TWENTY-ONE

Natalie’s silence was nothing she consciously decided, but when every moment in this house was worse than the one before, what was there to say? The more she withdrew, the less necessary it felt to interact with the exterior world, and by now she felt almost no desire to speak at all.

The first problem was her husband’s obsession with Skylar. There was a reason Life… Unexpected never disappeared from Seth’s Continue Watching list on Netflix, and it wasn’t his affinity for low-budget movies. The idea of Skylar Stover being here in person seemed to have blown his mind. He couldn’t stop looking at her.

Maybe he was noticing Skylar’s breasts, barely contained by the stretchy fabric of her tank top. Maybe it was the waterfall of her hair, which somehow looked theatrical and glamorous no matter how she chose to wear it. It might have been her perfect thighs or sculpted calves or the generous-but-tiny curve of her butt. All she knew was Seth couldn’t stop staring at her and it was driving Natalie mad.

By now it was Sunday morning, somewhere in the dead zone between breakfast and lunch. Natalie was at the kitchen table, buzzing a little from a fresh taste of the limoncello Thomas had served after dinner last night. Ben and Brandon were playing The Game of Life with Skylar in the living room while Thomas read a paperback on the sofa. Seth was upstairs at the pool table. Natalie didn’t see anything wrong with a little day drinking, especially since it seemed to dampen the ringing in her ears, and anyway what else was there to do?

“I don’t understand this game,” said Ben. “The job I get and the amount of money I make is based on luck.”

“Real life is sometimes like that, too,” Skylar explained.

“But my dad says you have to work hard if you want a good life. That we have to get good grades in school if we want to make lots of money.” “Your dad is right about that.”

“But if I work hard, it’s not luck.”

“And she has a better job than Dad,” Brandon said, pointing at Skylar. “You make like a million dollars, right?”

Natalie looked up and watched Skylar fumble for an answer.

“She’s a beautiful actress,” Ben pointed out.

“Exactly,” said Brandon, brow furrowing with the gravity of philosophical insight. “And that’s not hard work. She was born beautiful.”

“Even in acting you have to work hard,” Skylar finally said.

“Really?” said Brandon. “I was in a school play last year, and that didn’t feel like work to me.”

“Imagine being in a play for fifteen hours a day. And having to tread water in a swimming pool for six hours while the director tries to film three lines of dialogue your costar can’t seem to get right.”

“That still doesn’t seem like work,” said Brandon. “That seems like fun. How do I get a job like that when I grow up?”

Skylar glanced up then and caught her staring. Natalie looked away, at the wall, at Thomas, who was also looking at her. Then she realized: They expected her to say something. Ben and Brandon were talking about school and careers as if the power would eventually come back on, as if the old way of life had simply been put on hold. But how could Natalie explain reality to the twins when she wasn’t ready to face it herself?

She went into the kitchen, where the bottle of limoncello stood, and quietly poured herself another small glass. Judging by its flavor, so light and sweet, the liqueur couldn’t be very strong. She poured one more little swallow and went back to her seat.

Until now she had ignored the magazines fanned across one end of the kitchen table, but as she tried to enjoy this fresh and heady rush of limoncello, Natalie began to suspect everyone knew she was drunk. And the sound in her ears had returned, louder than ever, clamoring like a school bell as she reached for the nearest magazine. Here was a smiling Tom Hanks. A feature on someone named Darren Aronofsky. A picture of Skylar Stover in a tight-fitting red dress, her hourglass figure nearly a cartoon. What did it feel like to live every day in a body like that? How wonderful must it be to reach for Skylar’s voluptuous figure among tangled bedsheets, to discover swells and curves of radiant skin, breath hot and humid, the soft touch of warm fingers—

“It’s so cool you’re a famous actress,” Brandon said. “I used to watch Jeffrey every night before bed.”

“Me, too,” said Ben. “You were our favorite.”

“You mean Electric Eric was your favorite. Music Madison was my favorite. Because, you know, she was so pretty.”

Brandon looked up at Skylar, blushing furiously. She smiled gleaming megawattage back at him.

“Thank you, Brandon.”

A sharp sound startled Natalie, then. Startled all of them.

Someone had knocked on the front door.

“Everyone please be very quiet,” Thomas said. “This is exactly what I’ve been worried about.”

And then to Natalie specifically, he said: “Maybe you could take the boys into your bedroom? Just in case?”

“I’ll do that,” said Seth, who came padding down the stairs.

When the boys were gone, Thomas approached the door. The entryway was around a corner from the kitchen and Natalie couldn’t see it.

“Hey there,” Thomas said. “How’s it going?”

