The Kitchen Window

The kitchen is dark. She didn't turn the light on. She doesn't need the light on. She knows where the chair is. She knows where the table is. She knows the table has three things on it - a mug she didn't put in the sink, a letter she hasn't opened, and a tea towel she folded and left there at dinner and hasn't moved since. She doesn't need to see them. She sits in the chair and she knows they're there.

The window is open. Not all the way. The latch is loose and the bottom pane slides open about four inches on its own if you don't push it shut. She stopped pushing it shut weeks ago. Maybe months. The four inches is enough to hear through.

The road is out there.

She can't see the road from this chair. The window is behind the table and the chair faces the wall. She'd have to turn around to see it. She doesn't turn around. She doesn't need to see it. She needs to hear it.

A car passes. Not often. Sometimes ten minutes between them. Sometimes twenty. The sound comes in through the four inches and fills the kitchen the way water fills a glass - from the bottom up. First the tyres on the wet road. Then the engine as it gets close. Then the engine as it goes. Then the tyres. Then the nothing.

The nothing is the point.

She sits in the kitchen in the dark and listens to the nothing between cars. The nothing is not silence. The nothing has texture. It has the fridge and the pipes and the neighbour's dog - the one that barks once at 1 AM and then stops, every night, one bark, as if it forgot what it was doing. The nothing has the road in it. The road is in the nothing the way the road is in everything on the A57. Even when you can't see it. Even when you can't hear it. The road is there.

She used to sleep. She used to sleep the way people sleep - horizontally, eyes closed, the body doing its work without being asked. She doesn't remember when the kitchen became the place. There was a night she couldn't sleep and she came down for water and she sat in the chair and the window was open the four inches and she heard a car pass and then the nothing and then another car and then the nothing and the nothing was full enough to rest in.

That was the first time. She comes down most nights now. Not every night. Most. She sits in the chair and she doesn't turn the light on and she doesn't turn around and she doesn't open the letter and she doesn't move the tea towel and she listens.

The fridge hums. The pipes tick. The neighbour's dog barks once. One bark. Then nothing. Then a car. Then nothing. Then nothing for longer. Then nothing for longer than that. The nothing gets deeper the longer you sit in it. The first nothing is shallow - you can still hear the road in it. The second nothing is deeper - the road has faded. The third nothing is the deepest. That's the one she sits in. The third nothing. Where the road and the fridge and the pipes and the dog have all gone and what's left is the kitchen holding her the way the kitchen holds the table and the mug and the letter and the tea towel. Without needing to be asked.

She doesn't sleep in the chair. She goes back to bed when the nothing gets deep enough. She pushes the chair back. She walks to the stairs. She knows where the stairs are. She goes up. She gets into bed. She sleeps.

She doesn't know why the nothing helps. She has thought about it. She has sat in the chair and thought about why the nothing helps and the thinking made the nothing shallow, so she stopped thinking about it. The nothing helps because the nothing doesn't need anything from her. The nothing doesn't ask. The nothing doesn't look. The road is in the nothing but the road isn't looking at her. The fridge is in the nothing but the fridge isn't asking. The pipes tick but the pipes aren't talking. The nothing is the only thing in her life that holds without reaching.

The window is open four inches. The latch is loose. She stopped pushing it shut.

The road passes. The nothing comes. The nothing deepens. The kitchen holds.

She goes back to bed.