The Riddle of Empty Rooms

Maya found the cat sitting on the bathroom counter, staring at her reflection. Barnaby—her husband's cat, really—watched with that sphinx-like inscrutability that made her wonder what the animal knew.

She pulled another clump of hair from her brush. The chemotherapy was doing its work, stripping her of the identifiers that had made her recognizable to herself, to Mark, to the world. She twisted the strands around her finger before dropping them into the trash.

"You're staring," she told the cat.

Barnaby blinked.

Downstairs, Mark was cooking. She could smell garlic and something bitter—spinach, probably. He'd been trying since the diagnosis, filling the refrigerator with organic greens and vitamin supplements, as if nutrition could undo what radiation and poison had only begun.

She descended slowly, each step a negotiation with exhaustion. In the kitchen, Mark stood over the stove, his back to her. His hair was still thick, still dark at the temples. He'd started going gray last year, stress from the firm, he'd said. Now she wondered if that was all it was.

"Spinach again?" she asked.

He turned. "It's good for you. The doctor said—"

"The doctor said I need to keep weight on. Spinach is water and bitterness."

He sighed, the sound heavy with that particular exhaustion she'd come to recognize—the weariness of someone who hadn't signed up for sickness. Who'd imagined marriage differently.

"I bought those vitamins you wanted," he said, avoiding her eyes. "The expensive ones."

"Thanks."

They ate in silence. The cat appeared in the doorway, watching them both with that ancient, judging gaze. Outside, the March wind rattled the windowpane. Maya thought about the riddle she'd become: what loses everything and must nevertheless continue?

"I'm going to my sister's," Mark said, setting down his fork. "Just for the weekend. I need... I need to not think about hospitals for a few days."

She nodded. Something inside her cracked open, not cleanly, but like a door that had been sticking for years. "Okay."

"You'll be all right?"

"I have Barnaby," she said, and the cat, as if summoned, jumped onto her lap.

Later, she stood in the bathroom again, examining her reflection. The hair loss was uneven now, patchy as a field in drought. But beneath it, something harder was emerging. Bone and resolve and the terrible clarity of having nothing left to lose.

The cat rubbed against her legs, purring. Outside, the wind howled. Maya swallowed her vitamins without water and thought: the sphinx's riddle had been about what walks on four legs, then two, then three. But the real question was what you became when you could no longer walk at all—when you had to learn to fly.