Everyday I ask him if he’ll be home for dinner and everyday he says he will but most of the time he doesn’t yet all the time I believe him (because sometimes he does, and I tell myself, what if today he does?) and every afternoon I cook and every evening I set the table for two and every night I wake to find him already in bed with me, and the dinner I made still on the table.
The night before our anniversary, he said, let’s eat out—and so I dusted off my slingback heels and wore my red dress and perched on his arm. But he had only just sat me at our table and the spring rolls were yet to be served when his phone rang and he left and never came back that night.
Sitting at that table and staring into the candlelight, I imagined—I’m back in the kitchen. I have my apron on and I’m cooking. I’m slicing onions and mincing garlic to sauté. I set them aside and pick up a carving knife, pointed and sharp and small but heavy in my hand. I carve out my heart and place it on the cutting board. I slice it and I dice it, and all the while I feel every cut, I feel the cold steel of the knife riding forward and back and down, until the edge clack, clack, clacks against the wooden cutting board. I sauté the garlic and onion and I throw into the pan the bits of my heart. I add hoisin sauce, pepper, the salt of the years of waiting. I take it off the fire, add garnish, and serve it to him. Oh how he eats my heart with such gusto! Finally he tastes what I cook, he smells it, he sees it, sees me. He smiles, he smiles and it reaches his eyes, reaches mine. It is a warm smile; it melts the big cold lump, the throbbing cancer plugging the hole in my chest, and I smile too. And with that smile I take the carving knife from my apron pocket and run it through his heart.
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