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The front door beeped when Bradley got home from work and found all three of us crying.

  It had been another in a long line of cold gray March days that made it feel like spring would never come. Worse than the relentless wind whipping off the Gulf and severe Vitamin D deficiency, we were fogged in. From my fixed spot in the living room, surrounded by two of everything eight-month-olds could ever want or need, I hadn’t been able to see past the stone balustrade on the terrace in a week. Clouds, I’d learned while spending sixteen out of twenty-four hours (wrestling a nursing bra) on the same spot on the same sofa looking out the same window, moved around. Fog didn’t. And it was Wednesday, my least favorite day of the week. Nothing good ever happened on a Wednesday. I liked the beginning of the week, with its promise, and I loved the end of the week, anticipating having Bradley home for a few extra minutes, but Wednesdays could be done away with.

  “Oh, Davis.”

  I heard the thunk of his briefcase and the taps of his wingtips coming at me from behind. If I’d had the energy, I’d have at least turned my head to greet him. As it was, I only got as far as tipping it back. His face loomed over mine long enough to make sure I was okay. He bent down to barely kiss my forehead, then went for his daughters. He reached Bexley first, scooping her up, then lifted Quinn from her Exersaucer. The fussing stopped immediately and there went his suit. The girls were drippy with tooth anticipation and their daddy didn’t mind even a little bit. He jiggled and juggled, kissed soft baby heads, surveyed the demolition in the living room, gave me a wary look, then took off. I sank down a little lower in the cushions as he toured the front half of our home with a baby in each arm. He returned to stand in front of me. Waiting for an explanation.

  “I’m sorry.” I mopped my tears with the sleeve of my sweatshirt. “She wasn’t the one.”

  He didn’t say a word.

  “Bradley, there isn’t a doubt in my mind you’d have fired her too.”

  I said the wrong word.

  Bradley tucked the girls into his chest and I dove for cover as a siren blared and everything went red with strobe lights. Then a hundred and twenty grating decibels ripped through every fiber of our beings. Our house yelled, “FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! EXIT IMMEDIATELY! FIRE!”

  Bradley yelled back. “OFF! OFF! OFF!”

  Our daughters, who’d never known anything other than computer-generated gender-neutral max-volume broadcasts interrupting our lives via seventy hidden speakers followed by their parents yelling back, didn’t think a thing of it. One day they’d realize they lived in the world’s only home that spontaneously shrieked and yelled and demand an explanation, but for now, they mostly hollered along. (“Aaagaah!” and Gaahaah!”)

  Six weeks before the girls were born, nine weeks before they were due, Bradley and I packed our bags. I was so close to my due date we couldn’t fly, and I could say without hesitation that the best part of our last trip as a childless couple was the time on the road. For one, car trips were fun. For two, when we weren’t in Bradley’s BMW, we were in Tyler, Texas, with Bradley’s mother for five long days, then in Pine Apple, Alabama, with my mother and daddy for five even longer days. We didn’t think we’d ever get home, and when we did, we weren’t there five minutes before we were ready to leave again.

  We came home to a smart home.

  A really smart home.

  A ridiculously smart home.

