Never Odd or Even

Tick. Tick. Tock.

The second hand ticks forward.

He waits through two full turns, then another.

His shoulders drop.

She is sleeping on the sofa, curled on one side, knees tucked toward her chest. One sock missing. He catches it on the floor by the coffee table. He is tired of picking up after things that don’t stay. It feels like he is always arriving one step too late these days.

The clock ticks again.

He clicks rewind.

The refrigerator stops. The house silent, wrong, like something about to happen. She does not finish her breath, chest half raised, held.

He folds back into the chair. His armrests creak.

After a second, he clicks play.

She finishes her breath. And exhales through her nose, sharp.

The clock ticks.

***

The lamp is still on.

It sits on the side table, shade tipped slightly, cord pulled tight where it drops behind the couch. The light spreads over her face, the cushion below it, catching the edge of her cheek, the bridge of her nose.

He sees it.

Her eyes are closed. Her lashes stick together. One knee has been worked free of a blanket and lies against the arm of the sofa, foot bare, toes loose.

The switch is within reach. His hand pulls up an inch from the armrest before he pulls it back down.

He remains seated.

She shifts. She pushes her cheek deeper against the cushion. The fabric wrinkles under her weight and retains its shape. Her mouth unfurls slightly, then closes.

“Dad?” she says.

“It’s okay,” he says.

She frowns. Her brow pulls together for a moment, briefly as if the light has passed some inner line. Then it smoothes out. She turns her face slightly away.

Nothing changes.

***

The sock is still on the floor.

It sits half under the coffee table, heel turned inside out. There are a handful of crumbs nearby, pressed into the rug. He knows the crackers from earlier. She ate them straight out of the sleeve.

He leans forward and reaches for the sock.

For a few seconds he holds it out from his fingers. He looks down at her, and then at her, asleep under the lamp.

He sets the sock back down. Closer to the crumbs than it was.

He wipes one crumb back into the rug with the side of his hand. Then many.

From the couch she rumbles and makes a tiny noise..

He straightens in the chair, and crosses his hands together.

The sock remains where he left it.

The crumbs remain where they were.

The room goes quiet.

***

She rumbles again.

Her arm slides off the cushion and hangs there, fingers grazing the rug. One fingertip rubs over a crumb. It rolls and stops.

“Dad?”

He does not answer.

His fingers curl, then unclasp. He pulls his hand up toward himself, slow, surveying the space around him as if to measure the size of the room

“Dad,” she says again.

He watches her mouth move around the word. The lamp catches the sheen of moistness on her bottom lip.

“Yes,” he says.

She frowns. Her eyes remain closed. “What time is it?”

He gazes at the clock. The second hand moves.

“Late,” he says.

She sighs and blows out a puff of smoke in her nose. “You said you’d tell me.”

“I know.”

Her eyes open a crack. She squints into the light, then presses them back down.

“You didn’t even try,” she says, voice thick with sleep.

He keeps his hands clasped.

“I told you,” she says. “Wake me, even if I get mad. Even if I’m tired. I want to choose.”

The second hand moves.

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

He does not answer.

Her jaw settles. She pivots to lie on her side, her back to him. Her knees reach up.

“You always do that,” she says. “You decide. Then you act surprised when I hate you for it.”

***

She pivots back toward him.

She pushes herself right up again, slow, shaky, one hand against the pillow. The blanket rolls away from her knees, settles at her feet.

Her eyes are open now.

“You’re awake,” she says.

He does not answer.

She looks behind him, past the lamp, past the clock, past the floor in front of the table. Her eyes linger on the sock, on the crumbs that are next to it.

“You’re always awake,” she says.

He swallows.

“You promised,” she says. “You said this was the last time.”

He holds his face still.

“You know things before they happen,” she says.

The words fall between them.

He could ask her what she means. She could pretend she did not understand. He could say her name and nothing more. He does none of it.

She watches him for a moment longer.

