Ever since I got fired, I limit getting high to weekday mornings. It’s important to set boundaries. I roll out of bed before anybody else is up, sneak into the bathroom, open the child-safety lock on the cabinet below my sink, unscrew the cap on the gummies and pop one in. Then I roll back in bed and stare at the ceiling fan’s slow revolutions until it’s time to take a shower, get dressed, and pretend I still have a job.

A picture circulated of me joining a protest outside our research facility where we test numerous quality-of-life drugs on rhesus macaques. Nobody talked to the macaques about their quality of life. I wore a camouflage bandana and sunglasses, but the drug lords could tell it was me. (That’s what we call our bosses: the drug lords.) I said, obviously that’s me, but I was spying on the resistance, trying to get some intel. They said get out.

Does a man need to tell his wife everything? Rhetorical question. I expect Liz (short for Elizabeth) has secrets she keeps from me. And that’s okay! Secrets are a vital part of the human enterprise. Obviously I feel guilty for not immediately telling her about my job, but I like this new stoner part of myself nobody knows about, except for our cat Tux (short for Tuxedo; we let the kids name him), who probably wonders why I love him so much in the morning, our purrs coalescing as I run my fingers leisurely through his black and white fur until I am also soft and cuddly and all I want to do is follow Tux around and let him guide our agenda, curl up with him in an empty Amazon box by the back window as the square of sunlight toasts our toes. Tux is on anti-depressants, so I like to think he gets some tiny joy from our early morning cuddle session.

Animals have more senses than us. I read about it in a book my son Ty (short for Tyler) likes for me to read to him. Turtles can sense magnetic fields. Sharks can sense electricity. Some snakes can see infrared light. And here we humans are acting like masters of the known universe while we’re high in the shower on a Friday.

A timer is set on my phone to ensure I get out of the shower in what would be perceived as an appropriate amount of time. The water pummels my head and neck and shoulders in a delicious dance, and the little tiles massage my feet like I’m standing on a bed of expensive stones smoothed and polished by artisan elves, and the whole world slows down, and unless I set the timer, I’d likely stay soaking until the hot water runs cold, slowly lathering my scalp and tracing the solemn descent of soap bubbles down the glass. Then everybody in the house would know my secret. What are you doing in there? Daddy, are you high in the shower because you got fired? Why, yes, children I am. Don’t do drugs.

When the timer goes off, the twinkle setting, I reluctantly shut off the water and hug myself in the towel that’s flung over the edge of the shower door. It’s so fluffy and smells like the fancy detergent that Liz orders from France (which she will soon have to stop doing, which really sucks because all our clothes smell like a spring jardin), and I want to wrap myself in this towel until it melds with my skin and becomes my soft and fragrant pelt, and I am way too caught up in the sensory stimulation offered by this towel and the blooming nostalgia for this Parisian scent we will soon have to relinquish, and so I’m not fully possessing of attention when I trip over the threshold of the shower.

Is that what it’s called? A threshold? I’m not sure, but it’s the part I have to step over to step onto the bathmat, except I don’t step over it, I trip and land hard with a wet splat, and there’s a pop in my ears, like I’ve had water clogged that the blow has dislodged, and there’s a slight tinny ringing sound, and small, golden electrified floaters wriggling at the edges of my vision, and I have the thought that I might be concussed, because what I’m witnessing does not make sense.

The towel hovers in the air like a magic carpet.

A drop of water from the shower head is suspended in its fall, a tiny globule holding this whole miracle in its reflection.

The twinkle from the alarm is gone.

My life is silent except for the ringing in my ears.

I am a naked white man sprawled on his bathroom floor, and it’s as if time has stopped, and I am awash with a sense of shame, like I’ve been caught masturbating by a team of coworkers with robust social media followings. I scramble to grab the phone from the counter. The phone screen does not respond. I try to flush the toilet. The water does not swirl. I wonder if the time has arrived for an apocalypse, a cataclysmic event, like the poles have swapped and here I am suffering the end of the world. But who wants to be caught naked in the apocalypse? Not me! I think about crying out to my family, but I’m too embarrassed. Besides, what would I say? Hey, come check out this magic trick. Bring breakfast! And the whole ordeal lasts long enough for me to get to my feet and to poke the towel in the air, pitifully trying to set the world back in motion, but the towel is starched and stiff. I’m about to swat the water droplet from its halted descent when the ringing in my ears winds into a whirr, like a leaf blower, and the towel falls, and the water drips, and the alarm twinkles, and the toilet flushes, and I hear the muffled but welcome sound of Liz’s voice calling from downstairs, “Are you okay?”

