Photo by Hans Eiskonen on Unsplash
Who’d leave someone during a plague? Rose knew it was cruel. They’d agreed to take care of each other through sickness and health, but mostly she’d taken care of him. In her fever’s hallucinations, it was Jay, not Ben, she’d dreamed about--Jay, who had left her because he didn’t want to get married, he said, but had married someone else. When she woke from her last fever dream, she was sick of Ben: she had to make all decisions because he didn’t have the courage to tell her what he wanted; he asked her to bring him Tylenol, tea, soup, but never thought to even hand her a tissue when she sneezed. She decided she’d settled for Ben because she couldn’t have Jay.
She lay in bed, sweating and alone, stomach cramping, throat swollen, while Ben lay tossing in his own nightmares. In her dreams, it was Jay who brought her water, though she woke up thirsty; Jay who brought her chicken soup, though she vomited anything she ate; Jay who placed a pill on her tongue, though she woke up, calm, sure of what she didn’t want.
She didn’t want to spend the rest of quarantine with Ben though she didn’t have much choice, she thought. She cooked, cleaned, took care of him. He slept or told intimate details of their pain, their worst moments, their recovery, on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok. She hated him for it. She wanted to tell her own story, separate from his, but he gave both away as if she hadn’t had her own fever dreams, her own vomit, her own panic.
Some days Ben was so tired he could barely lift his head to look at her. He felt her watching him. He wanted to ask why she was quiet and sullen, why she stopped seeing him when he sat in front of her at the table. He couldn't face the fury in her eyes. He thought she blamed him for the virus, though she could have been the one who brought it home. He thought he’d been careful when he’d gone to the office on those few days a week he couldn't work from home, but he couldn't be sure. He didn't know how to apologize for such a thing.
She asked, “What did you dream about while you were sick?” He looked at her, confused. “You know, nightmares about dying,” he said. “I don’t remember.” He did, though. He didn’t want to say out loud how she tried to push him out of bed with her feet and hands while she lay there, feverish, crying and calling the name of some other man. He was sure that was just a dream. He didn't know anyone named Jay. He refused to believe she'd ever cheated on him. They'd never talked about who they'd dated before they'd met, though he couldn’t remember why they hadn’t. He had nightmares of her making soup for another man; in one dream, she took Ben to the emergency room and left him on the floor, gasping for breath.
When they were no longer quarantined, when they had both tested negative again, she said, “I’m moving out.” He just looked at her, confused. She assumed he didn’t have the courage, even then, to ask her to stay, to ask what she wanted.
He didn’t understand, at first, that she meant permanently. She passed him the bowl of vegetable curry she’d made for dinner, then stood up, washed her dishes, and walked to their bedroom where she’d packed a suitcase and several boxes of clothes, a toothbrush, her hairbrush, her jewelry and make-up. She didn’t want anything they’d bought together. It felt wrong to take things from him, too. But then she thought of the costs of things, how little money she made. “I’ll be back later for the rest of my stuff,” she said.
He wanted this to be just another dream. He thought for a moment, hopefully, maybe they were still sick and lying in bed, feverish. "Who's Jay?" he asked. He stared at her as she stood by the door. His mouth was dry, his teeth clenched. And then he was angry. He was tired of constantly working to make her happy, not knowing how to do that, of being afraid to ask what she wanted.
"No one," she said. "It doesn't matter."
He didn't object when she came back later that week with a borrowed truck and took the TV, flatware, coffee pot. A friend he’d never met helped her move. He didn't know what to say. When she was gone, he stared at the empty spaces where there’d been a lamp, a throw rug she'd bought on a trip, shelves of books. He felt empty, but lighter. He didn’t have to worry about disappointing Rose again. He missed her, but not her judgements, her anger. He worked longer hours and went into the office more often. He didn’t have to worry about bringing the virus back to her anymore, so he relaxed and worked more, worried less.
