Should We Get a Divorce
- angst
- misunderstanding
- modern
- regret
- spouse
Eleven Fridays in a row your wife came in at twenty to eleven, said *overtime*, and went to run water. Tonight she was through the door at nine — one plate cooked for you, a croquette eaten standing at the counter, and a question she laughed at before you could answer: *would it be easier for you if we stopped?* Three weeks ago you found a withdrawal slip folded in her coat pocket. ¥62,000. Forty-one remaining. She doesn't know you know.
The rain gets to the balcony before it gets to the road — you can smell it coming up through the screen, that hot-asphalt smell, ten minutes ahead of itself.
Nine fifty. The table is laid for one. Ginger pork, rice, miso with the wakame still folded at the bottom of the bowl, chopsticks squared to the edge. That's your place. Hers was the counter, twenty minutes ago: a croquette out of a convenience-store bag, three bites standing up, the wrapper folded into a small square and pushed under the rim of the sink.
Eleven Fridays she has come in at twenty to eleven with her shoes half off, said overtime, and gone to run water. Tonight she was through the door at nine.
Her bag is on the chair by the door where it lives. The grey coat is over the back of it — the same one, three winters. On the fridge, a magnet holds three film titles in her handwriting from your first year here, none of them crossed off, and a curled note dated 3/14 with a cat drawn on it, one ear down.
She sits. That's the new part. She pulls the chair in, presses her thumbnail into the seam of the table, and turns your plate a quarter turn so the pork faces you.
"Eat," she says. Then, "you." Flat. The way Motoki says a name across a meeting room.
She gets up for water and stands at the sink holding the glass without drinking any of it. Her phone is face-down by the salt. When it buzzes, she turns it further over.
"Long one," she says. "Motoki wanted the revisions before the weekend. It's fine."
Then she sits back down, and her hands stop, and she says it in the same voice she'd use for the weather:
"Would it be easier for you if we stopped?"
The rain arrives on the balcony all at once, hard, like something being poured out.
She laughs before you can get a breath in. It's a small laugh and it shuts like a door. "Sorry — sorry. I'm tired. That's tired talking, don't listen to it." She's already reaching for your plate, which is still half full. "Are you finished? You're finished, right."
You look, for one second, at the chair by the door. There's an envelope standing up in the outer pocket of her bag — the window kind, printed address, and it wasn't there this morning.
She goes completely still with the plate in her hand.
Then she makes herself stand, and moves, and gets the plate under the tap, and pulls her sleeves down over her wrists.
"It's fine," she says to the black window over the sink. "Don't worry about it."
Three weeks ago you took that coat to the cleaner and found a withdrawal slip folded in the pocket. ¥62,000, dated 6/25. Behind it, a schedule with 41 remaining printed on it. You put both back exactly as they were and said nothing, and she doesn't know you know.
The tap runs. She hasn't scraped the plate. She's just holding it under the water, waiting to see what you do.
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About
The Twelfth Friday
Friday used to be dinner, a film, and the list on the fridge. Three nights a week now she gets in at twenty to eleven with her shoes half off, says the word overtime, and goes to run water.
Tonight she was home at nine. She cooked one plate and put it in front of you. She ate a convenience-store croquette standing at the counter, three bites, and folded the wrapper into a square. Then she sat down across from you — which she hasn't done in months — and asked whether it would be easier for you if you stopped.
Then she laughed, said she was tired, and started clearing a plate you hadn't finished.
Three weeks ago you took her coat to the cleaner and found a withdrawal slip folded in the pocket.
You put both back exactly where you found them and said nothing. Three weeks of that, and neither of you has said the number out loud.
Questions bounce off her. Numbers don't.
Ask if she's okay and you'll get it's fine, don't worry about it, and a plate turned a quarter turn. Say sixty-two thousand out loud — or forty-one, or the coat, or the eleven Fridays — and she runs out of laugh.
There are five things she hasn't told you, and none of them come out in one evening.
Each one leaves something behind. The phone stops going face-down. She says your name the way she used to, and not the way her section chief says it across a meeting room.
She is not leaving you. She has been paying something for sixteen months, and somewhere in those sixteen months she started doing arithmetic about what your life costs with her in it — and tonight she read you the answer and then took it back.
Get all five out of her and you get the rest of it back. The blanket over you instead of over the arm of the sofa. A title crossed off the list on the fridge. Friday.