They were married eight years and five days, which was why it was a surprise to him when she handed him the papers and their house-key. He'd heard of the seven year itch, but they had crossed over that mark with the ease of a skipping stone, bouncy, but sure. Now he sat in his blue lazy-boy, a stack of papers to his left, and her key clutched in his right hand. She was leaving him. She'd left him.
She didn't take much from the house, the tea-towels still hung from the wooden rack hanging by two loose screws. He'd meant to fix that for a while, maybe tonight he'd do it. Her afghan, the one she'd taken from the nursing home when her mother passed, was folded neatly with the other blankets in the corner basket. The screen door slammed against the door jam and he jumped. Noises in this house were louder than in the house where she had made their home.
They married late in life, beyond children. But that's okay, she said. We'll have a quiet home filled with the things we love most, and most of all one another.
Most of all one another.
One and another. Two. Together.
He would leave for work every morning, a mechanic for 40 years, and come home every night to her. They danced to Sinatra and Elvis, Clooney and Fitzgerald. Sometimes to Simon and Garfunkel. They would eat turkey sandwiches and black-eyed peas together. Then they would sleep, separate beds, because 30 year old habits are hard to break. For those five hours a day he was never lonely and it was never quiet.
The screen slammed again, the lock broken for two summers at least. Maybe? He couldn't remember. There were so many things he couldn't remember hearing, now in the silence sounding so loud.
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