Still: my parents, I always thought, loved each other as much as they were supposed to. No, that’s not right—for a long time I simply never thought about it at all. I assumed they loved each other because that’s what parents did. Mommy loves Daddy. Daddy loves Mommy. That’s how you got here, you know. (It is, more than likely, not.) Whatever silence, whatever argument, whatever smooth white china dishes thrown methodically down the staircase, one by one, spraying thick shards like arrows into the carpet, whatever standing and watching with folded hands, whatever curses—I figured that must be simply how it goes with Mommies, simply the nature of Daddies.

Except no, that’s still not true, because I must have known something was wrong. I was only twelve when I entered the kitchen on a calm morning, looked at my mother drinking coffee at the table, my father washing dishes at the sink, and informed them that since I was almost a teenager now it would be perfectly all right for them to get divorced. I wouldn’t be traumatized, I said. I understood these things. I didn’t want to hold them back. They laughed at me, but less than a year later they separated, as if my permission had meant something to them after all. I do not remember feeling any kind of awe at myself, or any amount of pride. I felt only relief, a cooling sensation in my extremities.

Desire is the root of all suffering. I moved stiffly through my tasks that afternoon in the garden, willing myself to say nothing, to ignore Luke’s face and that milky elbow crook.

“What’s up with you?” he said.

I was plucking steadily at the basil plant, its supply of leaves apparently endless. He poked me in the ribs, and all of my nerve endings turned toward that spot. “Ow,” I said. There’s no explaining some things, like the smell of basil, or what happens between people.

“You look like someone died,” he said.

“People are dying all the time.”

“Well then,” he said, laughing, “you may as well be nice to me.”

“I’m being nice,” I said. He poked me again, and I held my hand over the spot.

“Tell me a story,” he said. There was a slight whine in his voice that surprised me. We had spent so many hours in the garden in silence; it had never bothered him before. It was as if someone had given him a tip that I was going to try not to love him, and he had decided that he’d really rather I did. He tilted his head, exquisite. He squinted at me, exquisite. He scratched at his beard, exquisite. Disappointing Luke was the root of all suffering. So I told him a story. That is, I told him all the usual stories a girl tells a man about herself, and also more. Binges, etc.