On the street one day, the woman runs into an editor she used to know, years ago. “The thing is this: Even if the husband leaves her in this awful craven way, she will still have to count it as a miracle, all of those happy years she spent with him.” The woman has reason to cherish what she’s cherished. But there is no kill switch for love, and treacherous behavior does not obliterate all that came before. It’s as if the skin has been torn, strip by strip, from his wife’s body. The man gets involved with a pretty young creature at work. It is also banal, a mortifying cliche of middle age. So when the betrayal comes, it is horrific, enraging. Offill has tapped a vein directly into the experience of this marriage, this little family, this subsuming of self, and we mainline it right along with her. If she would lie quietly with me, if I could bury my face in her hair, yes, then yes, uncle.” Listen: “I would give it up for her, everything, the hours alone, the radiant book, the postage stamp in my likeness, but only if she would consent to lie quietly with me until she is eighteen. For such precious entities, great sacrifices are made. It’s disgusting, of course, and proof of exhaustion, but also proof of the golden trio they’ve become. Just before teaching her writing class, the woman finds vomit in her hair.
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