The Walk Back

 

The Walk Back

 

Roger sits hunched over his keyboard, typing furiously, in a mad staccato of plastic keys. He’s managed to block out all noises, including his own children playing somewhere in the house. Dexter, his oldest, tried to say something to him that morning, which he soundly ignored. He hadn’t fully realized how porous the walls were before last spring, when the world shut down and suddenly his children were always home.

He’s always in the middle of some article these days, another sharp deadline as he struggles to keep pace with a world frantic for answers. No one has any, yet everyone still wants him to predict the future. His bosses, the people flooding his inbox, even his wife. They all want to know when—when will it be safe, when will it end, when can everything go back to normal?

He’s deep in the paragraph he’s been wrestling with all morning when he feels a pressure change in the room, a sudden humid warmth, and he looks up to see his wife studying him from the doorway. He blinks at her in surprise, having momentarily forgotten she exists. She stands so still, clutching her bare arms against the chill of the basement. He breaths out. Whatever he was thinking has gone right out of his head.

“What are you—”

“I knocked,” she says, frowning.

“Oh.”

She takes a breath. “I gave Dexter his phone back,” she says.

The single desk lamp throws deep shadows under her wife’s eyes. Her hair hangs limp and unwashed in the dim light of the room. She looks tired.

Roger leans back as he struggles to shift his focus from the screen to domestic concerns. He removes his glasses, massages the bridge of his nose, and sighs. Of course it’s about Dexter, who quit doing his homework as soon as the shutdown began. Months and months of lying about not having any work. God forbid he suffer any consequences for it.

“I thought we agreed on this,” Roger says, affecting calm. “He needs to earn back our trust.”

Lily’s drops her arms, and she takes a small deliberate step forward.

“We agreed there needed to be a punishment,” she says evenly. “You took his phone away. He’s been punished. He’s been working all summer to earn it back. But he hasn’t seen his friends in months, and he needs a way to talk to them.”

“That’s not what we discussed,” Roger insists.

Lily studies him, her pale lips pressed into a thin line.

“We didn’t discuss it at all,” she says. “You made the decision on the spot without talking to me, and with no clear idea when he could have it back.”

He knows she’s right, but admitting it feels impossible. He shifts in his chair and looks past her at his screen, which has gone blank. He shakes the cursor to wake it up.

“What he did can’t happen again. He’s in high school. It’s too important.”

“I backed you up because I didn’t want to contradict you,” she says firmly. “But it’s been months and he’s struggling. We’re all struggling. Parenting can’t all be about punishment.”

Roger sighs again. 

“I know you feel bad for him. You can’t help it.”

“I feel bad for him?” she repeats. She lifts an eyebrow at him, incredulous. “Yes, I do. I feel bad for all our children. They’re living though something unprecedented. But this isn’t about feeling bad. Dexter’s fifteen, he’s been stuck in the house for months, and everything he knows has been ripped out from under him. And you think—what? That taking away his only connection to his friends is going to solve anything?”

“Elinore and Sophie didn’t stop doing their homework.”

“No, they didn’t,” she agrees. He feels no victory from her tone. “But Elinore is desperate to talk to her friends, too, and cries for no reason. And Sophie is mean to her siblings. And Carson throws toys when he’s mad. At least they can play with their friends at the park. Kids Dexter’s age don’t play at the park.”

“Even so, we can’t slack off as parents just because the world is a mess right now. He has responsibilities. I don’t think we should let Dexter off the hook just because he’s—”

“’My favorite?’ Is that what you were going to say?” Her voice is rising. He cringes. He wishes he’d never said it.

“Lily, you can’t deny you favor him.”

“But my ‘favorite?’ Really? I love all my children equally, even if some are easier to get along with than others. And you’ve always been too hard on Dexter. Maybe I just feel like I have to counter-balance you. He needs at least one of us on his side.”

He’s silent for a moment.

“There aren’t any sides. You should know that.” He feels suddenly tired, and the words come out flat.

“You say that now,” Lily snaps, “but you act annoyed because we all have to be home constantly, horning in on your territory. We don’t want to be here. Breathing the same air.”

