My wife is beginning to fade on me. Sometimes she looks my way but she’s looking right through me, really. She’s looking right at me, but I can tell she don’t even see me. She’ll mutter something that doesn’t even make sense and I laugh it off and stroke her hair and she looks at me like I’m a stranger.

This morning she wet the bed. Then she kept denying it and said something must’ve spilled, maybe it was her drinking water. Yeah, her drinking water spilled right under her ass in the middle of the night. It’s so sad, it’s almost funny. I change the sheets and agree with her, yeah, something must’ve spilled.

She started to make breakfast today, I could hear her clanking around in the kitchen, and then when I went in there after a while to see what she was doing, she had the table set for five of us, like the kids were all still here, about to spill down the damned stairs for breakfast. "Saffron," I said, trying to be gentle as I could. "There’s too many settings at the table, darling. It’s just you and me."

"I know that!" She spat at me, bitterly. "You think I’m a goddamned idiot? You think I don’t know how many people live in my own goddamned house?" She looked at me with sad eyes, and I didn’t know what to say. My wife is a good Christian woman, and I don’t think I ever heard her use the Lord’s name in vain, at least not like that.

"Jesus, Job!" She said softly "Why the hell aren’t the kids eating anymore? They’re so busy now. They’re so busy they don’t have time for a nice hot breakfast. Everybody needs a nice hot breakfast." I walked her out of the kitchen and into her chair.

"Let me make breakfast, Saffron. You just sit down and rest."

"I don’t need to rest." She protests weakly and sits in her chair, folding and kneading her hands awkwardly. I can tell she is embarrassed. I feel so sad for her.

Each day I wake up scared, not knowing what the hell to expect. Will there be more blood in my piss today? Will my wife recognize me today? Is today the day I’ll have the goddamned balls to get us out of here? I could never say this out loud, but I am so scared. During my nap this afternoon, I dream that we are starting over. We are young again, and healthy and beautiful, but in this dream, we know it is magical, that we have just returned from being old and sick and we are overjoyed because we are together, and even though it looks just like our house on May Street, the one we lived in until 1967, we know we are in Heaven. We know, because all the roses are blooming, and it’s December. This is my sign, I tell myself when I get up from my nap. This is my sign that I gotta do it, and real soon.

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