Paradox

She had always made his breakfast for him, before he got up. He would rise out of bed to the smell of coffee and pancakes, and put on the fresh-ironed suit with the white, starched shirt on the hanger next to the closet. He would come down the stairs, and they would smile together as they ate. He read the newspaper before he left, when he would kiss his wife goodbye before he went off to work. When he got home, she would be there with dinner on the table, ready to hear about the events of the day. They still said “goodnight” in the same hushed voices that they used when they were younger, and went to sleep in each others’ arms. So it was for twenty years.1

So it came as a great surprise to him when he came home early from work one day to find his wife lying in a puddle of blood on the kitchen floor, clutching a note that read simply, “Goodbye.”2

He did not scream or cry, nor did he call anyone for help or sympathy. He simply stood transfixed, his gaze focused on an empty pot in front of him. The only thing that went through his head as he stared was:3

“Where is my dinner?”4

It echoed through his head as he walked blindly back out the front door and across the street. He put his key into the unfamiliar door before him, and finding it would not turn, he broke the window. Sharp pieces of glass embedded themselves in his palms. Climbing through the window, he stared at an empty kitchen, one that he did not know. Still, he only thought:5

“Where is my dinner?”6

He went on to the next house. And the next house. And the next house after that. All the time, the kitchens had no food for him, no living, loving wife to care about whatever trivial events might have happened that day, to agree without question with whatever opinions he had.7

It was getting late, and cars were coming back. He heard from his cramped hiding place in between a fence and a garbage container the sounds of phoned being dialed, of anxious people trying to find out what had gone on. They could only be half heard over the maddening mantra that repeated itself over and over, even as he ran out with his hands over his ears, screaming...8

“Where is my dinner? Where is my dinner? WHERE IS MY DINNER?”9

He ran down the middle of the street. No one noticed; they were all on the phone. No one noticed him, even when he was struck by a large truck coming around a corner. Men from the hospital came and picked him up. He did not survive the ride in the ambulance.10

It came as a surprise to his wife, who had gone to do some grocery shopping, that her husband, the man who she adored, had gone crazy and been hit by a truck. 11

She came home crying. She immediately went to the kitchen counter, scrawled the word “Goodbye”onto a piece of paper, found the largest knife she could, and plunged it into her heart.12

She was lying on the floor in a puddle of blood as the light coming through the windows brightened, and her husband entered and looked down at her, then looked up at a pot and said:13

“Where is my dinner?”14