Humiliated, I set the phone in its cradle and put the cap back on the pen with which I’d been doodling. Looking down at the back of the envelope, I saw the damage. I’d covered it with squiggles, blotting out a phone number Kate had written down and retracing a name I didn’t know—someone Brody.

That night, after a war was fought to get both boys in bed, I knew what was coming. In bed with the lights out, Kate turned on her side, faced me, and attempted to discuss certain pressing budgetary matters. “How can we cut back, spend less? How are we going to survive another year on your salary?” She said it innocently enough, but her question cut. I said, “Oh, please, honey. Not now. Not after tonight with the boys, not after the Bea Myerly of it all.” Kate: “I’m worried.” Me: “But we have more stuff than ninety-eight percent of the world’s population. Do you know how far my salary could take us in Kenya or Mozambique?”

I’d used this tactic before, but always with different countries. Kate usually countered, “Tim, we don’t live in those places.” And I’d say, “Yes, and we should be grateful,” even though, I don’t know, maybe those countries are the most magnificent places in the world to live. Maybe we’d be ecstatically happy walking among the naked peoples of wherever people are naked. Maybe we should be terribly sad and wake up weeping that not only did we not live in these places, we had never seen these places. If presented with this argument, Kate would sigh, “You’re impossible,” and I’d almost say, “Maybe we should move,” knowing full well that Kate didn’t want to move. She loved the Heights. She loved its panoramic view of lower Manhattan, its bucolic-looking streets with sweet idyllic-sounding names—Cranberry Street, Pineapple Street, Orange and Willow, Grace Court, Love Lane, Sydney Place, Garden Place, Willow Place—and most especially, that street of streets, our street, Oak Lane, that lone leafy block of dreamy childhoods and a favorite of Christmas carolers: The old brick fronts with the bluestone sidewalks and the original cobblestone paving gave a group of carolers the acoustic equivalent of Carnegie Hall. The sound, the bounce! Five singers felt like fifty. Bottom line: Kate didn’t want to move, and it would be unfair of me to threaten it. Moving for Kate was equivalent to the abuse of children, for as a child, she had moved often, sometimes monthly, at least once a year.

Because Kate had heard my Mozambique argument before, I was disappointed when she provided no valid counterattack. Instead, she grew quiet and said, sniffling, “I was just trying to think of a way to make it easier for you, a way to relieve some of the pressure.”

“There’s no pressure,” I said, lying. Kate covered her available ear with a pillow. Regrettably, I snapped, “Well, if you’re so worried about money, maybe you should get a job.”

That was when she let the pillow fall away. “It’s funny you’d say that, because Bruno called. He wants to have lunch.”