The Space Between Us

Daniel said he had slept beside her all night, but the couch remembered differently.

It was six fourteen in the morning, though the kitchen clock said two seventeen, as it had for almost three years. Daniel had offered to replace it, but Mara liked the ridiculous plastic cat and insisted she didn’t need to know the time every second of the day. This was technically true, though she checked the microwave clock almost compulsively.

“Daniel.”

“Hmm?”

“Did you sleep here last night?”

He turned from the counter with the coffee scoop suspended over the machine.

Daniel was fifty-three and still handsome in the irritatingly accidental way of men who had never learned what moisturizer was. His hair had gone silver first at the temples and then, seemingly out of laziness, stopped. He had the long torso of someone who looked thinner dressed than undressed, a softening stomach, and a small white scar beside his mouth from falling off a bicycle when he was nine. Mara knew the story because she’d heard it eleven times. Daniel claimed he’d told it twice.

“Where?” he asked.

“The couch.”

“No.”

She pointed toward the living room. One cushion was compressed, and the blue throw lay twisted on the floor as if someone had kicked free of it during the night.

Daniel followed her gaze. “I watched the game.”

“Until morning?”

“No. I came to bed.”

“You weren’t there.”

His face changed, though only slightly: the tightening beside his nose, the almost invisible exhale, his tongue briefly pressing against the inside of his cheek. Mara had become expert at detecting these things.

“Mara.”

“What?”

“I slept next to you.”

She laughed, though nothing was funny. “Okay.”

Daniel poured water into the coffee maker, and that was how most of their arguments ended now—with okay, a remarkably useful little word that could mean you’re right, you’re lying, or I’m too tired to continue. Occasionally, Mara suspected it meant I hate you a little right now, though neither of them had ever admitted to that one.

⸻

Mara was forty-nine and small enough that strangers sometimes described her as delicate, which amused anyone who knew her. She carried grocery bags up the stairs four at a time, killed spiders with her bare hand, and had once driven fourteen hours through a snowstorm because her sister called crying.

She only looked breakable.

At five foot two, she had narrow shoulders and pale skin that revealed nearly every emotion before she’d decided whether she wanted anyone to see it. Her hair was the pale brown of beach grass in November, and her green eyes were disproportionately large for her face, something Daniel had once said made her look like “a doe who’d wandered into a conversation and immediately had concerns.”

She’d laughed for ten minutes.

That had been twelve years ago, and Mara couldn’t remember the last time he’d made her laugh that hard. She could, however, remember the last time he’d tried.

Tuesday.

He’d come out of the bathroom wearing nothing but black boxer briefs, planted both hands behind his head and begun rotating his hips with the confidence of a man who had apparently mistaken their bedroom for a nightclub.

“Special delivery.”

Mara was sitting on the edge of the bed folding towels. She looked up to find Daniel advancing toward her in what could only generously be described as a dance: knees bent, lips pursed, one hand traveling dramatically down his chest.

Years ago, she would have grabbed him.

Now she sat there holding a washcloth.

“Daniel.”

“What?”

“I’m folding laundry.”

“That’s why I’m trying to spice it up.”

He turned and shook his backside at her.

Something inside Mara sank. Here was her husband being ridiculous, trying to make her laugh, comfortable enough after twelve years to dance half naked through their bedroom. Wasn’t this intimacy? Wasn’t this exactly the kind of silliness couples lost somewhere along the way and then spent years wishing they could get back?

She made herself smile.

Daniel stopped. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re doing the face.”

“What face?”

“That face.”

“I don’t have a face.”

“Everyone has a face, Mara.”

That got her. She laughed despite herself, and Daniel grinned as though he’d won something. He bent, kissed her forehead, and headed downstairs.

Mara remained on the bed with the washcloth folded between her hands.

She wanted him to come back, but not dancing this time. She wanted him to stand between her knees and touch her face. She wanted him to look at her long enough for her to see something change in his expression simply because she was there.

She wanted him to want her.

It sounded pathetic inside her own head, so she didn’t say it anywhere else.

⸻

On Thursday, Daniel talked to his daughter for two hours and forty-seven minutes. Mara knew because the microwave clock said 6:03 when the phone rang and 8:50 when he finally came inside.

She hadn’t meant to keep track. She had simply reheated dinner twice.

His daughter was going through something with her boyfriend. Mara didn’t know exactly what, and she hadn’t asked. Daniel had taken the call onto the back porch, where he paced beneath the string lights with one hand tucked into his pocket. Through the kitchen window, Mara watched him laugh, listen, then talk for a while before listening again. At one point he sat on the step with his elbows on his knees, his entire body turned toward the voice coming through the phone.

Present.

That was the word that came to her.

Mara hated herself a little for noticing. His daughter needed him, and of course she did. Mara loved that about Daniel. He was a good father.

That wasn’t the problem.

The problem was that watching him reminded Mara that he still knew how to listen to someone for two hours and forty-seven minutes.

