"A Word for Her"

He had not been expecting a letter. No particular notion stopped him inside the front door as he shrugged off his rain trench and saw the envelope addressed to him.

It lay on top of the pile, on the spindly antique table where Jennifer dropped the daily mail. He recalled for no reason her presenting him photos of that table before it was delivered.

"Wouldn't this be perfect?" she sang, "For the front entry? Eighteenth-century iron. Like a little spider squatting in the corner."

She placed it steps from the front door, a spot to drop her keys, the mail, the other everyday items she carried before rushing through the house, on to the next imperative.

Every day, Jake passed the little exposed pile of paper without much regard, but today was different. He was home early. Closing the Waterman deal ahead of schedule had filled his office to a level of such triumph that he had sent his team off for an early start to the weekend.

He opened the letter.

It was from a Mr. Sorenson, a broker with Smith, Sutter, and Cole. Mr. Sorenson needed an account number for something or other. Jake seemed to remember his wife mentioning a new retirement account, one that did not rely so heavily on stock from his company. Yes, he thought, walking down the hall, slapping the letter against his other hand. He could take care of this easily.

On the kitchen counter, he found a square of sky blue paper with a message crafted in curly-tailed script: Gone to Madison's. Home before the storm hits.

At her sister's. Well, that made sense. Madison was the type to call on a Tuesday afternoon and insist Jennifer drive over right away.

He carried Mr. Sorenson's letter into the office and stopped in the doorway, looking around him. Filing cabinet...filing cabinet... where was the filing cabinet? He remembered a sliding drawer, a row of papers. He had watched Jennifer in this room a thousand times. Her pen to paper. The tidy click of computer keys beneath her fingertips.

The computer hummed on the desktop. The gray, rolling sky filled the picture windows, and suddenly, strangely, he did not want to enter the room. The navy wallpaper--too bold he'd thought and that's why she'd chosen it--pushed him back. The feminine sway of the curtains confused him, and all the white--white moldings, white bookshelves, white lights--drove the thought of the letter and his reason and purpose clear out of his head.

In its place throbbed a word that had stuck in his brain since the SATs: cerulean. It basically meant blue, and yet it meant so much more than blue. Here, in this office where papers were filed and bills paid, was a palette of blue, and more than blue, a creation with purpose.

He shook his head to clear it, feeling ridiculous. He managed a team of thirty sales representatives. He could manage to find an account number. He noticed a handle on the smooth face of the built-in shelves--a drawer! He opened it to reveal photographs arranged by date and subject, landscapes and faces and ordinary objects. What did she do with these?

He went back to the kitchen to read her note again, as if it held the answer. Jennifer had stood there just the night before, at the kitchen sink, a full bowl of fresh green beans before her.

"Listen," she had said, tilting her ear, snapping a bean, "I love that little pop."

The snap of a bean, the click of the keys, the music of deep thunder, the flash of lights at the windows, the white and the blue, it was all of her purpose. Slowly, he walked through each room of the house. Jennifer would know, instantly, the answer to this letter. She would pluck it from the atmosphere, like a conjurer, like a...was there a word for his wife, a word like cerulean, that held vibrance in the ordinary?

He was still holding the letter crushed in his hand when she returned, just before midnight. She came in the back door, slipping off her wet riding boots, deliciously dry under her wrapped coat, warm and smelling of coconut lotion.

He showed her the letter.

"Oh," she said, with a wave of her hand, "Already taken care of." She threw the letter into the trash bin tucked inside the utility closet. "Let's make blackberry tea and sit a while. I haven't been home all day."

He followed her into the kitchen, flushed with relief that the letter was out of his hand, his palm still slightly damp from clutching it there all evening, and then he thought of it no more.