Looking back on events that happened seven months ago, it’s easy to note the discrepancies and road signs. I see Jason sitting there, calmly reading a scene I had written while I squirm in anticipation. I try not to let anyone’s opinion matter as much to me now as his did then. To try and control my fidgeting, I became engrossed in a discolored spot on my toenail.

  He sighed and put down my pages, leaning forward to turn on the television. I tried to keep the desperation out of my voice and failed completely.

  “What did you think?” I blurted out, all in a rush.

  He shrugged. “I like it as much as I like the other stuff, Daphne. Not really my thing.” He avoided looking at me. That should have been a flashing red light.

  “C’mon. I want your opinion.” I began to sound angry, but not nearly angry enough. My voice had a whiney quality to it that no one takes very seriously. The demons of self-doubt were gnawing at my vocal chords. I went back to my toenail to show that I could avoid him as much as he could avoid me even though I cast several glances to the side to make sure he noticed.

  He didn’t. “I told you I liked it. I’m just not in the mood.” In the mood to what exactly? I should have been wondering, but I know I wasn’t. I was just feeling hurt (and guilty for being hurt) which made me mad at myself and so on and so forth. I decided to let it slide, to become so focused on my toenail that nothing else would matter. I was already nervous because he had been so cold to me for the past few weeks. Maybe my blighted toenail was my anxiety rotting me from the inside.

  “I saw Harmony the other day,” he said. He was nonchalant, but I can hear the slight guilt in there now from seven months away. Was he afraid of me? Even a little? It’s times like that one that I wish I was one of those movie women who carries a knife in her boot.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said, bored, disinterested. “What’d she have to say?” Maybe it was a hangnail or a spot of blood.

  “We didn’t talk much.”

  “Why? She mad at you or something?” I could have been cleaning the knife right here. He wouldn’t have said all this to me if I had been running a ten inch blade across a whetstone.

  Jason turned off the television, getting my attention at once. “We need to talk,” he said.

  There! Right there I should have at least done something. It didn’t occur to me then, but it does now that Jason resembled no one so much as my father at right that moment. Who else tells you that he “needs to talk?” I should have been expecting a lecture on my grades or how often I’ve broken curfew. I should have said something like, “Ok, Dad, what do we need to talk about? Are you and Mom getting a divorce?” I should not have been looking at him with my mouth slightly slack, my bruised toe clenched tightly between suddenly nerveless fingers. I should not have been too paralyzed to only say, “What?”

  “Harmony and I, well, we’re having this thing. Have been having, I mean, and, oh Christ, Daphne.” He got up to stand behind the couch. I tracked him like a pathetic missile. He laughed a little and shook his head. “It’s weird, but, to tell you the truth, I don’t feel all that bad about it.”

  It’s probably a good thing I wasn’t holding the knife. I might have just stabbed myself in the thigh. “Thing?” I said. “Like an affair?”

  He looked at me sideways, a little smile on half of his face. “You know what I mean,” he said. I wonder now why he couldn’t say it. Maybe he could see the knife-wielding girl in me that I couldn’t. He put his jacket on without looking at me, taking my keys out of the pocket and setting them on a table with a clink of finality. I stared at them like they were on fire.

  Thank any and every deity that I didn’t beg or plead at that moment. I didn’t cry nor break into tears. I was completely stunned for the first time in our two-year relationship. He had floored me, and all I could do was cling to my toe and stare at my keys. The tendons in my jaw were made of steel.

  “I’m glad you’re not getting emotional, Daphne,” he said, opening the door. “It’s nice to know that we can all be mature about this.” He closed it behind him. I can clearly see those ten inches spinning its way through the crack in the door to pierce his mind, my toe and Harmony’s heart to cut out all the infection at once. It’s a sorry-ass thing, but, for a while there, my sense of self-worth blew right out that door behind him; my wounded keys served as a totem for keeping it out.