Some days Rose woke up in her new bed disoriented, panicking. Other days, she lay there, stretching her legs wide and not worrying about disturbing someone else. She could stay up reading, do whatever she wanted, whenever. She felt lighter, stronger, though some days she felt empty, sad, alone. Those days came less often than when she'd been with Ben. She missed him sometimes, the way she imagined she would miss an arm if she had to chew it off to escape a trap. She knew the pandemic would end, eventually. She would be vaccinated; she would be free, she thought, though she couldn’t really define what she meant by that.
The second wave of the virus came and went. Ben caught it again and died before signing the divorce papers or changing his will. He’d refused to sign. He’d called her at least once a week the first month, begging her to give him another chance. “I’ll change,” he said. “Just tell me how you want me to change. I don’t understand what you want.”
“That’s the point,” she said.
He didn’t understand that, either. He blamed it on the virus. He was sure she’d get over it and recover. He was sure she’d return to the woman he’d known before.
She hadn’t been there to care for him. She didn’t know if it would have made a difference. He’d gone to the hospital. She assumed not being there had saved her from getting it again. It was, his sister told her, one of the new variants. His sister was angry that Rose had inherited everything despite how she’d left him. “You selfish bitch,” she had said. “You abandoned him. He loved you. You don’t deserve anything from him.” What could Rose say? She knew she didn’t deserve it, but she was grateful for the house. Her apartment had been too expensive and too small. She needed to find something else, cheaper, even smaller, probably. Few businesses had the money to hire her to edit anything anymore. Now she had a home again.
She moved back into Ben’s house. She cleaned everything she could with bleach. She told herself she was cleaning any traces of the virus, but mostly she wanted to scrub away any last crumbs of Ben, any last scent of him that might seep into her dreams. She tried to make it her own house. Now, her name was on the title.
But he was there, anyway, waiting. At first, he was just a movement of the curtains in moonlight, then, a shadow moving in a corner of the bedroom. Finally, she saw the shape of his body stretched in the doorway. Then he she saw him whole, like a reflection in the window. “I missed you,” she thought he said. She didn’t know what to say back. She didn’t really miss him, she thought. She felt sorry for him. She felt guilty. She wished he had been what she wanted him to be.
She watched him wander the kitchen, telling her he had just wanted a quiet life, his job, her. Sometimes she told him about dreams she gave up, what she never said while he was alive; I wanted so much more. But she couldn’t define quite what that so much more was. Sometimes she talked about the book she was reading, or a new recipe she was trying out.
“You weren’t here,” he said. She tried to say, “I’m sorry,” but he couldn’t hear her. She said it out loud, three times. But it was the only thing he couldn’t hear her say. She started saying it every night before sleeping. It became a ritual to chase away the bad dreams haunting her.
His ghost drifted through the house and sat with her at night on her bed until she slept. He ignored her apologies. He wanted to be free, he kept saying. One day she thought she understood what he meant, as he stared at her by an open window. "Go," she said. “Please go. It’s all over. Everything, for you. Move on. There must be something else out there. I really am sorry.” She meant it, this time. He nodded, looking at her, sadly.
"You should go, too," he said, and then faded away.
"Where would I go?" she whispered, lighter, but emptier. Sometimes she said her own name out loud into the empty rooms. Sometimes it was his name she whispered as she lay in the dark, unable to sleep. Sometimes she dreamed he was back, lying beside her. When she woke up, the house was still empty. The house was always empty now.
Pat Hanahoe-Dosch’s stories have been published in The Peacock Journal, In Posse Review, Sisyphus, Manzano Mountain Review, and the Schuylkill Valley Journal, among others. Her poems have been published in The Paterson Literary Review, Rattle, The Atticus Review, Panoplyzine, Confrontation, Rust + Moth, American Literary Review, Apple Valley Review, The Red River Review, San Pedro River Review, Apt, among many others. Her books of poems, The Wrack Line, and Fleeing Back, can be found on Amazon.com or the FutureCycle Press website. Check out her website at https://pahanaho.wixsite.com/pathanahoedosch and Twitter @PHanahoeDosch.