THE INTERVIEW

19: Return Home

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Linda was in the kitchen.

He could hear her before he saw her—the soft clatter of dishes, the rush of water from the faucet, the familiar sounds of a life being lived in the next room. She hadn't heard him come in, or if she had, she hadn't come to greet him yet. She was giving him space. She always gave him space after interviews, knowing that he needed a moment to settle, to prepare whatever news he had to share.

Dale closed the front door behind him. The sound was louder than it should have been in the quiet house, and the kitchen noises stopped.

"Dale?"

Her voice came from around the corner, tentative and hopeful. The voice of a woman who had been waiting all day, who had probably checked her phone a hundred times, who had been afraid to call because no news was better than bad news.

"It's me," he said.

He walked toward the kitchen. His feet moved automatically, carrying him through the living room he'd lived in for—for some number of years—past the couch where he'd sat and the TV he'd watched and the photographs on the wall that showed people he should have recognized.

Linda was standing at the sink, a dish towel in her hands. She turned as he entered, and her face did exactly what he'd known it would do—that careful hope, that desperate wanting to believe, tempered by months of disappointment.

"How did it—" She stopped. The dish towel twisted in her hands. "Dale?"

He stood in the kitchen doorway and looked at her. His wife. Linda. She had hair that was—a color. Brown, maybe. Or graying. She had eyes that were—he couldn't remember what color, but they were looking at him now, and something in them was changing. The hope was fading. Something else was taking its place.

"I got the job," he said.

The words came out flat. He heard them leave his mouth and recognized that they should have had feeling behind them—joy, relief, triumph—but there was nothing. Just the words, simple and factual.

"You—" Linda's face did something complicated. The hope surged back, brighter than before, but underneath it—underneath it was something else. "You got it? You got the job?"

"Yes. I start Monday."

She moved toward him. The dish towel dropped to the counter, forgotten, and she crossed the kitchen in three quick steps and put her arms around him and he felt—

He felt her arms. The physical pressure of her embrace. The warmth of her body against his, the familiar shape of her fitting into the familiar shape of him.

He felt nothing else.

"Oh God," she was saying, her face pressed against his shoulder, her voice muffled and wet. "Oh God, Dale. I knew it. I knew you could do it. I knew—"

He put his arms around her. It was what you did when someone embraced you. His hands rested against her back, and he held her while she cried, and he watched the refrigerator over her shoulder and thought about nothing at all.

After a while—seconds or minutes, he couldn't tell—she pulled back. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed. She was smiling, but the smile was already faltering, already giving way to something uncertain.

"Dale?" Her hands were still on his arms, gripping. "Are you—is everything okay?"

"Everything's fine." The response was automatic. "I'm just tired. It was a long interview."

"How long? You've been gone all day. I called twice but it went straight to voicemail."

Had she called? He didn't remember his phone ringing. But then, he didn't remember much of anything from the past eight hours.

"It was—comprehensive," he said. "A lot of questions."

"What kind of questions?"

"Behavioral. Background. The usual." The words came easily, generic and meaningless. "They were thorough."

Linda was looking at him. Her eyes—whatever color they were—searched his face, looking for something. Looking for him, maybe. Looking for the man who had left that morning in a suit that didn't fit, nervous and hopeful and alive.

"You seem—" She stopped. Started again. "You don't seem happy."

"I'm happy." He heard himself say it. The word meant something, he knew. Happiness was a state people experienced when good things happened. He had experienced it before, probably. He just couldn't remember what it felt like. "I'm relieved. It's been a long eleven months."

"I know." Her hands slid down his arms, found his hands. She held them, looking down at the fingers interlaced, and then she went still.

"Your hands are cold," she said.

"It was cold in the interview room."

"That was hours ago." She looked up at him, and the uncertainty in her face had deepened into something else. Not fear, exactly. But the beginning of fear. The first faint stirring of something wrong. "Dale, what happened in there?"

"I told you. They asked questions. I answered them. They offered me the job."

"That's not what I mean." She was still holding his hands, but her grip had changed—tighter now, almost desperate. "You're not—you don't seem like yourself."

"I'm tired," he said again. "It's been a long day."

"It's more than that." Her voice was quiet, careful. The voice you used when you were afraid of what you might hear. "You're looking at me like—like you don't know me."

"I know you." He said it because it was true, in a technical sense. He knew who she was. His wife. Linda. They had been married for thirty-one years. He knew these things the way he knew the capital of North Carolina or the boiling point of water—facts stored somewhere, accessible when needed, meaning nothing.

"Then why—" She stopped. Her hands released his and went to his face, cupping his cheeks, turning him to look at her directly. "Dale. Look at me."

He looked at her. At her face, which was familiar in the way a frequently passed building was familiar. At her eyes, which were—which were some color. At the lines around her mouth, the gray at her temples, the small scar on her jaw that he couldn't remember the origin of.

