Cable to Nowhere

The coaxial cable lay severed on the carpet like a dead snake, its copper entrails exposed. Sarah had ripped it from the wall during the fight—her third episode this month, though David had stopped counting.

"You're running in circles," he'd said, the words escaping before he could swallow them. Now she was in the bathroom, the hair dryer roaring, and he could hear her brushing her hair with violent, rhythmic strokes. A hundred strokes every night since her mother died. Sarah's hair had started thinning at thirty-two, and each lost strand felt like a betrayal.

David stood in the kitchen, staring at the wilted spinach in the colander. He'd planned to make her favorite salad, the one with warm bacon dressing and pine nuts, back when he thought tonight might be different. Back when he believed that if he just loved her enough, she'd stop waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The bull in the room—her grief, his cowardice—had been grazing quietly for months, but tonight it had finally charged. She'd accused him of emotional distance. He'd countered that she was impossible to reach anymore. Both true. Both useless.

The hair dryer stopped. Silence rushed in, louder than the noise.

David's phone buzzed on the counter—a work email he should ignore. Instead, he found himself typing a response to the client who'd been demanding the impossible deadline. He was running on fumes, running from the conversation they needed to have, running toward the one thing he could control.

"David?"

He turned. Sarah stood in the doorway, her hair damp and dark against her pale face. She looked smaller somehow, like the fight had hollowed her out.

"The spinach," she said. "It's going to rot."

"I know," he said.

"I don't want to fight anymore."

"Neither do I."

She crossed the kitchen, not to him, but to the junk drawer where the electrical tape lived. "I'll fix the cable," she said. "We can still watch that show."

Her hands trembled as she stripped the wire. David watched her, remembering how she'd bandaged his knee after he'd tripped running for the train three years ago. How steady her hands had been then.

"Sarah," he said.

She kept working. "Almost done."

"I'm sorry about your mother. I'm sorry I keep trying to fix it instead of just sitting with you in it."

Her hands stilled. She didn't turn around. When she spoke, her voice was paper-thin. "She had spinach stuck in her teeth the last time I saw her. At the restaurant. I didn't tell her."

The confession hung between them, small and terrible and human.

David crossed to her, covered her hands with his. "Let's order takeout," he said. "And we'll watch the show on my laptop. The cable can wait."

She turned then, and for the first time in months, she looked at him like she actually saw him. "Okay," she said. "But I'm picking the restaurant."