The Book

Detail from Alexandre-Louis-Marie Charpentier, Young Woman Reading, (1896). The Cleveland Museum of Art.

“Dear Ms. Summerfield—We regret to inform you that your husband does not love you anymore. Your marriage is over, effective immediately.”

There was more—a lot more—but it was too much to take in all at once so I called Amber instead. 

“Are you sure?” she said, chewing something on the other end of the phone. 

I read over the paragraph again. “That’s what it says.”

“What else does it say?” It sounded like almonds or something, some kind of nut.

“I don’t know. A lot.” I flipped through the pages. There were hundreds of them, it seemed, and it wasn’t just words either, but drawings and diagrams too. 

“Well, you have to go get him,” she said definitively. I heard her dusting off her hands. 

“Now?”

“Yes, now! Of course, now! Go, go!” She yelled like a coach then hung up. 

So I went. I grabbed my keys and ran out to the car. I was still in my pajamas—yoga pants and a floppy sweatshirt from a thrift store—but Amber had yelled to “Go! Now!” so I did. As I backed out of the driveway, I noticed some of his stuff in the yard, a trail of things that started at our side door then kind of wended away, as if trying to decide which direction or whether to go. I knew it was his stuff because all the errant socks had holes in them (I could tell even from the car) and there was random shit like old keychains and bottles of carpenter’s glue. The trail turned onto Woodstock then went up 82nd for a while, eventually going onto the freeway—surfboard wax and chisels and books on history and ecology and some pens and a couple of shoes. I followed the trail for a good forty-five minutes—which felt like a lifetime—but after a while it started to trickle and peter out, then it dried up completely. There was nowhere else to go so I just went home. 

When I got there, the cat was slumped against the book—bound like you might get done at Kinko’s—sort of patiently and steadily cleaning herself, licking her chin and paws. 

“Everything, eventually, must come to an end,” the preface said. “Painful as it is to admit and to know, lakes dry and cliffs erode and love, too, changes and slips away. You should be thankful for the time that you shared. Be grateful for the memories and, if bitterness arises, let it go.”

But bitterness did arise, quickly. I took a shower and ate a piece of toast and looked around and blinked real slow, then said, “What the fuck?” I stood as if he were right there in the room. “You can’t just fucking end it. We made a promise. You can’t just leave.”

I glanced down. “Yes, he can,” the preface said, “is the answer to a statement like ‘You can’t just fucking end it’ or ‘You can’t just leave.’ It may take some time to accept, but he can—and did—just leave.”

“Of course, you’re angry,” Amber said when I called her again. This time I heard what sounded like a chip bag, the crunching of chips. She’s always going somewhere, working or picking up her kid or taking care of shit, so she