Or Not to Be Read Free Page B

first, to know. Always so logical.
    You came over for a hug, so I danced
you around the kitchen and you cried some more.
    He teased me to make me smile. He said,
“If your cooking skills are going, there’s only one thing left for us to do.”
    We had one of our cryptic conversations
about sex. Anna, you were always a trooper. You snorted and laughed through
your tears when I said I hoped you didn’t forget how to do everything I liked.
    He asked how much longer his favorite
thing was going to last. The man could be funny when he gave it some effort.
    You wiped your wet face on the front of
my shirt and grinned and said, “Eh, maybe a year. Fifteen months, tops. Then
you’ll have to find someone else.” Sarcasm is my friend. She used to be my
wife.
    I used to be his wife.
    No. I’m done here. This hurts too much. I
don’t have the strength to wallow in Eddie’s thoughts. I can’t let him pull me
back in, the bastard. He’s sad and misses me now, but he was an unforgivable
ass the last months of my life.
    Just run away. That always worked for me
in life. Don’t look at Eddie crying. Let me out of his head. I couldn’t face
our problems while I was alive, and I still don’t want to because it hurts too
much. My life unraveled at the end, and I couldn’t find my way back to the good
times. I couldn’t find the source of the problem, so I blamed myself and hated
my best friend, wondering how we got stuck so far apart, taunted by memories of
how good we used to be.
    | | | |
    On a late summer morning just three months before I died, I awoke without a
care in my head because my life was quite sweet before it started to rot. It
was our anniversary, and Eddie’s forehead rested against the middle of my back
right between my shoulder blades. He snored like a bear, unaware that we were
touching and that in his sleep he’d crossed the imaginary line down the center
of our bed that marked territory. My pillows, soft and deep, lay beside his
firm, unyielding foam ones. The stiff sheet, which I always hated, was crumpled
at the foot of the bed under the comforter on my side. It wasn’t yet dawn. My
coffee pot would soon gurgle to life. I fought down my brain’s insistent to-do
list and tried to slide back into sleep. That’s when Eddie’s breath shifted
perceptibly, and then he lazily stifled a yawn.
    I scooted back into his lap, and his arm
came around me; his hand rested on my chest, his fingers brushed my throat.
Under the comforting weight of his arm, I synced my breathing to his and fell
back to sleep. An hour later the coffee pot did its morning spit-spit. The
sound woke me just before the molecules delighted my nose.
    Eddie’s sleepy voice asked, “Want a cup in
bed?” His head still rested against my back.
    “Yeah, thanks.” I rolled into the puddle
of his sleep spot and purred when he vacated the bed. I stretched and grinned
while I watched Eddie try to tiptoe as he limped on his sore runner’s ankles
into the kitchen. Smug. That’s how I felt at the start of that day. Twenty-two
years together. Two elevens. We were still together. Still strong.
    Eddie came back with steaming mugs and the
newspaper. “This is all I got you for our anniversary. Read quick. The boy will
be up soon.” That’s how we did anniversaries—we blew past them. Even
Valentine’s Day was ignored. On February fifteenth every year we went to the pharmacy
together and brought home the orphaned, half-priced chocolates.
    “I know. God, I miss Bethany.” Our
daughter had started college a week before, and our house was eerily still
without the tremors of her mood swings. I dug through the paper to find the
crossword. I could read later, but if our kindergartener woke too soon and
heard the newspaper crackle, he’d want to help, and he just didn’t understand
that the letters had to spell actual and very specific words. “Joey can get his
own cereal now, you know.”
    “Really? I bet he spills all over the
kitchen.” Eddie