The Color of Forgetting

Margaret watched him chew. The spinach lodged between David's incisors like a tiny green flag of surrender, or perhaps defiance. Forty years of marriage, and still he refused to let her point out these small humiliations.

"The oranges were excellent," David said, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin. "Remind me to get more tomorrow."

His hair—what remained of it—had thinned to wisps of gray, floating like dandelion seeds against his scalp. Margaret felt a sudden, crushing wave of... what? Grief, yes. But also something more complicated: relief that she'd outlived her mother's expectations, shame that she was counting the days until she was free, love that had curdled into something unrecognizable.

"David," she said. "Your teeth."

He flushed the color of the juice in his glass. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I just did."

The silence stretched between them, taut as wire. Outside, autumn stripped the trees. Inside, Margaret remembered how he used to run his hands through her hair in bed, the way he'd press his palm against her scalp as if grounding himself. Now his hands shook when he reached for his water glass. Now she slept facing the wall.

"You used to tell me everything," he said quietly.

"I used to think you were listening."

David stood up, his chair scraping against the floor. The sound was like a door closing. Margaret watched him walk to the bathroom, his step slower than it had been yesterday. The spinach was gone from his teeth, but something else remained, something she couldn't name, stuck between them like an unspoken truth.

She reached for an orange, her fingers pressing into the dimpled skin. Somewhere, she thought, there was a version of herself who still peeled oranges for him, who still loved him enough to save him from small embarrassments. That woman was dead. This one—this tired, pragmatic woman—would stay for the finances, for the children, for the fear of being alone at sixty-two.

She cracked the orange's skin. The scent burst forth, sharp and bright. For a moment, it was all she could do not to weep.