This Is Where I Leave You

your consciousness even as you kiss, lick, and fondle each other. So even as Jen panted in my ear and rocked her hips beneath me, some part of her brain would be consumed with the basement light bulb she’d been asking me to change for going on a week now, or how I never managed to fully close my dresser drawers in the morning, which didn’t bother me but somehow threatened the delicate balance of her entire universe, or how I considered a cereal bowl washed even if all I did was rinse it with hot water and leave it in the sink, or how I never remembered to give her phone messages from friends who had called while she was out. And as I slid into Jen and felt her long smooth thighs clamp down on my hips, I might be thinking that she’d been a little bitchy tonight, that she had a tendency, at times, to react with a disproportionate amount of bitchiness, which only served to exacerbate things, digging whatever marital hole we were standing in a little deeper. Or maybe I’d be thinking about the latest American Express bill, how Jen had once again exceeded our budget by over a thousand dollars, and how I knew, if confronted, she’d have a rationale for every single line on the statement and then assure me that there had been returns made, that significant credits would appear on the next statement. I already knew from experience that these phantom 134credits would never materialize, or, if they did, Jen would use them to justify the next bill as well, effectively applying a single month’s credit to two bills. When it came to profligate spending, Jen was a demon accountant, bending the laws of mathematics to her will. And even as she shuddered through her orgasm, Jen might have been thinking about how I couldn’t, for the life of me, get my underwear from my body to the hamper without a stopover on the bedroom floor, or how I wasn’t as warm as I should have been when her mother called, and maybe, as I came (after her - let the record show), I would probably be thinking about how much goddamn time she spent on the phone with her mother and girlfriends every night, or the way she spit large chunks of toothpaste out into the sink and left them there to harden into little winter fresh slugs that had to be scraped off the porcelain. She couldn’t handle a slightly opened dresser drawer, but a sink full of crusty, expectorated toothpaste was apparently not an issue.
    None of this was very serious, obviously, just the minor aches and pains of a living marriage. And every so often we’d get into a fight over something larger, and we’d scream and vent all of our gripes, tears would fall, hurts would be validated, and sex would get good again for a while, passionate and intense, and then the cycle would repeat. So we lay there fucking through our resentment, our thoughts wandering as we rubbed mechanically against each other - for warmth, or intimacy, or maybe just base gratification, our minds a frenzy of disconnected thoughts and festering gripes, each of us too distracted to realize that the other was equally self-absorbed. And there was no hazy afterglow when we were finished, no lingering in each other’s arms as the sweat slowly dried on our skin; just peeing, washing, and the donning of sleepwear, and then the warm, numbing glow of the television.

Chapter 20
    10:12 a.m.
    So, you’re going to be a father,” Jen says gingerly.
    “How is that even possible?”
    We are standing on the patio in the backyard, overlooking the pool, which is brimming from yesterday’s rain. Today the skies are clear, and the August sun is burning through what’s left of the morning fog.
    “I’m almost three months. Think about it.”
    “You can’t possibly know that it’s mine.”
    “Yes, I can. Trust me.”
    “Trust is not my first impulse when it comes to you.”
    “It’s your baby, Judd.”
    “Bullshit.”
    “It is.”
    “You can keep saying that, and I can keep saying ‘bullshit,’ or you can say something else.”
    She looks at me for a long moment and then shakes her head, giving in. “It turns out, Wade is sterile.”
    The sound of my laughter surprises me. There is nothing remotely funny about the wife who betrayed me, the wife who is no longer mine, with whom I have already buried one baby, telling me, after our marriage has been ruined, that she is carrying our baby. There are very serious, life-altering implications hovering in the air between us. But right 136at this moment, all I can think about is