This is Where I Leave You

by Jonathan Tropper

Mom always took center stage. Marrying her was like joining the chorus.

The kids are Ryan and Cole, six and three, towheaded, cherub-cheeked boys who never met a room they couldn’t trash in two minutes flat,

I know every one of Jen’s smiles, what they mean and where they lead.

with your soon-to-be ex-wife. Ex-wife in waiting. Ex-wife elect. The self-help books and websites haven’t come up with a proper title for spouses living in the purgatory that exists before the courts have officially ratified your personal tragedy.

I could report the rest of the conversation, but it’s just more of the same, two people whose love became toxic, lobbing regret grenades at each other.

I will not let her pierce my walls in a Trojan horse of sympathy.

You get married to have an ally against your family, and now I’m heading into the trenches alone.

I would review the last year or so of our marriage like the security tapes after a robbery, wondering how the hell I could have been so damn oblivious, how it took actually walking in on them to finally get the picture.

There is nothing sadder than sitting in a car and having absolutely nowhere to go.

Phillip is her baby, and he’s spent his life reeling in the slack as fast as she can cut it for him.

that’s one of those questions I’ve learned not to ask, because I’ll just get that condescending look all parents reserve for non-parents, to remind you that you’re not yet a complete person.

“It just happened” was Phillip’s go-to explanation for pretty much everything, the perfect epitaph for a man who always seemed to be an innocent bystander to his own life.

You can sit up here, feeling above it all while knowing you’re not, coming to the lonely conclusion that the only thing you can ever really know about anyone is that you don’t know anything about them at all.

It’s a sad moment when you come to understand how truly replaceable you are.

Even under the best of circumstances, there’s just something so damn tragic about growing up.

The women look each other over as they chat, measuring thighs, bellies, hips, and asses, taking into account body types and recent pregnancies. They silently evaluate and pass judgment, realigning themselves in the pecking order. It’s a brutal business, being a woman.

That’s the thing about life; everything feels so permanent, but you can disappear in an instant.

Sometimes, contentment is a matter of will. You have to look at what you have right in front of you, at what it could be, and stop measuring it against what you’ve lost.

I’m forty-four years old. I don’t have time for anger anymore.”

We all start out so damn sure, thinking we’ve got the world on a string. If we ever stopped to think about the infinite number of ways we could be undone, we’d never leave our bedrooms.

I’ve never fully understood the agenda of angry breast-feeders.

“A problem is something to solve,” Phillip says. “If there’s no solution, it’s not a problem, so stop treating it like one.”

Our past trails behind us like a comet’s tail, the future stretched out before us like the universe. Things happen. People get lost and love breaks.

Sometimes it’s heartbreaking to see your siblings as the people they’ve become.

At some point, being angry is just another bad habit, like smoking, and you keep poisoning yourself without thinking about it.”

It’s hard to imagine her ever having felt lost, but it’s impossible to know the people your parents were before they were your parents.

I’m not a fan of country music, but there’s no better music to drive to.