Trouble by Kate Christensen Page A

even begin. I had helped and guided so many clients through moments just like this one. In fact, I thought of myself as an advocate for and expert in how to leave your partner, a sort of breakup maven. But this expertise was couched in the context of my being a happily married therapist. Like the frog in a pot of tap water on the stove, I had thought things were still room temperature between Anthony and me even as I was being cooked alive.
    I imagined returning from my office to some quiet new apartment, shedding my work clothes, rummaging through the fridge, all alone. Wendy was somewhere in the background in this fantasy; it didn’t exclude her, but the point of it was that Anthony was nowhere to be found in it.
    “I have to hop out of the pot,” I said absurdly.
    “Ha-ha,” he said automatically, not listening.
    “I mean it, Anthony,” I said.
    “Mean what, my love,” he said. This wasn’t a question; it was a soothing pat on the head, meant to appease me while he stayed happily submerged.
    “I mean I want a separation,” I said.
    He looked sharply at me.
    “I want a separation,” I said. “From you. From our marriage.”
    He put his fork down on his plate and coughed. He continued to stare at me, blinking.
    “You heard me right,” I said.
    It was out; I had said it. I had broken the hymen of this virgin topic, and now everything would take its own natural course from here. I took another gulp of wine. I watched Anthony’s face as he absorbed what I had said and formulated his response to it. I knew his expressions so well, knew his very thoughts, even. This conversation might as well have already been scripted, I thought, for all the surprises I’m going to find in it.
    “I have to ask the obvious question,” said Anthony. He blinked, took a sharp breath. “Have you met someone else?”
    “There is no other man involved here,” I said, and then I waited for his next question.
    “Are you sure about this?”
    “I am absolutely sure,” I responded promptly, right on cue.
    “Is there anything I can say to change your mind?”
    “No,” I said. “There isn’t. I want to move out. We can talk about what to do about Wendy. In the immediate future, I want to find myself a place. You can have this apartment; it was yours to begin with.”
    He took off his reading glasses and set them down next to his book. A fugitive vapor of old, old passion crossed his face like a tissue-thin wisp of cloud being blown across a clear sky by a rogue wind. The planes of his face contracted slightly with the impact of its passing, and then it was gone, as quickly as it had appeared.
    “Yes,” he said. “The apartment was mine to begin with. And you’re much more adaptable than I am to new places. I’ll help you in any way I can, of course. But I suppose you’ve figured it all out already, down to the last stick of furniture.” He gave me a sad smile. “I always loved that expression, ‘stick of furniture.’ So Victorian.”
    I began to cry, racking heaving sobs that made me gasp and hiccup. I cried and cried. He sat with me while I wept, didn’t say a word or move to comfort me, as if he had already realized that all our sorrows and joys would now be experienced apart rather than together.
    “You’re not even going to fight for me,” I yelled through streams of mucus, my mouth contorting with weeping so absurdly I could hardly get the words out. “You’re just going to let me go.”
    “Here,” he said, handing me a Kleenex.
    I blew my nose, but I could not stop crying.
    “Josie,” he said. “I think you’re being a little ridiculous, but I know better than to try to talk you out of something you want to do.”
    “I would hardly use the word want,” I said hotly. “ Need , maybe. You never even look at me anymore. We haven’t had sex since last spring, and that was just because I got drunk and threw myself at you. You don’t see me. I feel like a ghost to you, like I’m dead. Like we both