The Box by Iris Rosewater

Lynne finished the last of the dishes alone in the kitchen. She hadn’t bothered to put on the yellow rubber gloves under the sink, and found herself regretting it as the hot water and soap burned into the cracks in her overworked hands. So happy to finally have a moment to herself, forcing no reverent smiles and accepting no more pitiful hugs, engaged in something mindless, she dove in without taking the precaution. It wasn’t working as well as she’d hoped, however. Thoughts were still creeping in. Since the dishes hadn’t done the trick, she started tidying the whole kitchen, scrubbing the crusty brown ring around the base of the faucet with an old toothbrush, sweeping, condensing into plastic containers the leftover array of casseroles and gelatin salads with bits of carrot and fruit suspended inside. The broken skin on her hands stung as she worked, asking her to stop with each forceful scrub and scrape, begging for a healing balm and some rest. She ignored it and kept on. She painstakingly picked and peeled off a grubby piece of ancient scotch tape leftover from someone’s artwork on the fridge… found her little boy’s boot, caked with mud, under some empty paper bags at the bottom of the pantry and threw it away in disgust, crushing it into the overfilled trash can.
　
　
Her hands hung at her sides, weighted down by trash bags filled with sympathy cards and used paper plates and dried up bouquets of flowers, as she walked into the mud room. Out of habit and without looking, she stuck her feet into the shoes nearest the back door. They slid on easily, loose on her feet as she shuffled into the crisp night air. Then, realizing whose shoes she wore, she stopped halfway down the driveway, dropping the bags on the frozen ground, and looked at her feet. Derrick’s favorite running shoes seemed to look up at her. Her bare feet shook them loose and she pranced inside on the balls of her feet. It was irrational, she knew, to be angry, and she was angry at herself for feeling it, but there it was, gnawing at her insides. “I’m alone, Derek. What am I supposed to do now?” She asked the empty living room. It was silent. Her children were staying at a friend’s house for the night. Why do people take away all your distractions and try to stuff you with food when someone dies? she wondered irritably, flinging off her coat. Lynne flopped onto the couch and grabbed the remote control, filling the room with the noise of tinny laughter and closed her eyes. It stopped abruptly. Her eyes opened to darkness. “Perfect…” she muttered to herself, as she got up to find a flashlight. She fiddled with some breakers for a few minutes, in vain, cursing Derek again for leaving her. This was supposed to be his job. Defeated, she rooted into the boxes in the fading light of her battery-operated torch and found a box with some candlesticks and brought it inside.
　
　
Her brother had been kind to light the fire in the woodstove before he left. Gratitude found its way into her heart as she stoked the embers and added a piece of wood to the flames. She lit a candle and set it on the kitchen table. The light revealed his handwriting on the cardboard, with their names. Somehow, in the dark, she had managed to find this of all boxes in the whole garage. She traced her finger along the blocky capitol letters and sat down, bracing herself. Carefully, Lynne sifted through the remnants of their courtship, filled with letters and photographs, matchbooks from restaurants, poems written on napkins and paper lunch sacks.
　
　
They met when she was 16 years old and Lynne couldn’t imagine herself with anyone else since. Derek was her soul’s twin. He went away to college for two years before they were married, which nearly killed her. Lynne pulled out dozens of pictures they’d taken on visits to each other, some taken by Derek with one arm around her and the other extended to snap the shutter on the disposable camera. They looked so young, smiling and bursting with happiness just to be in each other’s company - it had been so rare. The end of every letter held the same promise that it wouldn’t be much longer before there would be no more goodbyes. His devotion had filled her to brimming. She recognized the candles from a picnic he’d made the summer before graduation… when he’d asked her to marry him. Officially. Unofficially, he had asked her a thousand times. They decided on a name for their eventual first daughter before they’d been together their first year. He was her only. Only. Only.
　
　
The days after his death, Lynne pretended he was away again, just like college. She could handle that, she reasoned somehow, because she had done it before. She had gone whole months without seeing his face and feeling his arms around her. Beyond that, she did not dare try to imagine enduring. The world began to cave in when she tried to picture living without him much longer than that. To stave off the black hole of thoughts that threatened to devour, she stayed safely busy, her worn hands a blur. To stave off the pain, she had allowed anger to numb her senses, and it was rapidly wearing off. Toward the bottom of the box, the darkness began its tug at her insides. She stayed perfectly still, listening to the wood crack as the fire consumed it in the next room.
　
　
“Can you hear me, Derek?” she asked the darkness. The walls danced in the delicate glow of the candle. “You said you’d never leave me…” she whispered. Under the ragged edges of envelopes torn-open, was a book Derek had given her the day he left for college long ago. Inside it, she found a faded scrap of notebook paper, marking a poem.
　
　
The neglected wounds on her hands burned with the brine of her tears, and she thanked him for this last promise, clutching the book to her broken heart.
　
　
　
“now all the fingers of this tree(darling)have
hands,and all the hands have people;and
more each particular person is(my love)
alive than every world can understand

and now you are and I am now and we’re
a mystery which will never happen again,
a miracle which has never happened before---
and shining this our now must come to then

our then shall be some darkness during which
fingers are without hands;and I have no
you:and all trees are(any more than each
leafless)its silent in forevering snow

---but never fear(my own,my beautiful
my blossoming)for also then’s until”