When he came inside, he seemed to have collapsed inward somehow. His broad shoulders sagged beneath his T-shirt, and he dragged one hand over his face before rubbing at the red grooves his glasses had left beside his nose. There were damp crescents beneath his arms and a heaviness around his eyes that hadn’t been there when he’d stepped outside. He stood with one hand still on the doorknob, staring into the kitchen as though he’d forgotten why he’d entered.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah. Boyfriend stuff.”

“Poor thing.”

“She’ll be all right.”

He opened the refrigerator and stood in its blue-white light, staring past the milk and mustard as though the thing he wanted might eventually announce itself.

Mara watched his back. “I missed you tonight.”

Daniel turned, and she immediately regretted saying it—not because it wasn’t true, but because she recognized the pause while he tried to determine what answer was required.

“I’m right here.”

“I know.”

He took out a beer.

“I just mean maybe we could spend a little time together.”

“We’ve been together all day.”

There it was. Not cruel, and not inaccurate. They’d gone to Costco, eaten sandwiches in the car afterward, and watched forty minutes of a documentary before Mara fell asleep.

“That’s not really what I mean.”

Daniel looked at the beer, then put it back and closed the refrigerator. “Okay.”

He crossed the kitchen and wrapped his arms around her. Mara rested her cheek against his chest, feeling his warmth through the thin cotton of his shirt. He smelled like soap and the cool September air that had followed him inside. For several seconds neither moved, and Mara felt herself beginning to soften.

Then Daniel kissed the top of her head.

“Better?”

The word ruined it.

She stepped away. “Sure.”

Daniel stared at her. “What did I do?”

“Nothing.”

“I hugged you.”

“I know.”

“You asked me to.”

“I know.”

“And now you’re upset.”

“I’m not upset.”

“Mara.”

“What?”

“Sometimes I honestly don’t know what you want from me.”

She almost told him.

I want you to want to hug me.

But even inside her own head it sounded impossible, like a test whose answer Daniel could only know after he’d failed it. How could he spontaneously give her something she’d just asked for without the gesture becoming proof he’d done it only because she’d asked?

For a moment she hated that he was right.

Then she hated even more that he might not be. “I’m tired,” she said.

Daniel’s shoulders dropped a fraction. “Me too.”

They went to bed at eleven twenty and settled onto their usual sides, Mara on the left and Daniel on the right, with twenty inches of untouched mattress between them.

At 1:12, Mara woke and found Daniel asleep on his back.

At 2:46, he was facing the wall.

At 4:07, she reached across the bed. His side was empty.

⸻

In the morning, Daniel insisted he’d never left.

“I woke up and you weren’t there.”

“Maybe I went to the bathroom.”

“The light wasn’t on.”

“Maybe I didn’t turn it on.”

“You always turn it on.”

Daniel stared at her over his coffee. “Do I?”

“Yes.”

“Every time?”

The certainty in her answer stalled somewhere behind her teeth. How would she know what he did every time unless she was awake to see it?

Daniel rubbed both hands over his face. “I don’t want to fight before work.”

“Neither do I.”

“Then can we not?”

“Okay.”

He carried his coffee toward the doorway, then stopped. “For what it’s worth, I did reach for you last night.”

“When?”

“When we went to bed.”

“You were on your side.”

“You turned away from me.”

“I didn’t.”

A short laugh escaped him, but there was no humor in it. “Mara, I put my hand on your back.”

She searched his face for the small signs she knew so well. The tightening beside his nose wasn’t there.

“You pulled away,” he said.

“No.”

Daniel held her gaze. “Okay.”

The word sounded different in his mouth now.

Then he left.

⸻

That afternoon, Mara found a bruise on her hip. It was small and oval, almost exactly the size of Daniel’s thumb. Standing naked before the bathroom mirror, she pressed it gently and felt the dull tenderness beneath the skin.

She tried to remember bumping into the kitchen counter or the dresser. She tried not to think about Daniel’s hand on her back. Nothing came.

She didn’t mention it at dinner.

Daniel had made pasta and bought tulips, bright yellow ones opening toward the kitchen light.

“These are beautiful,” Mara said.

“I know you like them.”

Her hand stopped halfway to the vase. “I like white tulips.”

Daniel smiled as though she’d made a joke, then seemed to realize she hadn’t. “No. You like yellow.”

“I’ve never liked yellow flowers.”

“Are you serious?”

“I think I’d know what flowers I like.”

“I bought you these last spring.”

“They were white.”

Daniel stared at her before taking out his phone.

“Don’t,” Mara said.

“No, because this is exactly what I’m talking about.”

“What are you talking about?”

He scrolled until his thumb stopped, then turned the screen toward her.

There she was, standing in their kitchen eleven months earlier with an enormous bouquet of yellow tulips against her chest. She was smiling. Behind her sat the blue PARIS mug she’d broken that winter.

Mara took the phone. “I don’t remember this.”

“Well, it happened.”

She enlarged the photograph, studying her own face as if it belonged to someone she’d met once and should have remembered. Then something behind the woman caught her attention.

A photograph was attached to the refrigerator with a red magnet. Mara and Daniel stood on a beach, Daniel shirtless and sunburned, Mara wearing a red bathing suit.

