Paraphrase

It’s been a year since Erin has gone to work. She barely leaves her apartment, and when she does, it’s for quick errands at most. The apartment itself is a mess, dishes piled in the sink and trash bags on the floor by her bed. She’s haunted by dreams of Gwen, her wife of 14 years, almost every night; around the apartment, she talks to herself out loud. It’s as though she can hear Gwen responding, saying all of the things she most fears Gwen would say to her. In a word, she’s stuck. She can barely take care of herself. Erin isn’t completely alone, however. She has a frequent visitor: Viv, a woman much younger than her. Viv helps Erin out around the house, picks up her medications, brings her food. If Viv weren’t here to help, things would surely be much worse for Erin. But Erin and Viv aren’t exactly friends. It’s only because of Gwen that they know each other at all. Their relationship goes back more than a decade, and for many of those years it was distant or strained. The terms of that relationship are more unstable than ever. If it changed, it’s not clear what it would change into — or whether that change would be good for the two of them at all.