"Something's wrong," she said. "Something happened to you in there. I can see it."

"Nothing happened." The words came out smooth, reassuring. The voice of a man telling his wife not to worry. "I'm fine. I got the job. Everything's going to be fine now."

She held his face for a long moment. He watched her eyes move, searching his, looking for something she couldn't find.

Then she let go. Her hands dropped to her sides, and she took a small step back, and the distance between them—a foot, maybe less—felt like a canyon.

"You should eat something," she said. Her voice had changed, gone flat and careful. "You've been there all day. You must be hungry."

"I could eat," he said.

She turned back to the sink, to the dishes she'd been washing when he came in. Her shoulders were tight. Her movements were jerky, mechanical.

"There's leftover chicken in the fridge," she said without turning around. "I could heat it up."

"That would be fine."

"Fine," she repeated. The word came out strange, like she was testing it. "Everything's fine."

Dale stood in the kitchen doorway and watched his wife move around the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator, took out a container, transferred food to a plate. Her hands were steady, but something in the way she held herself had changed. The hope that had been in her when he'd said I got the job—that hope was gone now. In its place was something smaller, colder.

She put the plate in the microwave. Pressed buttons. The machine hummed to life.

"Dale," she said, still facing away from him. "The scar on my hand. Do you remember how I got it?"

The question was unexpected. A test, he realized. She was testing him.

"A kitchen accident," he said. "You were making soup. The knife slipped."

She turned around. Her face was pale.

"What kind of soup?"

He opened his mouth to answer. The answer was—the answer had been—

"Chicken noodle," he said. "For Melissa. She was sick."

Something in Linda's face relaxed slightly. But only slightly.

"What year?"

The year. She'd told him, hadn't she? Or he'd told her. Someone had said the year, in the interview room, and he'd—

"I don't remember the year," he said. "It was a long time ago."

Linda nodded slowly. She turned back to the microwave, watching the plate rotate behind the glass.

"It was 1997," she said quietly. "Melissa was two. She had the flu. I was exhausted, and the knife slipped, and you drove me to the emergency room with Melissa screaming in the back seat." She paused. "You held my hand the whole time. In the waiting room, while they stitched me up. You held my hand and you told me it was going to be okay."

Dale listened to the story. It sounded true. It sounded like something that had happened.

"I remember," he said.

Linda didn't turn around. The microwave beeped. She didn't move to open it.

"Do you?" she asked. "Do you really remember? Or do you just know that it happened?"

The question hung in the air. The microwave beeped again, insistent.

"I remember," he said again. But the words felt hollow, and he could hear that they sounded hollow, and he knew that Linda could hear it too.

She opened the microwave. Took out the plate. Set it on the table with a fork beside it.

"Eat," she said. "You should eat something."

He sat down at the table. The chair was familiar—he'd sat in it thousands of times, probably. The plate was familiar—white ceramic, a small chip on the edge. The food was familiar—chicken and vegetables, reheated, steaming slightly.

He picked up the fork. He ate.

Linda stood by the counter, watching him. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and her eyes—whatever color they were—never left his face.

"Something happened," she said again, so quietly he almost didn't hear her. "Something happened to you, and you're not telling me what."

Dale chewed. Swallowed. The food tasted like food—he could identify the flavors, the textures—but there was no pleasure in it. Just fuel. Just the mechanical process of eating because a body required sustenance.

"I got the job," he said. "That's what happened. Isn't that enough?"

Linda didn't answer. She stood there, arms crossed, watching her husband eat, and her face did something complicated—grief, maybe, or fear, or the beginning of an understanding she didn't want to have.

"I'm going to bed," she said finally. "I have an early shift tomorrow."

"Okay."

She moved toward the doorway, toward the hall, toward the bedroom they'd shared for thirty-one years. At the threshold, she paused.

"Dale."

He looked up from his plate.

"I love you," she said. The words came out careful, deliberate. A test, maybe. Or a plea.

He looked at her—at her face, her eyes, the shape of her in the doorway. His wife. Linda.

"I love you too," he said.

The words came out automatically, the way words came out when you'd said them a thousand times. They meant something—he knew they meant something—but the meaning was abstract, distant. A fact about the world, not a feeling in his chest.

Linda nodded slowly. Her eyes were wet, but she didn't cry.

"Goodnight," she said.

"Goodnight."

She left. He heard her footsteps in the hall, the bedroom door opening and closing. Then silence.

Dale sat at the kitchen table and finished his dinner. The refrigerator hummed. The clock on the wall ticked. The house settled around him, full of objects he recognized and memories he couldn't access.

When his plate was empty, he stood up and carried it to the sink. Washed it. Dried it. Put it away in the cabinet where it belonged.

Then he stood at the window, looking out at the backyard he'd mowed a thousand times, and he felt nothing at all.