The Riddle of Us

I stood at the kitchen counter, chopping spinach with more force than necessary. The green leaves bled onto the cutting board like the words I couldn't say to him anymore.

Marcus sat at the table, sorting his pills into that neat little pyramid he made every morning — blood pressure, vitamin D, something for his cholesterol, something for his mood. The plastic clicked against the wooden surface, a tiny metronome counting down our mornings together.

"You're quiet," he said, not looking up.

"Just thinking."

"About what?"

About how you've become a sphinx these past months. How every question I ask gets answered with another question, or silence, or that maddening half-smile that makes me feel like I'm failing some test I didn't know I was taking. About how we built this life together like architects of a great monument, only to discover we were standing on different foundations all along.

"Work," I said instead.

He nodded, accepting this. He always accepted whatever I gave him these days. That was the problem — or maybe it wasn't a problem at all. Maybe this was just what happened when you spent thirty years with someone. The mystery dried up. The riddles solved themselves until there was nothing left to wonder at.

I scraped the spinach into the pan. It wilted instantly, surrendering.

"Remember Egypt?" I asked suddenly.

Marcus looked up, confused. "What?"

"Our honeymoon. You stood in front of the Sphinx for twenty minutes, trying to take its picture, and the camera wouldn't work. You were so furious. I thought you were going to cry."

He smiled, really smiled, for the first time in weeks. "I was going to propose again. Properly, with the ring I'd bought in Cairo. But the camera dying felt like a sign that I shouldn't push my luck."

My knife froze. "You never told me that."

"It was a silly thought."

"No," I said, turning to face him. "It wasn't."

The spinach burned behind me. Neither of us moved to save it.

"We could go back," he said quietly. "Before it's too late."

"To Egypt?"

"To the beginning. To the part where we still had things to say."

I looked at his pill pyramid, at the spinach smoking in the pan, at this man who had somehow become both stranger and home. "I'd like that," I said. "But you have to stop being a sphinx. I'm too tired for riddles."

He nodded, and something in his face softened, like the day we first met. "Okay," he said. "No more riddles. Just us."

I turned off the stove. We ordered pizza instead.