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
