Member-only story
Scenes From the In Between
14 women describe life during the pandemic
STELLA
My husband is banned from the cafe because he’s a member of many risk categories: old, former smoker, with heart disease. That means he doesn’t get up and go to work in the morning. And though I’m glad to miss his heavy sighs and groans as he forces himself out of bed to hurry out the door, I’m not glad to have him crabby and ever present. We are confined together in our 900-square-foot apartment and I work, as I often do in his company, to assert the outlines of my identity. It’s not just you: your discomfort, your frustration, or your lifting mood that matter. I am also here. Do you reckon me?
I remember his father. How he would bellow out to his mother in another room to come serve him: bring a cup of coffee, say, or a plate of food. We both grew up in an era when women were mostly helpmeets. We both see the changes. We both embrace them — perhaps one of us more than the other…
He admires a distant past, when all the wonderful inventions were being made — the airplane, the car. He watches black and white movies. I hunger for books and stories that center on women. I’m saturated with male heroes, having heard their praises sung for my entire life. I’m listening to a book on tape, knitting a baby blanket for my gestating granddaughter, when he…
