Rick stands on Bedford Avenue on a Saturday morning next to his wife Ella and their infant child Henry. They are watching a marathon. He sees the runners, hears the light pound of their feet on concrete and the bodies flowing forward, a sea or river rushing fast. He closes his eyes and is beside them, can feel his feet tense and light and the sweat on him slick so that he is like a fish in air that rushes against his body like thick cool water. He is running, he does not turn to look behind him, though in the corner of his mind he sees Ella with the stroller growing smaller and smaller until they are only a speck on the horizon, and then nothing at all, not even there. Rick opens his eyes and watches the runners; he cannot look at Ella at all. Ella who he cannot even think of anymore it seems; he can say her name and speak to her and see her when he is beside her, with her, talking to her. But when away from her she is a stranger, and “Ella” a word without meaning, so that it does not in his mind conjure the woman standing beside him but instead is lost to him like for-
eign tongue. So that at work and walking alone he cannot even imagine her face. At another time in his life, a few years before, he would have been disturbed by this, would thought his mind slipping, would have tried to fight it with herbal supplements and running, with watching for hours Ella sleep and thinking only “Ella. Ella. This woman sleeping is Ella. Ella my wife.” But now he does none of these things, in bed lies with his back facing her and falls asleep as soon as he hits the pillow. No, Ella is never in his thoughts, not even in his dreams. Except at dinner, which he takes alone, and at the bar afterwards. He usually eats at the Thai restaurant down the street, next to the front window where he can look out on the narrow street and watch people sit on their stoops and smoke. Occasionally a small brunette walks by and his heart jumps before even his mind responds, and still he does not think of Ella, does not think the name, word, “Ella,” but for minutes later he feels drained and shakes slightly, and he is unable to tell if it is the Chicken Basil only that has brought on his watering eyes.
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