Terminal

A Flash Fiction by Edith-Nicole Cameron

Image by R_Tee

It’s the last Sunday of their last weekend together at the Lake Nisswa cabin and Christopher has just realized he hates endings. He sits on a barstool in the kitchen, sipping his coffee. Molly’s untouched mug rests on the counter. “Your joe’s getting cold,” he hollers toward the basement, where he hears Molly doing made-up chores. The view outside the kitchen window briefly steals his gaze: twin tangerine suns, one ablaze low on the horizon, the other an undulating distortion waking up the lake.

Molly climbs up the stairs. “I used the last of the bleach,” she says. “You might want to add that to your list.” Before Christopher can respond that he doesn’t have a list, before he can properly ponder why Molly would suggest he might, because as far as he can recall he’s never had a list, Molly rounds the corner toward the bedroom, her face concealed by the pile of clean white sheets in her arms. He shared those sheets with Molly last night. Hundreds of nights. Thousands? Christopher carries both mugs to the microwave and presses the 30-second button twice. As the seconds tick, he twists the thinning gold band on his left hand, relieving its pinch on his finger.

“I emptied the bathroom trash,” Molly says. She’s in the hallway now, carrying a suitcase in her left hand and briefcase in her right. Yesterday she declined Christopher’s invitation for a last-hurrah canoe ride, saying she had to grade the briefcase’s contents: a hundred or so essays by her prep-school tenth graders. “Awkward adolescent attempts to grapple with the prickly ethics of free speech” – her description. Later that night, between those warm white sheets, as Christopher’s fingers traced infinities on her softening stomach, Molly laughed at her favorites: one essay presumed a fundamental right to “not be offended”; another subversively ascribing she/her pronouns to Kant. “She’ll go Ivy League, that one,” Molly had beamed. Christopher – the whole Kantian argument miles above his head, forget about pronouns – believed her. Believes, in fact, that Molly would have been an Ivy League professor herself had their paths not tangled. Had she found someone her own age. Remarried. Did he add to her pile of regrets? He definitely doesn’t want to ponder that one.

“I can grab that,” Christopher gets up to help with the suitcase. But right then, Molly loses her balance, only just catching herself against the wall and in the process knocking a framed photo onto the floor.

Now, inches from her right foot, Christopher and his wife, Janice, grin up at them, white frosting smeared on Christopher’s doughy face, Janice’s blue eyes shiny as she wields, victoriously, a silver cake spatula over her veiled head.

“Janice is pretty,” Molly says.

“Janice is frail,” Christopher says, bending down to pick up the frame, hanging it back on its nail. “She forgets to eat.” He doesn’t mention that she forgets his name most days. Maybe he deserves it. He studies Janice’s expression in the photograph. Triumphant.

Christopher grabs the handle of Molly’s suitcase and carries it down the split-level stairs. Molly wipes down the kitchen. They find each other back at the counter. Side-by-side, they cup lukewarm coffees in their palms. Molly chugs hers in one gulp.

“It’s not you, it’s me,” Molly says.

A crooked smile deepens the wrinkles charting Christopher’s jaw and he exhales a soft laugh. “No, it’s me. It’s been me for too long.”

He’s right. It’s been twenty-three years. They’ve both kept count. Molly was just twenty-five when they met, Christopher’s junior by two decades. She had a same-aged husband then – Lucas – who was diagnosed with a rare nasal carcinoma, which stole first his sense of smell, then his appetite, and face, and final breath.

Christopher was Lucas’s palliative care doctor, the only person Molly trusted with her parade of losses, a person whose capacity to comfort was boundless. Prickly ethics notwithstanding.

“We’d better head out,” Molly says. The westside neighbors share the driveway. They’d left for church an hour ago and Christopher knows Molly would rather not meet their scowls when they return. Christopher stopped caring what they thought years ago. Nobody can understand another person’s life.

Molly dumps the rest of Christopher’s cold coffee into the sink, washes and dries his and Janice’s mugs.

Christopher sits on the bench in the entryway and puts on his shoes. If he’s honest, he can admit he’s never felt guilty. Does that make him despicable? He hopes not. In his work, one person’s relief was often another’s sorrow. He’s taken more than his share though, with Molly, and he agrees with her: Janice needs the whole of him now. That’s what he tells himself as he resists the urge to grab Molly’s tight shoulders or thickening waist, to cling, to beg. To keep this one right wrong thing.

Molly grabs her purse and keys and sunglasses. Christopher touches her hand and she flinches. “They’ll be back any minute,” she says. The damn neighbors.

“I hear there’s no fundamental right to not be offended.” Molly smiles, almost.
“Christopher,” she says, and he savors the sound of his name on a woman’s lips. Molly’s voice quivers. “You were supposed to teach me how to say good-bye.”

Christopher takes her hands, places them on either side of his face. “There’s no one way,” he says. She runs her thumb down the bridge of his nose. And he remembers all the pieces missing from every good-bye he’s witnessed and feels lucky.

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Author: Edith-Nicole Cameron (she/they) lives in Minneapolis. She used to be a lawyer and an actor. They feel lucky to have work featured in elsewhere magazine, Star 82 Review, Brevity Blog, Literary Mama, Centaur Lit, River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, and other journals.

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