Liars

by Sarah Manguso

When I was young, all that fathers ever had to do was sit in offices, eat at restaurants for lunch, do whatever they wanted wherever they went, and then come home and appear hardworking and loyal. Loyal, just for coming home to eat food and enjoy a clean and well-run house that a woman maintained just so a father could do whatever he wanted inside and outside of it.

Agreeing to be someone’s wife should be done only if you can’t help yourself, I thought, but of course no one can help herself.

He added, You’re smarter than I am, but I wasn’t even smart enough to remember not to get married.

Why are you so angry? My husband frequently asked me why I was so much angrier than other women. It always made me smile. I was exactly as angry as every other woman I knew. It wasn’t that we’d been born angry; we’d become women and ended up angry.

I pitied men for having to stay the same all their lives, for missing out on this consuming rage.

John still talked over me, told me my feelings were stupid, blamed our fighting on me, left the room in the middle of a conversation, and said it was a reasonable reaction to my being crazy.

John came home and I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to have such a happy family. It wasn’t happiness; it was the temporary cessation of pain. But I wouldn’t know that for another seven years.

The purpose of marriage was to get stuck, I thought, so that one was forced to fix the marriage in lieu of leaving.

Even a decent marriage drains the life out of a woman. During our worst fights I refer to our divorce as a sure thing, impending. Yet I don’t know anyone with a better marriage. It really is absolute shit, being a man’s wife. I swear up and down that if I outlive this marriage, I will never be with a man again.

I feel embarrassed about having been tricked by an idiot.

Romance is nothing but a cheap craft-store decoration made to sanitize a desire to fuck.

A husband might be nothing but a bottomless pit of entitlement. You can throw all your love and energy and attention down into it, and the hole will never fill.

Maybe a man’s relationship to another person is only ever adversarial.

whatever it was that I hadn’t gotten over, I wasn’t sure I wanted to get over it if the prize was having to take on a husband again.