On Monday morning of homecoming week I wake next to a stranger, but this is hardly new. We’ve played this game for at least a month. In the dim bedroom light I see her dark hair spread in waves on the pillow next to mine – a beautiful but unfamiliar earthy brown. My eyes automatically search the wall for our wedding picture, and I study the image of my wife, noting her tidy, shoulder-length blonde hair, lean face, and vivid eyes like little blue flames. She is out there, I assure myself, and the doctors agree. She just hasn’t found her way home yet.
The stranger in our bed mumbles and rolls over, shifting the mass of comforter and dragging her brown hair across the pillow. I dress in semi-darkness, allowing only the slight glow from the barely-covered windows. A crawling discomfort in my stomach prevents me from talking to the stranger, so I work with quiet diligence and close the door softly when leaving.
Waking with strangers has worked its wickedness on my weary body, and I stare at a dim copy in the bathroom mirror-a dried husk of a man, scraped clean. Dark crescents slump under my eyes, my pale cheeks show age and exhaustion in the early morning, and I fight against surrender with a splash of cold water. I want to weep, but that won’t bring Liz back – that won’t help Owen.
He sleeps soundly in his cozy nest across the hall from my bedroom. When I wake him, he hugs me tightly, his four-year-old hair a tangled, curly mess, too long to easily tame.
“Quiet, buddy,” I whisper, “She’s still sleeping.” He nods and I help him dress in silence. We breakfast on a bagged imitation of Lucky Charms and look at pictures of football players on the front of the sports page. Owen drinks his watered-down orange juice from a plastic cup.
Before we can leave, she shuffles into the kitchen with wide, wild eyes. The eyes are brown, like the hair, and at that moment missing my wife’s feels like a fist in the chest. This woman is shorter than her with fuller body and rounder face. I move to hug her, but she remains stuck on the tile, watching from behind a foreign mask.
“Bye, honey,” I say. “I’ll take Owen to preschool again.” I hug the stranger like a statue.
After delivering Owen to preschool, I allow my mind to dream about my wife-my real wife, the one that must be out there somewhere. I’ve never actually seen her phase, but that’s the word the doctor’s use to describe Lizzy’s condition. They try pills, therapy, even a couple of old-fashioned spells that, in the end, just leaves us with a different Liz each day. We might as well throw rocks at the moon.
At work that day I attempt to teach Act I of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but the student body allies with school tradition and thwarts me. Fairy tale creatures inhabit the bodies of my students. It’s a hard realization, but I understand that my classroom will fill with strangers each day this week, my students maddened by their age and the themes of each day, dressing in odd clothing, and spending their evenings playing pranks on each other or working on class floats.
I don’t want this; I don’t need any more strangers.
When I wake on Tuesday, I smell bacon, eggs, and fried potatoes-comforting memories drifting with thick odors from the kitchen. I find the stranger standing in front of the range, tossing potatoes in a skillet. Owen sits at the kitchen table and looks at me with his pale blue eyes, asking a question without speaking. The stranger wears my wife’s clothes and fits them well, but her hair hangs limp and long, a few shades too red to recognize.
“Good morning.”
“I thought you might like breakfast,” she says in another’s voice while looking at the sizzling potatoes.
“Yeah,” I say, “sounds good.”
“I haven’t been pulling my weight around here lately.” Her voice almost breaks as she pokes the potatoes with the spatula, and I hesitate for a moment to stop the tears and stuff them back into my throat, weighing my words and actions carefully.
“We’ve been fine,” I say, gently patting the stranger on the back, “we’ll be fine.” She turns and hugs me, and for a brief moment, as her body presses against mine, I close my eyes. I’m touching my wife again. In my mind I hold that moment, but in the kitchen I muster courage to leave the house, not knowing who will take her place before I return in the evening.
“When is Mommy coming home?” Owen asks as we drive toward his preschool.
“Soon,” I say, although I don’t know.
“I miss Mommy.”
“I know, buddy.”
I study his face in the rearview mirror. He looks out the window as we drive, his blue eyes reflecting the shadows of the trees and houses.
