Yellowstone

Photo by cottonbro studio via Pexels

I see my husband standing on the edge of an overpass on the 101 Freeway, on the news channel that he keeps the TV tuned to at all hours. I’ve watched so many of these segments over the last few months that even though I recognize his dirty blue bathrobe, it takes me a minute to understand. I rush to my car to drive to him, to talk him down, to reassure him that we’ll figure it out, that everything will be okay, though it certainly won’t be. But there’s traffic — always in LA, there’s traffic — so I leave my car and run the rest of the way, horns honking, gasoline fumes leaking from stalled cars. When I see the crowd of people, I know. My husband, my beautiful Ben, is dead, rendering us both utterly alone. I know that if I look over the edge of the freeway, I’ll see his body, so I close my eyes and see, instead, the image of Ben’s face on our wedding night, during our first dance, his glasses slipping down his nose. He was nervous and vulnerable but willing, because he loved me most of all, better than himself.

When political factions first splintered and warred following the election, before the economic collapse but after we both lost our jobs, Ben and I dealt with our despair in different ways. I had always kept mine submerged in alcohol, and as local governments began to shut down, I wasn’t the only one. Every bar was overrun, patrons standing three deep, ordering two drinks at a time: madness, but a giddy kind. Our disintegrating nation was all anyone could talk about, like a pathological tic. Others came to know something I’d long understood: what fun it is to be swept up in the camaraderie of getting plastered.

Ben’s despair assumed the form of a plush velour bathrobe that he took to wearing day and night while standing too close to the TV; it became impossible to detach him from the cycle of breaking news and shadowy “sources say” tweets. His face blued as he worried the edge of his bathrobe. Once the bathrobe appeared, sex with my husband became less appealing, then unthinkable.

It has been so long since we’ve touched or really looked at each other that I’m shocked to rediscover his brown eyes at the morgue. I stroke the inside of