My elbow hurts from where I fell, but other than that, I’m okay, which is what I shout back. Obviously she heard me fall and was concerned. Had she witnessed the pause button pressed on my life, she would’ve been more concerned. But maybe it happened to her as well, happened to the whole family, but they’re not high, at least I hope not. And that’s what I blame the whole experience on, a momentary hallucinatory vision brought on by my citrus-flavored, legally-bought gummy.

I hurry to get dressed to pretend I’m going to work. Coat and tie, pressed pants and shirt, dress sneakers. I am a man who means business, but I’m also approachable. If I was asked to do an interview for network television, no problem. Ask me anything! (Except don’t ask me about the facility where we test on rhesus macaques.) I’m not trying to say that you have to wear a coat and tie to work or have a personal shopper from Nordstrom (which I’ll obviously be giving up) or be ready to go on network television to be a man. I’m simply saying that for my own personal self-esteem, my own identity and well-being and confidence, which is shaky right about now I must say, it helps tremendously to keep getting dressed like I have some place to be, when in reality all I’m going to do is take the train into the city and set up at a study carrel in the library and watch several episodes of The Wire on my laptop before I head to Starbucks and research jobs and send out résumés and watch European soccer matches and maybe allow myself a slice of pumpkin bread if I apply for at least five jobs.

It is remarkable how easy it is to kill a day doing nothing.

I negotiated a severance package. Six weeks. The weeks are ending. The holidays are coming. And I know eventually I’ll tell her, tell the family, or she’ll find out, but what she doesn’t need to know is that I’ve been getting high on weekday mornings, and, oh, by the way, time just stopped!

And now I smell bacon.

Obviously I am a man who likes bacon, but the smell warrants surprise. My house does not usually wake up to bacon on weekdays. Bacon is a weekend breakfast meat, a breakfast treat. A family luxuriating in bacon on weekdays will expect too much from life.

I walk downstairs, carefully, looking for signs of an extraordinary temporal experience in the faces of my family. Liz is at the dining room table that she’s turned into her sewing station. She makes flowing dresses in outlandish vintage patterns that people actually buy online, so now our dining room table is a sewing table, which means that Katie (short for Katherine) has to sit at the kitchen counter for breakfast. She’s eating a bowl of Whole Foods Organic Galaxy Marshmallow cereal while she watches a makeup tutorial on her iPad. She’s addicted to marshmallow cereal and makeup tutorials. She ropes her little brother into being her model so sometimes he’s wandering around the house looking like a Walmart Ziggy Stardust. But she hasn’t gotten a hold of him this morning. Ty is rosy-cheeked and smiling, standing on a stool so he can reach the stove. He’s got on his Hedley & Bennett apron and is scrambling up organic, cage-free eggs for the family. Our little chef; he’s obsessed with cooking competitions. The thick cut, applewood-smoked bacon rests in a delicious pile on greasy paper towels. The single origin free trade coffee waits fragrantly for my morning mug. How many dresses would Liz have to sell to keep us in cage-free eggs? Could Katie monetize her makeup videos? Could Ty dominate a cooking competition?

The sewing machine stops and Liz’s expression changes when she notices me. She tilts her head and squints, all her features contorting in confusion, like she did that time I gave her an electric can opener for Valentine’s Day. “Do you have to go to work today?” she asks.

Here it is. She’s got me. I assumed she’d be more sympathetic, offer soothing words in private instead of this passive aggressive interrogation in front of the whole family. Obviously I don’t have to go to work, dear. I got fired, okay! But she’s probably scared and hurt that I didn’t tell her. We all act out when we’re scared and hurt.

“I have soccer,” Katie says, before stuffing a spoonful of marshmallow cereal in her mouth.

The bacon should’ve told me. Ty wouldn’t make breakfast for everybody on a weekday before school. The kids are still in pajamas.

It’s Saturday!

Thankfully I make this discovery before lying down in Liz’s lap and crying about how I’m a failure and a disappointment.

I pour some coffee. Nod my head slowly. I’m relieved but also humbled. Today is not the day I thought it was. The days get all jumbled when you’re not actually going to work, when there’s nothing on the calendar. And now I’ve gone and gotten high on a morning I usually abstain. So much for boundaries.

“Thought it was Friday,” I say casually.

