One
It is just past eight o’clock on Saturday morning when Charlotte McGanley hears a strange rustling and looks up from her coffee cup. She is sitting outside on her back porch, at the weathered, wooden IKEA picnic table that she and Jason bought fifteen years ago, just after they married. Her journal is in front of her. She’s trying to indulge in what has always been one of her favorite rituals of the season: a few moments alone outside with her coffee, in the finally warm sunshine of early spring, the house to her back still quiet.
When her daughter was younger, this was a time Charlotte cherished. Jason would keep Birdie inside, occupied with Sesame Street or cinnamon toast or Chutes and Ladders, and Charlotte would scribble away, her thoughts pouring out of her so easily that by the time she came back inside, she felt cleansed. Light and serene, like she’d just emerged from under the hands of a very good masseuse. But lately, even though she has plenty on her mind, the words won’t come.
She sighs, her pen hovering over the page. Her intentions are good. Writing in a journal, or journaling, as they say, which makes it sound more physical (but also a little pathetic, she’s always secretly thought), is one of the core habits that she prescribes to her students and readers. Not only has she personally found that it works (back when she and Jason tried to have a second child and ultimately failed, it was actually one of the things that got her through) but the research clearly supports it. People who journal are happier. More resilient. More grateful. Just last week, she told her undergraduate students that keeping a journal is the psychological equivalent of taking your vitamins.
And yet . . . The only thing she’s managed this morning is a doodle of a trailing flower vine along the upper right-hand corner of a blank page. What’s that phrase, she thinks. Squeezing water from a stone? That’s what she feels like lately: the stone. Quick, like a lightning flash, her mind flickers on Jason, how the night before, he’d called her “cold.” An awful thing for a man to call his wife. Too close a side step to “frigid.”
She hears the sound again and looks up. What is it? And then it stops.
She flips back to the last time she wrote and, noting the date on the entry, feels a sense of defeat. It was nine days ago, and even then, it was a half-baked gratitude list, consisting of three unimaginative items, bullet-pointed with little ballpoint-pen stars:
Coffee
Slept through the night
No rain today
The rest was a scribbled smattering of reminders in the margin of the page: Call orthodontist—Birdie checkup reskedge, window washers?, Amazon: laundry detergent.
Did I remember to put the new checkup appointment in my calendar? she thinks. And then she hears the noise again—louder this time—and jumps, a little yelp escaping from her mouth.
Jesus, settle down, she scolds herself, running her hands over her face. Maybe she’s off because of the extra glass of wine last night, she thinks, feeling a twinge of shame for having drunk it only because it was Friday and she was bored sitting on her end of the couch, scrolling through Instagram while Jason watched the hockey playoffs. (Was this why they both worked so hard all week? she’d thought. For this?) She feels a sinking darkness, like she’s slipping underwater, remembering their bickering before bed, how she’d caught a glimpse of Jason rolling his eyes at her just before she turned out the light.
Hearing the rustling again, she takes a last gulp of lukewarm coffee (from a mug with “Do more of what makes you happy” printed on its side), and stands, determined to find the cause. When she steps off the porch, the wet grass tickles her feet, dampening her slippers, and she reconsiders for a moment, glancing toward Mr. Marchetto’s house, where she can see her neighbor in his open window preparing breakfast. But that sound . . .
It’s almost like cellophane crinkling, but there’s a chirpy squeaking, too. Maybe chipmunks? She’s used to spotting all sorts of animals in her yard. People back home in Georgia can’t believe her when she tells them, but even though she’s barely five miles from the DC line, she frequently sees deer, raccoons, and families of foxes frolicking in the grass. Mr. Marchetto even saw a coyote in their driveway once. The wildlife tortures Sylvie, their elderly golden retriever, and Charlotte’s relieved that the dog is still inside, having taken over her spot in the bed the minute Charlotte got up.
Once upon a time, they wouldn’t have let Sylvie on the bed, and for a while, she was banned from the room, due to her tendency to sit right beside the bed while they were having sex, watching them so intently that it was like she was a judge on one of those TV dance competitions. But now, it seems like a moot point. The last time they had sex was seven months ago, and even then, it felt more like an obligation because it was Jason’s birthday. Over seven months, Jason had said last night, when she pushed his hand off her hip. I’m too tired, she said. I had too much wine. She turned off the lights and they turned their backs to each other, and in the tense awful dark, she reached out for him, feeling guilty. She’s told him that it bothers her, too, how they never even try anymore, but that’s a bit of a lie, because while she misses the closeness they once shared, and the intimacy that was more than just physical, not having sex actually feels like a tremendous relief, one less thing on her to-do list. He didn’t respond to her hand on his shoulder blade last night, her half-attempt at an apology. She turned back over. She went to sleep.
The sound, Charlotte realizes as she makes her way through the damp yard, is coming from the other side of the deck. She crouches, taking tentative steps, remembering the time years ago when they were having dinner on the porch and watched a fox snag a squirrel right off the trunk of one of the oak trees. Or the time when Jason, digging ivy out of the flower beds, discovered a copperhead coiled just feet from where Birdie had been jumping rope less than an hour before. Charlotte begged him to call animal control, but he refused, instead insisting that the best thing was to just leave it be and let it go on its way. “I’m a keeper at the National Zoo,” he’d said, laughing as he followed her into the house. “You really think I’m going to call the morons at animal control?”
She takes one final step around the deck and then she sees it.
“Oh!” she gasps. There is not just one animal beside the deck but . . . she counts . . . one, two . . . Four bunnies! A perfect little bunny family! They’re huddled together, three big ones and a baby, and they are feasting on the leaves of her rhododendron. Instantly, her hand goes for her phone in the pocket of her robe.
She stretches her arms out to take the photo—it’s a flawless shot with the pink petals in the background, like something you might see on a wall calendar in a pediatrician’s office. When the clicking camera sound punctures the air, the bunnies freeze, their paws poised perfectly in front of their little chests, their big gumdrop eyes trained on her, the middle one—the smallest one—with a triangle of green leaf poking out from its mouth.
Yes! It’s perfect. The bunnies scurry off, and she walks back to the porch, a wave of satisfaction settling over her for the first time today. She opens Instagram, composing a caption in her head. Birds chirping, sun shining, and these little guys making my backyard feel like something out of a Disney movie today, she types. Happy morning, friends! She hits share and then immediately begins swiping down; one time, and then another, and then another. Within seconds, there are 153 likes. Her 93,000 followers love these sorts of posts. Simple. Wholesome. Happy.