My hus­band, Josh, couldn’t show up for his own birth­day party. He was present at the din­ing room table all right, but just in body. Even when it came time to blow out his candles, he stared at the kids and me, giv­ing us that vacant what?

“You’re doing the Grand­dad thing again,” Teddy, our six-year-old, said.

My father was at end-stage Alzheimer’s. While my hus­band, a fic­tion writer, was tech­nic­ally healthy.

I dropped the lighter on the table. “Why don’t you just go back to your com­puter? Why even pretend?”

“No, no.” He closed his eyes, moved his mouth close to the candle flames, and exhaled hard.

We all knew what he’d wished for. What he always wished for: the novel.

__________

Sev­eral days after his birth­day party, an egg-sized bruise appeared on his forehead.

When I ques­tioned it, his gaze skittered away. “Research.”

The next day, he swapped out the reg­u­lar light bulb in the base­ment for a yellow-colored one and locked him­self in down there, act­ing out the POW inter­rog­a­tion scene for his book. He stayed down there for two whole days, refus­ing food or water, and mak­ing hor­rible sounds. For the kids’ sakes, I tried to act like everything was nor­mal. I could tell by the way they looked at me, though, that they didn’t know who was cra­zier: their father or me.

Shortly after that, he stopped per­form­ing even such basics as brush­ing his teeth. Some­times he’d go into the bath­room and walk right out again, not know­ing what he’d gone in there for, and return to his com­puter. He devolved to stay­ing only a couple of hours a night in bed, and dur­ing the rest of the moon’s shift, I’d hear him tap­ping on his key­board, the sound echo­ing through­out the house, a burglar.

I avoided talk­ing to my friends and co-workers, and espe­cially my fam­ily, not want­ing to hear “Josh still writ­ing, act­ing crazy?” When I needed gas, I’d ask the sta­tion attend­ant to fill my engine, chit-chatting to him all the while. At school drop-off and pick-up, I’d jab­ber with the cross­ing guard. At least until I got a note from the Prin­cipal ask­ing me to desist for safety reas­ons. At the worst, the bank tell­ers ducked down behind the counter when I appeared. I adop­ted a York­shire Ter­rier puppy. She filled up some of the dead feel­ing. Josh kept trip­ping over her.

Dur­ing argu­ments, I tired of try­ing to make sense and instead said things like “being mar­ried to you is like driv­ing drunk”. Some­times I blared the ste­reo at max­imum volume, try­ing to blast Josh away from his writ­ing desk, but only suc­ceeded in giv­ing myself a migraine and mak­ing the boys cry. I snapped pic­tures with our cam­era, and showed Josh what he looked like when he zoned out. He apo­lo­gized, and prom­ised to try harder. He didn’t.

__________

At the insur­ance com­pany, Josh’s employ­ers threatened him with ter­min­a­tion, cit­ing how much his pro­ductiv­ity had declined, how many cli­ents he’d lost, and the new ones he’d failed to acquire. They ‘con­grat­u­lated’ him on the fifty-some stor­ies he’d pub­lished online in the pre­vi­ous six months, and called him on the amount of time he was spend­ing at work writ­ing and sub­mit­ting and net­work­ing with his online com­munit­ies; they’d checked his hard drive.

At home that night, Josh got drunk on warm beer, and admit­ted what had happened.

“You’re going to lose your job over all this writ­ing,” I said.

“I’m good, God dam­mit,” he said. “Great even, but what would you know?”

I’d stopped read­ing his work, unable to put together who I thought he was with what came out in his writ­ing; it scared me.

“You’re going to lose your soul,” I con­tin­ued. Used to be I’d add that last part for dra­matic effect, but by then I meant it.

“Your sons,” I added. “What about them? They’ll be grown up and gone before we know it. You won’t get this time back.”

I pressed on. “Did you ever think that one day our boys are going to be old enough to read this shit?”

His eyes bulged. “Shit?” he said. “Shit?”

I grabbed a pen from the kit­chen counter, and tapped it against his head, demand­ing to know if the man I’d mar­ried was still in there.

“That’s it!” He mumbled some­thing about a pas­tor and a Bible, and rushed upstairs to his com­puter, leav­ing me hold­ing the stu­pid pen. It didn’t even have ink; done spelling things out.

Born and raised in Dub­lin, Ire­land, Ethel Rohan received her MFA in fic­tion from Mills Col­lege, CA. Her work has appeared in or is forth­com­ing from over fifty online and print journ­als includ­ing elimae; PANK; DecomP; DOGZPLOT; Story­glos­sia; Word Riot; mud lus­cious; and Ghoti Magazine. Her blog is Straight From The Heart In My Hip.