total quiet of the night, one bedside lamp still lit with a dim bulb, waiting for what would pass as sleep, wondering at the difference between change and the sudden end of things.
• • •
Matthew Roberson is the author of four novels—1998.6, Impotent, List, and the recently published campus novel Interim. He also edited the collection Musing the Mosaic: Approaches to Ronald Sukenick. His short fiction has appeared in Fourteen Hills, Fiction International, Clackamas Literary Review, Western Humanities Review, Notre Dame Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and others. He lives and teaches in central Michigan.