“Been better,” said a man’s voice. “I’m going around the neighborhood to see how everyone is getting along. You remember me? I’m Matt.”

“Sure,” said Thomas like he didn’t know the guy at all. “I’m doing all right so far.”

“Have plenty of food?” asked Matt.

“I wouldn’t say plenty. If all this doesn’t get fixed soon, I’ll need to work on my fishing skills.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Well, no, I mean—”

“I got some kids who are pretty hungry,” said Matt, “so none of this seems very funny to me.”

Natalie heard a rumble of thunder. She looked out the window and wondered if it might rain.

“Sorry,” Thomas said. “It’s a tough situation.”

“I’ve been thinking, if everyone in Lakewood Village combines our food supplies, maybe all of us will have a better chance to survive.”

“I don’t have a lot of supplies,” Thomas lied. “I just hope the power comes back on soon.”

“I figured you’d be like that,” Matt said. “You don’t come to the HOA meetings. You don’t come to the monthly barbecue. I guess you like your privacy.”

“I pay my yearly dues,” Thomas said. “And I travel a lot, so.”

“A real jet-setter you are.”

Thomas stood there with the door open, saying nothing. Natalie wondered what was happening, why the two men were staring at each other for so long.

“Well,” Matt finally said. “I better run before I get rained on. Guess I’ll see you around.”

“Sure thing,” said Thomas.

As he closed the door, Natalie tossed her magazine across the table and reached for another one. A moment later, white light flashed through the windows, followed by a house-shaking clap of thunder.

“Holy moly!” yelled Ben, who was already approaching from the hallway. “That was loud!”

“Boys!” whispered Seth. “Keep quiet!”

But the twins had reached the window, fascinated by a curtain of rain crossing the lake.

“Look at that!” said Brandon. “Here it comes!”

A moment later rain was upon them, falling so heavily the nearby lake receded from view. The roar of the storm made Natalie think of her honeymoon in Niagara, where she and Seth had taken a boat tour to the falls. As they kissed theatrically under the spray, Natalie felt like a movie star, almost lovely, the way she felt before fat and gravity conspired to make her look like a middle-aged woman.

In the early part of their marriage, Seth had somehow been able to look past her declining beauty, and she basked in the glow of his attention. But as years went by, and especially after she gave birth to the twins, Natalie could no longer ignore what she saw in the mirror. The less attractive she felt, the more difficult it was to believe Seth could desire her. Or that she could desire him. Instead of waiting every night for the boys to go to bed, instead of anticipating a kiss or the delicate touch of his hand on her thigh, Natalie nodded off in front of the television earlier and earlier, as if someone had drugged her. It was obvious now she had slept through much of Seth’s descent into gambling addiction. That her waning sexual desire had inadvertently enabled him.

“Mom,” said Brandon. “Can you believe this storm?”

Natalie didn’t trust herself not to slur, so instead of answering she simply nodded.

“Mom, are you okay?”

All at once the world was spinning around her. The roar of the storm distorted the sound in her ears until it was a high-pitched whistle. She wasn’t in love with Seth. She had drifted away from him long before the gambling addiction took hold. Even while he apologized for his actions, while he came clean to her, Natalie had hidden her own failures.

“I’m fine, honey. Just tired.”

A figure approached from the hallway and she saw it was Seth.

“Look at that rain,” he said from the living room. “Can you imagine if there was a tornado? With no radar, we’d never see it coming.”

Thomas and Skylar joined her boys at the windows. Natalie’s heart beat in her brain. She had never felt so left out, so alone. She stood up suddenly and her chair screeched across the floor.

“Nat, are you okay?”

Seth looked at her carefully, waiting for an answer, but if she opened her mouth nonsense would tumble out. And what was there to say? She didn’t belong here. The whole scene was too much to bear.

She staggered out of the kitchen. Grazed the wall on her way to the bathroom and a picture frame exploded on the floor. Voices called after her. Footsteps followed her. She locked the bathroom door and vomited into the toilet.

As Seth pounded on the door, asking what was wrong, Natalie hated herself. How pathetic was it that the end of the world wasn’t the worst part of her life?

Then she heard someone else talking. Someone who turned out to be Skylar.

“Seth,” she said in the tender and husky voice that was her trademark. “Why don’t you give her a little space? She could probably use it.”

“She could probably use my help.”

“Honey,” Skylar said, “you should let Natalie process this in her own way. Believe me, I know how she feels.”

Natalie wanted to open the door and scream How could you possibly know how I feel? Look at your life and look at mine! You have no idea how I feel!

Instead, she kneeled forward and vomited into the toilet again, her ears whistling like a kettle. Something was wrong with her. Like really wrong.

Like she was losing her mind.