Wednesday

Our house isn't totally empty, but it feels that way. We still have four hundred fifty pounds air freight, and whatever we want to pack into the car with us, crammed into one room (to keep it from being shipped by the wrong movers). So the house seems totally deserted outside of that single bedroom. Being in a flat, empty, white space works on the head in odd ways. This morning, shortly after six, our power failed. We knew immediately because the alarm started beeping every thirty seconds alerting us to its powerlessness. In the silence between beepings, idle pressures, maybe, take on a life of their own, move things. I only became thoroughly awake when Sunshine rushed into the room, frightened, having heard something downstairs. A slam? A scraping? She said there were noises like furniture moving around. Our room is fitted with two deadbolts and a peephole in the steel door. It's equipped with a radio. The telephone, however, is out on the landing. Peering out the window, I saw that the power looked dead everywhere. I peeked out the little peekhole in the door, too. Our empty house is filled with skylights: during a full moon I can read in the dark here. There was no full moon this morning, and the sky was cloudy; so there was very little I could see through this tiny fisheye circle. In a big empty house, the darkness can look like shapes moving quietly around. We stayed locked in the one crowded room until the electricity crashed back on shortly before seven. She took a shower while I checked all the doors and windows--nothing amiss, emptiness, unmoved furniture. Later, she went on to work. It had all been in our heads all along in this empty house. [Cavin]