I blink in surprise as the dark red bedspread pools out of the dryer. I must have grabbed it inadvertently last night when I’d ransacked the linen closet, looking for old towels and blankets to staunch the flow of water from a broken pipe upstairs. I pull the bedspread onto my lap, my fingers tracing the split seams and stitches of the faded red cloth.
I’d hated the bedspread.
It had been a compromise for our first bedroom: blue, my favorite color, on the walls and curtains; red, Ron’s favorite, on the bedspread and throw rugs. The bedspread was heavy and slippery, sliding off the sheets and onto the floor nightly, and it needed to be line-dried. But it was what two twenty-somethings could afford when we moved our sparse belongings into the little brick rowhouse, the house we’d always planned to move from but never did, the house whose ancient pipes had given way last night and threatened to ruin the new carpeting I’d had installed over the wooden laminate floor scarred by Ron’s wheelchair and walker.
I hold the hated bedspread to my cheek. I’d handled it all, calling plumbers and repairmen and insurance people. The pipes were fixed, and the new carpeting safe. I’d handled it the way I’d handled so much in the last twenty years.
Alone.
The bedspread is damp in spots and I begin to throw it back into the dryer for another spin, but I realize it is my own tears dampening the cloth. I am crying. I blot my face with the bedspread that is my husband’s favorite color and was part of the life we began with such hope. I am not crying because I needed him to help me with the chaos of the flooded room, to soothe me with his patient smile and quirky laugh.
I am crying because I didn’t.