Autumn Valentine

In May my heart was breaking-
Oh, wide the wound, and deep!
And bitter it beat at waking,
And sore it split in sleep.

And when it came November,
I sought my heart, and sighed,
"Poor thing, do you remember?"
"What heart was that?" it cried.

-- Dorothy Parker

They spend the day before Christmas Eve fixing up the new house.

The only furniture they move in is an old mattress she’s had in storage and a kitchen chair he finds in the garage. He drags the mattress into the living room so they’ll have something to sit on while they eat their Chinese take-out. She’s spent the day painting what will eventually become their bedroom, so she’s starving. She digs into some shrimp fried rice but has to stop.

“I’m sorry,” she says and sets the container down. “I can’t eat with it staring at me.”

His mouth is full, so he just looks at her quizzically. She points to the clown painting in the hallway and he almost chokes on his food.

“Just… try not to look at it,” he says, staring down into his container of food. “That’s what I’ve been doing.”

She looks at him and deadpans, “It’s in my dreams.”

He laughs and looks up at her. “I’ll try to do something about it, I promise. Before you know it, it’ll just be… some distant memory.”

She nods and he goes back to eating. Despite her better judgment, she again looks at the clown painting. She thinks about distant memories and can’t wait for it to be one. She can put it in the mental shoebox in the closet of her mind along with all those nights she slept alone and that time she broke their hearts. Those are distant memories. It’s getting harder every day to remember what it felt like then, which isn’t a bad feeling. She never wants to feel so incomplete or heartbroken again, and she has a great suspicion that she never will.

She smiles softly to herself and picks up her food container and begins eating. He stops eating and she throws him a look.

“Well, now it’s staring at me,” he says.

She laughs and shrugs. “Distant memory.”