“Daddy!” Owen yells from his bedroom. I roll over and read 3:35 AM on the blazing face of the alarm clock. The stranger sleeps silently next to me, her dark hair a tangle of blue in the moonlight. Her face floats peacefully on the mat of hair, but the features are still alien.
“Daddy!”
I quietly swing my feet over the edge of the bed and bring them in contact with the cold hardwood floor. Behind me she stirs but does not wake. I stumble through the dark out of our bedroom and into Owen’s.
“What is it, buddy?” I whisper. I can just make out his small face in the glow of his nightlight; a shining streak down his cheek indicates he’s been crying. My frustration melts into the best sympathy I can muster in the middle of the night as I softly approach his bed.
“Is there anything scary out there?” he whimpers.
I kneel down next to his bed, his big eyes searching my face for the answer.
“No, buddy,” I lie.
“Stay with me,” he commands with his pitiful voice.
“Okay.”
I climb into his bed, stretching out on my side next to his wall. He buries his face in his stuffed bear and curls on his side, facing away from me. I reach out with my free arm and rub his four-year-old back. He is much too young to understand, and I am thankful that I might have years before I admit to him that yes, there are very scary things in the world. Sleep does not return for me that night, and I face the prospect of teaching Shakespeare in a stupor.
Owen and I leave before she rouses that morning.
My students, mock movie stars clad in wigs and gaudy togs, continue to practice being someone else that day. I yield to a BBC production of Midsummer.The blonde heads and fat sunglasses sit placidly in their seats, lapping at the myriad moving images and ignoring any of the content. I’m too tired to fight them today. When I suffer the video for the fifth class period in succession, I fall asleep.
She remains in bed when we return in the early evening. Owen swings in the backyard as I sit down on the edge of the bed next to her prone body.
“How was your day?” I ask.
“Okay.” She looks at me with dilated pupils and a gaunt, unfamiliar face. “I stayed in bed all day. It felt safer.”
“Are you hungry?”
“No, but I should get up. I’ll make you something.”
“Don’t bother,” I say, “I’ll take Owen to Dairy Queen.”
“Yeah.” The stranger’s voice says. “Okay.”
Later that evening, after I tuck Owen in and kiss him goodnight, I lie on the couch, unable to bring myself into the stranger’s bedroom. I try to read, but I have no endurance after my early morning. My night is short and dreamless.
The stranger walks through the kitchen as Owen and I eat breakfast the next morning, and this time she is shorter with cropped black hair and dark, deep-set facial features. She stops and looks at the paper on the kitchen table, and Owen maintains focus on his cereal bowl.
“Good morning,” I say, and she merely shrugs before walking into the living room.
At school on Thursday, homecoming week reaches a rolling boil as I watch “twin day” doppelgangers haunt the hallways. The faeries love to indulge the children.
An after-school faculty meeting delays my trip to pick up Owen that afternoon. Sitting impatiently through some blather about detention hall and in-school suspension policy, I watch the clock inch forward until the principal signals the end. I rush from the room, hurrying from the empty building with little time to collect my child.
When I find my car in the near-vacant lot, the front passenger corner of the car dips too low. My neck grows hot and tightens. The meeting held me too long to change the spare and make mandatory pick up time at preschool, so I must rely on the stranger to collect Owen. I dial my home number on my cell phone, stand next to the crippled car, and wait-uncertain of the voice I will find on the phone.
“Hello,” the stranger answers.
“Someone needs to get Owen at preschool,” I say, not bothering to fight through an introduction with the imposter.
“Owen?”
“Your son,” I say.
“Yeah,” the voice says, “look, who is this?”
I summon my resolve to push the words from my mouth. “I’m your husband. Please just go get Owen at his preschool.” The phone falls silent. I struggle with the jack, lying on the dusty ground, and the lug nuts resist my best effort to quickly twist them from the wheel. At one point my hand slips, scraping my knuckles bare and bleeding; I should feel pain, but my mind hovers elsewhere, working through possible scenarios, and wondering what the stranger will do.
