Where Is Your Wife?

After parking the car, you rush ahead of your son to unlock and get in the house before him. You check the kitchen, living room, bathroom and bedroom, before the eight-year-old slams the front door and kicks his shoes off into the middle of the floor. You're breathless from running up and down the stairs, and you haven't found your wife. She isn't here living and breathing, and she isn't here as a corpse either. She is elsewhere, and there's no way to know if she's alive or dead. She could have thrown herself off the bridge above the highway. You wish you'd found a place to live farther from the Don Valley Parkway, the sound of traffic all night long a siren song to the suicidal. She could have stepped off the platform in the subway station. It happens all the time-when there's a delay due to an "incident at track level" everyone knows what that means. You send her a quick text message: We're home, where are you? Your kid shrugs off his backpack and jacket as he walks through the living room. Along with his shoes, they make a trail between the door and the couch. "Put away your things," you call after him, but he glares at you, the whites of his eyes bright with contempt, and it doesn't feel safe to insist. Instead, you shower. It's your third shower today, but it's August and the humidex has been in the thirties all week. Your under-arm and under-boob and crotch areas are all damp and rank. It's climate change; it's the ever-expanding network of condo towers, blocking the lake breeze and eating up green spaces where trees cast shade. Or maybe perimenopause is making you feel the heat more. You gaze at the crane outside your bathroom window, its current project an unfinished structure of concrete and rebar. It'll be done by autumn. Someone's tiny balcony will be right there, where they can peer in while you pee. The shiny new condos have air conditioning, but your townhouse was built in the 1970's and you've never had the money to put in central air. You're lucky you were able to buy anything at all before real estate skyrocketed, but you've been house-poor ever since. A never-ending series of remortgages. By the time you get to the living room, sweat is trickling down your back again. The entire couch is taken up with your son's body, his Pokémon cards, his video game paraphernalia. He looks bigger, his ankles propped up on one arm rest, his head on the other. He used to fit inside the arms. "What do you want for dinner?" you ask. He snarls, not bothering to talk or tear his eyes away from the screen where he's making an animated armoured figure run and jump and shoot. Maybe you'd have a better relationship if you could spend time with him playing video games. But you've tried, and your hand-eye coordination is bad, and he doesn't let you try anymore. You're an impediment to his progress, or, as he puts it when he uses words, "You suck. Go away." A notification chimes from your phone, and your heartbeat is momentarily erratic, but it's not your wife. Just spam. In the kitchen, you grab a fresh dish towel to sop up the sweat underneath your breasts. Throw it over your shoulder, make a mental note not to use it on any dishes. For a minute, you contemplate the cereal boxes. That would be the easiest solution for dinner. Your son likes cereal; you wouldn't have to bear his disgust at your cooking. You wouldn't have to turn on the stove in this weather. It would take no time. But your wife could come home. The last time you suggested cereal for dinner, she started crying and said, "You're trying to make me feel guilty for not wanting to cook myself," so you had to cook then, and you have to cook now. There's not enough room on the credit card to order in. Put water on to boil for pasta. Check the living room. Your son is still playing video games, but he's grown two sizes larger. The hem of his pants is mid-calf, as if he were wearing clam diggers, and his shirt is painfully taut across his chest. "We need to go shopping," you say, tugging at his pants. "Don't touch me!" He slaps your hand and it stings. There's a fizzing sound and a burning smell coming from the kitchen, so you run back. The water is boiling over. You turn the heat down so it's simmering and notice the time on the microwave clock. Your son should have been in bed an hour ago. This happens too often, and no child can excel in school if they are chronically under-slept. If he doesn't do well in school he won't go to university, get a job, move out. You wonder again if your wife is alive, then slap your forehead to push the thought away. You have to make dinner. Children can't excel in school if they are under-slept, or underfed. The pasta is in the cupboard above the oven and you're a short woman, so you need to climb up the step ladder, but just as you've grabbed the dry goods container, your phone chimes again, startling you. You drop the jar of pasta into the pot, and boiling water splashes up your torso. The can of cooking spray falls in too, and that might explode, so you reach into the pot to fish the can out. There's a split second of calm silence before the pain kicks in. You stagger backwards off the stepladder, slip in the cooling water on the floor, crack your head on the cupboard. A sharp spike of pain in your skull sings along with the burning of your torso and hand. Wriggling around on the wet floor, you tear the soaked clothing off your scorched body. "I'm hurt!" you call. "I need help!" But the high-pitched gaming noises from the living room don't stop, syncopated swing rhythms, a "boing" every time your son hits the button to jump. Large red blisters bloom on your upper body, your hand. You roll onto your unburned side and manage to get up onto your knees. The phone is what startled you-it could be your wife. Maybe she could help. You paw it down from the counter, clumsily drawing your unlock pattern. A drop of blood runs off your nose onto the tempered glass. I'm home, the message from your wife says. Making dinner. Where are you? You turn your head wildly back and forth, scouring the kitchen, as if she might be crouched on top of the refrigerator, or peeking out from a cupboard. No one is there. You stagger out to the living room, holding your right arm in front of you so the damaged skin doesn't accidentally brush against a wall. "Have you seen OM?" you ask. 'OM' is a cute joke, an acronym for 'other mother' so either you or your wife could talk about each other with your son. But it seems ridiculous now; a syllable about meditation, which has become fraught and fearful since her mental health began to spiral. Since you started worrying about what she might do when you weren't watching. "No! Where is she?" Your son is fully grown, a patchy beard on his chin, man-spreading across the couch. He tears his face away from the TV to look at you. His eyes are still too bright, the whites showing all the way around the iris. "Oh my god you're naked! Disgusting!" he howls, and throws a video game controller at you. It lands on the swollen side of your body and the burn blister breaks, pus running down your hip. A sob erupts from your mouth, and your son yells, "Everything makes you cry! Grow up!" Was he ever a sweet baby you rocked to sleep at night? Did he ever give you a gap-toothed grin as you caught him at the bottom of a slide? Did you and your wife ever swing him between your clasped hands? And anyway, where is she? You hear her singing. Before you had a kid, you used to go with a group to the weekly karaoke night at the local pub. That was back when you had friends, but your friends all stayed childless and now you don't know them. "Can you shut her up?" your son calls to you. He doesn't like singing. The sound is coming from upstairs. You climb slowly, gripping the banister, dripping tears and snot and blood onto the carpet. Upstairs, the singing reverberates, as if this were a vast music hall, not a cramped hallway in a tiny townhouse. She's singing in