What We Leave Behind

The spinach stuck between her teeth when she smiled—that terrible, uncertain smile that meant she was about to say something devastating. I'd noticed it three minutes ago, and now I couldn't unsee it. It was like our entire marriage summed up in a piece of green lodged where it didn't belong.

"You're not really listening, are you?" Maya said.

The cat, Bast, wound around my legs, purring like a small engine. She always sensed tension before I did. I'd found her as a stray during that first brutal winter together. Maya had cried when she saw the kitten's matted fur, said we couldn't keep her, then spent three hours grooming her with warm water. That was Maya—always pretending to be practical while her heart did something else entirely.

"I am," I lied. "Go on."

Lightning fractured the sky outside, briefly illuminating the boxes stacked by the door. When had she started packing? I'd been so buried in work, coming home exhausted, that I'd missed the dismantling of our life together.

"I met someone."

The words hit like physical blows. Not because she'd found someone else—I'd known. It was the weariness in her voice. She sounded disappointed, not angry. Like I was a project she'd abandoned halfway through.

"Is he a friend?" I heard myself ask.

"No." She stood up. "He listens when I speak. He remembers that I hate spinach."

I laughed, ugly and broken. "That's what this is about? The salad?"

She didn't laugh back. "It's about you serving me spinach three times this week. It's about you asking how my presentation went when I told you it was canceled. It's about us becoming roommates."

Bast jumped onto the table, knocked over my water glass. The liquid spread across the unpaid bills and the anniversary card I'd forgotten to mail. Maya reached for a towel, but I stopped her.

"Leave it."

"You should have let me clean it up," she said softly. "You never let me help."

The storm broke, rain pelting the windows. I watched her wait for something I couldn't give her.

"I'll come back for Bast," she said at the door.

"No." I stood up. "Keep the cat. At least one of us should."

She nodded, spinach still caught in her teeth, and walked out into the rain. I stood there listening to the water dripping, the house suddenly enormous, and realized I didn't know how to be alone anymore. Somewhere in all those years of being a husband, I'd forgotten how to be anything else.