They all laugh at me, a big, full-throated guffaw. All aboard the family laugh train! And it’s way too boisterous given the situation. It’s funny, but not that funny. The man of the house, Daddy, has made an obvious mistake. The typical power associated with his coat and tie has been rendered impotent. He’s a buffoon, a goof, a jobless doofus who doesn’t know what day it is, and so I start laughing right along with them because I am not one of those men who can’t laugh at himself (and also probably because I’m still high), and then, right in the middle of our family hilarity, my ears pop and the ringing is back and the golden floaters jolt and jitter and everything is still.

I don’t fall, but time has definitely stopped, because the steam curling from my cup of coffee has frozen into a filigree, and a spoonful of Marshmallow Galaxy cereal dangles outside my daughter’s open, smiling mouth, and it is exactly like the end of a sitcom from the 70s or 80s where the show ends on a still image of all the characters reacting to some joke that wasn’t all that funny, and here’s my family pausing mid-action and waiting for the credits to roll, except they aren’t rolling, and the longer their expressions are paused the more they look like screams. Just like before, I can still move. I wiggle my fingers, my toes, take a step to see if that breaks the spell. It doesn’t. I ought to seize the opportunity and do something wicked, steal all the bacon from the plate, eat the rest of Katie’s cereal, but shame gnaws at my gut again, and as I’m making myself sick over these unwelcome thoughts of betrayal and trickery, the whole world starts up, churns back to life with that leaf blower whirr, and there goes the steam flowing naturally from my cup, and there goes the spoon in the mouth, and there goes the video, somebody putting on some scary-ass makeup to transform into a devil, and there’s the devil on my daughter’s iPad pursing its lips and offering me a kiss.

There’s no point in changing out of my coat and tie unless I have to cut the grass, but I don’t ever cut the grass because I have a lawn service, which I’ll soon have to give up. And obviously it would pile on the embarrassment to slink upstairs and come back down as schlumpy weekend dad in cargo shorts, an old hoodie, and a baseball cap. Somehow getting high on a weekend morning instead of my usual weekdays has disrupted the universe and caused a rupture in the space-time continuum. But what is the space-time continuum and why does it give a crap about me? More than likely it’s all some weird effect from the gummy, like two were stuck together and I didn’t notice so the dose was particularly potent. Well, soon it doesn’t matter. I’m not high anymore, which is good, because I’m driving us all to Katie’s soccer game in our Kia Telluride that still has another year of payments.

Katie’s overweight, “plump for her age” is what the doctor said at Katie’s latest checkup (former doctor now because Liz did not like the doctor discussing weight with a ten-year-old). It’s mostly a result of her sedentary lifestyle, but according to Liz we can’t tell her to, like, back off the Whole Foods Marshmallow Galaxy Cereal, because then she’ll develop an eating disorder, so instead we make her play soccer.

On the way, Katie asks us all what our superpower would be if we could have one. The question seems too on the nose for a morning where I have literally stopped time. But did I? Was I the cause or the effect? Could I do it again? If so, how would I control it? Or what triggers it? Water? Bacon? Weed? Secrets?

Ty chooses invisibility because he could walk into any store and take whatever he wants. This is an alarming element of criminality coming from my seven year old, and I would like to question him on his ethics, but then Liz asks him what he would take, and he says probably Dr. Pepper and Flamin’ Hot Doritos, two things I didn’t even know he’d ever had, but the world will find its way to your children no matter what you do. Liz laughs and asks him if the bags of Doritos would float out the door with him or what? And what happens when he eats the Doritos? Would the spicy dust reveal his invisible fingers? And then Katie asks, “What happens when you poop? Is the poop invisible, too?”

Ty laughs.

“Lots to think about,” I say.

“Every decision has consequences,” Liz says, and shoots me a side-eye like she knows all about me showing up to that protest and then getting fired, or “let go,” as the drug lords put it, which somehow feels more accurate. I am no longer holding on.

Katie says she would like the power to transform into any animal.

“What animal?” Liz asks.

“That’s what’s great about the superpower,” Katie says. “I could be a different animal depending on the circumstances.”

When she uses the word “circumstances” I regret the fact we’ll have to pull them both from private school. “So what animal would you want to be right now?” I ask.

“A Eurasian eagle owl,” she says. “Because I could rip out throats.”

