Lost Jobs, Lost Rings

By Simon Bittersea

The day I lost my job, you lost your wedding ring. I tried not to see it as a sign.

The job, I hated. So even though it was humiliating to be fired, and even though that all-too-familiar and sickening worry about where the next check was going to come from had sunk in before I had made it from the office building to the parking garage, there was at least a silver lining: I was free.

And then it occurred to me that maybe you saw things similarly. Maybe it filled you with fear and anxiety to think how you’d manage as a single mom with next to no income, and maybe you felt a sort of embarrassment or even shame about falling out of love with me when I’d done nothing wrong, but maybe you were as miserable in our marriage as I was in that office. And maybe when you went looking in the little glass bowl you keep next to your sink, and you saw it was empty, maybe you didn’t find a gold ring, but maybe you also saw a silver lining.

I tried not to see parallels. 

I did not want to see the similarities.

Because I had not lost my love for you. Just a job I couldn’t stand in the first place.

“What are you doing home?” you asked me. Your voice was flat. There was no surprise at my arrival. There was no delight at seeing me home on a day I should be in an office. There was no worrying that maybe I was ill.

“I lost my job,” I told you. “Budget cuts,” I said with a shrug, as if to say, hey, what can you do, these things happen. Only I didn’t want to be the one to say that. I wanted you to be the one to say that. To comfort me, to tell me to not feel like a failure.

“Great,” you mumbled, and then you exhaled, long and slow. Just to let me know how exhausting this marriage had become to you, I guess.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I’m going to find something better. Something that pays more.”

You nodded, but it wasn’t a gesture of agreement. 

“Really,” I said. “I promise.”

But you didn’t want promises. “Did they give you severance?”

“No,” I told you. “I’m going to go on unemployment, though. They said they won’t contest the claim.”

“Unemployment?” you said, as if the word itself was unfamiliar. And in a way, it was. Despite all of our financial stresses over the years, it had never once been discussed that either of us should go on unemployment. In our sixteen years married, this was the first time either one of us had said the word. “How much is that?” you asked.

“I don’t know. I have to register with the State and file a claim and…I don’t know what else. I’ve never done this before.”

“I was going to go on a walk,” you said in a way that made it clear it wasn’t an invitation.

“Oh, good, yeah. Don’t let me hold you up. I have freelance work to do, and then I’m going to get to the, uh…”

“Unemployment.”

I winced at the word. “Right. And applying to more jobs.”

You didn’t respond. You just stood there. Two strangers who owned a home together, who had children together, who—for now, at least—were married to each other.

“Well,” I said finally. “Have a good walk.”

When you got back from your walk, I was pouring a cup of coffee in the brightly lit kitchen. It’s a beautiful kitchen. You designed it yourself, and when it was finished, you called it your dream kitchen. You were happy then. With the kitchen. And with me.

“Hey,” I greeted you. And then I said, “Good walk?”

You feigned not hearing me, as you pulled the little white AirPods from your ears, and walked into our bedroom. 

I stood in the kitchen, feeling like an awkward houseguest. Then you came out of the bedroom.

“Did you see my ring in the bathroom this morning when you took a shower?” you asked me.

“Your ring?”

“My wedding ring.”

“You lost your wedding ring?”

“I misplaced it,” you corrected me. “Or I set it down and I just can’t remember where. Or it got knocked off a countertop or something.”

“No, I didn’t see it in the bathroom.”

“You didn’t see it in the shower, like near the soap dish?”

“No,” I told you. “I would have noticed it if it was there.”

“Hmmm,” you  said, sounding not at all distressed. At the most, slightly annoyed.

“Where did—” I started to ask.

“I’m sure it’ll turn up,” you said, shutting down any further discussion. I wondered what you meant by that. Did it mean you wouldn’t even bother looking? That you’d just wait for it to reappear? That you would wait until you or me or one of the kids stumbled across it?

I wanted to tell you that we could go buy you a new one, but I was afraid you would say no. You would say no because you would say that you would find the old ring. But I wouldn’t be able to believe that. Instead, I would wonder if you simply didn’t want another one because you were going to get rid of the old one anyway. I wondered if you’d be afraid I’d interpret you getting a new ring as some kind of act of faith or confidence in us, when, really, you had none. 

And so I said nothing instead. I simply stood in that kitchen you once loved so much, the sunlight illuminating countless flecks of floating dust. 

When I was little, I’d heard that dust was nothing more than old, dead skin cells. I wondered if this dust was your old skin cells, your cells from when you loved this kitchen, from when you loved me. And then I realized it wouldn’t just be yours. It would have to be my old cells, too, and the kids’. The cells of a happy family floating together softly in the sunlight amidst a man who had just lost his job, and his wife who had just lost her wedding ring.

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