Severance

Whenever Ellen gets upset, she washes dishes. But when I told her I wanted a divorce, there were no dirty dishes to wash. So she drew the water hot, opened the cabinet and started pulling clean ones into the sink. After a minute or so I spoke.

“We have a dishwasher for that,” I said.

She looked up at me. “Do you masturbate? Because you have a wife for that,” she said, and I walked to our bedroom and packed an overnight bag and got in my car and drove straight to Art’s. And we made hard love on his green plaid couch and meatless spaghetti in his tiny kitchen.

She called me the next morning. “I once hit a duck,” she said. “In my car. I hit a duck once and pulled over and got out. And then I saw the line of little baby ducks that were following her circle around and start babbling to each other. It was their mother I had hit,” she said, starting to cry.

“I’m so sorry,” I told her and we sat on the line for a minute.

Finally she stopped sniffing and breathed out slowly into the phone’s mouth so that it sounded like an angry wind was on the other end.

“Do you think those babies survived?” she asked. And I almost corrected her—’Ducklings’ I almost said, but I caught myself.

“Probably.”

Then she started crying again. “That’s not the right answer,” she said and hung up abruptly. We had been married for three years. We had just turned twenty-four.

And Art was forty-eight.

He walked into the den after Ellen had ended our conversation.

He placed the hot tea on a coaster next to me, picked up my hands and kissed each of my fingertips delicately, like a mother.

He knew exactly what to say, which was nothing.