The Riddle of Us

Ellen stared at the plastic container of wilted spinach in her refrigerator, the leaves already turning slimy at the edges. Three days since Mark moved out. Three days of expired groceries and silence.

The doctor's words still echoed: "You need more vitamin D. Your levels are practically nonexistent." A simple prescription for a simple problem, but Ellen couldn't stop laughing when she said it. The doctor had looked at her strangely, probably thinking she was one of those patients who found everything hilarious when they were nervous.

But it wasn't funny. Nothing about forty-two and suddenly single was funny.

She threw the spinach into the trash, watching it fall like a failed marriage. Outside, lightning cracked across the Seattle sky, illuminating the rain-streaked windows of their—her—apartment. The storm had been brewing for hours, much like the conversations she and Mark had never quite had.

Her phone buzzed. A text from him: "Left my orange sweater. Can I come by tomorrow?"

Ellen's thumb hovered over the screen. The sweater was a small thing, one of those mundane items that accumulate over twelve years together. But it wasn't just a sweater. It was the one he'd worn when they visited Egypt last spring, when they'd stood before the Great Sphinx and made jokes about how the monument had better posture than either of them after the overnight flight.

That was before the diagnosis. Before the genetic test that revealed they couldn't have children, before the conversations that started with "we" and ended with "you." Before Mark decided that at forty-five, he wasn't ready to accept a childless life, even if Ellen was.

She stared at the Sphinx magnet on their refrigerator—a souvenir from that trip, positioned absurdly next to her vitamin supplements and wedding photos that now seemed like artifacts from a lost civilization.

The riddle of the Sphinx: what walks on four legs, then two, then three? The answer was a man. But Ellen wondered if the better question was: what stays together through sickness and health, through joy and disappointment, through compromise and sacrifice?

Mark's version of love apparently had an expiration date.

Another flash of lightning. Thunder rattled the windows. Ellen typed back: "Burn it."

She wasn't sure if she meant the sweater or everything else.