  While we were gone, network engineers from Capital Defense and Security in Springfield, Illinois, had unleashed an arsenal of technology on our home. Anticipating my hands full of babies, I’d asked for a voice-controlled system. It was a first for Capital, and they threw everything they had at us. Our house heard everything. If either of us spoke a word even remotely associated with fire—flame, smoke, burn—the system thought we were in the throes of a raging inferno. Alarms went off and the authorities were notified. House heard every word, knew synonyms, could conjugate verbs, and was unreasonably concerned for our safety, well-being, comfort, and convenience. It tracked us from room to room, blasted out terrifying weather warnings, and kept meticulous inventory of the pantry and refrigerator. EGGS EXPIRE IN TWO DAYS! EGGS EXPIRE IN ONE DAY! EGGS EXPIRED! EGGS EXPIRED! EGGS EXPIRED! It wouldn’t stop until I threw out the eggs. Day and night, night and day, it took its cues by keying in on certain spoken words and acting on them. If we said anything even remotely associated with the dawn of a new day—try to stop saying tomorrow morning in normal conversation—the smart coffee pot kicked on. At three in the afternoon, three in the morning, it didn’t even care. The whole place smelled like Starbucks twenty-four seven, and I poured out ten pots a day so House would stop shrieking COFFEE READY! COFFEE READY! COFFEE READY! Words that incited the coffeemaker included, but were not limited to, any and all breakfast food items, like toast, juice, or Pop-Tarts, and all tenses of the word “wake.” It was infuriating. Why didn’t I just unplug the smart coffeepot? Because House screamed INCAPACITATED APPLIANCE! INCAPACITATED APPLIANCE! INCAPACITATED APPLIANCE! until I plugged it back in. Why didn’t I empty the coffee bean well so there was nothing to grind all day? Because House screamed CHECK COFFEE LEVEL! CHECK COFFEE LEVEL! CHECK COFFEE LEVEL! Why didn’t I disconnect the speakers? There were seventy of them, that I knew of, and when I put a hand on the first one, House lost it. SECURITY SYSTEM COMPROMISED! SECURITY SYSTEM COMPROMISED! SECURITY SYSTEM COMPROMISED!

  I called. And called. And called.

  “Speak up?”

  “I can’t speak up,” I told the Capital lady. “No one here can speak up. It’s the very reason I’m calling.”

  She put me on hold. I went through the whole spiel again with the next person and he put me on hold. So did the next person. And the next. I worked my way up the Capital ladder through a dozen people who’d never heard of me or my smart home all the way to the office of the President of the Engineering Department, who wrote the overzealous software, only to be told I’d missed him by a week.

  “Well, where is he?” I asked.

  “He took a position with another company.”

  “Give me the number.”

  “I don’t have it.”

  “Who does?”

  “Hold, please.”

  They had no idea where the engineer had taken off to and made the installation supervisor tell me. I gave him an earful and demanded he turn House off. That instant. “Flip the switch. Kill the power. Shoot it.”

  “Ma’am, we can’t isolate and disconnect your room from the system.”

  “It’s not my room,” I said. “It’s my home. I live here. With two newborn babies who need sleep.”

  “You and your babies live in a casino?”

  It wasn’t like that. We had a beautiful home twenty-eight floors above a casino. Which was none of his business.

  “Maybe you’re not hearing me, lady. And maybe you don’t live in a casino, but you’re networked to one. Your home is wired to the building. The whole building. And if I’m hearing you right, you’re complaining because the system works. I’m sitting here with the work order for a voice-activated security and smart home system, signed off on by a Mr. Davis Cole. Maybe you should take this up with him.”

  “Mrs. Her. Me.”

  “What?”

  “I’m Davis. I’m Mrs. Cole. I can’t take it up with myself. The system is too sensitive and I’m taking it up with you.”

  “We installed exactly what you ordered and I can’t turn it off, Mrs. Cole. Your home can’t be turned off without disconnecting the whole building. Do you really want the fire alarms off in seventeen-hundred hotel rooms and the public areas? Including the casino?”

  If that’s what it took, yes.

  (No.)

  “What about the office and home maintenance features?” I could hear him clicking away on a keyboard, looking for something, anything, to calm me down.

  “They work,” I said. House separated junk mail
from real mail, could conduct banking transactions and pay bills. It could shop, grill steaks, and it could even vacuum. House could find keys, phones, and needles in haystacks. It made reservations, saved me from missing my sister’s thirty-fifth birthday, and told me when Frostings, the bakery on the mezzanine level, had a fresh batch of my favorite cupcakes, Pink Velvet. It was the perfect strawberry on top that got me.

  “What about the health tracker?”

  “Okay,” I caved a little more. “It works too.” House tracked Bexley and Quinn’s weight and sleep patterns. It stopped me from feeding Quinn twice and Bex zero times in the middle of the night one day last week. (The girls were so perfectly identical at two in the morning.) “I see what you’re trying to do,” I told the man. “And you can forget it. The bad outweighs the good by a mile because the system is too sensitive. If you can’t turn it off, surely you can adjust it. Make it less responsive. I need the whole thing scaled back a notch or twenty. Take four thousand words out of its dictionary. Dial it down. Something.”

