Jill

Last year, when Cancer broke into our house, crept into our bedroom, and held a knife to your throat, I froze. You, so much braver, staved off the inevitable for nearly a year, letting cancer skulk about in your liver, then root for plunder in your bones. Meanwhile, you padded around our house in pjs and slippers, teaching me how to tuck sheets like envelopes around the mattresses and how to clean mirrors with a soft T-shirt, yours. The dog and I followed behind you, nodding our heads, silent, always looking over our shoulders, fearing more intruders. “Chuck,” you called me, because my old white bathrobe belted tight around my waist looked exactly like a karate costume. “Chuck, you’ll have a black belt in survival when we’re finished here.” You meant: when you were finished.

###Did you wonder why I didn’t kick-chop our intruder’s head?

###Month two, we notarized our will—assigning money and cars to our children, two daughters and an only son. That night, I left the door unlocked, and the flu wandered in. It climbed into our bed, with you, me, Cancer. It curled up beside the dog. It shuttered my lungs, and I swear to you, I willed myself to die. Before you. I slept without blankets; stood outside in the rain; took cold, brutal showers.

###Meanwhile, you continued our lessons. You taught me to flip utensils onto their feet in the dishwasher so their food-crusted heads peeped over the basket and got a thorough scrub, and to add a little vinegar to the laundry to brighten whites, especially my bathrobe, which I was wearing most of the day by then. You showed me coupons and the grocery store because you’d always done the shopping.

###Month four, Cancer swam like so many piranhas into your bloodstream. Our beloved children visited on the weekends—with tape dispensers and pads of paper—sticking their initials to chairs, lamps, candles, clocks, our belongings they wanted. I welcomed a stroke then, went limp in one leg, blind in one eye. The dog started sleeping under the bed, afraid of all of us.

###You stayed calm, persevered, taught me Campbell’s soup, frozen dinners, mac and cheese. “Chuck,” you said, “don’t forget to eat after I’m gone.”

###Sometime in month five, while the rest of us were sleeping, you grew attracted to the knife at your throat, and because Cancer promised to make it quick and clean, you packed your bags and ran away with him. After the burial, our kids came and took some of their property; I didn’t need two chairs, two lamps, two of anything, they said. I lurched round the yard, down the hall, about the kitchen, angling my good eye always toward the dog so I didn’t run him over. I washed my robe nightly so it smelled like you every morning.

###Honestly, the house was so empty, I would have welcomed the company of more thieves.

###In month eleven, our kids scolded me when I wore my robe to the grocery store, where I couldn’t remember if I needed peanut butter, glass cleaner, vinegar. Did I buy them last week? In the mirrors, cloudy without you, I saw a man I didn’t recognize—some guy named Chuck, his white costume moth-eaten, his arms stick-thin, his skull round and naked as a ping-pong ball, and his face a junk heap with one working eye and one beater.

###The dog didn’t know him either. He bared his teeth, snarled.

###Soon, our kids will come for the rest of their belongings. They will laugh out loud at the cupboards stocked with 15 bottles of Windex, 21 jars of Jiff, 12 jugs of vinegar, and 30 boxes of mac, a plunder of groceries. They’ll curse the year’s worth of daily papers crowding the guest room, the hall, the bath. They’ll play tug-of-war with our sofas and tables and linens.

###The dog, all gonzo, will clamp his jowls around my arm, my leg, and thrash hard. My stuffing will strew across the floor. My pong-head will dangle from my neck. Afterward, our son will trip over what’s left of me; he’ll snatch me up by a foot, wet with slobber, and, with little thought, he'll toss me out like so much garbage.