The Object Of
We stared at a worn stuffed animal on a pedestal. The creature—it was no discernible animal—was green, stark against the white of the wall. Its eyes bulged, lidless, and it had pointed felt teeth. This stuffed animal, according to the plaque on the wall, was won at a claw game inside a bowling alley in Columbus, Ohio during the final minutes of a first date. The creature had made its way here to a museum in Mexico City, an anonymous memory among a host of others.
The plaque read: This toy, once a symbol of love, represents how monstrous our relationship turned out to be. But I cannot divorce it from who we were, the kindness he once showed me. I leave it here as both a memory and a lesson.
“It’s so sad,” she said, her hand in mine.
“Who goes bowling on a first date?” I said.
The museum was called Museo del Objeto del Objeto. The direct translation: Museum of the Object of the Object. A three-story, aged building surrounded by upscale restaurants on a corner in Roma Norte. Found on Google Maps, it sounded like a lark, a way to kill thirty minutes before dinner.
Without context, the exhibit looked like a bunch of items (or, less charitably, junk) displayed with no connective tissue or visual symmetry. Except each item was paired with a description in both Spanish and English, written by the item’s donator. And the exhibit had a name: The Museum of Broken Relationships.
We shuffled to the right and stopped in front of an abandoned wedding ring.
I was aware of her hand in mine, a sensation that had long become unconscious. It was like the first time our fingers had linked, walking back from dinner on our third date.
I squeezed her hand. This isn’t us, I tried to send.
She squeezed back, absentminded, focused on reading.
We moved from item to item, silent. A love note torn in two. Two Betty Boops: one enamel, one plush. The frayed collar of a cat that had been named after a former lover. A single high-heeled shoe. A bracelet, a locket, a toothbrush, a vase.
This was the first thing he-
The last time I saw her I-
Even forty years later this-
In many of the write-ups, the language was simple. Blunt. Others sounded like poetry. Some looked back at a first love from a secured, happy future and showed grace. A handful, in that frozen moment of writing, swore they’d never love again.
Some items felt, even given the context, too personal. Goodbye notes from dying parents, graphic love letters with a signature on the bottom, medical apparatus once attached to flesh. What drove them to donate these things? Exhibitionism? Therapy? Revenge?
“I like that one,” she said. “Although maybe ‘like’ isn’t the right word.”
“Which one?”
“The cancer one.” She pointed to a red wig, the color bordering on unnatural.
“I like that one too.”
A man, alone at the exhibit, peeked at our conjoined hands.
The text began to blur. It did not matter how real the love felt, how long the marriage lasted. One message, repeated: Everything ends.
Our relationship, my first, had gone unquestioned so far. Two years in, I hadn’t looked closely at the details of our love, hadn’t thought past the immediate comfort it brought. I’d never imagined her smile on our wedding day; didn’t wonder what resentments, their roots visible now in our minor spats, might arise in five, ten, fifty years; had never questioned how she’d handle a sick child or depleting bank account. But in that moment, I began imagining a new first: a first break-up. Or not a break-up—that still felt too distant, too out-of-reach—but what came after. Mourning. I was daydreaming what trinket or gift I’d leave here, in the museum.
I could give the handwritten note from our first anniversary, written on oversized paper. Or the shirt she gifted me, a size too large, which I’d felt too guilty to return. Maybe the plane ticket for this trip, printed at the airport terminal, our first big vacation together. It was all perfect until… I wondered if I’d be glib, bitter or indifferent in my written statement, if what I wrote would match how I felt.
In that moment, I loved her so much. But the idea of loving her forever? It seemed impossible.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“We’re barely halfway through the exhibit,” she said, confused, looking away from a lactation pump to stare up at me.
“Let’s walk in the park. It’s beautiful outside,” I said, trying to divert her focus like a parent hoping to spare their child the sight of roadkill.
“A few more.”
“Please.”
She frowned, then nodded. We left hand-in-hand.
Outside, back in the sun, my doubts faded. We were not like those people, sad and broken. We could, would, last.
Then our hands separated—she’d pulled her hand from mine. She’d said something, but I’d missed it, lost in thought. I turned toward her.
She was frowning. Not the earlier frown of surprise, but an expression less pronounced but deeper felt. I wondered, watching her, trying to read her mood in the contours of her face, if we were standing at the beginning or the end of something.
Nick Kunze was a Creative Writing major at UCLA. He has had fiction published in the Angel City Review. He currently resides in Los Angeles.