Kevin had once been a good sleeper, sleeping through the night. So good, it had been a joke between them. A joke with Alex, too.

Stephanie would be chattering at him after they’d tuck in at night, and he’d drop off instantly, no matter how necessary the conversation. He was like one of those dolls whose eyes would close the moment they were laid on their backs. She’d taken to telling him outrageous lies as she saw him beginning to drop off, hoping that would stir him back to consciousness.

Had he heard about the alien invasion?

She hoped he wouldn’t mind, but she’d made a down payment on a zoo.

And, oh, she was having an affair with a movie star. 

At least, that’s what she’d later tell him she had said, because he never heard any of it. Nothing she said, no matter how ridiculous, had any effect on his perfect, uninterrupted night of sleep.

And the joke would continue in the morning, when she’d call Alex into the room, inviting him to bring along his noisiest toys. The spaceship with the flashing lights and laser blast explosions. The toy helicopter, with blades which shot wind which Alex would use to rustle Kevin’s hair. And, of course, the drum set, given by one of their relatives (they could never remember who), which during the day would drive him mad, but at night…nothing.

None of it made any difference to the strength of his sleep, so he’d snore on, waking only when he was fully refreshed, and find Stephanie and Alex laughing around him, and then he would laugh, too.

It had been a long time since there’d been laughter in their apartment. It had been a long time since there had been decent sleep. For him, anyway. Now their roles were reversed. Now he was the one to stare at the ceiling while she dropped off, exhausted by the day they’d been forced to live.

And that night, the night following the day they rented a car and drove around the countryside and tried to pretend things were normal, was no different. Stephanie yawned and murmured and failed yet again to fend off sleep.

“I’m proud of us, you know,” she said in close to a whisper, covering her mouth for a moment before her arm fell back as if it was too heavy to hold aloft. “So many marriages fall apart after something like...something like this. I don’t think I’ve said that to you enough...so proud...”

And then she was out.

And then -- even though he knew she was right, he supposed, that they were among the lucky ones, even in the midst of...of all this, he slipped from the bed when he heard her breathing become slow and regular. And then did the only thing which seemed to bring him sleep these days -- walked the city streets in the dark for hours, until he’d exhausted himself, then returned home to slip back into bed beside Stephanie, who would never even know he was gone.

They each had their ways.

It wasn’t until past midnight when he slipped down to the street and began his wandering, being careful to stick only to the residential streets. Even though he could make out the lights from the distant commercial avenues, he ignored the pull of them. He knew there were always drugstores or coffee shops to be found there which never closed, and he also knew he couldn’t bear to see people that night. Or any night, really. Presence only reminded him of absence. So, his only company were the trash bags which had been set out for pickup the next morning, and the rats which scurried among them. Every once in a while, a car would drive by, but he’d turn his head away each time they passed. He didn’t want to see anyone, and he didn’t want anyone to see him.

He tried not to think about what had happened earlier that day, not the call, nor the candy, nor the silent drive home. He tried not to think about anything, humming snatches of songs to keep the words at bay. When he was finally soaked in sweat and his feet were past the point of aching, leaving him feeling he might finally be able to drop into sleep, he began to head back toward home. It was only then the quiet of the night was interrupted by the echoing ring of a phone from within a nearby trash can.

He froze, unsure what to do. It was late, he was exhausted, he was likely dehydrated, he was probably imagining things...just as he did on what had now become the previous day. If he’d been slightly less tired, perhaps he’d have had the will to resist, and continued staggering on home, for their outing had given him far more of the unusual than he wanted in his life. But he instead found himself lifting the trash can lid before he even thought to do so.

That lowered the echo of the ringing, which continued clearer, more insistent. He shoved aside a greasy bag from a Chinese restaurant, a headless doll, then finally a chipped flowerpot, to reveal an old rotary phone. It had been a long time since Kevin had seen one of those. He lifted it from the can, its scratched shell tacky from the grime of a thousand hands answering a thousand calls. No wires ran from the bottom, no connection existed, and yet it continued to ring, not stopping until he raised the receiver to an ear.

He listened. He waited. But did not speak. He heard nothing save the sound of his own pulse, until --

“You’ve got to go on, son.”

“Mom?”

It had been years since he’d lost her to drink, and decades before that since she’d been stolen by whatever had broken inside her which eventually caused her to need that drink.

“Put down your pain, son. If I did it, so can you.”

“You only did it by dying. It’s easy to not care what happens in this world when you’re dead and gone to the next one.”

“You don’t have to die. No one else has to die.”

“It would have been nice if you’d said that a year ago when it might have mattered.”

He hung up the phone, dropped it into the can, and slammed the lid. As he walked on, he could hear the ringing begin anew. He ignored it.

He didn’t ignore it.

It followed him, lived in him, and was all he could think about as he slipped into bed beside Stephanie, whose breathing did not alter as he shifted to settle in. She was the lucky one these days.

Neither of them was a lucky one.

