Requiem for James

In the sink sits an old rusted baby spoon with an off-white handle and, if ever touched against the tongue, the tang of metal. It drowns beneath murky waters, sunken beneath the best china, a favorite coffee mug, and countless other utensils. It tastes the soggy lasagna and kidney beans that sink into the little metal device meant to catch food particles, preventing their escape down the drain, though the wife usually dumps them down the metal tubes and flushes them with water after the sink has drained. Countless days the little baby spoon sits in and out of water, never carefully rinsed, never at home among the other silver in the meticulously cared for drawer, never washed, never touched, never cradled between warm soapy fingers and hummed a lullaby.

The husband stands outside the kitchen door, smoking the last burning embers of a cigarette and holding a bottle of almost gone cologne in his spare hand. He told the wife almost five months ago he'd given them up, and though he knew by now she must know what makes him late every evening after work, and must have seen his ghostly shadow through the curtain tinted in night and streetlights, he still made the effort-half-hearted-to cover the smoky scent of his vice. He clutches the stick of mostly ash between his front teeth and lays the bottle of cologne on the small ledge of the door's windowpane. With trembling hands he carefully lights a match and holds it up to his face, watching the tiny flame flicker and twitch in a gentle breeze as it descends toward his fingertips, his calloused skin and hang-nailed cuticles. He feels the heat alight on his thumb and flicks the spent match onto the sidewalk, watches the last light die as it lands, and does the same with the cigarette. He scuffs it with the toe of his worn boot and kicks the evidence into the azaleas.

The scent of the cologne as he enters the back door overwhelms the kitchen and slips demurely into the dining room until it gently tickles the wife's nose and brings her to her feet. She walks to the kitchen and takes the husband's coat without kissing him, without speaking, and takes it with her to the small closet near the living room. Without care or sentiment she hangs it on an old wooden hanger beside a small blue jacket with tiny mittens sewn into the sleeves. A cold chill escapes from somewhere in the closet's depths and sends goose pimples up her arms. The chill whispers her name, but cannot occupy her mind: it lingers elsewhere, in the park, under the shaded tree near the swing set where she gently scolds, "Not so high" but loves to watch the boy sail against the sky almost like, should he release the metal chains, he might fly.

The husband eyes the little spoon in the sink and sighs, a breath that comes from deep within his soul like a memory. He walks through the dining room, past the table with three settings, and sighs again, this one carrying a little life with it that steals up toward the ceiling fan where it meets its doom. His life seems a slow progression of perpetual sighs.

Up the staircase, past the unused, unslid banister, a bedroom with a locked door whispers their names and asks them to play. Occupied, always too occupied, for simple games and fun. They ignore it, as always, as they ignore the little spoon that only longs to be held and told everything is okay, it will be loved again someday. As they ignore the little slide in the backyard that wets with morning dew that drips like tears down its surface. As they ignore the procession of days that steep them in something beyond misery, something beyond pain or sorrow, something like lifelessness, though still living. The room upstairs is warm and playful, filled with laughter and joyful memories, if only they would use the key to unlock it all and finally heal.

The husband and the wife eat dinner in silence because neither knows of anything to say that won't hurt. The wife cannot say that she misses her husband even more when he walks through the door than in all the hours she sits alone without him during daylight. She holds in the words that speak of how empty her bed feels, emptier than the hollow spot in her stomach that once vibrated with life whenever her husband laid his hand over its joyous roundness those years ago. She swallows her heartache and words with a sip of water and says nothing of the photo albums she found today and put in boxes so he wouldn't see them and want her to throw them away, too.

The husband does not say that the chicken is cold and he wishes she would stop making it because neither of them likes it, or that he will not eat the cake she's concealed in the center of the table with an embroidered cloth because it's chocolate and neither of them likes chocolate, either. He will not speak of the lunch hour spent in the car that always seemed to wind up at the park or outside the hospital or across the street from the graveyard. He won't say that he wanted to buy her roses today but roses no longer speak of love to him, only loss, only red petals thrown into a hollow hole in the ground that swallowed up all his wholeness. He pushes his plate away and walks past her without kissing her cheek, or laying a hand gently on her shoulder, or lightly touching the hair that falls across her forehead as she rests her face in her hands and rubs her eyes with her fingertips.

They walk upstairs separately and undress and redress in different parts of their bedroom, and use the bathroom in turns, and shut out their own lamps in their own time. They lie in the same bed and look at each other for a miniature eternity, but he rolls over first and she wets her pillow with her face and tries not to tremble. Down the hall the locked room slumbers to the sound of an old play ball falling from its shelf and rolling itself across the carpeted floor, its sound like that of a breeze through a field before touching the wall and stopping. In the kitchen a baby spoon gathers water on its face and reflects the moon and all the world upside down.

In the morning they wake wrapped up in each other's arms, thinking maybe this day will be different, but knowing it's already the same.