“That’s not fair.”

“I don’t think you have any idea what you do to him.”

“He’ll get over it,” Roger says, his fingers itching back to the keyboard as he struggles to regain his train of thought. It’s a signal—he’s done with this conversation.

She sees it.

“I expect he will.” Her voice is tight. “But I don’t think he should have to get over it. He deserves more understanding in the first place.”

“Lily,” he says slowly, not looking at her. “I’m working.”

“Yes, I know,” she says. “I work, too, in case you forgot. I also have children. You have children, too. Hiding away in your office all day, buried in your work, you don’t notice how any of us are coping. You’re too busy trying to be the answer to everyone else’s problems.”

Her words land hard. His own transparency cuts him. So brittle, one more blow might shatter it.

“I’m exhausted, Roger.”

She doesn’t understand what it’s like to have so many people depending on him, he tells himself, expecting him to have the answers, even though he’s just as lost as they are. Part of him wants to plead for understanding. Another part can’t let her see his doubt.

She is still clutching her arms, glaring at him.

“This article…” he says.

“Yes, I know. This article is important. So was the last one. So is the next one. They’re all very important. So are the children.”

“I realize you’re having a hard day,” he attempts.

“Yes, I am,” she agrees. “They’re all hard now. All the little tiresome details of people needing things. Food, clothes, help with homework. Emotional support. That’s what I’m here for. That’s all I’m here for. I’ll leave you to your article.”

Lily doesn’t raise her voice. She doesn’t need to.

She turns to leave, and he hears each footstep fall as she climbs the stairs. He’s trained himself to ignore things. It’s critical, or else he’d get nothing done. But now his concentration is lost, and he hears every small noise above his head: The dog’s nails scrambling against the tile floor in the kitchen. One of his children shouting to another. The flush of a toilet. He forces himself back into deaf mode and the noises drop away. He does not hear Carson call for his mother, nor does he hear as she makes her way obediently down the hallway to his room to answer a question.

He turns back to his screen and stares at the blinking curser, ignoring the way his pulse has picked up. He tries again but can’t remember where his thoughts had been. The idea he’s been exploring has evaporated. Irritated, he pushes away from his desk. He needs to get out of the house and walk for a while, and maybe a thread of the idea will let him grab its tail.

Upstairs the dog comes to him, her tail wagging softly. He hears a murmuring voice and looks out into the den where someone has left the television on. He stares at the screen for a moment, some cartoon he can’t follow, where the character stays still and the rushing background is meant to indicate speed. He clips the leash on the dog.

Outside, the mid-day sun glares down, assaulting the grass pummeled brown. Heat clings to Roger’s skin and sweat beads his lip almost immediately. He ignores this and walks purposefully down the street with the dog trotting beside him. The neighborhood is still and quiet, the kind of quiet that gives him too much space to recall the accusations his wife tossed his way. He tries to focus on the end of his article, a tricky summary that’s been eluding him. But the argument with Lily slips back into his thoughts like a splinter. The dog stops to sniff the base of a tree, and Roger waits beside her, motionless, staring at the ground like it might provide an answer.

They walk for a few steps before she slows and stops to sniff another tree. She squat to pee. Roger tugs on her impatiently.

“Come on,” he mutters. He wipes his face as sweat threatens to drip in his eyes. His shirt clings to his back, and he peels it away to fan himself.

They plod on for a few more steps before the dog stops to nose the ground. Roger’s fingers tighten on the leash. She’s not doing anything wrong—she’s just being a dog. He shouldn’t be punishing her for something that isn’t her fault. He ought to be more forgiving.

They walk on, the soft pads of the dog’s paws barely audible on the hard pavement. Somewhere in the distance, a child’s laughter breaks through the ordinary silence. As his thoughts continue to dwell on his article, Roger instinctively follows the sound without meaning to. When they turn the corner near the park, the children’s cries grow louder. Roger lets the leash slacken and the dog looks back at him expectantly, as if asking him to join in.

