Amelia Gray: AM/PM

The man who owned the furniture store was really glaring at Martha and Emily by then. They had been testing the stability of his coffee tables by piling on top of them, first Martha on her back and then Emily on her front. The owner thought it was pretty funny at first, but when they kept going and he determined there was no candid camera to catch his reaction, he started pacing back and forth in his glass-walled office.

Emily took Martha’s hand and led her over to a three-legged table with a glass top.

“Fall back on it,” she said.

“I’m not falling back on it.”

“Come on.”

“There’s no way, under any circumstance, that I would fall back on a glass table.”

“Heat of the moment.”

“No way. I’d have to be on drugs.”

“So you’re on drugs,” Emily said. “So we decide to relive our college days, and you’re on drugs, now fall back.”

The owner picked up his phone. In the reflection of the glass, Martha could see the two of them, together. They were reliving their college days, and she was on drugs, and it wasn’t even going to hurt.

Andrew’s problem with women was that he was analytical and they were always, always emotional. Women made fun of him for measuring out salt and spices when he cooked. Even the ones who never cooked would criticize him, leaning against the doorway of the kitchen as if they knew they shouldn’t trespass but teasing him anyway. At the movies they smacked him with popcorn buckets for commenting on an incongruous detail while they were building up the stamina to cry. None of it made sense to Andrew. He was very loving, and concerned, and simply knew where to place sadness and fear and anger, so that it could be accessed with great efficiency when necessary.

“It’s just you and me, house,” Andrew said.

The house was not so sure.

With practice, Hazel learned to paint rooms. The evidence could be found in the botched green walls of the room she left and would always remember, even when the house is sold and the room is repainted.

Understand that if you don’t paint a room properly, you will know those pieces of wall forever. Understand that every piece of paint not properly applied continues to quietly exist. The misapplied strokes hold a dull truth that remains despite new coats.

After a night of terrible sleep, Tess awoke to the realization that cows become meat, though they eat none, and the same goes for vegetarians.

She drank her coffee with extra cream and no sugar. The black linen dress hanging on the wall of the coffee house aspired to belong to a little girl, size six.

A man spoke into a cell phone. He said, Since I met you, baby, I’ve never been the same.

Another man said to a child, Where are you going, you bug? Don’t make me squeeze your little paws, you bug.

Unload your perishables and empty boxes. Give away old clothes and broken cookware. Crush the empty cans and load them with the yellow newspapers. Shred the sensitive documents. Discard fingernail clippings. Get rid of those photographs and letters. Offload the old enemies. A lighter life, at any price.

When Martha was a girl, fire safety was something presented on public service commercials and school visits from volunteer firemen. They even brought a miniature house, perhaps half the size of the house she grew up in, with child-sized stairs and rooms.

The children crawled into the house and the adults would start the sweet-smelling fog machine and pump it in through the windows and vents and say, Get down, get out, remember your training. Martha would obediently get down and get out, though she liked the way the smoke smelled.

The adults said, You must have a plan, and Martha made a secret plan: in case of fire, she would fill up the bathtub, get in so she would save her pajamas from burning, and simply peek her nose above the water to smell that candy smoke.

It was a warm Friday afternoon, and the rain hadn’t yet begun. Sam was throwing a rubber-band ball at Hazel’s forehead with repeated accuracy.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Hazel said. She closed her eyes when the rubber-band ball struck her forehead.

“Do you have a better idea?”

“You could not do that.”

“Sorry,” he said, catching the ball and throwing it again in rhythm. “I won’t define myself by what I am not , and what I will not do.”

She sighed. “You could throw it at the wall next to my forehead.” She kept her forehead still for him when she pointed.

“No go, unfortunately,” he said, scooping up the ball. “I place too high a value on human interaction.”

“You could throw it at somebody else for a few hours.”

Sam looked wounded. He winged it hard enough to leave a red welt between her eyes.

“I’d never do that to you,” he said. “I love you.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“At least we have that,” he said, aiming for the welt.

After Carla left, Andrew discovered that their house had three secret hiding places. In the second bedroom, he found a small cubby in the upper right corner of the closet, enough room for a medium-sized box or a small child. Under the sink, loose planks covered a few inches of secret space.

At the bottom of the stairs in the entry hall closet was the most exciting secret area. Close inspection revealed a panel that lifted up to expose the underpinnings and pipes of the house. He was shocked he hadn’t found the secret earlier.

The space had its own climate. In an emergency, Andrew could possibly fit in the area. This would be an emergency that required not exiting the house through the front door, five feet away. It would be an emergency requiring escape or concealment. The wood around the panel was original to the house, sixty or seventy years old. Andrew felt terribly safe.

Charles decided to see if he could live without worldly possessions. He said that giving them up one at a time was the scientific way to do it, which made sense to Doreen because she had bought him a subscription to Nature the previous Christmas, and since then he had been fascinated by the scientific method. Doreen’s friends suggested that she give him time, then they suggested that she draw the line at items important to her. Her friends made no suggestions at all for one week, when Charles packed their cell phones into the garage. When he brought them out, her voicemail was full of messages saying This has to stop.

That night, Doreen watched Charles dismantle the ceiling fan. “This has to stop,” she said.

“You only concern yourself with larger things,” he said. “You didn’t notice the week I went without socks.”

“I do your laundry. I notice everything.”

“Speaking of, I have the clothes dryer on schedule for next week.”

The base of the ceiling fan came down in one piece, and he wrapped the globes carefully with newspaper before unscrewing the blades. He lay them in a neat stack and arranged them all in a box.

“The girls are talking about you again,” Doreen said.

“Those women need to learn a thing or two about compromise,” Charles said.

He took the ceiling fan away. Doreen looked at the bare wires dangling from the ceiling and wondered how a scientist might see them.

Reginald closed down the furniture store on Mondays. He tried not to keep a set schedule on his day of rest, but he was an organized man by nature and did find satisfaction in loose guidelines. Before noon, he would ride his horse across his property. Sometimes he would find the cows, and sometimes he would ride the perimeter, checking the electrified fence. Around noon, Olivia would bring him a cold lunch on the porch. It was often a sandwich made from the leftovers from the previous night, chicken salad made from the dinner cutlets, or meatloaf soaked in ketchup. Olivia gave old meat new life between bread.