TWO VIEWS

Mirsky rang the bell and stood on the stoop waiting. Reflexively, he touched his fingertips to the mezuzah on the door jam and then to his lips. Elaine opened the door and the two of them stood looking at each other for the first time in over a year.
“Mirsky,” Elaine said. “What brings you here?”
Mirsky ran his fingers through his hair, shook his head and turned around and walked back to his car.
He remembered listening to the Charlie Parker CD that Elaine had bought him a long while back, before they separated, and while lost in the music and not paying any attention to his driving, he drove to his old house by habit. By habit—even after a year and a month had passed. Strange, he thought, strange and scary. He worried about his fifty year old mind.
Elaine went back to her coffee and smiled. She was pleased that her husband was getting tired of the separation and of not seeing her. She walked to the bathroom and looked in the mirror to see what Mirsky had come to see and felt satisfied with what she saw.