Liz does not comment on our daughter expressing a desire to rip out throats. “I would like to be able to heal people just by touching them,” she says, and then she reaches out and holds my hand, which is a clear indication that I am somebody who needs healing. Obviously she’d be the one in the car who is thinking of others and not herself.

“You could help all the people who get their throats ripped out by Katie,” I say.

Everybody laughs.

“No,” Katie says sharply. “They deserve it.”

I never get around to answering the superpower question, because soon we’re at the soccer field and everybody’s piling out of the Kia. I check my watch face, stare at the second hand, try to make it stop its movement with my mind. I squint my eyes, clench my teeth, blow on it. Nothing. I guess it’s possible I hit the floor and passed out for a second and in that moment of semi-consciousness I imagined the towel floating just before I came to and realized I had fallen.

But that still wouldn’t explain what happened downstairs.

So, okay, let’s watch some youth soccer!

Ty is off kicking a ball with a friend on another field. We’re not helicopter parents. We like to give them some freedom, which is easy at a suburban soccer field. I imagine Katie as an owl, but I’m not sure I’m imagining it right. What’s a Eurasian eagle owl look like? How does she know? Will she learn about Eurasian eagle owls in public school? I picture her flying around the pitch and ripping her opponent’s throats out. I can actually see it happening, visualize it, a violent bird of prey with Katie’s sweet face, and I want the image to go away, because what if my power is that I can imagine something and then make it happen? But I guess not, because all I’m staring at is a stunning display of athletic ineptitude.

Years of my life will be spent on a soccer field. When Katie is done playing, Ty will still be playing, or maybe they’ll both suddenly become athletic and turn their passion into scholarships, which we will probably need in order to afford to send them to college. I consider myself a decent father, and I like soccer. I like bacon, too, but that doesn’t mean I want to eat it every day. I wonder sometimes, if I’m being honest, what our life would be like without them, and whether or not it was even the moral and ethical thing to do to have children when the whole world seems doomed, but I stop that line of thinking pretty quickly when Ty whips up an amazing Oreo cheesecake, or when Katie paints her face like the Bride of Frankenstein, or when they fall asleep and their eyelashes, their delicate, long eyelashes flutter, and I wonder what they’re dreaming, or when I watch them on a soccer field kicking another player in the stomach while that player is on the ground.

Wait. No.

The coach rushes out and grabs Katie, scoops her up from behind, her feet kicking ferociously. She’s enraged, feral, wild and shrieking. Out of instinct, I run on to the field, and so does Liz, because the coach, a guy we barely know, has my daughter in a bear hug and is lifting her in the air while she is jabbing her cleats into his legs, and instead of me wanting to help the kid on the ground who was getting assaulted by my daughter, I want to help my daughter. I want the coach to let go, to get his hands off her, and let me hold her and hug her until she calms down, and then it happens.

A pop. The ringing. The floaters.

Everything stops.

Katie’s face is wet and red, a mask of rage in mid-scream.

The coach’s muscles flex as he restrains her, pink cleat welts slicing up his leg.

The kid on the ground has grass stuck to his tears. Her tears? Hard to tell. Co-ed youth soccer.

And there’s a ref blowing his whistle, his cheeks puffed, his eyes wide and bulging.

And my wife is behind me, mid-stride, gorgeous, her dark hair flowing like an action hero, paused like earlier, but this one’s more of a cliff hanger. What will happen next? Will she save the day? Find out after the commercial break!

And there’s Ty on the other field, lying down in the grass, staring up at the sky while his friend gets ready to kick the ball at his head to startle him out of his daydream.

And here I am, able to move, able to turn, able to absorb all the twisted expressions of shock and anguish and shame and judgment, but unable to help.

Katie says the other kid pushed her in the back and kicked her in the shins and tripped her and called her a butt fart, which pretty much sounds like youth soccer. She says she felt heat surge all through her body and then she was kicking the kid and couldn’t stop, and she says she was seeing colors, all kinds of colors, like a rainbow, and it was glittering, and she heard people cheering for her, not screaming for her to stop, but cheering, and she liked it, and then it was over. “But I didn’t want it to be over,” she says. “I would’ve kicked that cunt forever.”

She’ll be fine at public school.

We say all the right things or all the wrong things. Who knows? Parenting is tough. Then she takes a bath and burrows in her bed to watch makeup videos. I’m surprised how well she’s able to articulate this feeling, a common one, this feeling of not wanting something to be over even though you know it’s wrong.

