Some mornings she went downstairs only to find him gone; the paper read and folded awry, the coffee mug with its dark stains sitting forlornly in the sink, the chair a little off-kilter from where she had pushed it the night before. She would, without making any noise, wash the cup, push the chair back, and refold the paper. It didn’t bother her much. Men were creatures to be cleaned up after; that was all.
Not knowing what else to do, she would wander round the house in her old pink flannel bathrobe by herself for the duration of the hour of the sunrise. The house did not need to be cleaned; it was always immaculate. They had no children, and she had nothing else to do. Laundry and dishes were the only chores she ever had; the only evidence that anyone in the house even existed.
Sometimes she would wander upstairs and open the window of the little unused blue room and lean out and gaze at the tidy front yard and then to the street where all the children of their neighbors were at play. She would watch the games, the little dramas being played out before her eyes, and sigh, a little sadly, a little regretfully, a little angrily. Then she would quietly close the window and leave the sad, unused blue room to itself and its sorrow.
In the afternoons she often went back to the sad, unused little blue room to share the sorrow; for it was her sorrow too. Some years before – enough to make the memory of it vague, but not enough to make it painless – all her hopes and dreams had converged and taken shape there in the blue room. There she had heard the laughter of children through the open window and daydreamed that it would one day grace that very room.
But in the evenings, before he came home, she always slipped out of the sad little blue room and locked its sorrow away. When he came in the door she never met his eyes, fearing they would betray her secret, but he was too afraid himself to meet hers.
And the next morning it would be the same. The paper read and folded awry, the coffee mug with its dark stains sitting forlornly in the sink, the chair a little off-kilter from where she had pushed it the night before. And she would tidy up, not making a sound, never whimpering, never crying, only working meticulously, alone.