The Remains Of Us

(Content Warning: Past death of a baby and strong language)

She opens the fridge, stares at the empty space on the shelf, closes it.

She opens it again.

It’s still missing.

She slams the fridge close, and stalks out of the kitchen towards the living room, shoving herself behind the couch where her boyfriend is watching TV with a half-asleep gaze. “Where the fuck is it.”

“What.” He says it in the way he knows what she means, but wants to hear her say it, his eyes keeping track of the various characters vying to beat out a video game boss.

“You know what,” she says, her voice shaking, one hand gripping the couch as she breathes in shakily. “Where is it.”

“I threw it away.”

Her hand strikes out, smacking his shoulder even though it hardly moves him. “No you didn’t! Tell me you didn’t!”

“I did,” he says, his face never turning from the TV. “It was rotting. Rotting food doesn’t stay.”

“That was mine, you-you!” she shrieks, her hand slapping his shoulder again, her shoulders heaving in ragged breaths as a fist hits the couch. “That was the last one before-before he-! Go and get it!”

“I’m not getting it, Sal,” he mumbles, sinking in to the couch as if he hadn’t sat there for hours on end already, her anger blistering against his neck and shoulder. “I’m not-it needs to stay gone. It needs to end.”

“You don’t care!” she suddenly spits, and he can feel the bombs shaped like teardrops dripping against the couch and his hair where she’s leaning over him. “You never cared! You throw away his things, you throw away the meal I k-kept for him! I hate you! I hate you so, so much, I wish you-!”

And then, like it had been for the past few weeks, she deflates with a warbling cry, her body slinking over the back of the couch as if they were college students again and she were drunk and laughing and trying to make out with him like ‘that one Marvel superhero’, and his hand catches hers as her body rocks with sobs. “I don’t mean it…I don’t, I’m sorry, I’m s-s-sooorrrry.”

“I know,” he says, quietly, gently tugging her melted form further over the couch until she’s laying in a curled heap like the true form her body wishes to take, his free hand carding through her beautiful, unwashed hair. “I know.” He pauses. “But it was rotting.”

“But it was all I had left,” she sniffles out, smearing spit and tears across his side and pant leg, her body quaking as if it would come apart at the seams.

He says nothing.

She quietly cries, harder, and harder, coughing through phlegm as his hand continues to gently tug out unwashed knots and thumbs across an ear.

The video takes a pause, even though it had been on mute this whole time, and for one moment, she takes a long, shuddering breath. “…you didn’t really, did you.”

He stares at the TV. “…it’s on the table near the door.”

“Why did you…”

“I tried,” he says simply, ignoring the tear sliding down his own cheek, ignoring how it darkens patches of her gorgeous hair, ignoring the storm of tears in the forecast. “I just…it’s gross, and disgusting, and I’m sure there’s spores in that damn thing and we’ll die of botulism and the plague if you open it.”

She laughs, but it’s fragile and full of wetness and sparks of old hope and things they never talked about. “It is. It’s so gross,” she sniffs again, her knees tucked up into her chest, heaving sharply as she took in a deep breath. “It’s so gross and I hate it so much but I don’t think I can throw it away.”

Her boyfriend doesn’t answer, just keeps stroking over her hair over and over and over.

The silence is normal.

The silence is an old friend they didn’t want.

The silence is overbearing.

“What if we buried it?” he says, finally, blinking aching eyes as her hand slots against his knee for a moment, cracked nails stroking against the jean fabric.

“Just like him?”

“Yeah. But it’s me, and you, and a shovel, maybe.”

“Maybe?” she laughs again, but it’s less breakable this time. “You’ve got too much hope in my strength to break through some dirt, God.”

“Eh…but yeah. We’ll…we’ll get one of his favorite blankets, we’ll tuck it around it, and bury it.”

She’s pretty sure there’s some fancy psychological wording behind whatever it is they’re going through, but she can’t bring herself to go stomping through more grief lessons and more google searches, and seeing purple links staring back at her.

Her body screams not to, but she pushes herself up, snagging him by his shirt and kissing him softly, hiccuping as they part. “Let’s do it.”

