Death As An Excuse

Content Type: Fiction, Shorts Subject Matter: romantic relationships

The day her Marcello entered the hospital, she began to die as well. There was paperwork to be corrected, and their names were moved to separate sheets. Deceased. Their medical charts were sorted apart, as were the mortgage payments, their phone bills, and the car insurance.

With each name that was erased, she felt the burden of singularity pile upon her thin shoulders. One page at a time, she became weighed down with a forest’s worth of individuality.

“But I am not alone,” she wanted to protest. “Marcello will always be with me. He swore it. We spoke it before a priest…”

The bureaucrats ignored her, and continued stamping and shuffling her papers.

All the family in the tri-state area came to the funeral. Such a shame. Will you be all right on your own?

“I am never alone,” objected Alejandra, in her wispy, breathy way. That day, the television company called to ask why the payment was late. She hadn’t the heart to explain that they were a one-income family now, and would likely have to cut back. Instead, she let her sister handle it and went to lie with the dog on the rug her great-grandmother had made. The house felt empty, even with so many mourning people drifting through it.

That night, she lay in their cramped double bed and tried to breathe in his rich scent of Man and shampoo, but already it was fading. Comfortless, she wept herself to sleep.

Her psychic sister, her Linda, stayed on to help. There were meals to be cooked, garbage to be taken out. Mundane things that could, by turns, console or destroy. Alejandra felt guilty watching her perform them all, even going so far as to dust the shelf of Portuguese knickknacks Alejandra had collected during her year abroad.

“This is unhealthy,” warned Linda. “You cannot mope inside forever.”

Alejandra ignored her. Inside was where Marcello remained.

After some days, “Go outside! You are so pale it frightens me.”

Alejandra decided that pale was the new tan.

“Could you at least take the time to groom yourself?” groused Linda.

Did cave-people shave? argued Alejandra. Where they fastidious about their appearance?

Within three weeks, Linda had had enough. “I will not play nursemaid to a baby. God helps those who help themselves. You would do well to remember that.” Though she had always been welcome in their home, she closed the door behind herself with a certain finality.

Alejandra wept. The dog hid beneath the bed.

More days passed. It rained. The dishwasher sat half-empty while the sink became a tower of dishes soiled by lukewarm leftovers. The bed stank of sweat and tears.

Then the fourteenth came, the day of Alejandra’s period since she was fourteen, and she knew that there could be no going back.

With the alarm clock, she rose, and for the first time since she had left the hospital, felt some irritation when the sheets pulled on the floor. The shower was brutal- high water pressure. The pelting shocked her into wakefulness. Narrowly, she avoided the puddles left on the tiled floor and looked herself in the mirror.

Beside her stood Marcello, his hair damp and ruffled, a razor in one hand and a towel about his modest waist.

Their eyes met in the glass, their weariness and grief reflected clearly.

“I miss you, Alejandra,” he whispered through a throat clogged with sorrow.

She wished she had tears left to cry, but none came for her. “I love you, Marcello.”

As though he could see her, knew her, he pressed his square fingers to lush lips, and then touched them to the mirror’s surface. She could see his fingerprints reflecting off the silver backing. Alejandra covered his hand with her own, now even more slight and delicate than in life. They remained, reaching across forbidden boundaries to the place where eyes seem to look directly at one another.

Reluctantly, Marcello pulled away, and resumed shaving. She watched from the wall, hanging like the towels she would never use again, and drifted after him when he returned to the closet to get dressed. With a last, forlorn look, Marcello gave the dog its breakfast, and left for work.

It wasn’t until midmorning that Alejandra, in her heartbreak, realized she had not made Marcello lunch, breakfast, or even a morning coffee.

Curling up once more with the dog on her grandmother’s rug, she wished to disappear. Death was no excuse.