Barbara Parker: INITIALS • Cleaver Magazine

Flash by Barbara Parker
INITIALS

E + B equals a heart.

Carved into the curb of the sidewalk across the street where we live, there’s an E and a B with a plus in between. Our initials. I remember when I first saw the letters, in early spring after the last snow melted, staring down at my cheap black leather booties, too old and cold for the weather, and thinking, What a coincidence. I meant to show you, but life took over as it always does. Work, groceries, the children. Before they were born, we used to meet at the back of the Q train in Union Square. I’d spot your red sneakers peeking through the closing doors and I’d jump in. We’d stand the entire ride, my hand holding your hand holding the pole, feet hip distance apart—mine wider than yours, which I resented. Once, I put the left earbud in your ear, the right in mine. We hummed to Al Green while rolling over the bridge, marveling at the city at dusk like newcomers.

Like new lovers.

We rarely walk home together anymore. Twenty years of marriage, over a decade in this Brooklyn neighborhood where our boys were born—a neighborhood of dogs and strollers, not the graffiti of our old haunts. One summer morning, I looked for the initials on my way to the office and they were gone, gone before I could show you, gone before I could show the children where to find us forever. I couldn’t make sense of it, and it saddened me. Like the evening we brought our firstborn home, and I wept opening the fridge packed with premade lasagna. I could still see us, cooking together. You delicately breaking sheets of pasta to fit in the baking pan, me whisking besciamella to smooth out clumps of flour—my free hand on my pregnant hip, ever wider. Occasionally, you’d hold my hips and kiss my swollen, sweaty cheeks. I wept remembering how it felt to be a couple. To be in love with just you.

Days went by, weeks.

I forgot about our initials. Their disappearance no longer held meaning. Then one day, a late October afternoon, as I ran to pick up the boys from school because you couldn’t, frazzled, late like every day, my calves stinging from the sudden chill and aching from the unexpected use, I turned my head toward the lilac sky, then to the red streetlight, the cars, the curb. And there they were, our initials, clear as the first time I saw them. It was just dirt, I realized, accumulating in the concrete grooves. Dust and debris from traffic, people walking, crushed leaves and trash swept by the wind. It must have been a Tuesday, the street-cleaning truck coming by in the morning while we were rushing to our computers. E and B weren’t gone, only faded.

Now when I walk by our initials and I can’t see them, I look for a clue—the curve of the heart, the cross of the plus—and I know. We’re still here. You wipe the letters clean with your red sneakers. I smile at you and I tell you not to worry. By Tuesday, E plus B will equal heart again.

Barbara Tutino Parker was born and raised in Rome, Italy. Her short stories have been published in Italian literary anthologies, including Premio Letterario Giovane Holden and Bukowski. Inediti di Ordinaria Follia. Her novella “The Dredge” has appeared in Last Syllable. Her short story “The Stall” was a runner-up for the Spring 2025 Contest Issue of phoebe. She lives in Brooklyn, with her husband, E, and two boys.