“Wait, now? It’s like…two a.m.”

“Well, you should’ve been asleep,” she sniffles, dragging herself off the couch, something in her chest catching when her eyes find the fridge again, but she storms past it with all the annoyance she usually has at ‘feeling sad’ or ‘sorry’ for herself.

They get a shovel, and the tupperware of food, and the blanket that was hand knit by a lovely older woman in a Target parking lot full of stars and Snoopy looking up from his doghouse, and they go outside.

“It’s been a while,” she says, breaking the silence. Wind picks up and rustles trees, and a passing car in the parking lot flashes lights through the square of land in the middle of the towering apartments. It’s probably not a good idea, and it’s probably illegal, but all she can think of is his hand in hers, the food in her hands like an offering, and the cool air brushing over exposed arms and tickling necks.

“Yeah,” he says, a tiny shovel held in his hand. “Think they’ll fine us?”

“I hope they do.”

They dig a small hole near the fountain, breaking into giggles at the idea of them-them!-breaking the rules, him snatching up a handful of water and throwing it at her as she shrieks and throws shredded grass back at him, sometimes tears slipping down reddened cheeks that mix into the soft dew of the very early morning.

The box is tucked into the blanket.

The box is lowered into the hole.

They sit together, side by side, thigh touching thigh, as they stare at the disturbed dirt.

“I don’t feel any better,” she admits.

His hand squeezes hers.

Neither does he.

“We should get married,” he says instead, and she pinches his wrist with a frown, even though all he does is grunt at the sharp pain.

“I’m not marrying you while I’m crying at two in the morning.”

“So you have conditions, got it.”

She thumps his leg, but she’s smiling, laughing, crying, and he leans in, the lines of his face softening for the first time in…weeks? Maybe? “I mean it. I think.”

“You think?!” she garbles out while laughing harder, leaning away despite how her mouth widens, how her eyes water. “What the hell-that’s not romantic at all!”

“Nah. But, if I don’t get to see you in fuzzy socks in the morning and your hair all messed up every morning, I dunno. Might think life’s boring or something.”

She’s laughing so hard that she thinks they might wake someone up, and he’s just staring at her, wide-eyed, shoulders shaking as if he’s about to laugh himself.

“No,” she finally says, her hand tangling with his even as she smiels, laying back in the grass and staring up at the stars. “Nah. Not right now. How about…how about you ask me, in one of those movie ways?”

“Which way?” he asks, laying next to her, a small trail of ants climbing up his shoe, leaves fluttering to fly over her hair, some distant satellite making its way through the sky. “Ring in the champagne? You hate alcohol. …in front of a movie theater? That might be fun, unless it’s a loud one.”

“I want you,” she says, rolling over closer to him, slotting her face into his neck where it usually resided, where they’d often watch movies together and laugh and laugh and laugh like they hadn’t in a very, very long time, “to figure it out. I want it to be so romantic it makes my sister jealous. I want you to find a very old ring, and get down on one knee, and tell me you love me.”

“I can do that,” he says.

He squeezes her hand.

She wants to say so much.

Why get married now? Why not earlier? Why not then? Why, why, why, why???

Why her, when she is full of broken glass and shifting sand and something knotted in her belly that has yet to unwind?

The answer doesn’t come, not now, if ever.

But for a night, they are not full of grief and despair and aching and longing.

For a night, they are relaxing on the cool, cool grass, the wind grazing cheeks and bare arms, a mound of dirt with a shovel next to it hiding a secret within the confines of a blanket that had held hopes and dreams.

For a night, it’s just them, without their silent guest.

Something in her belly softens, and her breath catches, and her heart eases.

It won’t be easy.

Life never is.

But, maybe…maybe if she has him…

If they had each other…

Maybe they can think back on this little period of their life not with tears in their eyes and a rip in their hearts, but with a soft, comforting inhale of breath and an exchange of glances, and a squeezing of hands.

…and maybe, one day, they can laugh about burying a box of rotting food, and not have it hurt so much.