With the spare in place, I start for home while dialing the preschool’s office, questioning whether I should have relied on the stranger at all. No one answers. When I pull into the driveway next to her car, I exhale, trying to release tension through my mouth.
“Owen?” I ask as I open the door. The house listens in silence.
The stranger lurks in the hallway leading to our bedrooms. She is tall today, bleached platinum hair, and features far too light for my wife. Her eyes almost glow from sunken sockets just a little too close together, and her arms are crossed tightly in front – a stance of coldness and distance.
“You didn’t pick up your son today.” Her strange voice is low, full of disgust, and I hold my breath, waiting for the right words to defuse the moment. “I’m sick of your bullshit,” she says while brandishing a boney finger in my face before any words come to me. “We aren’t following you anymore.” She turns on her heels, quickly sweeping toward Owen’s room. I barely hear his small voice and reach to stop the stranger. When my hand touches her arm she quickly swats it away, enters his room, and slams the door.
“Honey, please,” I say.
I knock hard on the door and try the knob, but she must have immediately locked it. I slump against the opposite wall and slide to the wooden floor. When I wake in the middle of the night, I’m still hunched on the floor but covered lightly with a warm quilt.I lift my stiff body from the floor and peek into my bedroom. She lies sleeping under the comforter, and I turn to see Owen’s open doorway. I don’t approach the woman in bed, but quietly gather clothes from my dresser, place them in the bathroom, and lie down on the couch, waiting for the first light of dawn to brighten the deep red walls of our living room. I rouse while they both still sleep and stuff a few essentials for Owen in a bag.
We leave early in the morning. I take Owen to school with me today, and I’ve decided we will leave after the homecoming game. Trying to teach is a wash, Shakespeare will wait, and unquiet thoughts tell me to stay close to my son. He watches as students swathed in Springdale blue file through my classroom: football players looming large in their jerseys, cheerleaders’ painted faces and bold S-emblazoned sweaters, and the rest of the students, most infected by the same special drug that brings school pride at least during that week. I teach nothing that day.
I’d promised to announce the halftime crowning at the game, and Owen watches with rapt attention as football players collide and crash on the field. As the game clock melts, my stomach gradually softens, feeling as though it may pour out of my body. I’m too tired. During the halftime show, my voice echoes through the stadium with the empty sound of an exhausted man as I announce the king and queen candidates that night.
We stay for the end, watching Springdale lose the game by the slim difference of a missed extra point. Owen nestles into the back seat of my car, propped into position by the booster. We drive out of town. West of Springdale, the highway rises over a large hill, a place where you can see the lights of that small town spread in the valley below. Just as we crest that hill, I hear Owen’s voice.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah, buddy?”
“When are we going home?”
His face is just visible in the mirror, barely lit by the soft light of moon and stars. I gently steer the car onto the shoulder, shift into park, and lay my head on the steering wheel. I briefly imagine an escape, a fleeing from that town, from the relentless rotation of strangers through our house, and the pang that arrives when I realize my wife’s face would fade from my memory without the wedding picture on the bedroom wall. The bitter, angry stranger in the hallway last night would be reason enough to take Owen somewhere safe, but I know she is trying to find her way home. She must be trying to find her way home each time she phases. After a moment, I can speak again. “Now buddy. We’re going home now.”
Owen falls asleep long before we arrive. His limp body dangles in my arms as I carry him into the dark house and lay him on his bed, slip off his shoes, and pull the dark blue covers to his chin. I quietly walk to the door of his room, turning to look one last time at his sweet sleeping face before steeling myself to enter my bedroom.
The room feels warmer than it has in weeks, possibly the side effect of my quickened heart. The woman that lies in my bed is covered well, curled in a fetal position just like my wife used to sleep. The room is washed with blue from the moonlight, and I can’t see the woman’s hair color. I sit gently on the edge of the bed and undress, carefully crawling under the heavy blankets, and clutching a pillow as I roll to my side, away from her. I look at the wedding picture, just making out my wife’s face – a stolen silver moment of smile and happiness. The woman next to me shifts.