That sent Dave into a little raging fit. He stomped around the living room, punching the upholstered furniture with his fist. “That’s exactly what I mean!” he yelled at Sally in a high-pitched, angry voice. “I’m trying to tell you how I feel, I’m talking about my feelings, and all you want to know is ‘What kind of snake?’”

It was all so fast and unexpected, Sally couldn’t think or feel anything. Each breath she took seemed to leave a little empty space at the bottom of her lungs that she couldn’t quite fill. She just sat there and said over and over, “Dave, Dave.”

Finally Dave sat down on a side chair against the wall and without looking at Sally told the story of how he had been drinking a cup of coffee at the Java Hut when a young man walked by with a huge snake draped around his shoulders. The snake was so long he had to make two loops, and so heavy that you could see a droop in the young man, and a lag in his step. Then Dave started to cry. The thought had come to him all at once, he said, out of the blue: “That’s exactly how I feel in my marriage.”

All Sally could think of was the other times she had seen that same look of ragged desperation in Dave’s eyes, and how she might comfort him. But when she reached out to him, he shrank back, and they just sat for a minute, staring at each other, miserable and helpless.

“I need time,” Dave said. “I just need to be by myself, to think things out. We’ll decide what to do after the holidays.”

Sally’s sister, Alice, met her at the door wearing a google-eyed, red-nosed reindeer sweater with her arms full of a bundle of blinking white lights. Through all the twinkling Sally could see the picturesque clutter of the beginnings of Christmas in the background: tissue-paper-lined boxes, heaps of greenery and red berries, Santa Claus, a gingerbread house, three papier-mâché wise men, and a hand-carved camel tipped over on its side. In the middle of it all her niece Lauren was lounging gracefully in a nest of bride magazines, staring with alarm at Sally, her eyes wide and her jaw dropped open, just like a nutcracker.

“Sally?” said Alice. “It’s eleven thirty at night!”

“Let me in,” said Sally. “Dave wants a divorce.” And the next thing she knew she was drinking hot cider out of a Santa Claus mug and Alice was firing questions at her.

“Did you…? Were there…? How long…?”

“No,” said Sally, “no, no.”

“Did you have a fight? Was there someone else?”

“No, no.”

“Was there abuse—verbal abuse? Sally, did he hit you?”

“No,” said Sally, “he only hit the sofa.”