a moment in the day: noise

It's ten after five in the morning and I hear a noise in the house. Me at the computer desk, Nicholas on the little futon bed across the room, he hears it too and his head comes up and he looks at me.

We're upstairs where I sometimes sleep when I have to get up early-early or Stephen or I are sick. First thing I do every morning is wake up my computer because sometimes it takes a long time. But today it powered right up and I got sucked into an article—OK, about Bunnicula, if you must know—and I'm still here reading when the noise happens.

Thud! My eyes on Nicholas, his eyes on me. Stephen is asleep downstairs.

Prowler? My brain is equal parts go down there and don't go the hell down there.

In the next second my brain goes where it's always gone when I've heard a noise in the house this past year. Ever since the huge thud in the middle of the night before New Year's Eve when Stephen fell out of bed and we awoke groggy and confused and headed to the emergency room.

I get up from the computer. Nicholas, weirdly, puts his head back down, unconcerned. I creep down the stairs to where the door is shut at the bottom, and listen. Nothing. Open the door. It's all black in the house.

Fear sits on top of the background hum of general anxiety that I have lately. Somehow the immediate fear seems to magnify those other fears. Fires in Australia, earthquake in Puerto Rico, the U.S. baiting Iran. War, climate change, war, climate change. Growing old.

I creep through the dark kitchen, into the dining room. The Christmas tree is a black shadow in the corner.

I stop at the open door to the bedroom. All I see is black. I try to hear him in there, breathing.

I have to touch him to make sure he's there.

Don't want to wake him up. I could shine a light but I forgot my cell phone upstairs.

What would be worse? Touching him or blasting a light in his face?

I step forward, quiet. Creaky, old floorboards in this house. Reach a hand out. Touch lightly.

A lump in the bed. A leg.

He doesn't stir. Good. OK. It's OK. I can get on with the day.