The Business of Dying

Mara stood in the fluorescent-lit pharmacy aisle at 11 PM, staring at the wall of supplements. Vitamin D3 for bones she hadn't broken yet, B-complex for energy she couldn't summon, magnesium for sleep that refused to come. At forty-two, she'd become the kind of person who owned a pill organizer with tiny compartments for each day of the week. Her mother had died at forty-seven, and now everything tasted like countdown.

"You're buying spinach again?" Jenna asked the next afternoon, poking at Mara's grocery bag with manicured nails. They were sitting in Mara's kitchen, the same kitchen where they'd smoked pot in college and plotted their escape from small-town life. Now Jenna was divorced for the second time and Mara was teaching herself to like greens that tasted like wet lawn.

"It's supposed to help with inflammation."

"Everything is supposed to help with something." Jenna's hair was still the same platinum blonde she'd dyed it sophomore year, while Mara found her first gray strand three months ago and plucked it with trembling fingers. They were growing in opposite directions—Jenna chasing youth, Mara trying to make peace with its departure.

The real reason Mara ate spinach sat between them like a third person. Her doctor had called it "concerning markers" and recommended "lifestyle changes." The phrase hung in the air whenever they spoke now, even though Jenna didn't know. Mara had stopped telling her things somewhere around the second marriage and the miscarriage Jenna never mentioned.

Lightning cracked the kitchen window, sudden and violent, making them both jump.

"Remember when we drove to Chicago in that storm?" Jenna asked, and for a moment they were twenty again,believing they'd live forever, believing time was something they had in abundance instead of something they were slowly running out of.

"I should tell you something," Mara said, her voice thick. But the moment passed, as moments do, and she put the spinach in the refrigerator instead.

"What?" Jenna had already pulled out her phone, her attention already elsewhere.

"Nothing." Mara dry-swallowed a vitamin from her purse. "Just that we should go to Chicago again sometime."

"Sure," Jenna said, not looking up. "When things calm down."

They never did, of course. That was the thing about lightning—it struck and then was gone, and you were left standing in the rain wondering if you'd imagined everything.