Resignation
"The trash needs to go out," she thought. There were a lot of things needing doing, come to think of it. "Things I could use a man for." She could see the screen door off its hinge from where she sat at the kitchen table. It needed new screws. It'd been flapping in the wind since fall. Now the cedar scrabble was covered in snow and who was going to keep her from breaking her back shoveling the stoop? "Too late for that," she thought. "Not exactly in the flower of my youth, looks wise." Her eggs were probably all dried up by now, anyway, which is what you get for putting all your eggs in one basket.
She hadn't really expected him to leave. She hadn't expected him to come home, either. "He coulda just stayed on his barstool and I wouldn'ta paid no mind," she bargained. That shrink on the TV talked about that all the time...bargaining. Didn't seem to do her much good, though. He'd still smashed her favorite China doll on his way out. Didn't even write her a note. Just left. She didn't know he wasn't happy. She thought he just liked to drink. Maybe if she hadn't pestered him about it? "If he was to come back," she thought, "I'd just let him stay on that barstool." She was now certain that having somebody was better than having nobody, even if that somebody didn't take out the trash.
