![]() Instead she stood on the stairs and cupped her hands to her mouth and called to him, “I’m here. But she would not do such a childish thing. ![]() I was here, and you were not here.” And later that day, after his lunch and before his nap, unless it was before his lunch and after his nap, the wife heard the husband calling to her, “Hello? Hello? Where are you?,” and the thought came to her, No. He complained that one of the little plastic devices in the shape of a snail hurt his ear, the tender inner ear was reddened and had even bled, and so he would call, pettishly, “Hello? Where are you?”-for the woman was always going off somewhere out of the range of his hearing, and he never knew where the hell she was or what she was doing at times, her very being exasperated him-until finally she gave in and ran breathless to search for him, and when he saw her he said reproachfully, “Where were you? I worry about you when you don’t answer.” And she said, laughing, trying to laugh, though none of this was funny, “But I was here all along!” And he retorted, “No, you were not. He would continue to call, not hearing her, for he disliked wearing his hearing aid around the house, where there was only the wife to be heard. “What is it?” And he would tell her-a complaint, a remark, an observation, a reminder, a query-and then, later, she would hear him calling again with a new urgency, “Hello? Hello? Where are you?,” and she would call back, “Yes? What is it?,” trying to determine where he was. “Yes?” she called, trying to remain calm. The husband had got into the habit of calling the wife from somewhere in the house-if she was upstairs, he was downstairs if she was downstairs, he was upstairs-and when she answered, “Yes? What?,” he would continue to call her, as if he hadn’t heard and with an air of strained patience: “Hello? Hello? Where are you?” And so she had no choice but to hurry to him, wherever he was, elsewhere in the house, downstairs, upstairs, in the basement or outside on the deck, in the back yard or in the driveway. You can read the entire series, and last summer’s Flash Fiction stories, here. ![]() This is the first story in this summer’s Flash Fiction series. ![]()
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