My Husband

Ariane observes that she tends to lean towards her husband whenever they are together, such as her chair turned in his direction at the breakfast table. It is as if he is the sun to her planet. The opposite is not true, as her husband makes no effort to meet her even halfway across a room or walk in step with her. She wonders why her position is subordinate to him, when this is not the case with any other person. Which laws of physics govern the gravity between bodies in relationships, she often ponders. 

Later, Ariane notes that her husband hasn’t cleared his dishes from the table or his clothes from the bedroom floor. Picking up after him annoys her, but she refuses to initiate a fight with him. Ariane believes the fights in romantic relationships should be over big issues of jealousy and existentialist threats, rather than banal matters. She cleans up quietly after her husband. Her children go off to school. Ariane is happy she has trained them to be soft-spoken because she hates loudness in children.

She finds working on the translation difficult, as Friday is a day that feels too much like a vacation.