The phone rings.

The phone rings again.

The phone rings a third time.

She gets up to answer it slowly, taking her time to erase the empty distance between her plate of cold spaghetti and the phone. By the time she can twist the coiled cord in her fingers, it has stopped ringing.

She sits.

She sits on the floor in melting silence; her feet shoved beneath her and her mouth curled up as if in thought. Her feet fall asleep. She is not thinking, anything but; she is simply being, a tiny breath in the bubble of moving time. Tapping fingers on a wine glass, an ink of purple spilling to the floor. She should get a cloth to wipe the spill.

But no. The thought drifts away as quickly as falling in love. Instead she rights the glass. She sits. One hundred miles away, two fingers will dial eleven digits to a phone number, hope with hushed prayer in each press of the key that there will be an answer, maybe, this time.

The phone rings.

The phone rings again.

It should be easy. Her hand hovers above the receiver, next to the spot of drying wine, the permeating smell of cold spaghetti on the table. She should get up, put her plate in the dishwasher before the sauce clings sticky to cheap porcelain.

The phone rings a third time. Not the plate, not the spot, not her feet tingling pins and needles next to the sofa. She answers the phone. Her mouth almost forgets to work.

“’llo?” Not quite a syllable, not quite a mark in the small space of conversation, but it’s there. Almost a word. She used to know words. God, she even used to say them.

All it takes is a moment.

“Thank God,” says the voice on the other end, a low voice, a man’s voice. It tickles her ear through the receiver, slow worried notes in the silence of an empty house with an empty wine glass and an empty dishwasher. Too many empties (emptys?). The voice sounds worried.

(definition of worried: to be afraid. to be lost without cause. to be unsure. to wonder about the unknown. any of these.)

And here was the unknown:

“Are you okay?” he, the voice, asks. “I’ve been so worried. I’ve been trying to get out of here but my train is delayed because of weather. I’m coming, I promise. I’ll find a way. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

Somewhere, somehow, this thought penetrates the protective bubble around her mind.

She loves him. She loves this voice more than almost anything.She wonders if maybe he could fill up this empty. “I’m waiting,” she says, suddenly, unwillingly, surprising them both.

Right now, he breaks the silence with a soft sob. Stops. Deep breath. She presses the phone to her ear, tighter, closing her thoughts. The wine is drying beneath her feet.

“Are you…there?”

She nods and then speaks to make it true. “Yes.”

A whole word. It hangs in the air, in the silence, and then vanishes. Her tongue feels strange.

“Okay. I’m coming. I promise. I love you.”

I love you. There is a click, an end to a moment, an end to a something. She doesn’t hang up. She holds onto the phone, tightly, fingers turning white. They match the carpet, sans the stain.

The stain. A cloth. She should get a cloth. She can see it, see the sink, see the pink stitching of a wet cloth hanging across the divider. The phone is dropped, the steps taken slowly. She is going to get the cloth to clean up the mess on the floor from the wine and then maybe load the dishwasher with an untouched plate and one fork and one knife and –

She stops.

She sees it, dangling from the hook on the wall. It’s blue, it’s black, it smells like…oh, god. Stretching out arms unwillingly, achingly, she takes the scarf and wraps it around her, holding her breath to make her bubble bigger. It protects her thoughts, keeps them safe. All she needs to know, to remember, is the one thing that poked through earlier; I love him. She sinks to the floor next to the empty hook, another tally in her endless list of emptys (empties?).

And she sits, on the floor, curled up with this black and blue scarf. It’s a bruise staining her hands, a bruise on her neck, her lips, her face. She needs to stop breathing, she reminds herself as she wraps it around her nose, because it smells like…

It smells like.

Here it is, something dangling in the air, the bruise coming undone. When pressed on, it makes a mark, creates a gasp; it hurts, and yet she can’t help but touch it. This is the bruise, with two fingers: it smells like aftershave and peppermint, fabric softener and paper and.

She needs to load the dishwasher, right now. She needs to get a cloth. The scarf comes off. It stays on the floor.

She gets the soap and puts in the spaghetti plate and presses run, and the table is empty. She forgets the fork because it falls on the floor. And the cloth cannot wipe up the stain because its wine and wine doesn’t just go away.

Like most things, she thinks, scrubbing the carpet, and then she stops thinking. Instead, she puts down the cloth and gets the scarf from the floor and curls up next to the spot that won’t come off, that smells like summer heat and forgetting. And this is where time melds together.

Here it is, a reason for all this empty.

There is a before. There is a bed. They lay on their stomachs, face down, not sleeping. The moon keeps them awake, spilling on their cheeks while they whisper secrets, tangling up in each other. He traces every freckle, every scar, every bruise on her soft skin, memorized like a map. He fingers the bluing bruise on the crest of her hand, from putting up coat hooks in a new house, but it doesn’t hurt. He can see the hook now, his scarf woven through it, and he smiles. The nail went in uneven. He says that he loves her, against her lips. This is the future. She is completely, wholly, impossibly full, with him.

There is an after. There is a bed. She lies on her stomach, face down, not sleeping. She doesn’t speak. She’s waiting. She watches the moon across two pillows, hears herself breathe. She listens and

The phone rings.

She jumps to answer it, waits for his voice, waits for him to say, “I know, I’m late, I’m coming, I love you.” Any of these things. It’s not his voice.

There’s a siren ripping up the night, feeling impossibly close, and suddenly the phone is gone, the voice is talking but she’s gone, clenched in a ball on the bed where there are two pillows and one person.

The phone is still talking. She sees the hook she hung herself, last week, the one that gave her a bruise. It was an accident, dropping the hammer.

Accident.

Accident.

Accident.

Outside in the hallway, the hook is empty. His scarf is gone.

~

And now, with the scarf, she doesn’t know how long she’s been laying on the floor.

The doorbell rings.

The doorbell rings again.

She can no longer hear the dishwasher running, which means her spaghetti plate is clean, empty and clean, and she should get up and unload her clean and empty plate.

The doorbell rings a third time.

She is coming, feet moving too slow for the rest of the world but it doesn’t ring again and so the person who pressed the button has unconditional patience. Her bare feet smack clean tile, heading for the entryway. Here she pauses, and then she grasps the handle.

The door opens.

It’s him. It’s him, the voice, the man she loves. He doesn’t say anything because words aren’t enough and she would just filter them out anyway. He knows this. He stands with his arms hanging limp at his sides, in a black coat. She stands barefoot in a black and blue scarf.

Suddenly he pulls her to him, a touch she’s felt so many times before. Hands in her hair. Tears on her cheek. (whose tears exactly?)

And then there are words. They come slowly, seeping through her ears, into her bubble, into her head. This is all she is: a woman with a spot of wine on her floor, one that won’t come off. This is what she thinks, when the words finally come. They hang in the air, gaining weight in their bite.

“I’m so sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry about Jim.”

She stands, arms around her father, in an empty house, with an empty plate and a dishcloth on the floor. She wears her husband’s scarf. She wears it because he can’t.

She is the emptiest thing of all.