I want to say I thought it through. Truth is, I just got tired of hearing the sewing machine hum at six in the morning before my coffee even finished dripping.
My name's Hank Dolan. Forty-one years married to Roz, same house on Maplecrest Avenue in Dayton, Ohio, same creaky screen door, same neighbor's beagle barking at the mail truck every day at noon like it's the first time he's ever seen one. That Saturday Roz was packing a tote bag to go stay with our daughter Carol over in Columbus for a few days — Carol had a new baby and wanted help. Roz was folding dish towels around a pan of her peach cobbler, the one she always sends, and I stood in the kitchen doorway and said the thing I shouldn't have said out loud.
"Go on, then. Might do me some good, a little break from you."
I meant it as a joke. Forty-one years, you say things. Roz just tapped two fingers against her temple, like she was checking if I'd finally cracked, grabbed the cobbler, and walked out to catch the 2:15 bus downtown. Thirty-eight dollars round trip, I remember because she asked me for the cash and I handed it over without looking up from the TV.
I closed the gate behind her. Stood there in the yard a second, rolled my shoulders back, and thought: finally. Peace. No sewing machine, no soap operas at two o'clock, no fighting over the thermostat. I could watch the Reds game and the six o'clock news without anybody telling me Walter Cronkite would've done it better.
First thing I did was put the cat outside. Biscuit — her cat, really, spoiled rotten, sleeps on the good couch cushion — I shooed him onto the porch. Then I shoved her knitting basket behind the recliner, where it wouldn't be staring at me, and sat down with the remote.
Flipped through eleven channels. Nothing on. Turned the TV off. Walked through the house once, and it was so empty the floorboards sounded different under my own feet.
Around noon I heated up a can of chicken noodle, burned my fingers pulling the pan off the stove, sat down at the table, and hollered out of pure habit: "Roz, hand me the bread, would you?"
Nothing came back. Not even the usual "get it yourself, you're not hurt." Without her running commentary, even the news felt flat — who was I supposed to argue with about the mayor's race now? I got the deck of cards out of the junk drawer, thought about how she beats me at gin rummy four nights out of five and laughs like a kid every time she lays down a winning hand. That night, the house was so still I couldn't sleep — no snoring from her side, no clatter of pots at six a.m. Funny thing to miss, pots banging.
By Sunday afternoon I was edgy, short with myself, and the kitchen looked like something you'd find at the bottom of a cold bowl of dishwater — gray and nothing good in it. I gave up around five. Called Carol's number, heard it ring four times, left a message when nobody picked up the first time, then tried again. Carol answered laughing before I even said hello, like she knew exactly why I was calling.
"Put your mother on, would you," I said, and swallowed something that tasted a lot like pride going down.
Roz got on the line. I didn't say much. Just, "It's not good, being alone in this house." She didn't gloat, didn't make me say more than that.
She was back on the 7:40 bus. I heard the gate before I heard her key.
First thing she did was march into the kitchen and light into me about the dishes stacked in the sink. Second thing, she bent down and scooped Biscuit off the porch step and held him against her shoulder, scratching behind his ears like he'd been the one wronged. Third, she dragged that knitting basket out from behind the recliner and set it right back where it belongs, by her chair.
That evening we played cards at the kitchen table, same as always — tea going cold between hands, her laughing when I misdeal. I lost three games running. Grumbled something about how there's no peace with her around, maybe she ought to take another little trip sometime soon.
She didn't say anything back. Just reached over, took the deck out of my hands to shuffle it herself, the way she always does when she thinks I've been dealing crooked.
Before bed I did one thing, though — went to the refrigerator, tore a sheet off the grocery pad, and wrote it out in marker: HOUSE RULE NUMBER ONE. ROZ RUNS THIS KITCHEN. FOREVER. Stuck it under the magnet shaped like Ohio that Carol sent us years back.
Roz found it in the morning, read it over her coffee, and didn't say a word about it. Just left it right where I'd put it. It's still there now, a little faded, next to the grocery list and a church bulletin from three weeks ago nobody's bothered to throw out.
