We Are All Completely Fine Read Online Free PDF

knew, and accepted, her need for privacy, for multiple locks on the door, for sleeping with the bathroom light on. He never asked her why she couldn’t say “I love you.” They made a life. Sometimes an entire day went by when she didn’t think of the Scrimshander.
    Then, in their late thirties, a surprise. Not an unwanted pregnancy, but an unwanted desire for a child that appeared without warning and took up residence in her body. She felt ridiculous, as if she were reneging on a contract she’d made with Stephen. But when she finally admitted it to him—“Stephen, I have some news”—he responded with an enthusiasm that frightened her. Had this desire for fatherhood always been in him, but hidden from her because of her craziness? Or was it possible that they could both be so unknown to themselves?
    They pursued pregnancy with scientific rigor and religious fervor. They read What to Expect When You’re Expecting until they were sick with fear. It was the worst kind of horror story, a child endangered on every page, but they absorbed the moral in every chapter.
    And it worked. The babies were born with a minimum of drugs and drama. The infants escaped SIDS and survived croup. The adults weathered sleep dep and stress. They were determined to become what Stephen called The World’s Greatest Parenting Team, Non-Asian Division.
    When the show ended and the pizza was consumed, Barbara and Stephen expertly separated and funneled the boys into phase 1 of the nighttime routine: homework, dishes, tomorrow’s lunches, the charging of devices. They did not have to speak. An hour and a half later, her husband was shooing the boys upstairs to showers and bed. He stopped at the turn of the stairs.
    “You’re going out?” he asked. He did not add, again? Good, polite Stephen.
    “I need to get some work done,” she said. “I’ll be back before breakfast, don’t worry.”
    He started to say something, then changed his mind. A long time ago he’d stopped asking what she was working on, whether it was a new piece or something she’d been painting for weeks. He’d stopped asking when she would show them to him.
    “Drive safe,” he said.
    Drive safe, dress safe, live safe. Retreat to the safest place of all.
    She opened the two locks on the apartment door, slipped inside, and immediately flipped the light switch. She stood there for a moment, breathing in the familiar tang of paint thinner, reassuring herself that she was alone.
    Every inch of the apartment was visible from this spot at the front door. The main room was just over fifteen feet square with a tiny kitchenette set into the corner. The bathroom was open to her left; she’d removed the door and set it across two metal filing cabinets, making a work table. There were only a few other pieces of furniture: a pair of floor lamps, a wooden easel, a metal folding chair, and a futon with its blue mattress opened flat. A long, wood-framed mirror leaned in the corner. Nothing was wide or high enough to hide an intruder.
    The pair of skinny windows at the end of the room were draped, but behind them were sturdy bars. She could feel that the windows had not been opened; the air was as warm and still as when she’d left. She twisted the locks shut behind her, then clacked home the deadbolt like a horizontal exclamation mark.
    Safe.
    A half-dozen canvases leaned against the walls, stretched and primed. They’d been waiting for months. On the easel was the work in progress, if one could say that an ongoing failure could progress. She walked past it without looking at it. She drew aside the drapes of one window, then pushed it up a few inches, allowing a feeble draft of cool air. She was on the second floor, so there was little chance someone could see through the window.
    The painting on the easel waited for her. She sat on the futon and looked up at it. As she’d done many times before, she’d painted a set of double doors, pale as her skin, and a seam between them