Session Two

The WOMAN lets herself in through the back door. The GIRL is in the kitchen fixing two cups of tea, one with sugar, one without. GIRL enters into the living room to meet the WOMAN, who sits in her previous chair.

GIRL:
There's a woman somewhere. Somewhere near, or maybe not. I don't know. She is young, beautiful, and a widow. Her husband died in a car wreck, on his way home from working late. The Widow hates herself for thinking he was having an affair. She was going to confront him about his 'late work' and missed phone calls. She was going to do it that weekend. But he died instead. Right now it is snowing where she is. It's cold, but the air is still. It's been a week since they put her Groom in the ground. She walks around the house, carrying an icy mug of coffee. It used to be warm, but she can't bring herself to drink, she just goes through the motions of life, of humanity. The Widow wanders from empty room to empty room. She hasn't slept in her bed since he died. Sometimes she lies there, on her side of the mattress, just staring at his pillow, still holding the shape of his head. The blankets are still formed around the empty nest he formed for himself the night before he left. Widow should have made the bed in the morining, but was too upset about the hypothetical affair. Now she lies still in her cold bed, staring at the nest of sheets and blankets. The bed feels cold in the stillest way. Widow thinks she may be able to snap the corners of his pillowcase clean off, if only she had the strenght to reach out and try. She lifts her arm and stretches her fingers, but finds herself unable to cross the invisable lines of his body. Tears come to her eyes, but never fall, catching themselves in her eyelashes and swimming there instead.
The Widow sits in her home, where time has no hold and sips from glasses her Groom left around the house. Her lips settle to cover the spaces where his did. Even when the glasses are emptied of their dusty water she still does this. Her small ritual to remember not just his mouth, the way his lips formed not only for kisses but for the simple, necessary act of drinking water. She does this to remember that he was alive and in need of hydration. He was, but he is no longer. The widow breathes the scent of him from stale clothes. She wears his socks when she naps on the couch. She checks her voicemail obsessively, only to listen to his old messages.