a fifty sixth story...'ash'

Linda doesn’t think we should bother trying anymore.  She said so on the way home from Jeb and Sally’s place.  I was driving along a dark stretch of road, through the wood in fact, headlights on full beam.  She came out with this and I hit the brakes hard.  I had caught sight of a deer moving up ahead, and being a cautious man by nature decided to stop for a moment: to take in what Linda had said, I guess.  Linda looked at me, the way she does these days, as if I’m a stone in her shoe.  I had a cramp in my stomach, had eaten and drank too much at Jeb and Sally’s place, and then this.  

‘Why have you stopped?’, she said annoyed at me, suspicious at the same time.  I rolled down the window, let in some of the cool night air.  ‘I’m feeling sick’, I replied, although I should have told her about the deer further on up the road.  She turned her eyes away from me, followed the beam of the headlights.  If I had asked her to get out at that moment and left her there in the middle of the wood, it would have taught her a lesson alright, made her see I wasn’t such a push over after all.  Instead, I opened the driver’s door and got out. 

‘Go on, be sick’, she said impatiently, still looking straight ahead.  Thing is I wasn’t feeling sick, so much as lost for words, or at least the right words.  Anyhow, after a few short moments, I walked over to the other side of the road, knelt against a tree with my back to the car and to her, and pretended to wretch.  It was a small, pitiful thing, and when I think about it now, this morning, with a cigarette and a coffee on the go, and Linda away to work, I realise we have lost all trust, all sincerity between us, and that the dying embers in the ashtray on the kitchen table in front of me are in some way symbolic of how bad things have become; but like any cigarette we’ll both share what there is to the end, until nothing is left but ash, and more ash.