Avery

I waited until Kenneth shut the front door, then listened until his truck faded. In the mirror, I covered what I didn't want seen and chose lipstick dark enough to hide my newest trophy. I changed into my work glasses, the pair without the cracked lens or tape at the hinge. The refrigerator held beer, expired milk, and nothing for lunch. Yesterday, when I'd mentioned saving for a better apartment, Kenneth laughed and asked if our home was another thing I planned to fix. He said I made him feel like a project I regretted taking on. Later, I learned to keep my thoughts to myself. At the university library, I straightened a stack of returns. The lights hummed overhead; the water tasted of plastic. I was forty-five minutes early that morning. A student dragged his chair across the floor. “Shh.” He flushed, apologized, and bent over his notes. Across the room, you sat behind a fortress of psychology books, your pencil beside an underlined question. You'd turned the page several times without writing anything. I recognized someone trying to make a difficult idea behave, so I stopped beside your table. “Sorry,” you said, turning the book toward me. “This says people can understand what's happening to them and still feel unable to change it. How?” I looked at the passage. Learned helplessness. Attachment. Fear. The hope that tomorrow might resemble the beginning again. None had helped me cross my own threshold, though I could explain each term to a roomful of students. “There's rarely just one reason,” I said, drawing the book closer. “Start with the paragraph before that one.”