I smile at him, grateful for the calm before the storm.

“You don’t have to say it, Daddy. I knew you wouldn’t be here for my birthday.”

Oliver beams at me, as if to say, See? There’s no reason to make a fuss. Turning to Rebecca he says, “I’m sorry, kiddo. But you know the way it is-it’s really in everyone’s best interests if I go.”

“Everyone who?” I’m surprised I say it out loud.

Oliver turns to me. His eyes have gone flat and dispassionate, the way one looks at a stranger in a subway.

I slip out of my heels and pick them up in my right hand. “Forgetit. It’s done.”

Rebecca touches my arm on her way into the living room. “It’s all right,” she whispers, stressing the words as she passes.

“I’ll make it up to you,” Oliver says. “Wait till you see your birthday present!” Rebecca doesn’t seem to hear him. She turns up the volume on the TV, and leaves me alone with my husband.

“What are you getting her?” I ask.

“I don’t know. I’ll think of something.”

I press my fingers together-this is a habit I’ve acquired for dealing with Oliver-and head up the stairs. At the first landing I turn around to find Oliver following me. I think about asking when he is going to leave, but what comes out of my mouth instead is unexpected. “God damn you,” I say, and I actually mean it.

There is not much of the old Oliver left. The first time I saw him was in Cape Cod when I was waiting with my parents for the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard. He was twenty, working for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. He had straight blond hair that fell asymmetrically across his left eye, and he smelled like fish. Like a normal fifteenyearold, I saw him and waited for sparks to fly, but it never happened. I stood dumb as a cow near the dock where he was working, hoping he’d notice me. I didn’t know I’d have to give him something to notice.

That might have been the end of it except he was there when we came back over on the ferry two days later. I had wised up. I tossed my purse overboard, knowing it would float with the current in his direction. Two days later he called me at home, saying he’d found my wallet and would I like it back. When we started dating, I told my mother and father it was Fate.

He was into tide pools back then, and I listened to him talk of mollusks and sea urchins and entire ecosystems that were ruined at the whim of an ocean wave. Back then Oliver’s face would light up when he shared his marine discoveries. Now he only gets excited when he’s locked in his little study, examining data by himself. By the time he tells the rest of the world, he’s transformed from Oliver into Dr. Jones. Back then, I was the first person he told when something wonderful cropped up in his research. Today I’m not even fifth in line.

At the second landing I turn to Oliver. “What are you going to look for?”

“Where?”

“In South America.” I try to scratch an itch in my back and when I can’t reach it Oliver does.

“The winter breeding grounds. For whales,” he says. “ Humpbacks.” As if I am a total moron. I give him a look. “I’d tell you, Jane, but it’s complicated.”

Pedantic asshole. “I’ll remind you that I am an educator, and one thing I have learned is that anyone can understand anything. You just have to know how to present your information.”

I find myself listening to my own words, like I tell my students, to hear where the cadences change. It is as if I am having an outofbody experience, watching this weird one-act performance between a self-absorbed professor and his nutty wife. I am somewhat surprised at the character Jane. Jane is supposed to back down. Jane listens to Oliver. I find myself thinking, this is not my voice. This is not me.

I know this house so well. I know how many steps there are to get upstairs, I know where the carpet has become worn, I know to feel for the spot where Rebecca carved all of our initials into the banister. She did that when she was ten, so that our family would have a legacy.

Oliver’s footsteps trail off into his study. I walk down the hall into our room and throw myself onto the bed. I try to invent ways to celebrate Rebecca’s birthday. A circus, maybe, but that’s too juvenile. A dinner at Le Cirque; a shopping spree at Saks-both have been done before. A trip to San Francisco, or Portland, Oregon, or Portland, Maine-I wouldn’t know where to go. Honestly, I don’t know what my own daughter likes. After all, what did I want when I was fifteen? Oliver.

I undress and go to hang up my suit. When I open my closet I find my shoe boxes missing. They have been replaced by cartons labeled with dates: Oliver’s research. He has already filled his own closet; he keeps his clothes folded in the bathroom linen closet. I don’t even care where my shoes are at this point. The real issue is that Oliver has infringed on my space.

With energy I didn’t know I had, I lift the heavy boxes and throw them onto the bedroom floor. There are over twenty; they hold maps and charts and in some cases transcriptions of tapes. The bottom of one of the boxes breaks as I lift it, and the contents flutter like goosedown over my feet.

The heavy thuds reach Oliver. He comes into the bedroom just as I am arranging a wall of these boxes outside the bedroom door. The boxes reach his hips but he manages to scale them. “I’m sorry,” I tell him. “These can’t stay.”

“What’s the problem? Your shoes are under the bathroom sink.”

“Look, it’s not the shoes, it’s the space. I don’t want you in my closet. I don’t want your whale tapes-” here I kick a nearby box, “-your whale records, your whales period, in my closet.”

“I don’t understand,” Oliver says softly, and I know I’ve hurt him. He touches the box closest to my right foot, and his quiet eyes hold the contents, these ruffled papers, checking their safety with a naked tenderness I am not accustomed to seeing.

This is how it goes for several minutes: I take a carton and stack it in the hall; Oliver picks it up and moves it back inside the bedroom. Out of the corner of my eye I see Rebecca, a shadow behind the wall of cartons in the hall.

“Jane,” Oliver says, clearing his throat, “that’s enough.”

Imperceptibly, I snap. I pick up some of the papers from the broken carton and throw them at Oliver, who flinches, as if they have substantial weight. “Get these out of my sight. I’m tired of this, Oliver, and I’m tired of you, don’t you get it?”

Oliver says, “Sit down.” I don’t. He pushes me down by my shoulders, and I squirm away and with my feet shove three or four cartons into the hall. Again I seem to take a vantage point high above, in the balcony, watching the show. Seeing the fight from this angle, instead of as a participant, absolves me of responsibility; I do not have to wonder about what part of my body or mind my belligerence came from, why shutting my eyes cannot control the howling. I see myself wrench away from Oliver’s hold, which is truly amazing because he has pinned me with his weight. I pick up a carton and with all my strength hold it over the banister. Its contents, according to the labels, include samples of baleen. I am doing this because I know it will drive Oliver crazy.

“Don’t,” he says, pushing past the boxes in the hall. “I mean it.”

I shake the box, which feels like it is getting heavier. At this point I cannot remember what our argument is about. The bottom of the carton splits; its contents fall two stories.

Oliver and I grip the banister, watching the material drift through the air-paper like feathers and heavier samples in Ziploc bags that bounce when they hit the ceramic tile below. From where we stand we cannot tell how much has been broken.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, frightened to look at Oliver. “I didn’t expect that to happen.” Oliver doesn’t respond. “I’ll clean it all up. I’ll organize it. Keep it in my closet, whatever.” I make an effort to scoop nearby files into my arms, gathering them like a harvest. I do not look at Oliver and I do not see him coming for me.