The Last Bright Thing

The first thing Mara noticed when she walked through the door was the orange slice on the kitchen counter—its vivid citrus color startling against the gray Formica. Tom must have cut it for himself, forgotten it in the way he forgot everything now: their anniversary, her mother's funeral, the sound of her crying in the bathroom.

Three years of fertility treatments had turned them both into something else. She recognized the clinical term—emotional numbness, depressive episode—but the word that caught in her throat was zombie. She was a zombie moving through their life, and Tom was a zombie who had already started decaying.

"You're home," he said, not looking up from his phone. The apathy in his voice was worse than anger.

Mara crossed to the counter and picked up the orange slice. It had dried at the edges, the flesh starting to brown. She remembered how Tom used to peel oranges for her in college, making a single long spiral of peel, pretending to pull scarves from his sleeves. How he had laughed when she'd said orange was an ugly color for joy.

Outside, lightning cracked the sky—sudden, violent illumination. The kitchen went bright, then dark again. In that flash, she saw Tom's face. He looked exhausted, hollowed out. Not malicious. Just dead.

"I stopped the injections," she said.

Tom finally looked up. Another flash of lightning caught the wetness on his lashes. "You did?"

"I can't be a zombie anymore, Tom. I can't live in this house where we're both already dead."

She expected him to argue. Instead he stood up slowly, like a man waking from a long sleep, and crossed to where she stood. He reached for the orange slice in her hand and took it.

"I thought," he said, his voice cracking, "I thought this was what you wanted."

"I wanted us."

He pressed the orange to his lips, then threw it in the trash. "Okay," he said. "Let's start there."

Mara began to cry—really cry, for the first time in months. The storm broke open, rain finally coming down, and in the kitchen with all the lights still out, she thought she might be coming back to life.