The Hours

by Michael Cunningham

So now she is Laura Brown. Laura Zielski, the solitary girl, the incessant reader, is gone, and here in her place is Laura Brown.

For a moment she wants only to leave—not to harm him, she’d never do that—but to be free, blameless, unaccountable.

That is how Nelly would murder, competently and precisely, the way she cooks, following recipes learned so long ago she does not experience them as knowledge at all.

Venture too far for love, she tells herself, and you renounce citizenship in the country you’ve made for yourself. You end up just sailing from port to port.

Her cake is a failure, but she is loved anyway.

The question has been silently asked and silently answered, it seems. They are both afflicted and blessed, full of shared secrets, striving every moment. They are each impersonating someone.

She feels faintly, foolishly satisfied by her outfit, and by the cleanliness of her car.

If she goes to a store or restaurant, she’ll have to perform—she’ll have to pretend to need or want something that does not, in any way, interest her.

She worries that it’s one of her tics; one of those innocent little habits that inspire thoughts of homicide in an offspring.

“But there are still the hours, aren’t there? One and then another, and you get through that one and then, my god, there’s another. I’m so sick.”