Our house is not big. I used to like the closeness of it all. Each day I leave to walk the quiet streets of our neighborhood. Sirens are the most common sound these days. I haven’t been keeping count but I easily hear them twice as often as before. Now is the time of year when I can usually hear kids squealing from many yards and have to remind myself that this is the noise children make when they play but also when they’re in trouble. It always makes me uneasy. I think I prefer that unease to this particular quiet.  Sometimes I see people and dogs stare at me from their windows. I am not breaking the rules. I don’t have a dog, one of the legitimate reasons people have to leave their houses; a necessity as defined by the city. Things are only a necessity if they are visible. Of course, that’s not true either. Hunger is only visible after someone has been hungry for an extended time. Sometimes medicine is a visible necessity; for others, their medicinal needs will always be invisible. My walks are necessary so that I don’t have to interact with my soon-to-be ex-husband.

A year and a half ago, he asked me if I wanted kids. I said no. He asked why. I said I liked our life.

“What do you like about our life?”

I could not, cannot, fault his question. It was direct and fair. Nonetheless, I could not answer it. There was nothing in particular that I loved or couldn’t live without. I tried to tell him as much with softer, kinder words. He was crushed.

“I love so much about our life,” he said. He listed the gardens, the green house, the chickens, the house, me. I could not, cannot, fathom why I was on that list. I had and continue to contribute very little to the house other than my presence.

“I think we should get divorced.” We had spent two years in that house, almost six with each other. I did not imagine this path of life for myself, but as I stood there, in his manicured garden it felt like the logical step to take. He disagreed. We were meant to go to therapy, to discuss things we’d never willingly discussed before. There seemed to be some unwritten rule in his upbringing that a couple needed to fight for a year before separating.

The separation was slow, also guided by the therapist as one last-ditch effort to help us see if there was something to salvage. I wanted out. I was ready to sign a new lease, had been for a year. But a high school teacher’s salary does not afford one the means to pay rent and half a mortgage for any length of time. So long as that equity was shared, that my name was on the mortgage, I was staying put.

The therapist instructed us to go room by room and examine every item—discuss any memories and attachment. She referenced Marie Kondo’s book and television show as inspiration if we needed it. I participated, as requested. He took it very seriously at first. I couldn’t tell if he was still actually trying to save our marriage or checking boxes. If it was the former, I couldn’t imagine why he’d want to.

We started in the kitchen. I asked him for one pan and one small pot. He asked about the memories of the kitchen. I remembered that we fucked on the countertop the night we moved in. It was the only room with window coverings. We didn’t use any utensils for that. He put the pot and pan on the kitchen table. I wanted to move them somewhere else, like my desk. He’d need the kitchen table and chairs for his future family. I left them alone for now. The living room was part my office, part living room. I requested most of the books, the bookcase, my desk, and my reading chair. He nodded. His memories of any of them were largely watching me use them.

On the wall, there were some photos that we hung together. Two wedding photos and three from our honeymoon. Those were very clear memories. It was a beautiful day. We got married at the courthouse with four of our closest friends and held a small reception after. At the time I remembered feeling like it was the start of something new. Looking back, it was the moment my life stopped looking like my own.

“It’s got nice land,” he had said. It was a double lot and the house that sat on it had enough room for the two of us and a bit more. All I knew was there was dirt beneath our feet and concrete beneath the house. He knew soil and liked open spaces, having grown up in a small town. His parents didn’t have a farm but farmed what land they had for themselves and what they didn’t need they shared with their family and friends. When I asked what he wanted with all that land, he kept saying it would be great for entertaining. I had never entertained anyone a day in my life.

I grew up in close quarters—to my family, to the neighborhood, to the life of the city. Everything was within reach. Five of us in a one-bed, one-bath. The dining table separated what was supposed to be the living room and the kitchen. The living room was our bedroom, mine and my two brothers. We had no television. I suspected that was because it would be on all the time or we would fight over it if we did have one. We just didn’t have television money. I moved to a different city for college. At first, I shared another one bedroom with another college student. She was excited that I volunteered to sleep in the living room. I didn’t tell her why. When I could afford it, I moved to a small studio. I couldn’t kick the small spaces. They were comforting. As for entertaining, I met people at bars and restaurants. When we wanted a cheaper night out, we went to someone else’s slightly larger apartment. No one had the cookware for a dinner party let alone enough money to offer to feed that many people.

Despite his hopes, we didn’t entertain either. I stayed inside and graded students’ papers and projects, and he slowly built up the backyard with raised garden beds and a chicken coop and filled them with produce and chickens, respectively. During the first winter, he seemed bored. He spent the bulk of that February redesigning the yard and building bits of a greenhouse in the garage, for the following winter.

Today, I ponder the possibility that I am apathetic. I have not considered that possibility previously. Surely, if someone asked if I care about what happens in my life, I’d say yes. I care about many things—my students, my friends, my family, all who I haven’t seen for seven weeks. At some point though, it seems I decided my surroundings are not a priority. I wonder when that was.

When the city first shut down, before the state, before other states, before the country, I was still teaching, sort of. Students who could joined online. Students who couldn’t, I printed packets of reading assignments and homework sheets, stuffed them in envelops with extra stamps and return envelops, already addressed to me, and sent them to my students’ homes. I told students to participate if they could, let me know if they couldn’t. Those that said they couldn’t, I did not ask why but if there was anything I could do for them. Some said yes right away. I sent gift cards for groceries, books, pharmacies. Others gave a quiet thanks but no thanks. I wanted to help them the most.

He didn’t realize I was doing this at first. When he did, he was upset I was spending more of our money than he was. I asked how much we spent on therapy. He gave me a ballpark number.

“I would spend twice that much on my students.”

He left the room.

Our house is not big. Last week, I heard him talking to someone in our bedroom—his bedroom. Our walls are not thick. Crying soon followed. I knocked on the door. “Everything okay?”

Tears streamed down his face. He pointed to his computer screen. “She’s pregnant.”

I stared at the woman. She unabashedly held up her pregnancy test. I did not get closer to confirm the results. I did not know that woman.

He smiled. “I’m going to be a dad.” More tears came down his cheeks.

I left the room. That was too much to process in our small house. I went for a walk.

I haven’t been walking the whole time between now and then, but sometimes it feels like it. Sometime between when we started our separation exercise and the lockdown, he found a woman to procreate with. Even before that, they were ready to move in together, so they told me. But they had signed a lease that was supposed to start this week, but the old tenant can’t move out because their new apartment was also being occupied by the previous tenants and so on and so forth. Even if they did move out, no one could get carpet cleaners to the units. Everyone was stuck.

I keep walking. I’m further away from my house than I’ve been in weeks; further than I should be. I long for the city but not as it is now. This is the only time I’ve been glad not to live in close quarters. Friends have already died. Friends that are still living have lost family and friends of their own. Some that are my age have lost spouses. The collective grief hangs in the air, heavy and wet like summer humidity.

I want to run. I feel my feet step faster and then I stop myself. There’s nowhere to run to.

– Alli Parrett