Stray Wires

Marcia sat across from me at the dinner table, pushing spinach around her plate with deliberate, almost surgical precision. The overhead cast a harsh shadow across her face, highlighting the gray threading through what used to be entirely black hair at her temples. We used to dye it together on Sunday mornings, laughing in the bathroom with towels draped around our shoulders. That was before.

The TV was on mute, a cable news ticker scrolling silently across the screen like some grim prophecy. I'd been meaning to cancel the subscription since she moved out two months ago, but somehow I kept paying the bill. Maybe it was just one more thread I hadn't yet had the courage to cut.

"Your father called," she said, not looking up from her plate. "He's worried about you."

"I'm fine."

"You haven't been fine since—"

"Since my promotion? Since I bought this place? Since you decided a mortgage and a shared bed were too much commitment?"

Her fork clattered against the plate. A piece of spinach clung to her lower lip, but I didn't tell her. Let the email thread cling there, some small biological imperfection to match the spiritual ones.

"You're impossible when you're like this."

"And what am I like?"

"Like someone who'd rather pick fights than feel anything real."

She stood up, and that was when I noticed it—another strand of hair falling loose from her bun, catching the light. Had her hair always been this thin, or was I just noticing now because I knew I wouldn't see it like this again?

"This was a mistake," she said. "I shouldn't have come over."

"You wanted to talk about the papaya tree."

"I wanted to talk about us."

"There is no us. There's just the papaya tree we planted in Hawaii, on our last good vacation, and apparently now it's dead, and I think that's supposed to mean something."

She stared at me, and for a moment I thought she might cry. Instead, she walked to the window, where the cable from the building next door sagged between our apartments like a slack telephone line from an old Western.

"It died because we stopped paying attention to it," she said softly. "Not because it couldn't grow."

I wanted to say something clever, something cutting, but instead I just watched her hair catch the streetlight outside. Some things die from neglect. Others die because you water them too much, drowning them in what was supposed to be care.

"Take the spinach with you," I said, suddenly exhausted. "It's going to waste."

She laughed, actually laughed, and I remembered why I'd loved her in the first place. Even at the end, she could still find the absurdity in things.

"You're impossible," she said again, but this time it almost sounded like a compliment.