Witness

When the desk lamp opened its single eye, it illuminated various curiosities scattered across a makeshift desk. A jar filled to its lips with sea glass fragments, misfit buttons and pocket change from distant places. A dusty stapler atoned quietly for a lifetime of pierced paper and epidermis. Worn sticky notes, scattered like autumn leaves, flaunted recipes, secret passcodes and moments of scribbled brilliance. A tangled wind chime hummed a failed limerick. A retired fountain pen slept late, caught up in an inky black dream.

A few moments of exquisite quietness remained, so a basket of yarn from an unfulfilled baby blanket cozied up with a long-lost measuring tape. A worldly map looked down from above, old enough to recall Bombay and Burma, and tried, for the third time that morning, to recall its coordinates. Even the canvas-coated collector’s edition of Two Plays for Puritans was in a good mood, despite living cheek-to-cheek with a faded paperback copy of Barely a Lady. Two barn-red folding chairs, one on each side of the uncomfortably narrow desk, played a distracted game of footsie.

The moment the sunshine tripped and stumbled across the dew-dusted grass the marital babble began to bubble. After a requisite amount of throat and nasal clearing, warming up like a symphony of bodily functions, chairs slid back, newspapers fluttered. Slowly, comfortably, the opinions and wise cracks breathed in and out of the room like an iron lung, as it had for decades.

Headline fodder kept the couple’s marriage satiated between the hours of six to nine a.m. Politics, travel, fashion, movie reviews, sports, scientific discoveries, housing, horoscope, weather, the markets. Except for obituaries. Discussing the passing of a life was as absent as empathy.

A Daliesque clay vase, circa Miss Walter’s 1981 graduating preschool class, noticed the change in tone. And then a chunky slice of obsidian saw a flash of flame move across the wife’s brown eyes. The pincushion watched her fingers dance delicately across the tips of pens, knitting needles, rulers and chopsticks. The cluttered, low-ceilinged room heightened with expectancy. And when the folding chair skated backwards in slow motion across the wood floor, a frayed throw pillow released what remained of its stuffing.

The tchotchkes on the windowsill, always analytical, debated the root cause. Was it the editorial about the inflation of the Chinese renminbi? The insensitive comment about Gloria Steinem’s neckline? The impassioned debate about roundabouts? A widowed bookend would later insist it was premeditated. The plastic day-by-day pill container would confidently recall it was on a Thursday. The rotting bouquet of dehydrated daffodils insisted the case was cut and dry. The Couples Budget Travel Guide of Spain thought the coroner’s write-up was fitting, but the miniature glass-blown frog thought it was wordy and phlegmatic.

No one gave much thought to the tarnished letter opener, inscribed with the twosome’s wedding date, that had lain practically unused on the couple’s desk for 55 years, and now lay through a left ventricle.

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