Georgette kills me with her sense of humor.
She walks out the door, saying she’s going to get milk and eggs, but the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end when she adds, “I don’t know when I’ll be back.” Sometimes it can be years.
But I am comforted by how her presence lingers in every room during her absences.
***
Sometimes I sleep on the floor in her sewing room. In the summer I sleep in a sleeping bag out in her potting shed.
Her garden dies. Cobwebs form on her indoor plants. Dust collects on her books.
I never write more–or more vividly–than when she is gone, and I can’t help feeling that she leaves me now and then for my own good.
Her friends continue to visit, but they are too polite to talk about her. No one calls from the place where she works. I fancy that’s because her presence lingers at work too. Perhaps she even gets her work done in absentia.
***
We’ve been together since childhood, but in fact we’ve been apart far more than we’ve been together. We share a continuity of being that persists across these pervasive discontinuities in time. Don’t call it love. It has nothing to do with love. It’s just that we were both always good at playing connect the dots.
***
And then one night, three years later, she walks back through the door.
I laugh.
She is almost offended. She might even walk out again.
“What’s so funny,” she says.
“You remembered the milk and eggs.”
All she has with her is her purse, a gallon of milk, and a carton of eggs.
She takes these to the kitchen and starts making dinner.
“Would you like an omelette?” she asks.
“I’ve already eaten.”
I go put fresh sheets on the bed, because soon I might sleep in my own room again.
<< Story #8 | Index of Stories| Story #10 >>
Originally published April 5, 2020
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