The car in the drive is not his own.

It is a Camaro, the kind he has admired for many years but which always seemed impractical for a family. He looks down at the keys and half understands.

How has she done this? How can they afford it?

For now, at least, he decides that these questions can wait.

He presses the automatic tracking button on the keys and hears a satisfying click and double beep as the Camaro responds.

He smiles broadly and turns back to the front door, intending to go inside and get dressed before taking the car out for a spin.

As he does so, he catches the eyes of Ned, who stands by the lawnmower, staring blankly back at him.

“Morning, Ned,” says Arthur.

Ned does not reply, instead he continues to stare silently at Arthur.

Ned switches on the lawnmower and Arthur steps inside and closes the door behind him, suddenly very much aware of the cold.

•

Arthur Kovic wipes the sweat from his forehead and tries to remain calm. He has been driving for several hours now and knows that he is completely and utterly lost. A deep fog has rolled in across the endlessly unravelling highway and he strains his eyes to pick out the roadside signs that flash by him. Confused and afraid he switches on the radio, seeking guidance about this abrupt and unusual turn in the weather.

Instead of a weather report, a famous rock and roll singer from the 1970’s is singing a song about changes and Arthur focuses on the familiarity of the voice, letting it soothe and reassure him, as cars flash by in streams of soft neon light.

He thinks about Anna, sitting at home, glaring at the clock, as she assures the party guests that the birthday boy will be home at any minute. How long, he wonders, will it be before she has to start making excuses for his absence and what ramifications will those excuses have on him when he eventually arrives home… if he arrives home?

A light begins to flash on the Camaro’s dashboard indicating that he is running out of gas and Arthur makes a tiny, muted sound in the back of his throat. He turns up the headlights to full beam to combat the fog and sighs with relief when he sees a sign flash by advertising a gas station, a little under a mile up ahead. He looks at the meter ticking towards empty and reassures himself that it should be enough. Forcing himself to take deep breaths, he switches off the radio, just as the song ends and an advertisement for a new form of dental hygiene takes its place.

•

“You’ve taken a wrong turning,” explains the gas station attendant as he pumps the diesel into the car.

One by one, the attendant outlines Arthur’s mistakes to him and carefully traces out the route he will have to take if he is to find his way back home.

Arthur watches the attendant replace the pump and hands the man his credit card. The attendant looks at him as if he has just handed him a particularly difficult quadratic equation.

“What’s this for?”

“The gas.”

Arthur watches as the attendant’s previously cheerful face dissolves into a scowl.

“Okay, buddy. Where’s the hidden camera?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You will be sorry if you don’t pucker up and pay.”

Arthur has never heard ‘pucker up’ used like this before and thinks the gas station attendant must be misusing it. A more pressing concern, however, is the problem with the card. Arthur feels the sweat rising on his brow as the attendant continues to glare at him. The station must only take cash, he reasons, but, if that’s the case then why is the attendant being so aggressive? He fumbles for his wallet, digs around inside and is relieved to see that he has just enough in loose bills to cover the price of the gas.

The attendant hands him back the credit card, shakes his head in apparent distaste and returns to his duties.

Arthur stands alone in the moonlight, looking down at the credit card in his hands. There is nothing printed on the surface. It is as smooth and blank as an eggshell. He turns it over. There is no signature. No microchip.

Arthur puts it back into his wallet, gets back into the car and starts the engine. He grips the wheel tightly to stop himself from trembling.

•

Arthur sees the lights flicker on in the living room window, as he carefully reverses up the gravel drive and brings the Camaro to a halt.

Ned stands by the lawnmower, exactly where Arthur left him this morning. He has a can of Coca Cola in his hand and Arthur notes with mild disinterest that Ned has apparently shaved off his trademark beard.

“Evening, Neighbour,” says Ned.

Arthur does not answer.

The front door is already opening.

Anna beats on him with the flats of her hands as he tries to enter. Her mascara stained cheeks stand out against the shock of blonde hair that now rests where, only this morning, her dark brown locks hung. He does not like what she has done to herself, but he knows that this is not the time to say so. She listens to his rambling apologies but they seem as incomprehensible to him as to anyone else. He has driven the same route every day for the past five years and cannot explain how he came to lose his way today; how the roads seemed different and the signs to places he used to consider familiar led only to a strange, fog-infested highway with no end.

Anna screams and yells at him. She has been drinking and her words slur together. He tries to show her the blank, formless credit card, as if it will somehow explain everything, but she bats it from his hands and pushes past him up the staircase. From the top of the hall he hears their bedroom door slam shut.

Alone now, he looks around at the empty living room, noticing, for the first time, the banners that hang limply from the ceiling and the door to the kitchen. He notes the cake that sits, uneaten on the kitchen table and the empty glasses that embarrassed guests to a party that never happened have left behind them.

Arthur sits for a long time at the kitchen table turning the blank credit card over and over in his hands.

Eventually, he grows tired and creeps quietly up the staircase to brush his teeth. Before he heads to bed he opens the door to Jennifer’s room, the passageway light illuminates it just enough to avoid waking her. He wanders softly over to her bedside and looks down at her sleeping, unmoving form.

The girl in the bed is not his daughter.

It is the other girl: The girl from the dining room who smelled of freshly cut grass, who wore her hair in dark brown pigtails and poked her tongue out at him from above the drawing of a butterfly.

Arthur hears the girl’s voice in his head.

“Why are you afraid of butterflies?”

He stands unblinking in the half light, trembling over the girl’s quietly sleeping form. From next door he can already hear Anna snoring loudly.

Someday

Arthur Kovic wakes and makes love to a blonde haired woman that is not his wife.

The bedroom is the same. The wallpaper is the same design that they picked out eight years ago. The bed is the same one that they purchased and spent a day assembling, just a few summers back, but the woman now straddling him is not his wife and not the mother of his daughter, Jennifer.

After it is over, he lies in the ruins of his marital bed, mired in the disgrace of the deed. Arthur is ashamed of what he has done: Ashamed of the suppressed lust that Anna’s migraines have built up within him. He lies imprisoned and immobilised by his guilt. Eventually, he hears the radio turn on in the kitchen downstairs and Nina Simone’s voice once again rising up to greet him.

“Everything must change. Nothing stays the same. Everything must change. No-one, no-one stays the same.”