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confused.”
    I feel that leg-buckling feeling again. “ Confused? ” I say. “Confused about what ? About your feelings for her? About us?” The tears start to come again. I blink them back.
    He puts his hands behind his head and looks up at the ceiling. “It’s not about her. To be honest, it’s not even really about you. It’s about me. I’ve started to worry that you and I want different things,” he says, standing. “You know, we’ve been talking about having kids for so long and I know how badly you want that, and I know we can’t keep talking about it forever. I keep waiting to feel the same way—I should feel the same way—but I don’t. You know, I’m finally where I want to be career-wise, after all of the years of training, and we have the house, and it won’t be much longer until our med school loans will be paid off. I should be ready but I’m not. And I don’t know what to do with the fact that I don’t want the same things as my wife. I wish it were simpler but things have changed, and I can’t keep ignoring the way that I feel.”
    I suppose that it should be a comfort to know that it’s not her that he wants but it’s not. “It’s so like you to make this all about you ,” I say. “Do you realize how selfish you sound? So what, do you expect me to wait around while you figure out what you want, never mind our vows, never mind our marriage?”
    “Daphne, I wouldn’t blame you if you left, not after what I did.”
    I shake my head at him. “You should have talked to me,” I say. “I don’t care how confused you are, Owen, it never should have come to this. It’s so cowardly, what you did.”
    He nods. “I realize how bad this is—the worst thing, really.”
    “That doesn’t make me feel better.”
    “It kills me, knowing how much I’ve hurt you.”
    “That doesn’t help, either.”
    He takes a step toward me. “Don’t,” I say, raising my hands.
    He stops.
    “I don’t know where we go from here,” I say.
    “I simply need time,” he says. “I need a break, some time away from us to think.”
    “A break?” I say, wiping my cheeks. “We’re not fifteen, Owen, we’re married. You want a break ?”
    He nods and turns away from me. He could never stand to see me cry. “I’m so sorry.”
    “And how am I supposed to explain this to people? To my family?” We both come from long lines of together-forever Catholics. His parents have been married for forty years. Mine for thirty-nine. We are not the kind of people who take breaks .
    “You should tell them whatever you think is best,” he says. “I’ll deal with my parents.”
    And your mother will probably send you a big care package to nurse you through it , I think. Joanne is a seventh-grade math teacher whose wardrobe consists largely of dorky “math humor” T-shirts that say things like “There is a fine line between numerator and denominator.” I’ve never seen her angry or upset (which is saying something, given Owen’s father), and she’s an excellent mother-in-law—I’d like her even if I didn’t have to—but she’s always coddled Owen, who is an only child. It hasn’t always made him the easiest person to live with—obviously, especially, now. He wants a break?
      
    We stand there for a few minutes, neither of us sure what to do.
    I want to ask him to change his mind. I want to plead with him, fall to his feet, prostrate myself, beg for my life. Because that’s really what this is about, begging for the life that I thought I had. The image of myself on the ground, the dirty speckled porch, the thought of being eye to eye with the floor—I can’t take myself there. It takes every bit of my will to keep my rubbery legs from collapsing, but I don’t do it. I don’t say another word. What am I supposed to do with this? My husband cheated on me. He wants a break—from me. It’s like he’s described a surgery and I’m the thing that needs to be removed.
    Blue pulls herself off of