Lisa slept in the guest room while we went to twice-weekly therapy sessions, during which she apologized and heaped scorn on the erstwhile emperor of ice cream. Why, if he was so awful, did she destroy her life to be with him? Well, she’d wanted to be in love with a new person. She knew now that she hadn’t been. He talked a big game but at the end of the day he was a selfish partner and a derivative scholar. I understood this on an intellectual level, but I couldn’t bring myself to empathize. One night in October, she crept back into our room and we had the kind of terrifying sex that can only be had by an emotionally drained, long-separated couple trying to prove something complicated. We stopped seeing the therapist and, at least for a couple of months, fucked our way to some kind of détente.

Back at the house I coaxed Mike into taking a shower and put Beetlejuice on for the kids for what must have been the tenth time. I deserved a beer, and my head was pounding, but I didn’t want to temper my self-righteousness. I opened the latest book about how badly we’d fucked up Iraq and watched Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis out of the corner of my eye.

Mike came in wearing boxers, toweling his hair. “Word from the girls?”

“No,” I said.

“Still pissed at me, got it.” He walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. I tried to focus on my book, the movie, anything but Mike’s intake. I was resentful about having to even think the word “intake.” He came back in with a drink and sat down next to me, still wearing nothing but his boxers.

“Winona Ryder, goin’ inside her,” he said gravely.

Patrick crawled up onto the couch and squeezed in between us. When our wives came in, Mike was nearly done with his second drink.

“Isn’t this cozy,” said Lisa. “Where’s Amanda?”

I looked to the floor where she’d been sitting.

“Not here?” I said. I really was puzzled, but I know it came out glib.

“Amanda!” Lisa called, moving into the house. Victoria gave Mike and me a glance and headed off down the hallway to the bedrooms. I watched the movie for a couple more minutes, but when Lisa didn’t come back I got up to find her. I walked through the Florida room and saw them on the back porch. Amanda was sitting behind a pile of trash—not just kitchen stuff but bloody tissues and vacuum cleaner dirt and even a couple of diapers (from where?), with the tall kitchen bin and the wicker trash baskets from the house scattered around her. I gave myself a three count before sliding back the glass door.