My mother reassured me that the first year of marriage was the toughest. But what about the second? The third? Every time I outlined to her a fight we had—sometimes his fault, sometimes mine—she laughed with a mirth I hadn’t ever really heard from her. “Couples fight,” she said. “Men are stupid. They don’t know what they’re doing and it makes them panic, like dogs.” She’d gesture at my father, asleep in his armchair with his mouth open, as if to say, This is who you’re trying to reason with?
