INTENTIONAL LOVE: SHOW UP

BOTH PLATES

Point Of View — Maya

David does not come home by noon.

He does not come home by two either.

At half past three his assistant calls, not him, his assistant, to let me know the board session has extended into the evening and David sends his sincerest apologies and will make it up to me this weekend without fail. The woman's voice is professional and kind and completely practiced, the way a voice gets when it has made this particular kind of call many times before. I thank her. I tell her I appreciate the update. I hung up and set the phone on the counter beside the foil covered plate that has been sitting there since nine forty five this morning.

Ethan is napping upstairs.

The house is quiet.

I was reading to Ethan before his nap. The candle just burned all the way down. When I came downstairs I saw that it had gone out by itself. There was a circle of hard wax left in the holder and the wick was bent over. It looked like it just gave up. I stood there. I looked at the candle for a moment. Then I picked up the holder. Put it in the sink.

The wedding song stopped playing hours ago.

I never restarted it.

I stand at the kitchen counter now and I look at the anniversary table. The good plates are still out. The juice glasses still have a bit of juice in them, not a lot, just a tiny amount that I did not finish. It is golden and sits at the bottom of each glass. The three white roses have opened up fully and now they are almost flat, their petals are spread out at the end.

Everything looks like a film that did not happen the way it was supposed to happen.

I start cleaning up the table.

I take the glasses first. I carry them over to the sink and pour out what is left, then I rinse them. Set them aside. I take the roses. I put them gently on the counter. I fold up the napkins even though they are not really unfolded. I pick up his plate, the plate that is still covered in foil and I carry it over to the counter and put it beside mine.

I take the foil off his plate.

The food underneath is cold. It is not moving at all. The eggs have lost their color. The mushrooms have gotten flat. The bacon is hard. The pancakes are now dense the way they get when they have been sitting out for long. It looks like food that has been waiting for someone who never showed up. The waiting made it change to something different from what it was when it was first made.

I looked at the food for a moment and I trashed them.

I don't force the trash can to avoid sound.. I do not make any noise. I just close it quietly. Stand there with both plates, his and mine. I turn on the water.

The water starts coming out warm away.

I wash my plate first, it does not take long. I used it. I ate all my food so there is not much left on it. There is a bit of egg and some honey from the pancakes. I wash it very well ,the way I always wash the plates because they are special and they need to be treated that way.

I put it in the rack to dry.

Then I pick up his plate, the plate that belongs to him.

There is nothing on it. I already scraped it clean before I started washing it. I scraped it clean before I started washing. It is already empty. There is no practical reason to wash it as carefully as I wash mine. A quick rinse would do. Any reasonable person would just rinse it and be done.

I wash it exactly as carefully as I washed mine.

I have decided not to do this. My hands just do it. The same slow circles with the cloth. The same careful attention to the edges where the pattern is. The same gentle rinse. The same deliberate setting in the rack beside my own.

I stand back and look at them leaning together in the drying rack. Two plates. Clean and identical and side by side. One that was used and one that wasn't and you cannot tell the difference now. They look exactly the same.

I dry my hands on the kitchen towel.

I think about how many times I have done this.

Not just today. Not just this anniversary. I think back and I try to count, the same way I tried to count the covered plates, the apology flowers, the okay phone calls, and I cannot reach a number. The mornings blur together. The covered plates blur together. The careful washings of plates that were never used blur together into a single long unbroken motion, me at this sink, warm water running, washing the evidence of an absence so thoroughly that by the time the plates go back on the shelf you would never know.

I have been cleaning up after his missing for five years.

I lean against the counter.

Outside the kitchen window the afternoon light is going grey. December light does that early. It arrives thin and leaves before you are ready. The garden is still. The c***k in the wall is there, the same c***k that has been there since Ethan's birthday, and I can see it clearly from here now. It is definitely wider than it was in June. I have watched it slowly all these months without saying anything to anyone. Without calling someone to fix it. Just watching it get wider in small increments that are only noticeable if you have been paying close attention from the beginning.

I have been paying close attention.

Ethan comes downstairs at four with his hair pushed up on one side from the pillow and his eyes still soft with sleep. He comes straight to the kitchen and looks at the table and sees it is cleared and looks at the counter and sees the vase with the flat open roses and looks at me.

"Did Daddy come?" He asks.

"Not yet." I say.

He nods. He looks at the bin. He looks back at me. He is four years old and he does not have the words for what he is putting together but I can see him putting it together anyway. Behind his eyes. Quietly.

"Can I have juice?" He asks.

"Of course you can."

I pour him juice in a regular glass, not the good ones, and he takes it with both hands and drinks standing up the way he always does and I watch him and something in my chest pulls tight and then releases like a knot being gently tugged.

I put the good plates away after that.

I take them back up to the high shelf where they live. I stack them carefully, one on top of the other, and I slide them back into their spot and I stand on my toes to make sure they are steady before I step down.

I look at them up there.

Five years of marriage and I can count on both hands the number of times those plates have been on the table for both of us at the same time. The number of meals that were actually shared. The number of mornings that belonged to both of us and not just to me alone.

I step down.

I picked up the business card from where I left it on the counter this morning. I have been moving around it all day, clearing around it, wiping around it, as if it is a thing that needs its own space. I hold it in my hand and I look at the name on the front.

Then I turn it over.

My handwriting on the back. One word with a small question mark. The question I wrote eight months ago when I did not have the answer yet.

*Enough?*

I read it.

I turn the card back over.

I hold it for a long time standing in my quiet kitchen with the grey December light coming through the window and the good plates back on the high shelf and the drying rack empty and clean beside the sink.

Then I walk to the counter.

I pick up my phone.

I opened it.

I do not call Linda. I do not call David. I open the internet browser and I type four words into the search bar slowly, one at a time, like each one costs something.

The results come up immediately.

I sat down at the kitchen table, the cleared anniversary table with the empty vase and the spent candle holder and the two chairs perfectly side by side, and I read the first result all the way to the bottom without stopping.

When I finish I close the browser.

I sit very still.

Then I open it again and I read the second result.

And the third.

And by the time Ethan climbs into my lap an hour later and asks me what I am reading I close the phone quietly and wrap both arms around him and rest my chin on top of his head and I say nothing at all.

Because what I was reading does not have simple words yet.

Not words I can say out loud.

Not to Ethan. Not to Linda. Not even to myself.

But they are there now. Sitting in me. Solid and certain and no longer a question.

The question mark is gone.