“It’s so good to see you working on a new piece,” he says, walking in without knocking. “I have something for you. A noise-canceling device, like headphones, that you just slip over your ears. They block out all the background sounds that you’ve been hearing.”

Have I been hearing background sounds? I don’t remember saying anything to Jack about hearing sounds. Or to anyone else.

“Like what kinds of sounds?”

“All the old house stuff. Pipes, floorboards—the wood shifts on cold nights. I’ll show you how they work. They’ll help you concentrate and focus.”

He puts the headphones on over my ears and turns them on.

Silence. Not just quiet. It’s complete and utter silence.

I’ve never experienced this before, other than being underwater. Jack starts talking. I see his mouth moving, but I can’t hear anything.

He starts moving around the room, tapping the wall, but I don’t hear any of it. I’m under the ocean. Or in a dream. It’s peaceful, as if I’m hovering in space, but the removal of all sound is also strangely unnerving; to know there’s still communication out there directed at me but I’m not able to understand it. To know someone is walking down the hall, but not to hear it. No voices, no steps. No doors opening or closing. No wind through the branches of the trees that I used to love hearing in the park.

I’m not sure if I like it or hate it.

He takes the headphones off me.

“Amazing, right? Everyone else here already has a pair. They love them.”

“I think I’d prefer if I could hear music. I used to listen to music all the time.”

“These are meant more for cutting out distractions. Ruth uses hers when she’s working.”

“Working?”

“She translates different texts into English. Mostly from French. She does it for hours at a time.”

“Is there any way you could get some music for them? Please.”

“I can try, Penny.”

Jack walks over to the bed and starts stripping off the sheets.

As I watch him remove the cases from both pillows, it happens again, the way it did when I was getting my hair washed. A memory from childhood returns. Out of the blue. I’m surprised I remember it.

“Whenever my dad would change the sheets of my bed, which probably wasn’t all that often, but whenever he did, we had this little game,” I say. “I don’t know how it started. He would have all the dirty sheets stripped off the bed, lying on the floor in a messy ball, and I would get down under them. I would say to him that there’s a delivery for him. And he would then get down and start feeling around with his hands, saying, ‘I wonder what it could be,’ and I would be trying so hard to hold in my laughter. And then he would finally rip the sheets away and say, ‘Oh, it’s you.’ It was pure joy. Seeing his smiling face. His eyes focused on me. We did it over and over, and the feeling never changed. It was so simple.”