We planned the house ourselves, glad to have our own project after the maternal pressure system of our wedding. We saw the rocks one afternoon on vacation — one of the many weekend trips we took so we could truthfully say, Sorry, I have plans.
The rocks faced the water’s endless expanse, which fills the horizon with endless midpoints. It was the perfect spot to build a house, linear and strong. We would have separate halves of the house, live on our own sides of the petri dish.
It’s not that Steven and I don’t love each other. We’re asexual, you see, which means that we only cuddle. And I have OCD too, which means I like to have things just right. I’m only calm when things are symmetrical, when there’s a midline, or midlines, to divide.
Steven understands. We met online, on a website for asexuals. I had my profile private, but I found him one night, sitting at my desk with a glass of wine beside my elbow. I don’t drink, but I like to pour it and see it swoosh up the side and leave a translucent red film.
I found his profile because he also said that he doesn’t like animals, human contact, cheese, and grass. There are many other things that I don’t like, but no one else had that many matches.
We went out on a date and I knew by how he arranged his plate and silverware — silently, compulsively sliding it in line with the frizzy floral centerpiece — that he would be it. I had never felt so strongly attracted to touch someone in my life.
We like to brush the tips of our fingers together, because our middle fingers make a midline and his fingers are all almost exactly an inch longer than mine.
One day when I held my hand out to him, he slid a ring on my finger.
So we married, and lived in an efficiency while we built our house. Steven went out every weekend, to see the frame rise out of the ground. I don’t like dust, so I didn’t go, but he would tell me: the bare beams rising out of the ground like breadsticks, the sweet sighs of the waves — like the ones I make in my sleep, he said.
We moved in the fall after our wedding, into a house filled with dust. Steven gave me a slim new broom and I raised clouds that floated out over the lake and dissipated. We settled in: Steven cooked, I washed. I made the bed, he vacuumed the windowsills, hung the white curtains.
Our neighbors Jan and Kent came by one day, after gardening. They eyed us eyeing their smudged knees, their clasped hands. They asked us if we were thinking about a baby, and I smiled. Steven did his head jerks, five times, which is less serious than 10 but more serious than none.
“Babies aren’t really for us,” I said.
“Is it because of your um,” Jan tilted her head, “disorders?”
I tilted my head to mirror her, smiled thinly.
“What disorders?”
She smiled back, her face framed by the embarrassed blotches staining her neck and face, and they backed away.
That night in my bed I thought of the powdery saliva smell that emanated from my sister’s baby. I thought of how she gripped my mother’s hand until their fingertips were purple on the way to the hospital. I slid my hands out from under the cover and gripped them together. My fingertips began to tingle.
Klarissa Fitzpatrick has been writing stories since she was seven. She has won multiple awards for her work and is currently working toward a degree in English Literature. She lives in Texas.