In Filip's family, doors were closed with elbows, questions were asked from another room, and potatoes passed over someone's head. During the first hour Lana thought they were arguing. During the second she realized they were asking for salt. During the third she retreated to the porch with a book she could not manage to open. She had come for a weekend at the family house, her first since she and Filip began dating.
In her family, people spoke quietly. Her mother even expressed anger in a whisper, which was often more frightening than shouting. Lana had learned to listen for changes in a voice and anticipate when to disappear. She had fallen for Filip's cheerfulness in a small apartment, where he spoke only to her. In this house his voice grew, multiplying through his brothers and sisters, until she could no longer find the man she knew.
On the first evening they played charades. Lana refused three times, but his sister still pushed a slip of paper into her hand. She had to act out a vacuum cleaner. She stood in the middle of the living room, red to her ears, while Filip called out that she should relax. She left the slip on the table and went outside. Behind the door she heard someone ask whether they had offended her. Filip answered that she was just a little strange.
She found him later beside the car, taking a spare blanket from the trunk. She told him she did not need a blanket; she needed him not to describe her next time as a defect his family must tolerate. He sat on the edge of the trunk. He had not known she heard him. At first he defended his sister, then his parents, until Lana stopped him. None of them was her boyfriend. He was.
In the morning she walked to the shop alone. When she returned, two cups stood on the porch, and Filip was finishing an argument with his brother about the grill. He had not quieted the house for her. He came out, closed the door, and asked whether she wanted coffee without an audience. She told him about silence in her house. He told her how he had fought for a whole sentence in his. Both had long thought other families exaggerated.
That afternoon Lana joined the cooking. She declined another game of charades, this time without an explanation, and nobody insisted. Filip's mother showed her where she kept the tea nobody else drank. On the drive home Filip switched off the radio. A few minutes later Lana turned it on again and rested her head against his shoulder while they waited at a red light. The quiet had felt pleasant, but it no longer had to last all the way home.