“Would that have made it better?” she cried. “If we were staring at each other the whole time? Jesus Christ, Henry, I saw you. You were all over her, and you were doing it—you were doing it with her right in front of me.”

“No,” he shouted. “Not like you. We were fooling around—”

“So were we, Henry.”

“No—no, you weren’t. Don’t tell me that’s all it was.” He’d found his voice, and it felt good to shout. The words poured out of him. “What I did, it didn’t mean anything, but you—that was something else. I was looking at you the whole time, Effie. You wanted him, you were begging for him, I could see it. You made yourself his little whore. I’ve never seen you that way before. You’ve never been that way with me—never—that, I can tell you. You wanted him, you liked it, don’t tell me you didn’t.”

Tears streamed down her face. “God, Henry,” she wailed, “how can you talk to me like that? You’re rotten. Do you know that? You’re a rotten son of a bitch.” She started out of the kitchen, and when he went to grab her she jerked with surprising strength away from him. “Don’t touch me, you bastard.”

He followed her back into the living room. “Tell me you didn’t want him, Effie. Tell me you didn’t like it.”

“Get away from me.”

She started up the stairs, and he followed. “You wanted him all along, didn’t you? This whole time. You laughed at all his fucking jokes. You were dying for him.”

At the second-floor landing she turned and shouted, “Get away from me, Henry!” and ran the last flight up to the attic room. He ran after her and caught the heavy glass door just as she was sliding it shut and shoved it open, so hard he thought the panes would shatter. She backed away from him, sobbing. “Get away, Henry, get away from me.”

Behind her the attic room lay bathed in midafternoon light, and there was the bare mattress where they’d shared their first two weeks of marriage. She stood before it now, arms slack at her sides, and the way she cried made his heart ache for her. He wished he could go to her and hold her. “Do you love him?” he asked.

“What?”

“Do you love him, Effie?”

“No,” she cried. “God, Henry.”

“But last night, when you were with him…”

“I don’t love him,” she cried, “for Christ’s sake.” She held her hands out as if in supplication. “What do you want me to say? I wanted him—okay? I’m a human being. I thought about him. I wondered—I wondered what it would be like if…” She held her hands up, and then dropped them, as if words had failed her.