Fraying at the Edges

Elena's fingers trembled as she plucked the third gray hair from her temple that morning. Forty-three and suddenly her body was declaring war on her, strand by stubborn strand. She stared at the mirror, at the fine lines etching themselves around her eyes like cracks in porcelain, and felt a strange hot panic rising in her chest.

She was running before she knew she'd decided to go, lacing up her shoes and escaping the apartment before Mark could ask why she was crying. The treadmill at the gym felt like both punishment and penance. Her thighs burned, her breath came in ragged gasps, and still she ran harder, as if she could outrun the creeping awareness that she was disappearing, that somewhere in the last two decades of marriage and mortgage payments and sensible decisions, the woman she'd meant to become had been replaced by someone she didn't recognize.

The apartment was quiet when she returned, save for the low murmur of the television. Mark was exactly where she'd left him, sprawled on the couch, eyes fixed on the cable news flickering across the screen. He didn't look up. Something in her chest tightened.

"I found another gray hair," she said, and her voice sounded small even to herself.

"You look great, El. You know that." The response was automatic, absent. He'd been saying the same thing for years, like a script he'd memorized and no longer really meant.

She went to the kitchen and pulled the bottle of vitamins from the cabinet, swallowing two without water. The pills rattled against her teeth — bitter, chalky, a daily reminder that this was what it had come to. Fighting off decay with gel capsules and optimistic denial.

Mark appeared in the doorway then, and for the first time in months, he really looked at her. Really saw her.

"What's wrong?"

The question hung between them, fragile and terrifying. Elena felt tears stinging her eyes again and didn't care.

"I think we're both waiting for something to happen," she said. "And nothing is."

He crossed the room and took her face in his hands, and for a moment she let herself believe they could find their way back to each other, back to the people they'd been when falling in love had felt inevitable instead of impossible.

"We're still here," he said. "We're both still here."

She wasn't sure if that was enough anymore. But as she leaned into his touch, she decided to stay in the question a little longer.