The Riddle of Us

The HDMI cable lay severed on the floor between us like a dead snake, its copper entrails exposed—a fitting metaphor for our marriage. Sarah sat on the beige sectional, eyes glazed over, doom-scrolling through her iPhone while I stood there holding the bottle of vitamin D supplements my doctor insisted I take for bone health and seasonal depression.

"You're like the Sphinx," I said, my voice cracking. "Riddles and silence. Nothing but riddles and silence."

She looked up, finally. "That's bull, Marcus. You want clarity? Fine. Clarity is I haven't been happy in two years."

The words hit me harder than I expected. We'd met at twenty-three, both certain we'd be the ones to make it—the ones to defy the statistics, to grow old together in that agonizingly ordinary way people claimed they wanted. Now, at thirty-seven, we were just two people sharing a mortgage and a declining tolerance for each other's breathing patterns.

I remembered our trip to Egypt three years ago, how we'd stood before the Great Sphinx at dawn, drunk on cheap wine and the kind of optimism that only tourists possess. We'd made promises into the limestone face, secrets whispered to something that had heard them all before.

"Is there someone else?" The question felt ridiculous even as it left my mouth.

"No." She set down the phone. "That would be easier, wouldn't it? Something to point to. But it's just—this. This stagnation. These same walls. These same arguments about whose turn it is to decide what to watch for dinner."

I looked at the vitamins in my hand—cholecalciferol, gelatin, olive oil. Chemical solutions to existential problems. We'd both been taking supplements for years, trying to optimize ourselves into happiness.

"So what now?" I asked.

She shrugged, and somehow that gesture was more devastating than shouting. "Now we figure out if some riddles are better left unsolved."

Outside, a car alarm pierced the evening silence. I sat on the floor beside the broken cable and wondered if the Sphinx ever got tired of watching people pretend they understood the questions, let alone the answers.