Perfect Little World



Now, the rumor was that Benjamin and Alyssa were having problems with their marriage. One night, Link had gone to the makeshift studio that he’d set up in one of the rooms in Main 2 to work on some music, when he noticed a light on in one of the empty rooms adjacent to the studio. He knocked and Benjamin sheepishly opened the door, revealing a sleeping bag, a pillow, some potato chips, and a book. “Trouble in paradise,” Benjamin had said, shrugging.

Link had stayed up most of the night talking to Benjamin, but he told Julie about it the next morning, who had told David and Susan, and then it spread around the complex. Link and Julie were closest to Alyssa and Benjamin, spent the most time hanging out by virtue of age and interests, and they admitted to the other parents, who now talked of the matter whenever Benjamin and Alyssa (and Dr. Grind) were out of earshot, that Benjamin sometimes disappeared when Alyssa needed help, always watching a movie or checking the Internet, barely listening as she recounted her day.

“But he doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong,” Link offered, and Ellen rolled her eyes and said, “Anytime a man says that they don’t think they’ve done anything wrong, they’ve definitely done something wrong, but I also believe that they don’t think that they have. You guys are so stupid.”

“Well, Alyssa kicked him out and said he has to straighten up, be a part of this family, or, I guess, their family, or she doesn’t want to be with him.”

“Who would leave the complex?” Izzy asked.

“Both?” Ellen offered, and then Link shook his head and said, “Probably Benjamin.”

“We should tell Dr. Grind,” Kenny said.

“Ben would be mortified,” Link said, shaking his head.

“We all have to see a therapist anyway,” Julie then said. “Why not a marriage counselor?”

At dinner, Benjamin and Alyssa would sit at opposite sides of the table, and Izzy would frequently look at Dr. Grind to see if he had any inkling, but he merely smiled in that soft, patient way, focusing mostly on the children. At the end of the night, when the parents went their separate ways back to their houses, Izzy would watch from her window until Benjamin, twenty or thirty minutes later, would slip out of the house he shared with Alyssa and stroll toward Main 2. She had thought to buy some magazines and make some cookies to leave by the room where he now slept, but worried that would be creepy. She would climb into bed, staring at the ceiling, and imagine what Benjamin was doing, so far from everyone else, somehow separate from the actual family, and then she wondered for the millionth time if this was how the rest of the complex felt about her, watching her walk into her own house each night, alone. For the entirety of the trial separation, or whatever the Infinite Family might call it, Izzy slept fitfully, her dreams uneasy.


“Dr. Grind knows,” Link said a month later, while a group of parents were playing cards in the TV room.

Carmen immediately looked at Kenny and said, “You told him, didn’t you? Even after I told you not to.”

Kenny shook his head, then frowned. “Well, no, not exactly. I mean, I told him about it, but he already knew. He said Alyssa had come to him immediately, telling him that she and Benjamin were having problems and she wasn’t sure what was going to happen.”

“And?” Carmen asked.

Link then interjected, “Benjamin told me that Dr. Grind said today that they would both stay in the Infinite Family, that the project would continue and would want both of them to stay. He said that if the two of them decided to separate, Dr. Grind would open up one of the empty apartments in Main 1, and Benjamin could stay there. Ben said that he wanted to stay in the room in Main 2 for now, because it made everything feel less permanent.”

“I’m curious,” Julie said, “whether there’s anything we could do that would make Dr. Grind get angry with us. Would he ever kick any of us out?”

“If we killed somebody else in the family,” Kenny offered, his facial expression one of apology for even mentioning it.

“Not out of the realm of possibility,” Link admitted, “come year five or six.”

“I think we’re safe,” Paul said, who was on the sofa, watching a football game. The others turned toward him, not realizing that he had been listening. “Dr. Grind needs us just as much as we need him,” he continued. “Maybe more.”

Izzy wondered if this was true, but couldn’t make her brain tabulate the facts in a way that made sense. She would take it on faith that this was true, hoping that she never had reason to find out.

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