It is early in the morning, and my wife and I are setting off on a long car journey. My wife is driving; I am looking at my phone. It is my plan to look at my phone for at least the first hour, even though it is unlikely my wife will allow this.
“Bit hazy,” she says.
“Hmm,” I say, looking at my phone.
“But I think it might burn off later,” she says.
“What?” I say, forcing my eyes up to the horizon.
“Never mind,” my wife says, turning on the radio. I return to my phone.
“Sorry, will you clean these please?” my wife says, handing me her glasses.
“What?” I say. Instead of answering, she drops her glasses into my lap. Reluctantly I put down my phone, pull out the hem of my shirt, and fog the lenses with my breath.
“By the way, I don’t approve of this,” I say, overtaken by irritation.
“Of what?” she says.
“I mean, first, I can’t believe how filthy these glasses are,” I say.
“I know,” she says. “That’s why I asked you to …”
“And second,” I say. “I can’t believe you didn’t notice until we’d done eight miles on the motorway.”
“I just realised the haze I was seeing was on my glasses,” she says.
“That’s the best I can do,” I say, handing her glasses back.
“Much better, thank you,” she says.
“It’s not safe,” I say.
After a few minutes spent looking at my phone, my irritation subsides. I remind myself that my wife doesn’t need her glasses the way I need my glasses: she will sometimes lose them for an entire weekend without suffering any particular inconvenience. I couldn’t take off my glasses while driving without quickly crashing into a bridge support.
Something I’ve seen on my phone catches my attention.
“Interesting,” I say. “Guess how many …”
“No,” my wife says.
“Wait, just guess how many countries have a …”
“You didn’t want to chat,” she says. “Don’t try to start a conversation now, using facts you found on your phone.”
“Fine,” I say. I take off my glasses to clean them, and the world ahead becomes a blur.
Two days later, it is time to set off for home, but my wife can’t find her phone.
“I swear I just had it,” she says, coming back from the car. “Will you ring it?”
“Straight to voicemail,” I say, holding my own phone to my ear.
“Why is it doing that?” she says. “It’s fully charged.”
“Probably because there’s no signal wherever you left it,” I say. In practical terms, this means outside, and it’s raining outside.
We try to approach the problem logically. My wife’s laptop indicates the last picture she took on her phone was of a nearby pond, only 35 minutes previously.
“And then what?” I say. “Did you fling it into the pond?”
“I went across that meadow, through the gate, and then to the car,” she says. “But I really don’t think I would have left my phone outside.”
“I once found your phone in the crook of the tree,” I say.
“That was different,” she says. “I was listening to the Archers omnibus while I was weeding.”
My wife returns to the pond, while I walk the meadow twice over, getting soaked. I am longing, for reasons both admirable and shameful, to be the person who finds the phone. But I don’t see how anyone could find anything in this expanse of long grass.
As I approach the car, the rain turning heavy, I see my wife coming. When she sees me she holds her phone above her head.
“Where was it?” I say.
“It was lying on a stone wall, getting rained on,” she says. “I think I was taking a picture, and then my shoe was untied, and then … never mind.”
“Let’s go,” I say.
As we drive the sky begins to clear toward the east. The recent rain and the warm weather have caused the hedgerows to explode with growth.
“I’m glad we found it,” my wife says. “It felt very uncomfortable not having my phone.”
I do not say what I am thinking, which is: people who are truly uncomfortable without their phones don’t leave them on stone walls in the rain. I need to be an exemplar of patience, if only because I so often try the patience of others.
As we approach an intersection made blind by fresh greenery, my wife hands me her glasses.
“Will you clean these?” she says.
“Of course,” I say.