Jenny Offill

An unflinching portrait of marriage by the award-winning author of Last Things features a heroine simply referred to as "the Wife," who transitions from an idealistic woman who once exchanged love letters with her husband and who confronts an array of universal difficulties.

Dept. of Speculation

dana

if i had to sum up what he did to me, i’d say it was this: he made me sing along to all the bad songs on the radio. both when he loved me and when he didn’t.

the reason to have a home is to keep certain people in and everyone else out. a home has a perimeter. but sometimes our perimeter was breached by neighbors, by girl scouts, by jehovah’s witnesses. i never liked to hear the doorbell ring. none of the people i liked ever turned up that way.

he’s from ohio. that means he never forgets to thank the bus driver or pushes in front at the baggage claim. nor does he keep a list of those who infuriate him on a given day. people mean well. that is what he believes.

my husband gets a new job, scoring soundtracks for commercials. the pay is better. it has benefits. how is it, people ask. “not bad,” he says with a shrug. “only vaguely soul-crushing.”

three things no one has ever said about me:

you need to take yourself more seriously.

she will not go to college if that means she must go away from me. when she has a baby, she will come and stay with me for a month and i will help her care for the baby and then she will go away for one day, then she will come back again and stay for a month or year. she does not ever want to live away from me, she explains. “promise?” i say. she curls up in my arms, all elbows and knees. “promise.”

but truth is she has good impulse control. that is why she isn’t dead. also why she became a writer instead of a heroin addict. she thinks before she acts. or more properly, she thinks instead of acts. a character flaw, not a virtue. 

our daughter hands us her crumpled papers. you stop and wait for me. we watch as she gets smaller. no one young knows the name of anything.

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