“It isn’t fair,” she says. Her voice cracks on the last word. “You don’t get to decide that.”

He opens his mouth. Her name is there.

She breaks the silence. “You tell yourself it’s for me.”

Her eyes catch the lamplight. “It’s for you. You don’t want to watch what comes next.”

He closes it again.

Her face moves, straightens. She lands on something more solid than injury.

He understands, with a clarity that hurts, that she is already angry at someone he has not been yet.

“I don’t want you to,” she says. “Next time.

She inhales, sharper this time, gathering herself to speak again.

The second hand moves.

He does not turn to her.

He looks at the clock.

He clicks rewind.

Tick. Tock. Tick.

***

The room lurches, then steadies.

The lamp steadies. The clock starts moving again.

The sock is not where he expects it to be.

She is where she was when she spoke, her breathing shallow, her face turned toward the back of the couch.

He does not look at her.

He clicks fast-forward.

The house surges ahead.

The light shifts. The noise of the room stretches thin, then snaps back into place. The clock blurs.

He keeps his eyes down.

It lasts less than a second.

When it stops, he is breathing hard. His hands shake before they press against his thighs. He does not move further.

He does not look at the couch.

He does not look at the room.

He knows what will happen next.

He clicks rewind after a moment.

The clock blurs, then centers itself.

***

She stretches out as before, facing the back of the couch, with her knees pressed together. One hand is tucked under her cheek. The other is open on the cushion, palm upwards, fingers loose. The lamp has given her a hard edge along her knuckles.

He looks at her hand.

Her fingers might be simple enough to slip into his palm. It would not take much to take it. He could close his hand on hers, and hold it there, give her something solid to wake to when she does.

He leans forward.

The chair shifts under his weight. He stops it with his thigh and does not move.

His hand lifts anyway. He keeps his arm near his body, as though that might keep it from meaning anything. His fingers reach out, cautious, deliberate.

The space between them narrows.

Her fingers twitch.

He stops.

The hand stays where it is, close enough now that he can count the faint crease at the underside of her thumb, the cracked skin catching the light. He can feel the warmth radiating from her, a muffled, human heat that asks nothing of him.

He draws his hand back.

He sits on it.

She sighs and moves, lying down into the cushion, as though something has been let go. Her fingertips curl in, empty.

He does not move again.

The moment holds.

***

He sits.

The blanket has unfolded and landed on the floor. One corner has folded up on the other corner. He stares at it, not trying to touch it.

She is breathing again. Slow. rhythmic.. The kind that invites correction. The type that tells him it would be safe to move her now.

He can picture picking her up, the heaviness of her weight pressing into his chest, the tiny grunt she would make if she moved in her sleep. He knows where the light switch is in the hallway. He knows how to take a step so the floorboard near the door does not sound.

He doesn’t do any of that.

He lets the lamp stay on.

He lets the sock stay where it fell.

He lets the crumbs mark the rug.

Everywhere from where he sits, he can see the movement of her back, the line of her spine pressing faintly through her shirt. She is uncomfortable. She will be sore when she wakes.

A good parent would fix this. He knows this will be the night she learns not to ask him.

He leans forward. As though reconsidering things. His hands split. He rests his hands on his knees.

He leans back after a moment.

He watches her long enough to trust she is still there.

Then he looks at the clock.

The clock keeps time whether he is there or not.

***

Tock. Tick. Tick.

She turns on the couch and rolls onto her side, hair straight on one side. Her feet groping for the floor and failing.

“You didn’t wake me.”

He looks at the clock.

“It’s fine,” he says.

She blinks at him. Rubs the side of her face on the heel of her hand.

“I don’t want to,” she says, then stops, searching for the rest.

The clock clicks again.

He nods.

She watches him, then lies back down. Pulls her knees in. The cushion dips where her head comes to rest.

He makes a choice. This is the version of it he can live with.

It leaves her free to hate him.

He clicks rewind, and keeps it even.