How could they get together? They were like two people who couldn’t get together.

When Mamie last came to visit, we moved in unison. Think synchronized swimmers, the sweet grace of aquatic ballet. In Target, we did not gesture wildly. Our arms moved in slow arpeggios. A pair of harpists escaped from the stage to buy children’s socks. Surely, we looked a little startled at the cheap quality of light. In the evening, we gathered the children to us, took turns reading, while outside the moon drifted slowly, like a buoy, in the trees.

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. What really happened is that Mamie came home at 230 a.m. I thought she was staying elsewhere. The doors were locked; I was asleep. A distant pounding. I stumbled to the front door and flung it open. Looked around. Nothing. I started to close it when I heard, “Wait!! I’m here!” Cue Mamie falling out of the hedge. "I was looking for the secret way," she told me. There were bits of pine straw in her hair. For the record, the hedge at the front of the house is impassible. Nothing makes it through there. Nothing, except Mamie. “I was going to, you know, open a window. Tap on a brick for the opening,” she continued, trying to pat my shoulder and missing by a foot. I followed her inside. She kept going, “Ssshhh. Ssshhh.” Even though I hadn’t said a word. “Ssshhh, do you, by any chance, have some small amount of alcohol? Just an itty-bitty bit? Ssshhh!”

Against my will, I’d started to wake up. Concentrated on drinking as quickly as possible while someone on speaker phone screamed, “I love you Mamieeeee!!” As soon as I started feeling happy, Mamie fell asleep in her rocking chair. “I needa gottobed.” It’s her signature move. She’s with you, she’s with you, and then with the terrible stubbornness of a child, she abandons you. I showed her where she was supposed to sleep. She toddled over to my bed and curled up in it. With all the blankets. I slept in the living room.

The next morning, she told me that she woke up later and didn’t know where she was. She padded around the house, and prodded gently at my stomach to reassure herself that I was me. I remain indignant about the fact that she ever thought it was okay to do that.

And now, months later, we’re still off. There’s more than highway and a really fucked up yard-zoo with giant plastic animals between us. We’re living worlds apart and our yelling is like voices muffled over water. Everything we say and do comes out wrong and isolated. We’re clearly in the winter of our marriage. She calls laughing. I tell her to get it together. I panic about something, she says she has no sympathy. This week, there’s been some sort of turn-around. Mamie is euphoric, is the playful dolphin while I am the one stuck in a tuna net. She seems to be ending every story with: And then, they said they loved me. Or: And then they started a petition to keep me in their lives forever or their lives would no longer have meaning. At which point I scream, “I KNOW!!!”

People often ask if Mamie and I are actually in a fight. The answer is obviously yes. Still, if we’re on opposite sides of the lake, at the very least, we still keep our eyes trained on what the other is doing. Even if it’s just to say, “Stop it. Stop looking at me.” Today, I told Mamie I would drive there with the kids—me in a loose nightgown with my hair in a messy braid, them asleep in the backseat—only to beat punch kick someone. And I meant it, so that’s something.