He fell asleep continuing to hear that distant ringing, even though he knew that to hear it from that distance was an impossibility, as impossible as the ringing itself, and as the world finally fell away, he wished that when he woke, Alex would be laughing by his side, his toy helicopter whizzing by their heads.

Their therapist thought decluttering would help, not that he and Stephanie had ever amassed much excess to declutter in their New York City apartment. But they both knew that what she meant when she told them decluttering might help wasn’t what her words appeared to mean on the surface. For what she meant was -- if they let go of the small things, certain specific small things, perhaps they could then start to let go of the big ones.

The big one.

But they resisted even beginning.

He’d occasionally find Stephanie, having opened the door to Alex’s room, merely standing there, her posture such that it might have fooled someone other than Kevin that she was about to step inside. But she could do no more than look, unable to enter, her wet eyes wide as she stared intently at what remained of a life.

Kevin couldn’t even bring himself to join her in staring. He’d come up to her side, put a hand on her shoulder, whisper her name...but not be able to tilt his head to look along with her into the room itself. Its emptiness was too unbearable.

He was envious of her ability to look at the toys scattered where Alex had left them, and somehow imagine that if she did nothing to neaten them, their boy would be along shortly to pick them up. (Only at her urging, of course.) But Kevin’s imagination could not work like that. He had to only perceive the places Alex had touched through his peripheral vision, in order to be able to continue his version of pretending. So, whenever it was necessary to pass Alex’s room, he’d keep his head down and eyes averted. Both of their thinking was magical, each magical in its own way.

Until that one morning when the sun hit him in the face, and he woke to a silence which for once did not seem unbearably loud. He slipped from the bed where Stephanie continued to breathe peacefully and padded down the short hallway. He opened Alex’s door -- he still thought of it as Alex’s door, he would always think of it as Alex’s door -- and looked in, unsure whether he’d be able to find the strength to enter, surprised he had the strength that moment even for the looking.

He held up his right hand, extending it into the room. He found he could press his palm forward only so far, but no farther, as if a membrane prevented him from entering. It was only when he closed his eyes and blocked his view of all he’d been avoiding that he could step forward and pierce whatever had been holding him back.

And then he was in.

The bed was unmade, covers crumpled the same way they’d been the day of...

The day of.

Comic books were scattered on the floor along one side of the bed where Alex would sit reading on the floor with his back pressed to the wall. His action figures were piled as if engaged in a furious battle by the base of the small desk where he’d do his homework. Or pretend to do it, anyway. An unfinished diorama atop a stack of curling colored construction paper was evidence of that. Kevin should have known which class the assignment had been meant for but didn’t.

He shuffled around the room, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to touch anything Alex had left scattered in his past. He told himself it was because he didn’t want to upset Stephanie by having the room appear changed the next time she’d peer in, but even as he thought that, he knew it was just a lie.

Maybe he could start with the closet, a space which somehow seemed less fraught.

He found much of the clothing inside was already on hangers, probably put there not by Alex, but by him and Stephanie. All right, mostly Stephanie. But several T-shirts remained on the floor. He reached for one on top of the pile, hesitating slightly before his fingers touched cloth. But then he sighed deeply and snatched it up, shook it out, and slipped a hanger through its collar.

He recognized the cartoon gorilla who smiled on its front while giving a thumb’s up, remembered watching that show together. He laughed as he recalled the way he’d laughed then. But then he inevitably thought of the shirts which had been meant to come, the ones which now never would. They’d have been decorated with the logos of bands he and Stephanie wouldn’t recognize, who’d play music they’d never understand, because -- how could they do either? They’d be old. Yet, that wouldn’t bother them a bit, because -- wasn’t that the way it was supposed to be?

But now...now he didn’t know whether he wanted to grow old. Once, there was a time he would have looked forward to it. He used to think it would be a joy, because it would allow him to see the man Alex had become. Only now...what would be the point?

As he stood there, hanger in hand, half in and half out of the closet, he heard a ringtone. Not the tinniness of an antique phone or the bark of a rotary one, but an actual ringtone. It was one he recognized, the theme song from Alex’s favorite anime. It came from behind him, but when he turned, he couldn’t seem to mark the exact location. He rushed to the desk, began moving scraps of paper and pots of paint with which Alex was meant to finish his school project, whatever it had been meant to be. Something about the future, he suddenly remembered.

Underneath the supplies -- the papers, paints, scissors, glitter, and glue -- he found a phone, Alex’s first phone, which they’d bought him even as they also thought he was too young for one, because they felt he should have it just in case they were ever separated while out at a park. The familiar music continued, even though there was no way the phone could have held a charge after all those months.

And it hadn’t. The battery icon was at zero -- which was strange, because didn’t that mean the screen should be dark, and the phone unable to receive calls? -- and yet the screen still blinked in time to each note.

Holding the phone against his chest, smothering its sounds, Kevin stepped to the door and looked down the hall toward their bedroom, toward Stephanie. The ringing hadn’t woken her. He then backed into the room and swiped his thumb, accepting the call.