The Things We Don't Say

The spinach was stuck between Marissa's front teeth, a tiny green flag of surrender that she kept talking through, oblivious. I watched it move as she extolled the virtues of her new vitamin regimen — some expensive subscription service that shipped personalized supplements based on DNA testing. At forty-two, we'd both reached that age where wellness became a religion, but Marissa had always been the more devout convert.

Her iPhone lay face-up on the café table, lighting up every three minutes with messages from someone named Jordan. She kept ignoring it, or maybe she just wanted me to see that she was ignoring it. The phone was newer than mine, sleeker, its case a fashionable beige that matched the highlights in her hair. My own hair had gone fully gray last year, and I'd made the deliberate decision not to dye it — a choice Marissa had described as "brave" in that tone that meant she'd never be caught dead making the same mistake.

"You look tired," she said, not unkindly.

"I am."

"The B complex helps with energy. And the magnesium. I can send you a referral code."

I stirred my coffee, watching the dark swirls dissipate. We hadn't spoken since the funeral, since she'd put her hand on my shoulder and said some things are meant to be, since I'd realized that my grief offended her tidy sense of cosmic order. Now here we were, two years later, having brunch like nothing had changed.

The phone buzzed again. Jordan.

"Your husband," I said.

She flinched, just slightly. The spinach remained wedged in her teeth, broadcasting its presence like a secret she'd forgotten to keep.

"We're separated."

The silence stretched between us, filled with all the things we couldn't say about her marriage, about my widowhood, about the slow erosion of a thirty-year friendship. I should tell her about the spinach. That's what friends do. But we weren't those friends anymore, if we ever had been.

"I started seeing someone," she said, finally. "After. It's not — I mean, we were already having problems."

I nodded, like this made sense, like it explained everything.

"The vitamins," I said. "Do they actually work?"

She looked confused for a moment, then relieved. "Oh, absolutely. I feel completely different. Better than I did at thirty."

Her phone lit up again. Jordan.

I stood up, leaving half my coffee untouched. "I have to go."

"Of course." She reached for her phone, saw the message, and hesitated. "Will I — should we —"

"Take care of yourself, Marissa."

I walked out without telling her about the spinach, letting her carry that small green fragment of herself out into the world, unaware. Some kindnesses are cruelties in disguise, and some truths are better left undiscovered. We'd spent decades protecting each other from reality. Why stop now?