Trout

Two years after her mother's death, Jane's boyfriend asked her to marry him, and nine months later, they moved across the country to start their new life. Jane was twenty-nine, ready to step away from Phoenix after a hard few years. Ryan had taken a job at a recording studio in Tennessee, and he pointed out that the public schools there were as bad as the ones in Arizona, so she could easily fail teaching fourth graders in either place. Her father was a kind, if distant, ichthyologist, and he seemed to think the move was maybe not ideal, but maybe not a bad idea. Jane was excited to start over. She'd been adopted when she was six, and she thought of six as the beginning of her real childhood. As they drove out of town, she decided twenty-nine was the beginning of her real adult life.

Three weeks after the move, Jane and Ryan went out for drinks with two other couples, one from Ryan's new job, one they'd met playing trivia at a bar. Afterward, they argued about whether to park their Toyota in their overgrown driveway or on the street, and then about whether they should have left the porch light on, as it was now the center of a thick swarm of bugs. They kept arguing after they went inside. Jane realized as she was brushing her teeth that this was one of those fights that happens because someone needs it to happen.

She could see Ryan in the bathroom mirror, sitting on the arm of the living room couch, looking brilliant and restless as he talked. He was always his most beautiful when gearing up to push someone into an epiphany. She rinsed off her toothbrush and turned around.

"You're not cheating on me, right?" she said. It wasn't something she had been planning to ask or had even thought about consciously.

Ryan laughed. He stood up as if to leave, then sat down again.

"You're not," Jane said. "You are?"

Ryan started to cry.

________

He left at 5 a.m., acting contrite and mysterious. She watched him pack up his messenger bag and turn off his laptop. She couldn't tell if he was leaving because it was required after such a revelation or because she'd asked him to go. Instead of talking about it, he'd wept into his hands while she watched, too stunned to feel, and then he'd gone into their bedroom while she sat on the couch, surprised at her own stiff posture. When he finally came out, two hours later, looking wept through, she'd gotten them each a bottle of seltzer water. Ryan drank half of his while she held hers close, the glass a cold ache on her skin.

"I don't understand," she said, and he nodded as if the situation was incomprehensible. But she was confused about the basic facts: Who? Here or there? Was it over? Why?

She followed him outside.

"I'll call," he said. "Please remember that I love you."

She began to understand that he was leaving because he had somewhere to go, and then he was driving away, and she was alone, standing barefoot in the street in a neighborhood she did not know. It was still dark. A possum scuttled across the road in a hunch. Jane went inside and threw her bottle of water right through the bedroom window.

________

By noon, any notion she'd had of strength or independence was gone. Incompatible sensations rolled through her body. She was angry and started to cry. She felt sad and decided to go for a run, but halfway through changing, she was angry again and couldn't find her shorts. She gathered the clothes on the bedroom floor and shoved them into the washing machine. She needed to tell someone, but her oldest friend, Allie, was on Fulbright in Malawi. Her other best friend had just had a baby.

Jane's rage felt contagious. Her dog was hiding...