On Tuesday morning, Florence woke while Bill did not. His mouth was
open, surprised at the whiteness of the ceiling.  She rose in the dim
light without knowing, slipped on her house shoes and robe, made coffee
and toast, washed her face in the stained kitchen sink. The stillness
of the house finally drew her back to the bedroom past the amplified
ticking of the living room clock. She wobbled to the telephone, slender
fingers hovering above the numbers. She could see that Bill’s bony
white feet weren’t quite covered by the bedspread. She put the receiver
back in its cradle not knowing what to do. The air of the house felt
close, so Florence opened the windows and let the spring air stir the
curtains.

She could not look directly at her husband’s face, knew only
that his eyes were closed, but that his mouth hung oddly ajar. His
glasses were folded neatly beneath the table lamp. A bent corner marked
his page in a Louis L’amour collection of stories.  So this is what it
is to be a widow, she thought.  Already the quiet unsettled her.
Already she dreaded the empty bed.  The deep breath she’d taken in felt
trapped, searched for a way to escape. She put one hand on a cold shin
and exhaled slowly, “You can’t leave me,” she said to the quiet room.
Her limbs felt twice their normal weight.  She crawled into bed
beside her husband’s body and turned toward the wall to sleep.  When
she woke Bill sat in a white wooden chair he’d dragged in from the
kitchen. His hair was wild and out of place; his mouth still fixed and
open. He perched there in the half-light staring at her as if she’d
done something he couldn’t quite believe.  She swung her feet to the
floor and touched her cheek with the back of her hand. Her face burned
against her fingers.

“But you’re dead,” she said to her dead husband.  She got
nothing from him. He only twisted a bit in his seat. He seemed paler,
thinner than the night before.  She thought the room had begun to take
on an odor. She couldn’t be sure.  She rose and slipped past her dead
husband and returned again to the telephone. Surely she should call the
authorities and let them know her Bill was dead. She sensed how he
turned in his chair, how he waited, helpless, for her to act. Instead,
she opened more windows in the living room and also the small one above
the kitchen sink. A silk flower fluttered in a small blue vase.

“I’ll make you a soft-boiled egg, “she said.  He limped into
the kitchen, opened the glass face of the wall clock and stopped the
pendulum mid-arc with a crooked finger, then settled into his rickety
chair at the head of the table. He peered down at the tops of his bony
feet, the blue gathering between the bones. He gazed at his pale white
hands, then rose and unlatched the screen door for their long-missing
cat. The mulberries were plump and ripe beyond the fence. In a high
branch a tent of caterpillars hung like smoke.

“You’ll never leave me,” she said. The boiled egg shivered in
its pot.  Bill scraped his chair across the linoleum floor until he
found a shady spot where his feet would be out of the sun. She spun the
wedding ring on her swollen finger.  The high soft notes of a song
filtered across the dewy yards, and from somewhere, too, an infant’s
insistent cry.  The blue flame beneath the boiling water popped and
ticked and she felt the sag and lean of the room behind her as it bent
out of shape.  She felt her skin let go of the air. She felt her bones
turn into light.