MaryAnn kisses Timon at the front door just after closing it behind him. He holds her waist and she leans back. Her glassy eyes wander, then look to him with some eagerness.
"Is everything alright?" he asks.
"Have you seen the news?" she asks. "They were talking about it at The Marmot today. We didn't know how to spin it. We don't want to freak everyone out—you know?"
Timon feels his throat again.
"Everything is going to be okay, dear," he says, attempting to keep the family calm. "I'll make us some dinner. Okay?"
He leaves MaryAnne at the door and starts toward the kitchen, but she intercepts and leans into him.
"They said the U.S will intervene. It could be war," she whispers, her warm breath on his neck.
"Just take a seat, darling. Come..."
Timon takes MaryAnn by the hand and walks her to the dining room table.
"Don't brush me aside, Timon. We have to find out what we are going to do."
Timon turns back to her. "I'm not brushing you aside. It's just—"
"What?" she asks as she pulls out a chair and sits at the table.
"There is nothing to do. All we can do is get through the night without too much excitement."
They look into one another's eyes for a moment before he fetches a cup of ice water. Timon watches her take a sip before he walks off to the master bedroom to change.
MaryAnn drinks the water and falls into her folded arms on the table. Marie comes silently to her side, placing her small hand on MaryAnn's back.
"Is everything okay, Mommy?"
"Yes, dear, why don't you go to your room. I'll call you when dinner is ready."
"I'm not done with my homework, though."
"It's okay, we can finish it up after dinner," she says, feeling for the first time homework is no longer a concern.
Marie hugs her mom and waddles off down the tall corridor to her bedroom, leaving her door slightly cracked. She hears Jack and Havel jumping around in their room while she sits with a piece of cardboard to draw.
Marie's pink-walled room is her favorite place. She always preferred to do school work in her room until the family psychiatrist told her parents it was best to have separate rooms for sleeping and studying. He said it had a dramatic impact on the efficiency of her work. But she still spent most of her time alone in the room. She did not get along with her rowdy brothers, and she never made any outside friends, always considering her mother to be her best friend.
Timon reappears wearing his white undershirt and black suit pants. He notices his wife still lying in her arms at the table where he left her. Timon hoped to avoid the subject for at least the night. He knew she may turn this all into another reason to leave the suburb.
He opens the refrigerator and pulls out a plate of salmon that had been marinating in the chilled air, then preheats the oven.
Timon strolls to the table and sits down next to MaryAnn. He takes her hand and places it in his.
"Everything will be alright. I'm sure this will all blow over. Just stay calm, at least for the kids' sake."
Timon leans over and looks down the hall, catching Marie peeking through her bedroom door.
"Close the door, Marie," he calls out to her.
Marie obeys.
Timon sits back in his chair, and MaryAnn turns to him with a forced smile.
"Like this?" she says. "I'm going to check on the boys."
MaryAnn stands from her seat and begins toward the hall.
"Wait," Timon says, standing from his seat. "There is something else we need to talk about."
She stops, knowing precisely what he is going to say.
"We can't keep going over this, Timon. I feel the same as the last time we talked."
"Hey, hey. Slow down," he says, approaching her slowly as if to be a calm presence. "Just give me a minute, okay?"
"What," she says, crossing her arms.
"Look, I know we have money, and it shouldn't be an issue, but we can't keep hiring all these babysitters—our kids are going to end up like me. When I was a kid, my parents left me all day with housekeepers and babysitters. And you know, I feel like I didn't know either of them so well."
"I'm not going to quit my job, Timon. That's the only conclusion we are going to reach with this. Why don't you quit your job, huh?" MaryAnn says, then looks behind her to see if the children were hiding anywhere and trying to listen. "The children are fine. And believe me, I want to spend more time with them. I just can't quit my job. I'm not a housewife, Timon. I told you this long ago."
She slides out of her chair and walks off to the boys' room. Timon can hear the muffled tone of their voices talking.
A few minutes later, he opens the oven door, and a wall of hot air pours out like a portal to death valley. He quickly places the salmon in the oven, doing his best to avoid being burned.
He notices the television lighting the living room, the sound muted. The news is on, and he can make out a portion of the headline which said something about Ukraine. He investigates and sees the well-dressed news reporter, with his salt and pepper hair gelled and combed back, gesticulating above the headline, which reads, "U.S. AGREES TO AID UKRAINE."
He debates the meaning for a moment, thinking maybe the states were sending them supplies or just money to help their efforts.
He approaches the wooden coffee table in front of the T.V. and reaches down for the remote control. After increasing the volume, he listens to the news reporter explain how the United States is sending over soldiers to fight with the Ukrainian army. His stomach drops. The reporter speculates that a rumored military draft may become necessary. He explains it could be a non-discriminatory draft, women will be drafted to the same degree as men. The draft age is said to be between eighteen and thirty-five.
