"Here is Ray's comb — a small black plastic comb — I have glimpsed amid his things, sometimes. When we've traveled together — staying in a single hotel room — a kind of intimacy more marked than the intimacy of daily life, which has acquired its own subtle protocol; at such times, I would see my husband's toiletries kit and in it such articles as toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant etc. But also nail clippers, after-shave cologne, prescription pills. It would seem to me touching, it would provoke a smile, that a man, any man, should take such care to groom himself, as women take such care.
"That a man, any man, should groom himself to be attractive, loved — this seems wonderful to me.
"That a man, any man, should seem in this way to require another, a woman, to be attracted to him, and to love him — what a mystery this is! For to a woman, the quintessential male is unknowable, elusive.
"Even the domestic male, the husband — always there is something unknowable and elusive in him. As in Ray's life, or perhaps in Ray's personality, there has always been, for all our intimacy of forty-eight years — for the record, forty-eight years, twenty-five days of our marriage — a hidden chamber, a region to which he might retreat, to which I don't have access.
"Now, Ray has retreated to a place where I can't follow. Just behind his shut eyes.
"These toiletry things — that they were his, but are now no longer his, seems to me very strange.
"Now, they are belongings.
"Your husband's belongings.
"One of the reasons that I am moving slowly — perhaps it has nothing to do with being struck on the head by a sledgehammer — is that, with these belongings, I have nowhere to go except home. This home — without my husband — is not possible for me to consider."
