One night, I couldn’t lie still a second longer. The hum was peeling my skin like a potato. I imagined Paul waking up to find just one long skin-curl beside him. I slipped out of bed and went for a walk. It was a clear night. The hum was the only sound. I had never heard it so intensely. I walked with no particular destination in mind, and yet it felt purposeful. Was I in a dissociative state? It’s quite probable. I began imagining I was in a movie. In the movie, I got to the end of the street, rounded the corner, and I saw it. A tall, dark shadow, like a scar on the night. The cell tower. A shiver ricocheted through me. I stared at the tower for a long while, and then started walking towards it. As I walked towards it, I asked it, in my mind: Is it you? Are you doing this to me? I stopped at the curb, bent down, picked up a palm-sized stone—and chucked it at the tower. At first I missed, so I picked up two more stones, and I threw one, then the other, and the third one hit the tower bang on, and made a loud, metallic clang. It was shockingly loud. It surprised me. I mean, I was surprised at myself—a grown woman, a high school teacher, a mother—throwing stones at a tower like some preteen neighbourhood delinquent. But I think I was most surprised by the tangibility of everything. The tower was really there. It existed. And my body existed. They weren’t just things that I had also imagined.

3

PAUL’S GOODWILL AND PATIENCE RAN OUT. AFTER THE first month, he moved me into the guest room, saying he couldn’t afford nights of insomnia either, which was fair enough, though it still felt a bit like I was being put in some kind of quarantine, or asylum. Paul called the guest room The Gym, because that’s where his exercise equipment was; whereas a more appropriate name would have been The Storage Closet, or perhaps The Room of Failed Resolution. It had bare white walls that we never bothered decorating. Needless to say, it didn’t help my sleep.

After two months, I had to make a decision whether to return to work or go on extended disability, which would have seen a major reduction in my pay—something we really couldn’t afford. So I returned to class, no more rested than before, still hearing the noise, but much better at pretending that I didn’t.