The 86' Oldsmobile pulled into the drive through the four foot snow drift and parked in front of the house. An icing of white covered the yard and the trees and the bushes and the lawn mower that was left running idle until it had run out of gas. She had not moved it since that day. She just found comfort in knowing that he had been the last person to touch it and that he was doing his husbandly duty when it all happened.
She walked inside through the garage door and told Jeremy to go to his room and change out of his suit and coat and to come and watch TV with mommy. As he walked down the dimly lit hall to his room she fell into the kitchen chair that he would always sit in at meals. She slowly removed her black gloves and her black veil that she had worn because it looked classic and her mother before her had always told her that classic was in style no matter what the occasion. But in this instance she wondered if that even mattered now and she was pretty sure that it didn't.
All the lights in the house were off and the blinds were open and the gray winter light poured in like a thick soup. The house was luke warm and she could barely feel the air on her skin but she knew it was there because she felt the inkling to take a razor blade and hack into her wrists so that she didn't have to live the coming portion of her life. She sat there wondering how she would ever learn to fix the disposal or how she would teach Jeremy to throw a curve ball or how in the world she would be able to pay off the mortgage.
Jeremy was watching the TV with lights twinkling and images cycling and she wondered how in the world she could do it alone. Then she looked over to the end of the table and saw his ball cap. She hated it. It smelled bad and the red had faded to a dirty yellow sweaty gray and was torn near one of the seems on the left side. But he loved it because it was the first gift that she had ever gotten him. They had gone to a baseball game their junior year of college and he was working while going to school and was dirt poor and really wanted a ball cap so she bought him one. He loved it because he loved baseball and he loved it even more because she had bought him something that represented something that he loved very much. And she loved this. She loved that he found comfort and so great a nostalgia in something so simple.
She walked over to the other end of the table and picked up the hat and smelled it and looked it over. It still stunk but she didn't care because it was his stink and she knew that in two or three months the smell would be gone and then she would have to remember the smell and it scared her because she knew that she would never be able to get that cap to smell the same way ever again.
So that night she put Jeremy to bed and tucked him in and sang him a song and watched over him as he fell into dreams. Then she walked slowly into their bedroom with eyes watered by tears and lips quivering and shed her clothing and laid down naked under her sheets with his ball cap on his pillow. Her fingers ran over the indention of the mattress where his body should have been but was there no more. And as the moonlight poured in like verses of angel speak her eyes grew heavy and her muscles fell limp and her breath deepened and shortened and her mind shut off and sleep came.
She would figure out how to pay the mortgage tomorrow or the next day but for now she had to go meet someone. Someone who she could only meet in her dreams.
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