by Rachel Weinhaus
I take my sleeping pill before walking the dog. There is someone always out there, a runner, a widow dragging garbage cans, an Amazon delivery person on a same-day rush, a possum darting across the street. I am at my most sociable in that twilight. Mr. Morton, who seems to shrink more each week since the ambulance came and went with his wife in it, tries to wave my help away. But Jasper sits on his hind legs and reaches his muzzle toward a half-moon, and Mr. Morton reaches down to pet him.
I line his cans at the edge of yard and driveway, and when he thanks me, I think I reach out to hug him. I think he tells me his wife’s name. I think I cry. I think I tell him I am lonely too. I think we hold each other for a long time—or he holds me—long enough that Jasper lies in the grass and closes his eyes.
In the morning, while my husband wakes and starts the coffee, while the boys yell and fight over the bathroom, while Jasper stretches and waits for his belly rub, I walk to the window and pull up the blinds. I blink against the harsh light. A garbage truck flips Mr. Morton’s cans violently upside down, then leaves them in the middle of the pavement. In that moment, I vaguely recall that Mr. Morton’s wife’s name was Linda or Lois, but I can’t remember which, or if her name started with an “L” at all.
Rachel Weinhaus is a screenwriter, memoirist, and flash fiction writer. She earned an MFA in screenwriting from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema-Television. She has been published in The New York Times, Newsweek, Huffington Post, Insider, The Today Show, Kveller, and Brevity Blog. Her work has appeared in Trampset, Necessary Fiction, Flash Fiction Magazine, Micro Fiction Monday Magazine, Five Minutes, MoonPark Review, Moon City Press, Frigg Magazine, Does It Have Pockets, and Bull.
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