She zoomed closer.

She had never owned a red bathing suit.

“Where was this?”

Daniel leaned over her shoulder. “Wildwood.”

“We’ve never been to Wildwood.”

He went still. “Yes, we have.”

“Our anniversary was in Cape May.”

“One year. The next year was Wildwood.”

“No.”

“Mara.”

“We’ve never been there.”

Daniel took the phone slowly from her hand. When he finally spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper.

“This is what it’s like for me.”

Mara looked up. “What?”

“Living with you.”

There was no anger on his face.

That would have been easier.

Daniel looked frightened.

⸻

That night, neither mentioned the photograph.

They sat at opposite ends of the couch while the television played to an audience of no one. Mara scrolled through her phone. Daniel scrolled through his. At 9:17, she realized neither had looked at the television in nearly twenty minutes.

She put her phone facedown. Daniel didn’t notice.

Mara studied him instead: the crease between his eyebrows, his lower lip moving slightly as he read, one bare foot propped against the coffee table.

This man knew how she took her coffee. He knew she hated wet socks and couldn’t sleep if the closet door was open. He knew the story of the scar beneath her chin and the name of the girl who’d tormented her in seventh grade.

He knew she liked yellow tulips, apparently.

“Daniel.” He looked up immediately.

Something about that hurt.

“Do you see me?”

His eyebrows drew together. “You’re sitting right there.”

“No. I mean, do you actually see me?”

Daniel set his phone down. “I don’t know how to answer questions like that.”

“I’m not trying to trap you.”

“I know you don’t think you are.”

She stood. “I’m going to bed.”

“Mara.”

She kept walking.

“Mara.”

When she turned, Daniel was still sitting on the couch. For one irrational second she expected him to look different, but he was simply Daniel—tired, sad, somehow older than he’d been that morning.

“I see you,” he said.

Mara swallowed. “Okay.”

His face crumpled almost imperceptibly. “See? You don’t believe me.”

“I want to.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“Jesus Christ.” He picked up his phone. And that was when Mara understood something terrible.

Perhaps Daniel had been reaching for her all along. Perhaps she had simply stopped recognizing the shape of his hands.

⸻

At 3:18 in the morning, Mara woke to an empty bed. She lay still, listening.

A floorboard creaked downstairs, followed several seconds later by another.

“Daniel?”

Nothing.

She crossed the hallway and descended the stairs. A light was on in the kitchen, though she couldn’t remember seeing it from the bedroom.

The living room was empty. The blue throw had been folded neatly over the couch.

In the kitchen, the refrigerator hummed. The yellow tulips stood on the table. Beside them lay a photograph. Not an image on Daniel’s phone. An actual photograph.

Mara picked it up.

Wildwood. Daniel beside her. The red bathing suit. Both of them laughing.

She turned it over. In her own handwriting:

Best anniversary yet. I hope we never forget this.

Her stomach tightened.

“Mara?”

She screamed.

Daniel stood behind her in his boxer shorts, hair flattened on one side from sleep. “What the hell?”

“You scared me.”

“You scared me. What are you doing?”

She held up the photograph. “Where did this come from?”

His face changed. “Where did you get that?”

“It was on the table.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“That was upstairs.”

“In your drawer?”

Daniel hesitated. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t want you to find it.”

A coldness moved through her. “Why wouldn’t you want me to find a picture of our anniversary?”

“I don’t want to do this at three in the morning.”

“Why was it hidden?”

“I didn’t say hidden.”

“You said you didn’t want me to find it.”

Daniel rubbed his forehead. “You’ve been forgetting things.”

Mara’s mouth went dry.

“No.”

“Conversations. Places we’ve gone. Things you’ve said.”

“You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Making me question myself.”

“I’m not making you question anything.”

“You tell me things happened that didn’t happen.”

“Because they happened.”

“According to you.”

Daniel’s jaw tightened. “Do you know what you said to me last night?”

“We barely spoke.”

“We talked for almost an hour.”

Mara stared at him. “No.”

His eyes filled. That frightened her more than anger would have.

“You asked me if I still found you beautiful.”

She stopped breathing. “I didn’t.”

“You did.”

“What did you say?”

“I told you yes.”

“Then what?”

“You cried.”

“No.”

“I held you.”

“No.”

“You fell asleep on my chest.”

Mara backed away. “No.”

Daniel reached toward her, and she flinched. His hand froze between them.

For several seconds they stood there, three feet apart, husband and wife, each looking at the other as though one of them might be dangerous.

Neither seemed to know which.

Then Daniel’s eyes dropped to the photograph.

“Mara.”

“What?”

“Turn it over.”

She did.

The back was blank.

Mara stared at the smooth white paper where her handwriting had been.

She looked at Daniel. For the first time that night, his confusion looked exactly like hers.

Neither spoke.

Behind them came a sound Mara hadn’t heard in years.

Tick.

She turned toward the plastic clock above the stove.

Tick.

The second hand moved.

Tick.

Daniel whispered her name.

Mara reached for his hand.

Or perhaps he reached for hers.

Later, neither of them would remember which.