The Burdon of a Smile

“I wouldn’t want you to go. I should think that you would want me to stay.” His brow buckled and looked like it might melt down his face.

“I don’t want you here if you don’t want to be here. I can’t do this right now.” She turned away from him at the door and walked slowly back into the kitchen. She stopped at the sink and swung her head up to look at the dogwood they had planted in the back yard when they first bought the house. It had gotten tall and the white flowers where raining from the branches in the breeze.

She thought about going after him when she heard the door open and close, but decided against it and to stay at the sink with the dogwood in view. Hearing the car start and back out she pictured the routine: he would go, drive for hours until he felt far enough away, and they he might come back in a week or so. It had happened before, in the beginning when they had had hard fights. But not lately. Not since she had gotten sick and she needed him there—just to be there and smile at her when couldn’t for herself. He was so strong then. He face was a lion and he represented everything she had wanted to smile about despite the gentle crush of it all.

Her family, her hopes, her wasted life. Everything had hit her all at once and she had spent what seemed like a lifetime in bed. In reality it was only two months. But he never left, he never gave up on her, and he made her believe that there was something bright there. He kept her from the abyss, tethered to his towering courage in her. But where that was tethered for him, she had no idea.

But he had just gone. He had just walked out of their little house and left. She wondered where the strength in him had gone. What was there now that she had found a smile to make him leave? She had started again, thanks to him. She was singing again around the house and was beginning to make her way out more. Her friends looked forward to her coming over. She was reinvigorated now; she had found a new purpose and he had helped to rebuild her. But why had he gone?

She moved from the sink to the small oak dining table in the small half of the oversized living room. Sitting down she couldn’t believe that he had gone because she was better. That was too simple and didn’t make sense for him. Was there another woman? No, not for him. There couldn’t be. She could see him with another woman as much as she could picture herself with another man as long as she knew that he loved her. And that they were married. But what had hurt him? What had set him off and then sent him off? Was it really because she was well? She couldn’t accept that not absolutely depending on him for happiness had been healthy, for either of them, but should that make him want to leave? And if so, why not when she was sick? Why now when she was just getting better, and almost normal?

She didn’t know why being free of the burden of her would have hurt the strong, lion-faced man that she honestly did love. So she sat, and put her head on top of her folded arms, and she cried thinking she had ruined her marriage with her recovery and that he might not come back this time, and that she wouldn’t need him and could smile without him here at all.