The Weight of What We Carry

The hat sat on the restaurant's coat rack like a dead animal—gray felt, crushed at the crown, smelling faintly of cigarettes and regret. It belonged to Marcus, though Elena had stopped thinking of him as hers three months ago. She watched him across the candlelit table, his fork pushing at a wilting spinach leaf that had escaped his mouth earlier. He hadn't noticed. He never noticed anything anymore.

'You're wearing it,' she said softly.

'Wearing what?' He looked up, eyes slightly glazed from the second bottle of Pinot they'd both been pretending to enjoy.

'The bear. On your forearm. You rolled up your sleeves.' She nodded toward the tattoo—black ink, fierce jaws mid-roar—that he'd gotten drunk in Tulum during what he'd called his 'finding himself' phase. What she'd called his affair phase, though the paperwork from his therapist later said bipolar disorder. Either way, the bear was there, permanent as a gravestone.

He covered it with his napkin. 'It's just a tattoo, El.'

'It's not just anything. It's her initials in the claws.' She placed her wineglass down with deliberate precision. 'Celia's initials.'

The spinach on his plate had gone cold, congealed into an unappealing mass of dark green. Like their marriage. Like the life they'd built in that oversized house where every room felt like a museum exhibit of who they used to be. She remembered bringing the hat home for his birthday last year—how he'd laughed, how they'd made love on the living room floor while Frank Sinatra played from a speaker she'd since sold.

'I should go,' he said.

'You should.' She stood up first, leaving money on the table. More than enough. Always too much, never the right amount.

He reached for the hat on his way out. She watched him put it on, watched him adjust the brim, watched him walk into the night wearing another woman's initials on his arm and a dead man's hat on his head. The spinach sat untouched on his plate, a small rotting thing that would be cleared away by strangers who would never know their names.