THE GLOW
By
E. E. Williams
It was the three
a.m. glow that woke him.
“What … what time is
it?” he asked.
“Three,” she said.
“In the morning?”
“No, in the
afternoon. Of course, in the morning. What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with
me? What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why are you on
your phone at three a.m.?”
“Just reading one of
my newsletters.”
“At three in the
morning?”
“The world is on
fire. War in the Middle East. Violent protests on our college campuses. The
border’s a sieve. Everything is going to hell, and you should be glad that I’m
keeping up with everything. When the civil war here starts, you’ll be thanking
me for knowing what’s what.”
“Unless your phone
has the stopping power of an AR-15, I think we’re gonna have to hide in the
basement if a civil war breaks out.”
It was an old
argument. His wife was forever on her phone. At night in bed. At the breakfast
table. And at lunch. And dinner.
If they watched a
show on Netflix or Amazon, she was on her phone, missing important developments
in the drama, then asking what she missed.
When he went to bed
early to read, she’d stay in the living room, playing one of “her”
shows—usually something foreign with subtitles—but still on the phone, reading
news and analysis from the New York Times, or the Washington Post,
or The Atlantic. (How she kept track of the subtitles while reading her
phone was a mystery.)
She’d eventually
join him in the bedroom and the lights would go off at ten-thirty or eleven at
the latest, but inevitably, the phone’s glow would awaken him at two, or three,
or four.
It was driving him
crazy. He was losing sleep. And patience.
They’d been a happy
couple once. This was well before cellphones, when you had to read a newspaper
or watch Dan Rather to get the news of the day.
Once,
their weekends
were vibrant tapestries woven with laughter, shared meals with friends and
family, and the caress of ocean breezes as they walked along the beach. Barbecues
crackled with the scent of grilling food and the warmth of company. Evenings
unfurled into passionate encounters, a Saturday night ritual (sometimes
spilling into Sunday afternoons).
Then,
thanks to Steve
Jobs, a gleaming phone entered their world. It became a captivating web for his
wife, ensnaring her attention. She was both obsessed and possessed by the
device, which, much like the Devil, insidiously whispered promises of endless
possibilities, a constant stream of distraction. Slowly but surely, their
vibrant tapestry began to fray. The shared experiences, the laughter, the intimacy,
all faded, pushed to the periphery by the glow of the screen.
He understood, with
a pang of sadness, that a perfect rewind was impossible. Cellphones had wormed
their way into everyone’s daily life, not just his wife’s. Hers—theirs—wasn’t
an isolated case. The universe had been irrevocably altered.
But what was the
point of being informed about a world hurtling towards chaos when it was
something you couldn’t control? The war in the Middle East, student protests
against Israel, school shootings, Covid variations, none of them were problems
anyone’s phone could fix. Information overload wasn’t a substitute for
connection.
He could divorce his
wife. Marry someone who wasn’t perpetually plugged into the world’s woes. There
was that pesky pre-nup, though. Half of everything he worked so hard to
accumulate would have to go to her. It wasn’t fair, but at the time of their
marriage, he was buried so deep in the corporate hierarchy, you couldn’t have found him with
spelunking gear and a topo map. But guile and a relentless work ethic had
helped him rise to CEO where he reaped the millions befitting such status.
Should he have to give half of that to a woman who had more interest in her
phone than him?
No, it most
assuredly wasn’t fair.
Something had to be
done, though.
Something permanent.
***
“Where is my phone?”
“Probably wherever
you left it last.”
“Very funny. It was
on the bathroom counter. I was reading my Bulwark newsletter while I was
brushing my teeth. It’s not here now.”
“Your phone or your
teeth?”
“Don’t quit your day
job because you’d starve as a comedian. You need to help me find it.”
They scoured the
house. Top to bottom, side to side. The bedrooms, the living room, the
bathroom, the garage, the cars in the garage, the screened patio, the bathroom
again.
He was tempted to
ask if she might have mistakenly flushed it down the toilet, but the withering
look she gave him made him swallow the question.
“It was here, in the
bathroom. It was. I’m sure of it.”
“You certain you
didn’t leave it somewhere else and just forgot?”
“I. Don’t. Forget.
Things.”
“Really? You
remember a couple of weeks ago when you couldn’t find your glasses that were
sitting on top of your head? Or the time you absolutely had no idea where your
watch was and it was on your wrist?”
Her gaze skewered
him like a hot poker.
