Betty was waiting for the Wi-Fi to start working.
It was her third month working from the new house. It was also the third month of saying goodbye to her partner Ron in the morning and waiting for the one hour they might have together at night.
Ron was, unfortunately, essential.
He had to work despite the seemingly infinite reality of the pandemic because his job fell within the increasingly urgent category of wellness. He made serums that helped people make the most of visits to a float spa. This was one enclosed space in which the danger of disease did not linger, or at least that’s what customers hoped.
Humanity had entered a time during which escape and its providers were mandatory.
Betty was a designer. These days, she was working on surveillance drones for concerned parents and not feeling entirely enthused about it. This was the only way she and Ron could claim a space for themselves.
Ron often joked about the fact that “starter” homes were the only ones people their age could ever hope to buy. It was a small miracle that they had a few rooms and a backyard to themselves just when space became so much more precious.
The new rituals of their lives were equal parts soothing and disheartening. Making food, rearranging the few pieces of furniture they owned, and seeing what their one hour together could accommodate was already second nature.
Betty was surprised by how much she’d taken to mundane domestic activities. She suddenly had preferences for designs on plates and opinions about how the living area could comfortably accommodate a coffee cart. It was her and Ron’s chance to make something just for them. She just wished he could be there to take part in more of that process with her.
If the pandemic hadn’t swallowed everything, they would sit in traffic every day and quote the podcasts they frequented to pass the time while cooking dinner together. They would both miss each other equally.
Life was an infinite sequence of Zoom meetings and alarmist tweets. Working from home while working on a home was a bit too much home for Betty to stomach. She wondered if it was overwhelming for Ron to help people forget how life was changing outside. He was a gateway to something he probably wished he could enjoy. Then again, he and Betty wanted to remember the specificity of that bizarre moment in history. Life had been turned upside down just when they had secured the ultimate symbol of “normalcy.” How could they appreciate the comfort of another person that truly understood them if they each had to spend 23 hours each day simply waiting and coping?
Ron was excited to get home especially early one day. He and Betty 17 bonus minutes to spend together before their worlds began spinning again. Mostly, they used the time they had to talk and do emotional check-ins.
There was more and more to take in each day even though their routines stayed mostly the same. The federal government’s lack of a response coupled with the fracturing of what people defined as facts made for an increasingly volatile environment. The world beyond their front door was changing between each iteration of them closing and reopening it. After she stared at the door all day with much more time to speculate, Betty wondered if All Ron was getting from her were stir-crazy leftovers.
Autonomy was what they had originally wanted. They had designed their pre-pandemic lives to avoid spending too much time together. They lived independently and had completely different hobbies.
Most weekends were still for rock climbing trips with their friends, though. That’s how they’d met and it was the thing that made them feel the most connected to both the world and each other. It was impossible to imagine what going outdoors for extended periods of time would mean in the very near future. Betty and Ron both anticipated checkpoints, protective gear for their faces, and more managed methods of being in nature.
According to most experts, outside could be the safest place of all if enough space was made between people. It was ironic that they might need to introduce a sense of physical autonomy into spaces where they felt the most whole.
The Wi-Fi appeared to be working again. Betty signed into Zoom and clicked over to her Twitter tab. Things felt the same, which was becoming strangely comforting.