“It’s just an old house,” she said, her fingernail making a sharp clicking sound against the phone glass. “Things get loose. We can just push the furniture in front of them.”
“It sparked when I took the lamp out,” I said.
Brenda stopped tapping, her shoulders dropping a fraction of an inch before she forced a quick, bright smile.
“I’ll have a look at it this weekend,” she said, her voice rising in that hurried way she used when she wanted to end a conversation. “Toby got a B on his spelling test today, by the way. We should focus on that.”
Toby sat at the end of the table, his eyes fixed on his plate as Brenda began to spoon the carrots next to his meat. He did not look at either of us, his hand reaching into his pocket to touch his green pen.
“We need to make sure the wiring is safe, Brenda,” I said, looking at the grey charger plugged into the wall outlet near her purse.
“Everything is perfectly fine, Mother,” she said, her voice sharp enough to cut the discussion short. “The bills are paid, the house is standing, and we don’t need to spend money we don’t have on things that aren’t broken.”
She picked up her phone, the cheap grey adapter creaking in the socket as she pulled the cord.
I looked at Toby, who was slowly cutting his meat into tiny, identical squares.
After dinner, while Brenda was in the living room sorting through a stack of past-due notices she thought I had not seen, I walked up to Toby’s room. He was downstairs brushing his teeth, and the hallway was quiet.
I opened his desk drawer, the wood sliding dryly against the frame. The melted grey astronaut lay in the corner under a stack of school papers.
I took the toy and walked back to my own room, closing the door behind me.
I placed the melted plastic toy on my dresser, watching the evening light catch the distorted grey shape.
The tea in my mug had gone lukewarm, a dark ring forming against the yellowed ceramic of the cup. Across the kitchen table, Brenda was already dressed for her office job, her hair pulled back into a tight clip that seemed to pull the skin at her temples even tighter than usual. Her index finger tapped the screen of her phone with a rapid, dry click, over and over, as if she could force the emails to load faster by sheer digital willpower.
I reached down and touched the silver wristwatch resting on my left wrist. It had belonged to Arthur, and winding it had become a quiet habit I could not break in the five years since he passed away. I turned the small stem three times, feeling the tiny, familiar clicks beneath my fingertips.
“We need to address those outlets, Brenda,” I said, my voice quiet in the morning chill of the kitchen. “I saw Toby playing with that melted grey piece of plastic yesterday.”
