The Long Season of Hollows

Elaine stood before the bathroom mirror, scissors in hand, and cut her hair. Not a trim—a severance. Chestnut coils fell into the sink like dead things. Twenty years of marriage and she'd worn it the way David liked: long, feminine, manageable. The man who'd once run his fingers through it now slept beside her without touching, a zombie of the husband she'd loved, animated by routine but hollowed out by something he refused to name.

Downstairs, Barnaby whined at the back door. Their golden retriever, once David's running companion, now limped from arthritis. She let him out and watched him navigate the frost-bitten grass, each step deliberate, each breath visible in the November air. She remembered bringing Barnaby home as a puppy, the way David had laughed when the dog tripped over his own paws. That man felt like a stranger now.

She poured orange juice—pulp settling at the bottom, the glass catching morning light. They used to share this ritual. Saturdays, newspapers spread, David making terrible jokes about the comics. Now he drank coffee in his car before work, claimed the morning air helped him think. She knew he was thinking of nothing. Or someone else. The second option she'd learned not to voice aloud.

David came downstairs, stopped in the doorway. His gaze flickered from her short hair to her face and away again. Nothing. No reaction, or a suppressed one—it amounted to the same thing. The zombie quality of him frightened her most. Not that he might leave, but that he'd already gone and kept showing up anyway.

"Hair's different," he said.

"Yes."

He poured his coffee. "Okay."

Barnaby scratched at the door. She let him in, buried her face in his fur, and thought about what it meant to love something that could no longer love you back. The dog would die soon. The marriage already had. She was the only one still pretending otherwise.

"David," she said.

He checked his watch. "Late."

She watched him go: coat, keys, the careful closing of the door. A zombie performance of leaving. The juice sat warm on the counter, its color violent against the gray kitchen. She washed the glass, called to Barnaby, and began to pack.