  He put me on hold. When he returned, he asked if we spoke a second language, because the system was programmed for English. If we would stop speaking English, he suggested Chinese, or Spanish maybe, the system wouldn’t react.

  Really?

  No.

  He said he’d consult with his team and get back with me. When he did, two days later, it was to tell me they’d be here in eight weeks. “Late September,” he said. “Maybe the middle of October.” He explained that their security systems were in government complexes across America, up and down the Strip in Vegas, and in Madison Square Garden in New York. My home couldn’t be moved up the list because of the inconvenience I experienced when a seagull lighting on my balcony triggered fifty floodlights and seventy speakers screaming INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT!

  “You know what?” At the time, the girls were five weeks old, Blitz was constructing a glassed-in pedestrian bridge linking the casino to a sprawling entertainment complex with a concert arena that seated five thousand, and the way things were going, I doubted we’d still live here by the time Capital could make a service call. “Uninstall it. Get here as soon as you can and get it out.”

  He put me on hold again. Then came back to tell me their first available date for an uninstall was in November.

  “What? You’ve got to be kidding me. It’s August. We can’t live with this house screaming at us until November.”

  “Look, lady. Maybe you don’t understand computers. The system is hard-wired into every inch of your home. I’m looking at the schematic. Every light fixture, every appliance, the heat and air, the plumbing, the electrical, every nook and every cranny. It wasn’t easy to install and it will be ten times harder to uninstall unless you want us to tear down your walls.”

  Installation took two weeks. The man on the phone swore on a stack of smart-home manuals that removal would take six weeks, three if we moved out. And that was with Capital crews working around the clock and on weekends, like the big inconvenience was on their end. Where, exactly, did one go with two newborn babies for three weeks? We couldn’t move to a hotel room below us; we’d have to move to a hotel floor below us. The girls had enough equipment to open a baby mall. And knowing we weren’t long for the Bellissimo—the end could be any minute, any hour, any day—why move twice when we didn’t even want to move once? It was easier to stick it out for the short term, limiting our vocabulary and lowering our voices.

  Six months later, we were still sticking it out. Living our lives in whispers. And the ongoing we-need-a-nanny whispers brought out the worst in everyone, including House.

  “Bradley, the girls didn’t like her.”

  “Is that true?” he asked our bouncing daughters, who rolled their blonde heads no. I’m the one who taught them to nod yes or no when they heard the lilt of a question, and here they were using it against me. “What was the problem?” Bradley asked me. “And please don’t give me a speech working your way to it, Davis. Just tell me.”

  “Her shoes,” I said.

  Quinn was patting his face with both hands and Bexley was bumping his chin with her forehead.

  “Her shoes?”

  “They made a slurpy noise,” I said. “Every single step she took. It’s like she was stuck to the floor and had to peel herself off every time she moved one of her feet. I couldn’t stop thinking about octopuses. You know those sucky things on their legs?”

  “Tentacles.” Bradley found the one chair in the room that wasn’t full of Fisher-Price and sat down with his daughters. He was an instant baby-handling expert, from the moment the girls were born, and just then, when they unhappily realized their ride around the house with dad was over, he switched them. Bexley got his right knee and Quinn his left. Often, that was all it took: a different perspective.

  “Legs, tentacles, whatever,” I said. “Suck, suck, suck.”

  “You—” he leaned in and whispered, so House wouldn’t hear “—fired the nanny because of her shoes? Do you realize it’s Wednesday, Davis?”

  I flopped over. “Yes!” I said to my knees. “That’s part of the problem!”

  “Davis, honey. Look at me.”

  I peeked.

  “Do you realize this is the second nanny you’ve—” he skipped the word “—this week?”

  “It’s been a very long week, Bradley.”

