“Sensavision.”

“Now that you got your chance to talk, I thought maybe I could tell you some more about the Sensavision.” He reached into his back pocket, displacing me from his shoulder, and pulled out another brochure, different than the one we’d argued over. “You’re gonna love it, I just know.”

I was dumbfounded. He continued, oblivious. “Y’see what a nice time we had tonight, with me home? I’d be home every night if we had one of these. Wouldn’t you like that?”

Sitting up, I grabbed the flowers. “Is that what this is all about? You trying to look like a sweet and thoughtful husband so you could romance me into buying one of those?”

His eyes told me he was confused by the question. But his shrug told me more.

I threw the flowers to the floor. “You fooled me. I’ll give you that. Here,” I went to the banking console and inputted the code that transferred funds from my trust account into a debit disk. He watched me, the whole time, his eyes alert, not contrite. I waved the silver disk at him. “Buy the stupid thing. But don’t ever pull a stunt like this again.”

The next day we sat in Gran’s kitchen.

Emily sat at my feet, and I sighed with pleasure. For the past hour, she’d been pressing Gran’s door chimes over and over. Programmed to play Emily’s favorite song, “Whatsa Whatsa,” they’d been the hit of the morning. I was relieved she’d finally gotten bored with the game.

Gran sat down next to me, “So. What are you going to do about it?”

I bit my lip. Complaints about Don had just fallen out of my mouth. I usually tried to keep marital discord safely under wraps, but today something had snapped. And now Gran knew it all.

“Marry in haste, repent at leisure, isn’t that how it goes?” I asked. I was kind of kidding, kind of not.

Gran snorted. “I married your grandfather knowing him only two months,” she said, her blue eyes telling me an important point was about to follow. “And a finer man, a better lover, there never was.”

Settling in for a “talk,” Gran continued. “We knew. We both knew that no matter how many years we had together, no matter how many thousands-no-millions of moments we had-they were never going to be enough. A lifetime together was just going to be the start. And we knew that right off.”

She looked at me. “So it isn’t that you married young, or quick, honey. It’s that you married someone who couldn’t make you the center of his world.” Offering me her ever-present cookies, she added, “I’d move on, if I were you.”

I hadn’t expected that. I took a pink sprinkled cookie from the plate, even though I didn’t want one. “What about Emily?” I asked, “She deserves to have a father.” I looked over at my daughter, singing to her doll, crumbs covering both their faces.

“You think Don’s the best one for the job?”

There it was. “Why didn’t you say anything before?”

“No one could have talked me out of marrying Edwin. They had no right. If you would’ve asked, I would’ve given my opinion. But you didn’t, so I kept my mouth shut.”

Not for the first time since my consultation with the doctors did I question their sanity. Gran was the most lucid person I knew. I needed Gran’s company. I craved her advice, her insight. These were not the rantings of a crazy woman.

If it weren’t for that shuttle thing.

She handed Emily a photo imager just like the one she’d let me play with when I was little. “Take lots of pictures for Grannie, Emily.” Then she dug into her pants pocket. “Here,” she said.

It was a debit disk.

I didn’t understand.

“Take it.” She shook it a little, tapping my arm. “There’s enough here to cover what you took from your trust. And then some.”

“But…”

“I don’t need money where I’m going.” She grinned and sipped her iced tea.

“Don?”

He nodded, his eyes glazed, fastened in rapt attention to the scene playing out on the Sensavision before him. “Oh!” he said. “Ah!”

Leaning in the doorway, I watched him.

The Sensavision, nine feet tall and twelve feet wide, took up nearly an entire wall of our family room.

Though it stood two-dimensional, Don was standing on the bridge of a futuristic spaceship. It looked a lot like the one from the sci-fi television show he liked to watch. He wore a uniform of sorts. Several people around him, similarly clad, smiled up with looks of bland adoration and called him “Captain.”

I looked at the far wall out the spacecraft’s window where stars went on endlessly. Yeah, Don was sure imaginative if this was the best he could come up with.

A hiss, a puff and one of the hidden modules released some experience-enhancing aroma. I wrinkled my nose, not knowing what to expect.

I sniffed, then smiled.

Cinnamon.

This stripped-down version of the Sensavision was all I’d been willing to buy. Don wanted the top of the line model, but I’d finally put my foot down.

Aliens appeared on the bridge. Angry, green monsters, with bright yellow fangs. The entire crew jumped up from their stations to fight.

I watched my husband pull a knife from his pocket. The weapon didn’t belong in this time frame, but Don must have wanted to hold something real. I recognized it as one of many from our kitchen drawer. He dodged a light-beam and then charged the hologram alien who’d fired on him and whose round silver eyes quivered in fear. The warrior screamed in pain even though Don’s blade only glanced the being’s upper arm. In a blink, I understood. The Sensavision, loyally programmed, had adjusted the knife’s trajectory and the holographic soldier lay dead on the floor, pierced fatally through the heart.

“Haaaaaaaaaah.” My husband released a long breath, and dropped his shoulders.

“Don?”

He turned, eyes blazing, and advanced on me. I stepped back. “Hey,” I said, attempting a light tone, but failing to keep the panic from my voice. Although the soldier at his feet wasn’t real and the aliens’ weapons weren’t real, the blade Don held, and my fear, were.

He launched himself at me, knife high and ready to strike.

I screamed.

And, just like in stories, he blinked. For a moment, ever so brief, he looked sheepish. Then, as he lowered the weapon, his mood changed. The Sensavision froze.

“Don’t ever do that!” he yelled.

“Do what?”

“Interrupt me. You always ruin everything.”

A burst of anger skyrocketed in my chest. My mind exploded with white light as I fought for control. “Me? Ruin things for you?”

“Look,” he said, still furious, “I work all day. This is my way to relax. All I ask is that I get a little uninterrupted pleasure here. At least I’m home. Most guys go out on Saturday nights. Can’t you just go… do something?”

I opened and closed my mouth twice. “You aren’t here,” I said. “You don’t know anything about anything around here. You have no time for me. But you have time for this-thing.” I shot my hand toward the Sensavision.

He sat down hard on the chair behind him. It gave a high-pitched whoosh. “You want to talk? Fine. All the fun’s gone now anyway. Whaddyawanna talk about?”

In that instant I realized how futile it would be to discuss my concerns about Gran with him. And so I said the only other thing that was on my mind.

“We have no life together, Don.”

Did I expect him to sit up and take notice at that? I suppose I did. When he shrugged and said, “So?” my legs went a little limp. I sat down on the couch.

A few hours ticked by. But it was only seconds.

Don stood up. “OK. So, are we done talking?”

“Yeah.” I said. And I went to go check on Emily, because that’s all there was to do.

Gran and I took Emily to the very same playground that I’d scampered through in as a child. We watched her go up to a bigger girl, about five years old, I guessed, and start talking. Soon they were both giggling. Emily’s brown curls and other girl’s straight blond hair waved in the breeze and got in their eyes as they played a rhyming game that started them skipping in circles.