Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel

He couldn’t bring himself to contact any of Rachel’s friends and ask if they’d heard from her. There was something about this that was so deeply embarrassing that he couldn’t handle anyone knowing it. Yes, divorce was ugly and people understood that, but getting abandoned by the wife you’re already separated from seemed even too humiliating for him

The only way he had survived in his marriage, with a wife who not only made about fifteen times his really quite good doctor salary but who, the moment she surpassed him on the earn-o-meter, found herself completely disgusted by his earning ability, was that he made a big show of only barely tolerating the perks of the money. He allowed Rachel to b

This is this money and here is how we’re spending it and if you want to be able to make those kinds of decisions, you should make this kind of money. It was never said. It was just beyond what was said, and he knew (and she had to know) that he wouldn’t be able to bear to hear it actually voiced, and so he tiptoed to the edge but never plunged into

She had so much and wanted to keep it all. She wanted to leave the father of her children without any relic of the last fifteen years. But that wasn’t the worst part about this. The worst part about this, other than all the other worst parts about this, was that it put Toby into a position where he had to actually think about what he wanted.

“But this isn’t about our marriage, Toby. This is about me. They didn’t promote me, because I didn’t tell them I was pregnant.” “That’s bullshit. They didn’t make you partner, because you didn’t sleep with Matt Klein and because they don’t fundamentally respect you.” Her response came like a boomerang. “Fuck you, Toby.”

The baby was offered to Rachel behind the blue curtain that kept her from seeing her own organs splayed across her chest, but she said she felt too unsteady holding her in her supine position, paralyzed from the chest down.

“I’m saying I’m tired of taking long walks. I don’t like them. I never liked them. It’s a waste of time.”

She was also capable of that, which made the fact that she didn’t do it at home harder to stomach.

Let’s say he and Joanie met eyes soulfully and what