  “You—” he skipped the word a second time “—the nanny Monday because you said her hair reminded you of dryer lint.”

  “It did.” (It really did.)

  “You—” then a third time “—the nanny last week because she sniffed too much.”

  “She had allergies!” I threw my hands in the air. “Her sleeves were stuffed with Kleenex!”

  “Davis.” His tone was tender; his message was tough. “We need a nanny. You need a nanny. The girls need a nanny. I need to be able to work without worrying about you.”

  My socks didn’t match.

  “It’s not admitting defeat in any way.” His voice was barely above a whisper. “It doesn’t make you any less of a mother; you’re a wonderful mother, Davis. It’s a simple fact that two babies is a big job. I could never do it alone, and I don’t expect you to. You absolutely have to stop firing the nannies. If for no other reason, we’re running out of them.”

  The room grew still, except for baby singing, which was something the twins had done since birth—sing to each other. It was the most beautiful music in our world.

  “Have the girls had a nap today?” Bradley forgot to whisper. House heard “nap” and put our home to sleep. Lights went out and blackout shades began whirring down. Bradley yelled, “OFF! OFF! OFF!” and everything stopped, then reversed. “Davis?”

  I couldn’t quite remember. I was pretty sure I’d fallen asleep at one point, but I didn’t think the girls had done more than doze in their Pop ’n Play.

  “Have you eaten?”

  Another thing I wasn’t sure about. I didn’t remember actually eating. I did remember ordering three strawberry milkshakes from room service, and I must have devoured them, because the empty evidence was around. Around pacifiers, rattles, and my Canon zoom-lens camera. I knew for a fact the girls had eaten. All. Day. Long.

  “Davis, sweetheart? Have you even had a shower?”

  House said, “PREPARING MASTER BATH! PREPARING MASTER BATH! PREPARING MASTER BATH!”

  Three

  An hour later, the girls were squeaky clean and fast asleep. I was squeaky clean and wide awake. Bradley and I were in the sitting room adjacent to our bedroom, a warm inviting room with deep linen club chairs, round ottomans, a thick wool rug the color of wheat, and soothing art about nothing in particular. The lights were soft and low. What the study didn’t have were Baby Einstein toys, blankies, or a view of Blitz. It was a quiet room in a quiet corner of the house we’d never used, just passed through, until
the girls were born and it quickly became our favorite because it was one of only two rooms in our living space not wired for House. The girls’ nursery was the other. So the sitting room was where we could talk uninterrupted at the end of our long days.

  My husband was thirty-seven years old. Six feet tall with sandy blonde hair, true blue eyes, and as long as the subject wasn’t nanny, the patience of carbon waiting to crystalize into a diamond. He sat in the chair beside me, having shed his jacket, loosened his tie, and rolled up his sleeves. Well deserved. Because while I’d taken a shower, a long blistering shower, he’d bathed the girls and put them to bed, restored a semblance of order to the living room, and had House make me a turkey and tomato panini.

  I didn’t even deserve my life.

  “Tell me everything.” Bradley wanted to know, in painstaking detail, what our daughters had done that day. The thing about parenting with someone you love is that they’re as interested in the details of baby world as you are, while no one else—and by no one else I meant not one other living soul in the universe—was. I told Bradley how much progress the girls made with their new trick: rolling as means of transportation. Rolling over they had down pat. But they’d discovered if they did it again and again and again, they could get from A to B. The best part of my day had been following them as they rolled from one edge of the living room rug to the other, the three of us cracking up the whole time. Baby belly laughs were the very best.

  “Who started it?” And now their father was laughing.

  “You know who started it.”

  Bexley was the alpha of our identical twin daughters; Quinn followed her lead. Between us, we kept three eyes on Bexley and one on Quinn. Since I only had two eyes, by the time Bradley got home at the end of the day, often alarmingly close to the next day, I was cross-eyed. Not to mention what was going on behind the nursing bra. (My next career move? Build a better nursing bra.)

  Here’s what we talked about at the end of the day: Bexley and Quinn.

  Here’s what we didn’t talk about at the end of the day: anything else.