I’ve been noticing that Pandora’s been leaving her lunch in the fridge longer than usual. Yesterday I found a piece of week-old pizza wrapped in foil behind the orange juice, and this morning there was a carton of Chinese takeout from three days ago sitting untouched on the bottom shelf. Normally I wouldn’t give abandoned leftovers this much thought, because refrigerators are basically museums dedicated to meals people once believed they were going to finish, but Pandora isn’t usually like this. She remembers things. She plans things. She is the person who can tell me exactly how long something has been in the refrigerator while I’m standing there sniffing it and trying to decide whether three weeks is really that long for potato salad. Lately, though, she’s seemed distant. Not angry exactly, and not even particularly unhappy, just somewhere else. We’ve had a few stupid little arguments, but nothing I could point to as evidence of an actual problem. John Mercer left for work this morning while I was making a sandwich, Mrs Jenkins was outside complaining that Mr Whiskers had gotten into her garden again, and Pandora’s forgotten lunches were occupying considerably more of my attention than forgotten lunches probably deserve. Then Karen texted me from work asking if I wanted to grab coffee later, and for some reason that made me realize I couldn’t remember the last time Pandora and I had gone anywhere together simply because we wanted to.
That bothered me enough that I stopped making the sandwich and started thinking about how Pandora and I used to try new restaurants all the time. We’d find some little place neither of us had heard of, order something neither of us could pronounce, and then spend the drive home arguing about whether we actually liked it or were just pretending because we’d paid too much money. Somewhere along the way, though, that stopped happening. Lately our evenings have mostly consisted of dinner, television, our phones, and Mr Whiskers strategically positioning himself between us as though he has personally negotiated custody of the couch. I started wondering whether Pandora had gotten bored with the routine and, more importantly, whether she had been trying to tell me. Once that possibility entered my head, naturally I began conducting an investigation instead of doing the sensible thing and asking her. Pandora had suggested that we go out the previous Saturday, and I’d told her we could decide later because I wanted to finish something first. We never went. A few nights later she’d mentioned a restaurant she wanted to try, and apparently my response had been, “That sounds good,” which I now realize is not technically the same thing as making plans to go there. She’d asked if I wanted to take a walk with her one evening, but I was halfway through something on television and told her I’d go the next time. There had been several next times since then. I hadn’t gone on any of those either.
I tried to convince myself I was manufacturing a pattern from unrelated events, because that is apparently a concern I have only after manufacturing the pattern. Maybe Pandora was simply busy. Maybe the forgotten lunches meant nothing. Maybe she hadn’t stopped suggesting things because I kept failing to respond enthusiastically; maybe she’d simply developed a sudden passion for sitting on the couch beside a man staring at his phone while an orange cat occupied forty percent of the available seating. Then I remembered Tuesday. Pandora had been sitting beside me when she suddenly said, “We never do anything anymore.” At the time, I thought she meant there wasn’t anything good on television, so I picked up the remote and started scrolling. Remembering that now made me put the sandwich down entirely. Then there was another conversation a few days earlier when Pandora had asked what I wanted to do over the weekend. I told her I didn’t care and that whatever she wanted was fine. She said, “That’s what you always say.” I’d interpreted that as confirmation that I was exceptionally accommodating. Looking back, there was a slight possibility she had meant something else. There was also the evening she told me it would be nice if I occasionally planned something instead of making her decide everything. I had agreed immediately because that seemed completely reasonable, and then apparently planned nothing.
Mr Whiskers wandered into the kitchen while I was standing there reconstructing the possible collapse of my relationship from refrigerated Chinese food. He looked at me, looked at the open refrigerator, and meowed. “Don’t start,” I told him. He meowed again, and the disturbing thing was that even the cat was beginning to seem judgmental. I closed the refrigerator and started considering whether Pandora’s recent interest in Mrs Jenkins’ garden was connected somehow. She’d spent quite a bit of time talking with Mrs Jenkins lately, asking about flowers and vegetables and which plants would survive on our side of the building. At first I’d assumed it was casual conversation, but now I wondered whether Pandora was thinking about changing something around the house. Maybe she wanted a garden. Maybe she wanted a hobby that got her outside more. Maybe she was trying to create something we could do together and had simply given up waiting for me to notice. That possibility made considerably more sense than the conspiracy involving Mrs Jenkins I had begun constructing approximately thirty seconds earlier, although I wasn’t prepared to dismiss the conspiracy completely.
John came home later and found me sitting at the kitchen table with my phone, Pandora’s abandoned takeout container, and a notepad. He stopped in the doorway and looked at the arrangement. “What are you doing?” he asked. I told him I was thinking, which naturally caused him to look at the takeout container and ask whether I was thinking about Chinese food. “Pandora,” I said. “I think she’s been trying to tell me something.” John stared at me for a second before asking the question that, in retrospect, should have occurred to me considerably earlier: “Did you ask her?” I looked at him. John looked at me. There are moments in every friendship when another person manages to communicate an entire paragraph without saying a word, and this was one of them. “I’m gathering information first,” I explained. “Of course you are,” he said before walking away. I was offended by his tone, although not enough to stop gathering information.
By the time Pandora came home, I had assembled what I considered a fairly compelling collection of evidence. There were the forgotten lunches, the abandoned restaurant suggestion, the missed walk, the Saturday plans that never became plans, the comment about us never doing anything anymore, and her increasingly frequent conversations with Mrs Jenkins about gardening. I had even included Mr Whiskers’ unusually judgmental meow, although I marked that one as circumstantial. Pandora came into the kitchen, put her bag down, and immediately noticed the notepad. “What’s that?” she asked. “Nothing,” I said, covering the page with my hand. She narrowed her eyes. “Hal.” Then she sighed, and there it was. The sigh. I’d heard that sigh before. Recently, in fact. Frequently. It was the same sigh she’d made when I said we could decide what to do Saturday “later,” the same sigh she’d made when I said “whatever you want” after she asked where I wanted to go for dinner, and the same sigh she’d made when she suggested taking a walk and I told her I was comfortable.
Suddenly I understood. This wasn’t about the lunches. It wasn’t about Mrs Jenkins. It wasn’t about gardening, John Mercer, Karen’s invitation for coffee, or Mr Whiskers behaving like a furry little relationship counselor. Pandora had been trying to tell me exactly what was wrong for weeks, and I had somehow managed to treat every clue except her actual words as evidence. “Do you want to go out tonight?” I asked. Pandora stopped and looked at me. “Out?” she said. “Dinner. That place you mentioned.” She stared at me for another second. “The Italian place?” I nodded. “That one.” A smile slowly appeared on her face. “You remembered?” she asked. “Of course I remembered.” From the doorway, John made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a laugh, which I ignored because there are times when preserving your dignity requires pretending you cannot hear your roommate.
Pandora walked over, kissed me on the cheek, and headed toward the bedroom to change. I sat there feeling pretty pleased with myself. Apparently I had successfully decoded the entire situation. It had taken several weeks, a refrigerator full of neglected leftovers, one judgmental cat, a page of handwritten evidence, and John asking the single obvious question I had somehow failed to consider, but I had figured it out. Mr Whiskers jumped onto the chair beside me and stared down at the notepad as if reviewing my methodology. I looked at him, and he looked back at me with the exhausted expression of someone who had been watching this investigation unfold from the beginning. “You knew the whole time, didn’t you?” I asked. Mr Whiskers yawned, stretched one paw across the table, and knocked my pen onto the floor. I’m almost certain that meant yes.
