On smaller roads, the nearness of human habitations provides them with the relief of conversational fodder, largely on the subject of Christmas lights. How charming the lights in that hedge, or the raindrop animations in that tree; how garish the dreadful competitive display on that row of former council houses. How surely there are fewer visible Christmas trees in windows every year, as though more and more people are counting their pennies, giving up decoration, giving in to the gloom. It is mostly Jules talking; Logan is simply agreeing. He weighs the gaps between his responses, ensuring his murmurs of assent are both warmly toned and sufficiently regular for his reticence not to be mistaken for a symptom of morose contemplation. Or perhaps it’s just that more and more people have other religions, Jules says. Or no religion. Not everyone celebrates Christmas, do they?
Once they are home, the awkwardness of going to bed begins to loom. It feels too soon to sleep together. They are strangers again and must get to know each other, flirt and date for a time before allowing each other the sight or touch of naked skin. Except they are too wary to flirt, too hurt to date. So they stay downstairs awake, though both are tired, and prepare a light supper side by side, though neither is hungry. Logan senses his wife’s words, only seconds after they are uttered, draining through a grating and disappearing from his awareness, as if washed into the sewer of the past; not for him to process. The medication, he supposes. He stays focused on the bright present; her hands spooning his coffee into the coffee-maker, her waist in that sweet blue dress cinched by a bout of food poisoning at her sister’s. Now she is polishing a teaspoon and putting it back in the drawer and he says, I’m very glad you’re back.
I’m glad you’re back too, she says, and drops the tea towel to put her arms around him, very lightly, resting her head on his chest. He wonders if he is back, really. Or whether he seems a different Logan altogether, as Tom seemed a different Tom. If she has noticed this, she isn’t letting on.
She wants him to be back, so he is back. She holds him for almost a minute, to be sure of it. But holds him very lightly, so he won’t vanish.
Come on upstairs, she says, leading him by the hand. But by the time they reach the bedroom door she has let go of him, and undresses herself matter-of-factly, turned away, as if for a doctor. And of course, I am a doctor, he thinks, but the thought is like a dead vole at the roadside. He follows her lead and undresses more carefully than usual; folding things onto chairs, dropping things into the linen basket, leaving nothing on the floor but the forlorn twins of his shoes.