Roger pauses under the shade of a large oak tree across the street from the park. In the brief respite from the sun, he feels the heat leave his face. The park is alive with movement, the same park he’s passed a hundred times, but the cacophony of children playing pierces a silence that’s hung over the neighborhood for months. Children hang from the monkey bars, race each other down the slide and back up the ladder, pump their legs on the swings, and push each other in circles on the merry-go-round. Masks dangle uselessly around their ears like props for a performance. Here suddenly a thin sliver of normalcy—it feels like watching a memory through glass. The easy, unthinking joy of being a child among friends.

Below a clump of trees on the other side of the playground, a group of teenagers cluster together on a bench, staring at their phones. Roger is surprised to see them there, tall like adults, but gawky like children, all limbs and big feet. They should be gathering in someone’s dark basement to assault each other on an Xbox. Suddenly they all burst out laughing, holding up their screens, as one of them nudges another, teasing, and something inside him goes still. He doesn’t remember the last time he heard Dexter laugh.

For a moment, her stands frozen, watching them.

He pulls the dog away from the park, determined to push on and complete his walk, but a hollowness has expanded to fill his chest. The children’s laughter fades behind him, replaced by the tapping of the dog’s nails against the pavement.

The dog slows in the heat, panting hard, and stops to nose a patch of grass. Roger tries to summon irritation, but the emotion won’t stick. He gathers his thoughts about the article, but they scatter. The only thing that lingers is the image of those teenagers together. Something in that burst of laughter has lodged deep inside him.

His shoulders sag. The day presses down on him with a heaviness that can’t be fully explained away by the sun. They walk home at the dog’s pace, not because she’s tired, but because he’s no longer trying to outrun her.

When they step into the darkness of the house, yellow and green spots dance before his eyes until they readjust. The house is cool and quiet, and Roger realizes he’s missed the children’s grandfather picking them up as planned to take them swimming at his condo.

He unclips the dog from her leash and hangs it in the closet. The basement door is open, the dark stairwell waiting. He intends to go back downstairs and finish the article, and for a moment he stands there, hand on the railing, trying to remember the urgency he felt about it. Instead, he finds himself climbing the stairs to his wife’s office where she is back at work. He doesn’t feel angry anymore, just…empty. He feels a void widening inside him, with her on the other side. He wants his wife to know how empty he feels, wants to bridge this unwelcome distance.

He finds her at her desk, her back facing the doorway, typing. Her shoulders are stiff and focused. He stands in the doorway, unsure how close to come.

“I’m back now,” he says softly, hovering in that space between them.

“That’s good.” He words fall flat. She doesn’t turn.

He steps closer, just inside the doorway. His hands hang limp at his sides. He’s unsure what to do with them. Silence starts to settle between them, familiar and heavy. He almost lets it stay there. Almost steps back.

“There were kids,” he says. “Playing at the park, like before. It was so strange.”

Her fingers pause on the keyboard for the briefest moment, like she might turn around.

“There were these teenagers there, maybe Dexter’s age. I kept thinking…”

But he doesn’t know how to finish the sentence.

The silence stretches on, but he doesn’t leave. He just stands there, waiting, hoping that staying will be enough this time.

After a moment, her shoulders relax, and she turns around.

“What were you thinking?” she asks.

He says, “That you were right. That more than anything else, Dexter needs his friends right now. We all need people. Maybe more than we did before.”

            She studies him. It’s the first time all day he lets himself be looked at. He meets her gaze.

            After a moment she nods.

            “Okay,” she agrees.

            Roger exhales. It’s not forgiveness, or a solution, but it’s movement. It’s the first step of something he should have started a long time ago.

Anne McPherson Arthurs

Anne McPherson Arthurs grew up in Carbondale, Illinois, and earned a BA from Southern Illinois University and an MFA from Western Michigan University. After a hiatus spanning two decades, she began writing again during COVID. Her fiction has appeared in Ariel Chart, The Whitefish Review, Down in the Dirt Magazine, Embark Journal, October Hill Magazine, The Westchester Review and Peruse Lit. Her short story, Piano Lessons, was nominated for the 2024 Best of the Net award. She lives with her husband and two children outside Chicago, where she reads and writes daily, usually with a dog at her feet.