A cold sweat comes over his forehead as footsteps near from behind him. He spins and finds MaryAnn staring at the screen. She approaches slowly and stands by him.
"It's going to be okay. There's no way—" she begins.
"I just have a bad feeling," Timon interrupts in a shallow voice.
MaryAnn glances at him.
"Bad feelings are contagious."
"I know, I'm sorry. You're right. It could be fine."
MaryAnn embraces Timon from the side and leaves to the kitchen to check on a peculiar smell.
"Honey, you set this oven at way too high of a temperature."
Timon watches as she cracks open the oven door, and thick black smoke rolls out like a Chaplin movie. About twenty minutes later, the salmon is thrown out, and MaryAnn has made sandwiches with chips in its place. After eating, the children go to bed while MaryAnn and Timon stay up watching the news on the living room couch, with a red plaid blanket covering their legs.
The living room is illuminated by ever-changing colors from the T.V. —vacuum to their attention. The color of the room swings with the will of the news. Bright, wonderful colors, and right in the center of the light show is the paranoid, wide-eyed couple holding each other under the freshest crisis.
The reporters speak against Russia, calling them bullies and explaining why the United States has to intervene. Another reporter appears and argues with a man with a contradicting tie color about how the country's involvement would bring direct war with Russia, sparking off World War III. The man states people had begun fleeing the country because of the intervention.
Though there is no way for anyone to know at this time, the supposed war will be over in a matter of days with only minor military action.
...
Timon pulls the blanket off of himself and stands from the couch, wanting water from the kitchen. The creaking of a settling home is always loudest at night, it speaks to him in his walk. In the kitchen, Timon takes a glass from the shelf and fills it with tap water. In his tiresome withdrawal, a photo held on the fridge by a couple of magnets catches his eye. He leans in for a better view. It is a photo of him and his parents in their home when he was a boy. His face in the photo is cold and emotionless while his smiling parents hover above him like hunters posing with a kill. He thinks of what Charles had said about his father, and at this moment, he picks up the phone and dials Phineas Finch's island without any apparent hesitation. It seems to ring for eternity. MaryAnn, who Timon thought had fallen asleep on the couch, asks who he is calling. He ignores her. The phone rings a few more times, no one answers, and he hangs up before the robot demands a voice message.
With the phone back on its port, Timon feels the nervousness in his throat build again. Just as it had with Charles in the office. The memories that accompany it are fewer but more vivid. He remembers a wine bottle shattered across the kitchen floor of his family house — his mother pleading somewhere in the maze of marble corridors. The island — like an old friend who disappeared into homelessness in another country. So foreign, yet so full of his own past. Timon breaks from these thoughts, reasoning that they must be re-swallowed.
Timon joins Maryann on the couch and pulls the blanket back over his legs, regretting the attempted call.
"I think I'm about ready for bed, dear," he says.
"Who were you calling? Was it work?"
Timon feels no confidence in his ability to lie tonight.
"No, I tried to call Phineas."
MaryAnn focuses on him with a curious expression. Her mouth opens with an initial response, but before producing any sound, she quiets to reassess.
"Just checking in?" she asks finally.
"Yeah, I guess. I'll turn this off. Let's go to bed."
MaryAnn agrees, and they retire to their room after turning off the T.V.
Timon adjusts his pillow and rests in bed, watching MaryAnn comb her hair through the open bathroom door. She wears a sheer, light-green, silk nightgown, resting loosely on her figure. Timon admires her from a distance like a tourist in flight.
"I think it's a good idea," she says, gathering her hair to tie it back.
"What is?" he says, knowing exactly what she is talking about.
"To stay on the island. At least until things calm down."
Timon stays quiet. She gathers her locks and brings a hair tie around, looping it several times, then tightening it to a tail.
"I think we should wait to see what will really happen, though. It could all blow over," she says. "But it could be a good way to finally spend some time away from this town."
He can hear certainty in her voice, as though she had been thinking it over. But she doesn't know Phineas, not the way he does. Then again, in their disconnect it is possible his father has changed—possibly for the better.
Timon considers this, listening to the small noises of her bathroom routine. Could this really be an option? We have been estranged for decades. Through his processing, he comes to an insufficiently explored conclusion.
"I'll have to get in contact with Phineas first. I'll try him again from work tomorrow."
Without a response, MaryAnn crawls into bed. She reaches out to the bedside table and tugs the silver beaded string of a lamp, switching it off. They find each other in the darkness and intertwine.
"You think he would let us all come and live on his island?"
"I hope so."