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Show 54 Seventeen The emptiness of the house is almost as great in the day as in the night; Robeck is alone now, where there are no noises of his wife, not even the heavy, full silence when she sits in her room. He had not known that an empty house could become emptier, but each day it is more so, and his very breathing seems to grow less audible, his movements to cease. Occasionally, he tries calling friends; he spends an evening or two at dinner, explaining that Annis is out of town, but afterwards there is the cavernous emptiness of the uninhabited house: where even the memories are packed away in boxes, or have vanished. He tries to work on the new portion of his manuscript, but does not succeed: he spends hours twisting paperclips between his fingers, or wandering idly through the animal labs; he cannot bring himself to write, and finds that he has nothing to say. In the evenings he returns home, opens one can of vegetables and fries an egg, or puts a single frozen dinner into the oven. He sits stupidly in front of the television, drugged by it but not amused. He eats the same things again and again, watches the same programs every evening, and he always finds it hardest of all to put an end to the light when he goes to bed. Sometimes he cannot bring himself to do so, but leaves it burning. By the mid-point of Annis' absence, he begins to hunt through the house. He does so slowly at first, looking idly into a cupboard here, opening a single closet there. But everywhere he finds the same thing: the drawers are empty, the contents of the cupboards packed, and in the attic what he finds are stacks of cardboard boxes, one stack for Roderick, one stack for Evan, a small stack |