Quarantine
Patricia Patterson
Day 5: I light a candle in the kitchen of my apartment. The flame casts shapes on the wall, and I spot cobwebs I missed while cleaning. The TV drones from the living room. A headline reads “Pandemic declared national emergency.” I take a bite of cold pizza, pour oregano on the slice until it’s more spice than pizza. Beside me, you read an article about jellyfish. “Did you know that jellyfish don’t have brains?” you say. I blow out the candle and turn on the light. “And some jellyfish are immortal. When they’re under stress, they travel back in time to their younger selves.” I place my empty plate in the kitchen sink, my back turned to you, and ask, “Will you move in with me?”
Day 8: It rains all day. I pace the living room. It’s been raining for four or five days—I’ve lost count. “When will it stop?” I whisper. You pull a record from its sleeve, lift the needle on the turntable, and place the record under it. The speaker fizzles, then settles. Glenn Miller plays “In the Mood” at Carnegie Hall. I hear rain, a trombone, a saxophone, a trumpet, rain, piano, piano, piano.
Day 14: I sit by the window. I stay by the window. I sleep by the window. A cardinal pecks at the window. I want to let him inside, say, “See? Your reflection isn’t reality.” I tap on the glass to scare him away, but I only feel my fingers striking, see my reflection staring back.
Day 29: You whisper, “Wake up.” Your fingers graze my shoulder. “The day needs you.” You kiss my exposed cheek. I roll over. The blinds are closed, but the light is brighter than morning sun, burning through the slits. Wake up, I think. Wake up. My hand reaches for the dusty blinds. Wake up.
Day 32: The neighborhood is quiet. Tree branches dip and rise. The neighbors have disappeared or have burrowed inside or have never existed at all. Even the piano teacher and his wife next door have vanished. I remember children knocking on his door, “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” filling my apartment, the notes loud and erratic. I remember the silence that would follow, the footsteps to the car, the careless slamming of the door. Then, a moment later, the keys of the piano: soft and wild and urgent, like nothing I’ve ever heard before.
Day 45: A girl moves out of her apartment across the street. I watch her father lug her belongings into a U-Haul. Another girl moves in a few units over and a boy moves out of the one beside it. Five hours pass by. I eat buttered toast and scoot closer to the window. A block over, someone waters their plants. Someone walks their dog. I watch another couch, another dresser, another box come in and out of different apartments. The sun sets in shades of orange and purple. I think of jellyfish, how they can rewind their lives in times of crisis. The neighbors are gone still—their curtains are drawn, their lights off. I see a couch, a dresser, a box, a couch, a dresser, a box, a box. I finish my toast and shut the blinds.
Day 52: My mother calls, asks how I’m doing. “Good,” I say. I always say “good.” She talks about work, talks about how ridiculous the world seems now. “People are going crazy, cooped up in their homes like this,” she says. I listen, don’t offer my opinion. My mother tells me my aunt Konny is dying. Tells me we’re flying to Mexico for Christmas. “This may be the last time we get to see her,” she says. I remember the first time my aunt was hospitalized, nearly ten years ago. The day after she was sent home, my mother and I flew into Mexico City. We paced around my aunt’s home. A portrait of Jesus hung above the couch. Every room was lit with candles. We walked from room to room. My mother’s voice echoed throughout the home, filling hollow corners. I stared at Jesus then at my aunt in a wheelchair, then back at Jesus.
Day 53: The dull hum of the air conditioning comforts me. One day, more people will die than babies are born. Cockroaches can fly. There is such a thing as a broken heart. These are truths that haunt me.
Day 79: Two 50s vintage cars park in front of my apartment. A stranger steps out. “Come look,” I say, calling to you downstairs. Your footsteps follow suit. You place your arm around my shoulder. “I saw,” you say. “I opened the blinds downstairs.” The stranger looks around the neighborhood and up at the sky, as if he’s just stepped out of a time machine and the world around him is unfamiliar. And I think, what a rare, serendipitous thing: two people experiencing the same world from different windows.
Day 99: The neighbors are back. Thank God the neighbors are back.
Day 104: You sit on the couch beside me. The TV is on but muted. I scroll through furniture online. We don’t need any of it, don’t have money for it, but I scroll anyway. You read something on your computer. “Did you know that people who stutter have brains that work faster than their minds can follow?” you say. I close all the tabs on my computer. “My aunt is dying,” I say. How have I gone this long without telling you?
Day 137: I’m sitting by the window drinking water, watching the sun set. You stand beside me, sipping peppermint tea. The neighbors pace the sidewalk. The wife shakes her head gently, nudges the piano teacher in the ribs. He laces his hands behind his back. I wonder if his hands ache from constant movement. “They look like old friends,” I say. “I hadn’t noticed before.” The wife reaches for his tired hands and he offers them to her.
PATRICIA PATTERSON
Patricia Patterson is a Mexican-American writer and editor based in Greensboro, North Carolina. Her fiction appears in PANK, wildness, Platypus Press, and elsewhere. Patricia is currently at work on a collection of short stories that inhabit small corners of Mexico, North Carolina, and California.