She has never lived anywhere but in a gerbil cage. She has never had money. Her father was a bag-eyed jazz musician—dead in middle age—her mother a schoolteacher who supported them all. Madeleine had diligently sidestepped adulthood in her parents’ lopsided brownstone on Charles Street, among the aging socialists and drag queens. Before meeting David, she had acquired the habits of every cynical city girl: shutting down dirty bars, flattering scrawny musicians, waking Sundays on ripped Naugahyde couches.
Tonight, he is out in the woods, building a tree house for their daughter who is due in a month. Although she will not use it for years, he has thrown himself into the project as if on a deadline. Each evening, when he comes home from work, he puts on old jeans, disappears into the garage, and cuts lumber with a power saw. Madeleine has agreed not to visit the tree house until it is finished. She watches David carry wooden planks over the grass to the woods, the late-summer sun casting his long shadow before him. His hands have become splintered and raw, his forearms welted from the ash tree he has selected.
This is his nature, she knows, this kind of focused work ethic. He lugs home stacks of library books about tree house architecture. At night, he comes into the house with the look of an outdoorsman, in soiled plaid shirts and patch-kneed jeans. Perhaps he has reverted to a forgotten self, his childhood on the farm, when he’d spent whole days in the woods hunting for turtle shells, mouse skulls, snake skins. He works on the tree house later and later each night, until he is coming indoors well after dark. Madeleine does not want to complain. She wants him to feel free in his life with her. For years he has lived as an independent man—but now, with parenthood advancing upon him, perhaps he feels invisible ropes tightening. She wants to show that she understands. He can build a tree house if he wants to.
Alone, she watches the evening news, its galloping sound track bridging one bleak segment to the next. Beyond the glass door, she sees David cross slowly over the grass, his figure becoming part of the deepening evening. At last, his silhouette melts into the dark line of trees. The glass door frames a phantasmagoric reflection of the room’s interior, of Madeleine’s own bulging form. The news anchor begins a dirge about home foreclosures. There is talk of a stimulus package. People will be given old-fashioned things to do with their hands. Madeleine herself is fabulously idle, having finally quit her series of temp jobs. This had been David’s idea. He’d encouraged her to enjoy her pregnancy, to not feel ashamed for staying home with their child if that was what she wanted to do.
She is not accustomed to so much aloneness. Nothing in her old life had ever approached this depth of quiet, this vacuum of night. She imagines animals in the woods surrounding the house, emerging when the sun sets to carry on their dark pursuits. She does not like to think of David out there, but restrains herself from going to retrieve him, from begging him to come inside and sit with her. She does not want to be that kind of woman.
At last, after she has gone to bed, she hears the sliding door. Moments later, he is with her beneath the blanket, whispering apologies. There is a chill in his touch, a suggestion of autumn. He slides up against her spine and a coil loosens inside her. What extraordinary luck, after all: this beautiful place, this wonderful man. At last, a real house with a mailbox and garden hose. A desirable suburb in a sterling school district, not too far from the city. A kind, intelligent husband with a lucrative career and domestic leanings. The child inside her settles itself, and she falls into dreamless sleep.
Over the summer weeks that follow, David returns from work earlier in the afternoon. “Light day,” he tells her, and disappears into the garage. He rushes into the trees with his planks. He comes in only to eat whatever dinner she has made, then goes back out until dark. One night, he does not come in for dinner at all, and Madeleine finds herself crying over turkey tetrazzini. Finally, she puts the food away and climbs into bed in her clothes. After midnight, she hears the sliding glass door. “I’m so sorry,” he tells her in bed. “Sometimes I just lose track of time out there.” Madeleine turns over, too spent to protest, and allows him to put an arm around her. “I know you’re tired of this, but I’m almost done building, I promise. I can’t wait to show it to you.”
She has been sleeping badly, staring through the skylight in the bedroom ceiling, convinced she can see the stars move. David has become progressively more restless at night, twitching his legs like a cricket, muttering garbled syllables. She listens closely, but is unable to decipher any meaning. Tonight, his vague murmurs become louder, insistent. He repeats a strange phrase that sounds like “Up a cat I kill.” His face tightens and he jerks upright, eyes open. A cold current passes through Madeleine’s veins, and she turns on the bedside lamp. David stares at her for a moment without recognition. She rubs his arm tentatively.
“It’s okay, honey. You were just dreaming.”
He gazes for another blank moment, until something in his eyes folds inward and he softens into himself again. He shakes his head. “I’m sorry.”