Chapter 20

The first serious disagreement Focus Man and Claire had after they began living together concerned the dishwasher.

Claire would later dispute the word serious, and technically she was right. There was no argument. Nobody raised a voice. Neither of them left the room. It was entirely possible that for the first several weeks Claire didn't even know there was a disagreement.

Focus Man knew.

The dishwasher had rules.

They were not rules he had invented. This distinction seemed important to him. The rules arose naturally from the purpose of the machine, the direction of the water jets, the shape of the racks, and the reasonable expectation that dishes placed inside a dishwasher should emerge clean.

Plates faced inward.

Large plates went toward the outside so they would not obstruct smaller items.

Bowls required sufficient separation for water to reach their interior surfaces.

Glasses belonged in the upper rack, preferably arranged by size, though he was willing to concede that this last principle was more aesthetic than functional.

Utensils presented a more complicated problem. Forks and spoons should not nest together. Knives required special consideration. Larger cooking utensils belonged horizontally along the upper rack unless their dimensions made that impractical.

There was a system.

Claire, apparently, had never been informed.

Her system consisted primarily of opening the dishwasher and putting things in it.

At first Focus Man assumed she simply hadn't finished loading.

He would enter the kitchen after dinner and find a cereal bowl resting at an angle across two perfectly usable spaces, a glass positioned where three smaller glasses might have fit, and plates facing directions that suggested they had entered the dishwasher during an emergency evacuation.

He corrected these things.

Quietly.

There seemed no reason to mention it.

Claire cooked more often than he did, and he appreciated that. She had an easy way in the kitchen, using several pans at once and tasting things without measuring them. Focus Man admired people who could cook that way, although he personally found the absence of measurement unnecessarily suspenseful.

When dinner was over they usually cleaned up together. Claire washed the pans that needed washing and placed dishes into the machine. Focus Man wiped the counters and gradually relocated everything she had loaded.

For a while this arrangement worked beautifully.

Then Claire noticed.

One evening she was standing at the sink when she saw him remove a bowl she had just placed in the lower rack.

"What are you doing?"

He looked at the bowl in his hand.

"Nothing."

"You're holding the bowl I just put in the dishwasher."

"It was blocking the plate."

"What plate?"

He pointed.

Claire looked at the plate.

Then at him.

"Is the plate unhappy?"

Focus Man understood immediately that the conversation had taken an unproductive turn.

"No."

"Good."

She returned to rinsing a pan.

He repositioned the bowl.

Claire glanced over.

"You moved it."

"It fits better here."

"It fit where it was."

"It occupied two spaces."

"I wasn't aware the dishwasher charged rent."

He smiled.

This was one of the things he liked about Claire. She could make fun of him without making him feel diminished by it. There was affection in the teasing, although occasionally there was also information.

He left the bowl where it was.

Their life together was still new enough that many things required adjustment. They were learning each other's schedules, preferences, noises, and tolerances. Claire liked music in the morning. Focus Man preferred mornings to begin quietly. He liked doors locked as soon as they came inside. Claire generally remembered them sometime before bed. She squeezed toothpaste from wherever her hand happened to land on the tube.

Focus Man squeezed from the bottom.

He did not consider this obsessive.

He considered it physics.

There were discoveries more intimate than these, of course, and some more consequential. But much of learning to live with another person turned out to involve surprisingly ordinary questions. How warm should the bedroom be at night? Did towels need to be folded in thirds? How long could mail remain on the kitchen counter before it ceased being mail and became furniture?

Neither of them had thought about these things while falling in love.

Now they were sharing a bathroom.

The dishwasher remained the most persistent test.

One Saturday morning Focus Man opened it and found the silverware basket arranged in a way he could only describe as random.

He stood looking at it.

Claire entered the kitchen carrying a laundry basket.

"Don't."

He turned.

"I haven't done anything."

"You're thinking about it."

"Thinking about what?"

"My dishwasher."

"Our dishwasher."

"Not when you look at it like that."

She continued toward the bedroom.

Focus Man looked back into the machine.

Three forks were together.

He separated them.

Then, feeling faintly guilty, put two back.

This seemed like compromise.

The matter might have continued indefinitely if not for an evening several months later when they had friends over for dinner. Claire had cooked. Focus Man had helped clean afterward, and eventually everyone moved into the living room with coffee.

He returned to the kitchen for something and heard the dishwasher running.

He stopped.

He hadn't started it.

That in itself wasn't troubling.

Then he noticed two things still on the counter—a pan Claire had rinsed and a glass sitting rather close to the edge.

He moved the glass farther back.

That was safety, not compulsion.

Then he looked at the dishwasher.

He knew he shouldn't.

He opened it anyway.

The machine stopped.

He stared inside.

It was worse than he expected.

Plates leaned in several directions. Two bowls overlapped. A large serving spoon had been placed vertically in the utensil basket, where its handle rose high enough that he suspected it might interfere with the upper spray arm.

And there, near the back, was a coffee mug positioned almost horizontally.

He knew what would happen to that mug.

It would fill with water.

He reached inside.

From the living room came laughter.

Claire was telling a story. He couldn't hear all of it from the kitchen, but he recognized the sound of her voice when she was enjoying herself. Someone interrupted her. She laughed again and continued.

Focus Man still had one hand inside the dishwasher.

He looked at the mug.

He could fix everything in less than a minute.

Probably forty-five seconds.

The serving spoon first. Then the bowls. Rotate three plates. Move the mug. There was even room for the pan on the counter if he shifted the smaller plates slightly to the right.

The solution was obvious.

He began rearranging.

Then he stopped.

There was something faintly ridiculous about crouching alone in the kitchen rearranging dishes while the woman he loved sat twenty feet away laughing with their friends.

He straightened.

For perhaps the first time, he considered the possibility that Claire knew exactly how to load a dishwasher.

She simply didn't care as much as he did.

This was a disturbing idea.

It meant the problem could not be solved through instruction.

He looked again at the mug.

The mug would probably survive.

The bowls might come clean.

The spoon was admittedly questionable.

He reached toward it.

Then withdrew his hand.

This required considerable discipline.

He closed the dishwasher.

The machine resumed with a low mechanical hum, apparently unconcerned by what was happening inside it.

Focus Man stood for another moment.

Then he turned off the kitchen light and joined the others.

Claire looked over when he entered.

"Everything okay?"

"Yes."

"You were gone a while."

"I was checking something."

Her expression changed slightly.

"The dishwasher?"

He sat down.

"No."

Claire looked at him.

Focus Man looked back.

One of their friends asked what they were talking about.

"Nothing," Claire said. "We're making progress."

Focus Man wasn't entirely certain what she meant.

Later that night, after their friends had gone home, the dishwasher finished its cycle.

Claire was getting ready for bed when Focus Man opened it.

The dishes were mostly clean.

Mostly.

One of the bowls had a small piece of something still clinging to its rim. The serving spoon was fine. The coffee mug contained perhaps half an inch of cloudy water.

Focus Man lifted it carefully.

Claire passed through the kitchen and saw him holding the mug.

She stopped.

He waited.

She looked at the water.

Then at him.

"Don't say it."

"I wasn't going to."

"You were thinking it."

"That's different."

She kissed him on the cheek and continued down the hallway.

Focus Man poured the water into the sink, rinsed the mug, and placed it in the drying rack.

The entire operation took perhaps fifteen seconds.

He turned off the kitchen light.

He was beginning to understand that living with Claire might require learning to tolerate certain imperfections.

Claire, though he didn't yet appreciate it, was learning exactly the same thing.