What the Sphinx Already Knows

The spinach had gone cold, a congealed mass of green on Arthur's plate that mirrored exactly how he felt about his marriage. He watched Eleanor push the wilted leaves around with the tines of her fork, a ritual she'd performed at their weekly Thursday dinner for six months running. Thunder rattled the windowpanes of their Chicago apartment, and he almost welcomed the coming storm. At least rain had the decency to announce itself before it ruined everything.

"I have to tell you something," she said, finally abandoning the pretense of eating. She reached across the table to adjust his fedora—it had been his father's, and he only wore it to funerals and restaurants that required jackets. "You look ridiculous in that thing, Artie. You know that, right?"

He didn't take it off. "Since when do you care?"

"Since I realized we're both wearing costumes." Eleanor's hand lingered on his sleeve, her thumb tracing the wool. "I saw Marcus yesterday."

Lightning fractured the room, throwing their shadows against the wall in sharp relief. For a moment, Arthur saw them as they must appear to an outsider: two strangers seated across from each other, performing the ancient choreography of disappointment, their silhouette caught mid-motion like figures in a photograph someone would find years later and wonder what had gone wrong.

"Marcus who?"

"Marcus from the gallery. The one you said was pretentious." Eleanor laughed, a sound like breaking glass. "He asked me why I stay. He asked me what riddle I'm still trying to solve, living here with you."

Arthur thought of the stone sphinx they'd seen on their honeymoon in Egypt, how he'd jokingly asked her what it guarded, what terrible truth it kept from travelers. She'd laughed then, genuinely, with her whole body, leaning against his shoulder in the merciless heat. She'd said: The sphinx doesn't guard anything, Arthur. It is the question. It exists to remind us that some answers destroy the very thing you're trying to understand.

Now she looked at him with eyes that held nothing but exhaustion.

"The answer is simple," Arthur said, standing up. "I stay because I still believe there's something left to solve."

He walked to the window, watching the rain finally break against the glass, transforming the city outside into something blurred and inscrutable. Behind him, he heard Eleanor's chair scrape against the floor, followed by the soft click of the front door closing.

Arthur reached up and touched the brim of his father's hat. Outside, the storm had already passed.