Vitamins for the Bear

Margot arranged the hat on her head with surgical precision, adjusting the brim until it cast the perfect shadow over her eyes. The funeral was in twenty minutes, and she needed to look like a widow who was holding it together beautifully.

"You're taking your vitamin?" Elena asked from the doorway, holding out the small orange bottle like an accusation.

Margot took it without meeting her friend's eyes. She'd been taking them for three months—ever since Richard's diagnosis, since the decision to sell the house, since the night he'd whispered that he'd never loved her more than when he was dying. The vitamins were supposed to help her cope. Instead, they just made her feel like her grief was a medical condition that could be fixed with the right supplement.

"I can't bear this," Margot said suddenly, the words tearing loose before she could stop them. "I can't bear sitting there and listening to people talk about him like he was a saint. He wasn't, Elena. He was cruel, and selfish, and I haven't missed him once since the hospice nurse turned off the machines."

Elena's silence stretched between them, heavy and judgmental.

"Then why are you going?" Elena asked finally. "Why wear the hat, why take the vitamins, why perform the grieving widow?"

Margot touched the brim of her hat, her fingers trembling. "Because Richard's sister is flying in from Tokyo. Because his business partners are coming. Because somewhere in this mess, there are people who actually loved him, and I won't be the one who tells them they loved a lie."

"That's not friendship, Margot. That's masochism."

"It's bearing it," Margot said. "That's what adults do. We bear things we can't change because the alternative is—" She gestured vaguely at nothing. "—unacceptable."

Elena stepped forward and took the vitamin bottle from her hand. "Or you could just not go. You could take off the hat and say: I didn't love him, and I'm glad he's dead, and I'm starting over."

Margot looked at herself in the mirror—a stranger in black with a shadow across her face. She reached up and removed the hat. Her hair was flattened underneath, unstyled and honest. For the first time in months, she looked like herself.

"Cancel the car," Margot said. "I'm staying home."