The tea had gone cold again.
Arthur starred into the mug, watching a dust mote drift across his reflection. He saw a man with deep, carved-out valleys around his eyes.
“Arthur?”
The voice came from the doorway, warm and familiar. A woman stood there holding laundry. She had moss-green eyes and a small, crescent scar on her left cheekbone.
“Are you Clara?” he asked.
The warmth in her eyes stiffened, “no sweetheart. Clara was your mother, I’m Sarah, I’m your wife”
“right” Arthur murmured, pulling his hand back “of course” then wrote it on the margin of the newspaper. Sarah. Wife. Moss-green eyes. For Arthur, time was no longer a river flowing in one direction; it was a shattered mirror, everyday he was handed a different shard.
An hour later- or perhaps a year- he stood in the hallway. The wallpaper was faded yellow, floral pattern. But when he blinked, the flowers withered, peeling away to reveal sterile, modern drywall.
He touched the wall. It felt rough, like paper. When he closed his eyes, his fingertips insisted it was cold, smooth plaster.
Are you real? He asked the wall. It did not answer.
In the living room, Sarah sat reading. Beside her, a seven-year-old boy built a tower of wooden blocks. He had Arthur’s crooked nose.
“the base is too narrow” Arthur whispered.
“Arthur?” Sarah looked up from her book, her eyes sliding right through the space where the boy sat.
“the boy” Arthur pointed “He’s going to knock it over”
Sarah closed her book with a soft, heavy thud. She looked at the empty rug, “Arthur, Leo is thirty-two. He lives in Edinburgh. He hasn’t played with those blocks in twenty-five years.”
“but I saw him” Arthur whispered “I smelled the pine woods. If I can see it , how is it not real?”
Sarah gently took his hands. Her palms were warm and dry. “your brain is visiting old rooms Arthur. But those rooms aren’t here. I am here”
“And how do I know you are?” he asked “how do I know I’m not just visiting a room from the past?”
She couldn’t answer.
Arthur blinked. The yellow wallpaper was gone, replaced by plain beige paint. A different woman walked in carrying a plastic cup with two blue pills.
“Time for your medicine Arthur.” She said.
“where is Sarah?”
The woman paused, pity in her eyes. “Sarah passed away three years ago, Arthur. I’m Helen, your caregiver”
Grief hit him like a physical blow-fresh, sharp and bleeding but a terrifying thought bloomed behind the tears.
If Sarah can exist so vividly in a room that isn’t here, how do I know Helen is real? How do I know this grief is real?
Arthur looked out the window at the vibrant garden. He smiled a fragile smile and let go off the table, stepping forward to see if the ground would hold him.