The Little House Next Door

The monitor

I set up the baby monitor that night. The camera went on the dresser in her bedroom, pointed at the bed and the door.

The little screen went home with me and sat on my nightstand, fifty feet away, with its little green light on.

I tested it from my bedroom. I could hear her humming while she got ready for bed. I could hear her slippers on the floor.

I pushed the talk button and said, “Goodnight, Helen,” and through the screen I watched her look up at the ceiling and say, “Goodnight, God.”

I laughed out loud. Curt was lying with his back to me. He did not laugh.

The first night went fine. Helen got up twice for the bathroom and went back to bed. I woke up both times, the way I used to wake up when our daughter was a baby.

Once she talked in her sleep, something about calves.

The second night, I woke up at three and Curt was lying on his back staring at the ceiling.

“You okay?” I whispered.

“I can hear her breathing,” he said.

“That’s the point,” I said. “So we know she’s okay.”

He did not answer. After a while he rolled away from the nightstand and put the pillow over his head.

The third night he slept on the couch. He said it was his back. He said the couch was better for his back. I knew it was not his back.