In all honesty, I really ain’t missed him personally, but what I do miss is his presence. That raggedy house feel even smaller without him in it. Like all the moisture been sucked out. I can’t even smell him no more. Ain’t nothing to pick up. Or hang. Ain’t washed but once this past week, but even that was only a half a load. And plenty of leftovers. Never learned how to cook for just two people, let alone one. If I thought about him long enough, I guess I could miss him.

He stopped by last month to pick up his little pension check, looking all embarrassed, and, boy, was he surprised when he saw all his stuff stuffed in old pillowcases and balled up in old sheets and stacked on top of each other in the storage closet right off the carport. The spiderwebs was already starting to do their business. I only did it to impress him. I wanted him to think I can live without him. I’m sure I can, I just ain’t figured out if I want to or not yet. He didn’t mention nothing about coming home, and I didn’t bring up the subject either. I can’t lie: right after he left, I was relieved, like I was getting a much-needed vacation. It was like the part of me that used to love him had been shot up with novocaine. I didn’t shed a single tear. I been numb too long. Even still, another part of me is scared, ’cause I ain’t never lived by myself. Always had him or the kids here: somebody.

“How you feeling, Vy?”

Well, look who’s here: Cecil! At first I pretend like I’m already dead. I want the guilt to eat his ass up. But he can see the oxygen coming through this mask, hear me breathing through these tubes, see that monitor zigzagging with my life in green. He take my hand and I snatch it back. When I open my eyes, he look like a bear. He smell like curl activator. Cecil will not cut off his Jheri Curl to save his life. I told him a thousand times to look around: this “do” ain’t been in style for years. But he don’t care. He think, ’cause he dye it black, it makes him look younger, which ain’t hardly true. He think he still “got it going on,” as Dingus would say. To set the record straight, Cecil look like he about four months pregnant. He wearing his exciting uniform: them black polyester pants that don’t need no belt, his Sammy Davis, Jr.–pink shirt without the ruffles (thank the Lord), and those lizard shoes he bought at the turn of the century, when we still lived in Chicago. He look like a lounge singer who just got off work. But other than this, I’d say he still might be handsome, all things considered.

“I was worried about you,” he say like he mean it. “You doing all right?” If I ain’t mistaken, them look like tears in his eyes. I know how to do this, too, which is why I ain’t the least bit moved by this little show of—what should I call it, emotion? I open my eyes wide—like a woman who done had too many face lifts—grab the little notepad from my tray, write, “Take a wild guess,” and hand it to him. He look somewhat hurt and sit down at the foot of my bed. The heat from his body is warming my right foot. I feel like sliding both feet under his big butt but I don’t. He might get the wrong impression.