The Supplements of Grief

Margot stood in the bathroom, the fluorescent light catching every stray gray hair like silver threads in a tapestry she hadn't asked to weave. At forty-three, she'd stopped plucking them. Let them come, she thought. Each one was a witness.

On the counter sat her daily pyramid of vitamins—C, D3, B-complex, calcium, and that expensive horse-pill of a multivitamin the nutritionist swore would change her life. She'd started taking them after Simon died, as if health could be bargained for, as if she could metabolize her way out of grief.

The dog, Buster, scratched at the bathroom door. Simon's dog, really. A golden retriever who'd aged alongside them, his muzzle now frosted with the same white that speckled Margot's temples. She'd wanted to put him down three months ago when the hip dysplasia got bad, but Simon had made her promise—on his actual deathbed, wheezing from the cancer that had eaten through his organs like sugar in hot tea—to keep Buster alive.

"He's your tether, Margs," Simon had said, and she'd wanted to scream that he was leaving her untethered, that "tether" meant two ends connected, not one loose end flailing in the wind.

She opened the bottle of orange juice—store brand, pulp-free, the kind Simon had hated—and washed down the vitamins. The acid hit her empty stomach like a judgment.

Her phone buzzed on the counter. Her sister, again. Checking in. Making sure she was eating, showering, showing up to her job at the pharmaceutical company where she helped market placebos to people who wanted to believe in something, anything.

Margot looked at her reflection. The pyramid of supplement bottles rose behind her like a monument to denial. Buster whined. She opened the door and he pressed his warm weight against her leg, and she sank down onto the cold tile floor and buried her face in his fur, smelling the sweet decay of old age and cheap dog shampoo.

"I'm still here," she whispered, not sure if she was talking to the dog, the dead husband, or herself.

The vitamins would dissolve. The hair would keep growing. The juice would go bad if left open. Some things were inevitable. She got up, closed the orange juice, and fed Buster a treat from her pocket—something Simon had taught her never to do, spoiling his dinner.

Rules changed when the rulemakers died.