When the little pretty girls are here, he likes it. Their voices are like birds, chirping and fast. He can’t understand most of the words they say, but sometimes it clicks. Grampy. Nana. Upstairs. Cookies. These he knows. They run to him and kiss him and are gone, like the . . . the . . . the flower-bugs that float and drift. Flutter-bugs. Flutter-byes. Something like that. He knows he is close with the word, and also wrong with the word.

John also knows his wife doesn’t love him anymore. She is important in some way, and she doesn’t like him very much, but she isn’t unkind. John tries to remember why she doesn’t love him, but he can’t remember or understand why that would be.

Barb. Barb. He wants to talk to his Barb. When he tries to make his mouth say her name, he only hears a wheezy old man—his now-self—making horrible sounds, so he stops trying. A bossy lady comes to see him and tries to get him to talk, but those sounds are too awful. Sometimes, if he moves his mouth too much, he drools, and this makes him feel small and stupid.

Barb.

Barb.

She looked so pretty on their wedding day, back in the long-ago.

They lived in a little red house in the long-ago. Not this house. Things were better there, but then there was something very sad, and she was different. Closed and locked. Case closed.

Case closed. Those words mean something to him, but he’s not sure why.

Barb lives here now. In his grandfather’s house. It’s her house now, not his. Not theirs.

Barb wanted something very much in the long-ago. Was it this house? No. But something to do with this house. A boat? No, but almost a boat, with the same starting sound, that’s what the bossy lady says when she tries to make him talk. The starting sound. Boat. Bank. Baby.

Baby. She wanted a baby. So did he. Lots of them. He wanted four, because four was a nice number, many but not too many. But they couldn’t find the baby. No, not find. Get the baby. No, not that, either. They couldn’t buy the baby?

Have the baby. They couldn’t have a baby, and Barb was pretending to be happy, but she wasn’t. She would have people over and make meals and light candles and pretend-smile, and he hated it. The . . . untruth of it. She would do those things and then he’d hear her crying in the bathroom, but she wouldn’t talk to him. Fine. Fine. That was a word he knew was a lie when Barb said it.

She had . . . pretended, pretended happiness, and did things with people John barely knew, and filled their days with people and work and . . . and . . . and there were always things in the way, her things, her projects and papers, and he just wanted it to be the two of them, like the time in the little red house, when home was home, not a place to do so much. Always, there were the new people who thought Barb was fine, fine.