My husband and I have not spoken for many years.
We’re not estranged or anything. We live together—happily I might add—but at a certain point silence just became easier than talking.
I could never have imagined this silence when we were first together. Back then it seemed like we could talk for a millennium and never run out of things to say. We used to drive way out past the outskirts of our little college town, talking, talking. I would have listened to him describe every blade of grass. That town was the first place I ever lived where you had to use the high beams at night. One night when I was behind the wheel, Bill—my husband, Bill—laughed as he explained to me that you have to turn lights on and off for other cars. Maybe that’s why talking felt so much easier when we were young. We had so much to learn, so much to teach each other. So much to argue about. So much to resolve.
Yesterday, while I was brushing out my hair in the bathroom, I heard a crash come from the kitchen. When I went downstairs, Bill was kneeling over a broken white porcelain serving tray. I couldn’t recall ever using that tray, even though I knew we had had it forever. Why did he have the serving tray out? Where had we stored it, where had it even come from?
I looked down at Bill looking up at me. I swept my hands around in front of me. Everything all right?
Bill’s shoulders moved just barely up and down. His upward-looking eyes seemed pleading. I dropped it. I don’t know how it happened.
I knelt down across from him and picked up a piece of porcelain. The edge was sharp. My finger bled.
I went to the sink to wash out the cut while Bill swept up the mess and threw it in the trash. The water rushed. The broken pieces went chunk chunk chunk. My finger stung under the cool water. I racked my brain: Who had given us that serving tray? Who would be fool enough to give us a thing like that? And why had we kept it, all these many years—through moves across the country, births and deaths—just to break it now, untouched, pristine, and never used?
That night with a Band-Aid on my finger I went down and searched the kitchen like a jewel thief, looking for things to throw away.
Susan Holcomb holds an MFA in writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and studied for a PhD in physics at Cornell. Her writing has been published in the Southern Indiana Review, The Boston Globe, Epiphany, and elsewhere. Her chapbook WOLFBABY, a collection of flash fiction, won the 2023 Cupboard Pamphlet chapbook contest and will be published this year.
Lost Balloon 