Purple Bowls

As usual, when he came to visit the children as he did every week, he preferred to drink coffee with her in the kitchen, rather than spend time with them in their room.

He sat in his usual place. She asked herself whether that happened automatically, and whether that meant that on a non-existential plane – on an atmospheric level, so to speak – he still lived with her in this house, and whether for some reason he chose this seat to say to her, “I’m still here, I still have rights here,” perhaps so that she wouldn’t think she could demand anything, for example, dental treatments for the children, because in some way, he was still her husband, living here with her, and she still had to be considerate of him.

She didn’t ask “Milk and sugar?” She remembered, of course. She now realized, seeing through his eyes, that some of the cups were cracked, but one survived like an archeological remain, and she chose this one for him, so he sat, warming his hands on the mug even though it was midsummer, and she noticed his fingers, the way she had noticed them before, because the image floated up unchanged in her brain, which seemed to preserve memories together with word pictures. The images were like the blind newborn of some animal, something between mammals and lizards.

In the first months, or maybe the first year or even two years, she’d cry when she saw him. Not out of sorrow but out of pain. If you think about it, even though they...