Later in the afternoon there’s a knock on the door. We have a doorbell, so the act of knocking is alarming and mildly aggressive, but we also have a doorbell camera so we can stay safe from alarming and mildly aggressive knockers (not sure the monthly cost of such security). We aren’t expecting anyone, so I check the doorbell camera. It’s a man with a droopy mustache, which makes him seem approachable and friendly, like a wise and helpful cowboy. It’s not one of those ironic mustaches. Not a pervert mustache either. It’s an honest to goodness sincere mustache.

Still, I don’t know this man, so despite his friendly mustache, I don’t fully commit to opening the door. I leave enough space so I can see him, but not enough that he could barrel right through. The message is I’m opening this door out of social convention, to see who you are and what you want, but I will not hesitate to close the door in your face should things get weird. He’s wearing baggy cargo shorts and an over-sized hoodie and he stands with his Birkenstocked feet splayed at ten and two. His calves are thick as bread loaves and one of them has a tattoo of a clown’s face, a sad-looking clown. The overall impression I’m getting is baggy but harmless.

“Sorry to bother you,” he says, “but are you Mr. Arnold?”

I’m glad I still have my tie on, loosened, but still meaning business. I ditched the coat when we got home from soccer but kept the tie for our debrief with Katie. I want to say, who’s asking, but that seems rude, so I say, “All day, every day.” Which sounds dumb the minute I say it, but I can’t take it back.

“Your daughter kicked my kid today,” he says.

And now I open the door and walk outside to join him, to face him, even though I know it should be Katie saying what I’m saying. “I’m sorry,” I say. “Is he okay?”

“They.”

“Are they okay?”

“This is such bullshit,” he says. “His name is Todd. He’s a boy. He’s got a pecker. I saw it the day he was born. He shot piss in my face on more than one diaper change. Fiddled with it before he knew how good it felt to fiddle. And now Todd says they don’t want to be Todd anymore, and they are not a boy and not a girl and their name is Amoeba. Fucking Amoeba. You believe that?”

This is not the conversation I expected. I would much rather he punch me in the face or toss me down my own front steps or kick me over and over like Katie kicked his kid. But this. This is too much. I know I should be open and accepting, but I also know how he feels. And I sense that he knows he should be open and accepting, but is having a hard time squaring this knowledge with the way he feels.

“I like your tattoo,” I say.

He lifts his heel and turns his leg like he’s modeling. “It’s my dad. He was a rodeo clown. Got gored one too many times.”

He must’ve been a shitty rodeo clown, but I don’t say that, instead I say, “I’m sorry.”

“Shit. That’s not what I came to talk about, man. Forget I said any of that. You just, you just came to the door and looked like a man who had some answers. Maybe it’s the tie.” He extends his hand for a shake. “My name’s Walt, short for Walter.”

I shake Walt’s hand, firm but not too firm, a shake of mutual respect. “I woke up this morning and didn’t realize it was Saturday,” I say. “Thought I had to go to work.”

He chuckles, a polite chuckle of recognition.

“Funny thing is, I don’t even have a job.”

He stops laughing. “Amoeba’s rib is broken,” he says. “I’m going to need you to pay for that. I wanted to tell you face to face. Man to man.”

“I’m sorry,” I say for the third time, or the fourth, or the millionth. “I can write you a check.”

A quick flash of fur darts between us, a black and white streak that bounds down the front steps and tears off, disappearing in the unkempt privet hedge separating our house from the neighbor’s. Tux is an inside cat. Tux has never been outside. I must’ve left the door open. “Tux!” I shout.

Walt turns to watch Tux go then turns back to me. “Yeah, I’m not really sure how much it’s going to cost. Haven’t gotten the bill yet. But we don’t have insurance. I’m kind of between jobs right now, too.”

“Okay,” I say, “Just let me know.”

“Okay.”

And then we stand there, stand so long I wonder if it’s happened again, if time has stopped. Walt doesn’t blink, and there are no cars moving on the street, and the leaves cling firmly to the trees, and our depressed cat Tux has vanished into the hedge, but I don’t hear the pop or the ringing or see the golden floaters, and so I know we are just two men standing still.

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Jeremy T. Wilson is the author of the novel The Quail Who Wears the Shirt and the short story collection Adult Teeth. He is a former winner of the Chicago Tribune’s Nelson Algren Award for short fiction and his work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Florida Review, Jet Fuel Review, The Masters Review, Split Lip Magazine, Third Coast, The Best Small Fictions 2020, and other publications.

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