“Call it for me.
Right now.”
A humorless sigh
escaped him as he scrolled through his phone’s favorites list. His finger
hovered over the “WIFE” icon, and he smiled inwardly. He doubted she could hear
the phone ring from its resting place. The murky pond behind their house, home
to turtles, water snakes, and a gator that liked to occasionally sun itself on
the banks. The very same pond where he’d launched the phone during his wife’s
last shower—the only place and time she wasn’t glued to it.
With the best
innocent face he could muster, he asked, “Can you hear it?”
“Are you just trying
to get under my skin? No, I can’t hear it. Can you hear it?”
No, he couldn’t, and
thought the turtles and fish might be the only ones to
answer—or perhaps the gator, though he doubted it had much interest in incoming
calls.
He
desperately wanted
to laugh, but his wife’s eyes were wide with a frantic terror that chilled him
to the bone. Her face, no longer flushed with the screen’s glow, had turned a
sickly shade of purple. It wasn’t anger. This was the raw panic of an addict
facing withdrawal.
“I
need it now,” his
wife cried. “Please, if you know where it is, you’ve got to tell me.”
Tears
streaked down
her cheeks.
“I
don’t know … I
don’t know what I’m going…”
Her voice trailed
off into a strangled gasp. With a thud that echoed in the tense silence, she
sank into a chair beside the bed. Each shallow breath she took was a desperate
fight for air, her lungs seemingly rebelling against their usual function. A
sheen of sweat erupted across her forehead, and her hands trembled. He’d
witnessed countless high-pressure boardroom battles, hostile takeovers, and
market crashes, but this, this raw, desperate struggle was entirely new territory.
It ignited a flicker
of concern amidst the embers of his resentment. Maybe, throwing the phone away
had been a tactical error. His wife was unraveling before his eyes. He hadn’t
anticipated her reaction and fear twisted his gut with sickening dread.
“I need a new
phone,” she panted. “I need something now. I’m begging you. Go out and get me a
new phone.”
“It’s ten o’clock,”
he said. “All the stores are closed.”
“Let me have yours
then.”
“No.” What would be the
point of throwing her phone in the pond if he was just going to give his to
her?
“No!” she shouted.
“No? Do you know what I’m going through?”
He held his palms up
in surrender.
“Okay, okay. I have
to be honest. I threw your phone in the pond out back. When you were taking a
shower, I threw it away.”
“You what? In the
pond? Why? Why would you do something so cruel?”
The words tumbled
out of him, a torrent of pent-up emotions.
“I just ... I
couldn’t take it anymore. You’re gone, even when you’re here. We haven’t
talked, haven’t gone anywhere, haven’t ...” He choked back the last word, the
lack of intimacy a painful memory. “That damn phone. Every night, its glow cuts
through the darkness, wakes me. I can’t live like this. I’m sorry, but this
can’t go on. You’ll get through tonight. We’ll get you a new phone tomorrow.”
She didn’t respond.
Just nodded and climbed the stairs to bed.
Later, a sliver of light
once again danced
behind his eyelids and woke him. It wasn’t the familiar cool
blue of a phone screen. It couldn’t be. His phone was on the
nightstand beside him, hers was in the pond. Unless his wife had taken a midnight swim
on an improbable retrieval mission.
His mind sluggishly
cleared the fog of sleep, and he realized the light emanated from
the closet. His wife wasn’t in her usual place beside him. She must be in the
closet. Why?
He crept out of bed,
the floorboards
creaking with each step. He cracked the closet
door and was about to ask what the hell she was doing when she pivoted to face
him.
A thin smile played
on her lips, but it never touched
her eyes.
Something glinted in her hand. Was that … a gun?
His gun? The gun he bought a dozen years ago? The “just in case” gun he hadn’t
touched since? That gun? It was the last thing his mind registered
before she pulled the trigger.
“You shouldn’t have
thrown my phone away,” she said as he collapsed in the doorway.
She stepped over his
body, plucked his phone from the nightstand, and dialed 911 to let an operator
know there had been a shooting and that her husband was dead. When the last
syllable of her confession faded, a sudden calm washed over her. She eased back
into bed, fluffed up the pillows and awaited her fate. When officers finally
burst into the darkened bedroom, the glow from the phone lit up her face.
“Did you know,” she
asked, holding the screen aloft to the confused assemblage, “that the New
York Times is reporting there’s a staffing crisis in federal prisons?”
THE END
