Free Unremarried Widow by Artis Henderson Page A

answer to? The women on either side of me scrawled on the paper they pressed against their thighs. The pretty friend folded up her piece of paper and dropped it into a ceramic jar on the table next to the cheese.
    â€œI’m going to start passing this around,” she said. “Just drop your question in.”
    Should I ask about sex? About school? About books? I discarded every question that came to mind while the jar worked its way around the couch.
    â€œYou want us to fold it up?” a woman three cushions over asked. She balanced the jar on her round knees. “Or just drop it in?”
    â€œDo whatever you want,” the friend said.
    The woman crumpled the paper into a ball the size of a marble. I needed a question. Any question. So I wrote what I worried about every day. I wrote the question that I thought about when I woke up in the morning and that pressed me into sleep at night.
    What if you love someone with all your heart but you’re afraid that being with him means giving up the life you imagined for yourself?
    I folded the slip of paper just as the jar reached me and dropped my question in. The container finished making its way around the room and already the pockets of conversation were starting up again. I clutched my paper plate in my hand, crimping the cardboard edges.
    Please don’t pick mine, I thought. Please pick another question.
    The pretty friend held the jar over her head.
    â€œI’m going to choose now,” she said.
    The room grew quieter but not quiet. Ms. Walker leaned againstthe counter and talked to another teacher. Three women at the far end of the couch ate tiny meatballs and talked in low voices. One burst out with a loud laugh.
    â€œHush,” Ms. Walker’s friend said.
    The woman with the meatballs covered her mouth with her hand and one of the other women slapped her knee. They all three laughed.
    The pretty friend stirred the jar dramatically.
    â€œCome on, pick one!” Ms. Walker shouted from the kitchen.
    â€œI’m getting there,” the friend said. She gave her hand a final swirl and then with her perfectly manicured nails lifted a folded slip of paper.
    Not mine, I prayed.
    She unfolded the paper and skimmed the question. She cleared her throat and the room waited.
    â€œWhat if you love someone,” she paraphrased, “but being with them means giving up your own life?”
    There was a lull as people considered the question. I looked at the floor. The meatball women started talking again in low voices, their feet pushed close together.
    â€œAnd I said, ‘If you’re not going to bother to treat me like a lady, then don’t bother—’ ”
    The woman next to her nodded vigorously. A woman at the end of the couch stood up to fix herself another plate of cheese, and I thought the moment might pass. But Ms. Walker stepped out of the kitchen and leaned over her friend’s shoulder to read the paper. She looked pointedly in my direction.
    â€œYou figure out how to make it work,” she said. “That’s what marriage is.”
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    On a clear day at the end of the year, Miles and I drove through the hills that surround Killeen. The day was cool enough that we rolled down the windows and let the dry air blow into the car. Thistle bushes grew beside the road and mesquite trees crouched back from the shoulder. Sunlight filtered through the open sunroof and the wind flowed into the car and back out, taking with it the air we exhaled and the evaporating sweat from our bodies. We drove until we spotted a vegetable stand beside the highway.
    â€œShould we stop?” Miles asked.
    â€œSure,” I said.
    Inside the wood frame of the market stall, heat radiated from the corrugated tin roof. Rays of sunlight angled into the shed and illuminated the motes of dust that rose in our wake. Miles pointed to the clear plastic bags of water hanging from the rafters.
    â€œKeeps the flies off,”