Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

by Gabrielle Zevin

“I think we should break up,” she said. Once she had said this, he recognized that the strange feeling in the air between them for the last several months was denouement. After Both Sides had come out, there had been a series of mundane skirmishes. She had accused him of spending too much time at the office, something that she had never cared about before. She accused him of loving Sam more than he did her. (She did not mention Sadie.) She had yelled at him for being bourgeois—for caring too much about Danish furniture and wine ratings. (He had spent some time shopping for a dining room table, but the wine struck him as unfair—he preferred beer.) Suddenly, she seemed to loathe California, complaining about allergies and vapid people and bad theater. And then the arguments had ceased as abruptly as they had begun. A month later, she informed him about the opera fellowship in Italy. It was too good an opportunity to pass up. “You don’t love me,” she said. “Zoe, of course I love you.” “But you don’t love me enough,” she said. “What’s enough?” Marx asked. “Enough is…Maybe this is selfish, but I don’t want to love more than I am loved. And I don’t want to be with someone who loves something or someone more than me.”