Michael’s worried about Lee. Scared and worried. He doesn’t know what to do.
Some of the things she does are things she’s done in front of him before, but a lot of it is new, and all of it is more. She constantly talks about sounds that Michael can’t hear, people listening in on them, conspiracies. There was a time when he found it interesting, but it’s begun to make him tense. He tries to tell himself that stuff isn’t real, but he gets more and more easily startled as time goes by.
The past few days have been the hardest—the way she could barely see or hear him, how it didn’t matter if he touched her or tried to make dinner or read to her from one of her favorite books. Once he realized she wasn’t even drinking water, he started coming home for lunch so she wouldn’t go all day without any. Sleeping beside her like that had been painfully lonely, and even though he’d felt strongly that he should watch over her, there’d been one night when he couldn’t help but go out and walk off his distress.
Today, at least, is a relief, and for the time being he’s not going to question it. There’s no time to question it, anyway. People are landing on the moon. A large portion of his attention is on the television, because it’s possible that nothing in the universe is more important than what is on television right now, but Lee is in his lap, and it feels great. His fingers are in her hair, but they’re still; he’s too focused on what Walter’s saying to divert any brain activity to muscle coordination.
“I’m tense? What about the astronauts? You can’t be cool at a time like this! No one can be cool! I bet Don Draper is shitting his pants right now.”