The Evening We Everything

The orange glow of the streetlamp cast long shadows across Maria's kitchen floor. She sat with her third glass of wine, staring at the empty chair where he used to sit. Three years since David left, and still she measured time in before-and-afters, like seasons that no longer aligned.

Her elderly cat, Barnaby, jumped onto the table with arthritis-stiff joints. He'd been David's cat originally, a rescue from that baseball stadium parking lot where they'd first met—both of them running late for a concert, both of them lost in the rain. The memory still made her chest ache: how he'd laughed when the soaked kitten scratched his expensive suit, how they'd ended up sharing an umbrella and then breakfast, then ten years of a life she'd thought was permanent.

Now Barnaby kneaded the tablecloth with senile persistence, purring like a small engine. Maria smoothed the gray hairs at her temples, wondering when she'd stopped being the woman who laughed at unexpected rainstorms. Somewhere between the mortgage payments and the arguments about whose turn it was to call David's mother, between his affair with that younger colleague and the silent months that followed, she had misplaced something essential.

She poured another glass. The apartment was too quiet. She used to hate his baseball games on television—the endless innings, the crack of the bat echoing through Sunday afternoons. Now she'd give anything to hear that sound again, even the arguments that came with it.

Maria stood up, Barnaby mewing protest. She walked to the window, watching the city's orange sodium lights flicker on. Somewhere out there, David was probably with someone younger, someone who didn't have gray hairs or an arthritic cat or a heart that had been broken and clumsily mended back together.

Running. That's what the therapist had suggested. Start running, she'd said. Physical activity helps with grief. Maria had tried, once, at dawn, but she'd stopped after three blocks, gasping, crying, realizing she wasn't running toward anything—she was just running away from the knowledge that some things, once broken, can never be whole again.

She returned to the table, scratched Barnaby behind his ears, and poured the rest of the bottle down the sink. Some nights, being sober was harder than others. But the sun would rise eventually, and she'd get through it, like she'd gotten through everything else—one breath at a time.