Nothing Is Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn by Alice Mattison Page A

into the dish, then added dry pellets from the box on the counter. She thought to herself in words, as if she said it to an interviewer, While my marriage was breaking up, I fed a cat.
    As she put the bowl on the counter, she heard herself make a sound—not a sob, not a sigh, something more primitive—a soft, low-pitched wail such as someone might emit before a battle in which people who were dear and well would screamand die. It was a sound for the last moment before the battle, when everyone was still all right and no skin was broken.
    â€œI can’t live with you,” she said.
    â€œI’ve been thinking—” said Jerry.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI know you’ve been thinking this way.”
    Yet she hadn’t known she’d been thinking this way. It wasn’t until she found Joanna that she had known what she’d been wanting to do. Somehow he had known before she did. He continued, “I know you want this. I don’t. I want us to stay the way we are. I thought maybe we should figure out what you could do that would be like these trips. These trips are why I can live with you—not just you, with anybody. I couldn’t live with anybody if I couldn’t do this.”
    Con hadn’t thought about whether she could live with anybody. She couldn’t live with Jerry, with his smooth surface that couldn’t be blemished or even grasped, with his solipsistic happiness.
    â€œYou never let me come on the trips. You let Joanna.”
    â€œShe’s a child.”
    â€œSo what?” she said.
    â€œThere are things you can share with a child and still keep to yourself.”
    Again, he sounded firm and confident. This was all he had to offer: the suggestion that Con take trips—or something—of her own. From here on, it would be up to her to end this marriage. Jerry would simply watch.
    â€œOf course I’ve thought of it, too,” he said now, surprising her.
    â€œOf what?”
    â€œOf breaking up. Of living apart. There are plenty of reasons. But I don’t want to. Well, I guess if I had wanted to I’d have said so. But if this is something that will help your life—well, you’ll have to do it, Con. I mean, if it’s like my trips are for me. If it’s the only way you can breathe.”
    Could he give it up so easily?
    Maybe it was the way she could breathe.
    â€œI think I’ll talk to someone I know who does separations and divorces,” she said.
    â€œA lawyer friend.”
    â€œA lawyer friend.”
    â€œWe won’t fight,” he said.
    â€œWe’ll talk.”
    â€œMaybe it doesn’t have to happen,” he said. “Con, I’m sorry your bag got stolen. I’m sorry I picked the wrong time to have an adventure with Joanna.”
    He’d never apologized before. She was slightly awestruck. They hung up and she went to bed and lay rigidly under her mother’s blanket, looking down at her still, separated body, nearly an unmarried woman. She was in the middle of leaving her husband, and in the middle (past the middle) of a week looking after her mother’s cat. She hadn’t told Jerry her mother might be losing her mind, or that Marlene wanted power of attorney.
    Lying in bed, she realized her period had started, a week early. This happened lately, and she had a box of Tampax in her suitcase, but it was almost empty. Peggy would lend her tampons, she thought, slightly consoled. Or money.
    In the morning she got up and went about her business, notexactly grieving, almost convalescent: each act—showering, dressing—was noticeable, even startling. She watched the news on television. There was always something about the Exxon Valdez . They kept trying to figure out what had caused the ship to run aground. In China, ten thousand people had now taken over the central square in Beijing, demanding increased democracy. And an enormous asteroid had passed within half a