"Don't like it? Divorce me."
My wife said those words while standing in front of our bedroom mirror, fastening a silver earring as though she were reminding me to take out the trash.
The dress she wore was black, the shoes were new, and her phone had been buzzing on the dresser every few minutes for the last half hour. Downstairs, the dinner I had cooked was getting cold. I remember all of that with uncomfortable precision because there are moments when an ordinary evening divides a person's life into before and after.
I was standing in the bedroom doorway with one hand against the frame. I hadn't shouted at her, blocked her path, taken her keys, or demanded that she stay home. I had asked why I was hearing about another night out fifteen minutes before she planned to leave, and why every attempt to discuss what was happening between us had lately ended with her treating me like a nuisance. She had rolled her eyes, turned back to the mirror, and given me an ultimatum she apparently believed could never cost her anything.
"You heard me, Randy," she said. "If you can't handle me having a life, maybe you should divorce me."
For years I had responded to sentences like that by explaining myself again. I would soften my voice, remind her that I loved her, and search for a combination of words that might get us through the evening without making things worse. That night I looked at the woman I had married fourteen years earlier and realized that every new explanation had become another invitation for her to ignore the old ones. Something inside me settled. It wasn't anger, exactly, and it certainly wasn't triumph.
"All right," I said. "I'll file. I've already spoken with an attorney, and I won't threaten you with it or argue about it. If this is the choice you're offering me, I'm taking it."
Her hand stopped halfway to her ear. For the first time all evening she turned completely away from the mirror and looked straight at me. The phone buzzed again, but she didn't reach for it. She stared as if I had answered a question she never intended to ask.
"What did you just say?"
"I said I'll file for divorce," I told her. "Not tonight, and not to punish you. We'll talk about the house and the accounts with help from people who know how to do it fairly. I am finished begging you to take our marriage seriously."
I didn't raise my voice. That seemed to disturb her more than shouting would have. She waited for the next sentence, the one in which I would take everything back and promise that we could work it out if only she would stay. When it never came, she grabbed her purse, walked past me, and headed down the stairs with the sharp, clipped footsteps she used when she wanted everyone within hearing distance to know she was furious.