Realizing we are no longer in love is not the heartbreaking sensation we imagine when we are in love—because it is no sensation at all. It is a realization made by a bystander.

Strangle him? Salute him? Put him in a novel? You are seeing suffering, Robert used to say when confronted with a horrible person. You are seeing someone in pain.

What could be more normal than to be out of place everywhere you go? What could be more American?

then a castaway in the wide ocean of possibility,

Only a fraction of the old magic remains, and impostors are everywhere!”

“You got time to change what you want out of life.”

In the middle of their time together as a couple, when the hazy spell of early love had faded but the mist of disillusion had not yet settled over them, a romantic period whose ordinariness can sometimes overshadow its clarity, which has its own beauty, Robert took Less to Provincetown.

I understood that happiness is within our grasp if we reach for it.

“Neither of us is strong. We can’t put up a shelf or fix the sink and neither of us can catch a mouse.” You put your hand on my arm. “But somebody has to catch the mouse. So here’s my proposal. You be the strong one Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. And I’ll be the strong one Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.” I paused, suspicious. “What about