She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odor of dusty cretonne. She was tired. Few people passed. The man out of the last house passed on his way home his footstep clacking on the concrete pavement and later crunching on the cinder path before the red houses.
Her head leaned against the cool glass pane through the curtains. It had become too heavy to lift. As the sound of the footsteps faded into the dusk a great sigh escaped from her. With difficulty she mustered up the energy to move and followed the path of dusty linoleum tiles through the house into the kitchen. She ambled across the room to the fridge, which was empty. In the freezer was one spaghetti microwave dinner. Her shoulders slumped. She took it out and put it in the microwave for the standard three minutes without taking it out of the box or poking holes in the plastic. It had been years since she cared whether or not her microwave exploded in a flash of blue light and flecks of spaghetti infused cardboard. The hum and steady light was soothing. From one of the cabinets she pulled a plate replete with stains and chips and from the drawer below a silver fork.
She sat at the head of the long table with her plate for the eternal three minutes. She heard the crunch of someone walking on the path and her mind wandered imagining for a moment that they were coming home to her. She had spent years waiting for a family to come home to her in vain. Instead the only sound to greet her throughout the day was that of the broken faucet whose steady drip accompanied her wherever she went in the small silent house. The microwave dinged without urgency as she was sliding out of the chair to retrieve her steaming heap of plastic and soggy cardboard. She saw the trail of ants marching across her counter but did not bother to crush them or sweep their crooked line away. She left the cardboard outer box on the counter for them to infest and slumped towards the table clutching the melting plastic insides of her dinner. The steam fogged up her thick glasses without fear of being wiped away. She clutched the fork in her arthritic hands. The burning cheese dripped unhindered onto the wood table. By morning the ants would take care of it.
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