The Last Enigma

Mara stood before the bathroom mirror, tweezing another stray hair from her chin. The overhead light cast harsh shadows, revealing the topography of a face she no longer recognized. At forty-three, she'd become a sphinx of her own making—inscrutable, guarded, posing riddles she couldn't answer herself.

The bottle of vitamin D pills on the counter caught her eye. Daniel had bought them, concerned about her winter fatigue, back when he still noticed things like that. Three months since he'd moved out, and she still took one every morning with mechanical devotion.

In the living room, their orange couch—the first major purchase they'd made together—now sat at an awkward angle, like a wound in the room's geometry. She'd meant to rearrange everything, but inertia had settled in like dust.

Her phone buzzed. Another message from him: "Left my keys. Can I come by Thursday?"

Thursday. The day they'd met at that terrible office party, seven years ago. She remembered his terrible impression of a goldfish—mouth opening and closing in silent panic—as their boss droned on about quarterly targets. She'd laughed so hard champagne came out her nose. He'd said later he knew he loved her when she wiped her face and said, "Well, that was undignified."

Now everything felt undignified. The protracted division of assets. The friends who'd stopped calling. The way her body seemed to be quietly betraying her, one hair, one wrinkle, one unexplained ache at a time.

She typed back: "Thursday works."

Then deleted it.

Then typed it again.

The goldfish in the bowl on her desk—Daniel's parting gift, a joke about how they'd both forget why they fought—swam in endless circles. Its memory supposedly spanned only seconds. Sometimes she envied that. To swim the same loop forever, meeting the same plastic castle anew each time, unburdened by the weight of what came before.

She took the vitamin D. She plucked another hair. She waited for Thursday, trying to remember who she was before she'd become someone's wife, before she'd become this sphinx in the mirror, posing riddles with no answers, only the endless circling of goldfish in the dark water of remembering.