The Divorce

He died while they were in divorce proceedings. She tried to be philosophical about this. Gary himself would have laughed if he’d been there to laugh. But she tried to think of it not as the work of a God with a sick sense of humor but as a kind of alternate message. She tried to be—what?—light about it. Light? An odd word, light, especially as it applied to her. She wasn’t light; she had no lightness. If you asked people they would have said, Oh, no, not light, whatever you mean by that, no, Sheryl’s, you know, serious. And yet today, now, she feels wrongly buoyant. Even the casket itself seems like it’s bobbing in water. She loved him. Some people that you come across in this world you come to love. He was one of them. Why? Why did God give us toes?