The only contested property at the end of my first marriage was a used copy of Stanley Fish’s Is There a Text in This Class? Alex, my ex-husband, originally bought the book for his graduate literary theory class and passed it along to me early in our relationship, when I was 18 and still wide-eyed at the idea that text may not have inherent meaning, that it was just us and our context defining our words. Other peoples’ words. He was 26, a graduate student and my professor. We called it love and this was the only text in our class.

I wrote my name and phone number inside the front cover of the book. First it was his and then it was mine. I eventually placed it on the bookcase next to our bed that we bought together, that book with its shiny blue cover and equally shiny promise that no truth was absolute. First the book was his, then it was mine, then it was ours. We were both from intact families, typical two-parent homes. That’s how we understood marriage to be. There was, again, a singular text, although classes had ended.

Both Alex and I moved out of the literary world in our first year of marriage. Alex got a job as a waiter at Ruby Tuesday with his M.A. in Literature. I finished my undergrad degree with 18 credit hours toward my M.A. in Literature, but second-guessed myself and went to law school and relegated my feelings to notes in the margins of legal pads and scotch in my coffee cup. I was, in a word, depressed. I had a name for this state and knew, if not optimal, this was okay in time. I would be okay, whole. This was my text. Alex argued that he loved Ruby Tuesday, the easiness of all-you-can-eat salad over academia and nothing was wrong with that. He was a man, an Ecuadorian man to boot, and he was fine, not depressed. Our class had two texts.

Somewhere between Civil Procedure and Criminal Law, I realized I wasn’t okay. Law wasn’t for me. I told Alex I wanted to quit and pursue writing. Your pipe dreams, he called them. 2 I cried as our texts diverged into two, but maybe three as I questioned marriage to Alex as much as law, but our texts were the same in that they said to keep going, even if our reasons were different because our texts said to ask What? But never Why?

One Friday night in March 2004, Alex and I attempted a movie date, something sci-fi but romantic, the advertisements said. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, perfect for that dual-text couple, if I was going to add my own subtext. The opening scene stuck with me all weekend, namely, Jim Carey’s character, taking the train to the beach seeking out a fragment of memory that pulled him with a superhuman ferocity. On Monday, I had to take the risk. I got on my train, like normal, but didn’t get off at my work stop. It felt as natural as anything. I didn't know where I was going, but it didn’t matter. No one knew where I was but I felt like I was close to finding what I was looking for. I rode the train most of the day before going home and finding Alex sitting at home, waiting for me with some Ruby Tuesday shrimp scampi and second-hand concern from my employer. He was concerned. It made a world of sense to me. I didn’t care how different our texts were.

Two weeks later, I rode the train again for most of the morning, skipping work, but biding time until Alex was gone. I went home, drank 50 ibuprofen with a glass of sweet tea and then called Alex, well in the midst of the 20-minutes-or-it's-free lunch special and told him what I did. At the cost of a few free lunches, I got a trip to the hospital and a cup of activated charcoal. Between bouts of shitting black, they asked me: Did you want to die? and I told them, no, I just wanted a divorce. And to be a writer. There’s no prescribed text on how to ask for those things.

Alex worked closely with my doctors. It has to be bipolar disorder, he told them, but I disagreed. I know what I want, I said. There’s nothing impulsive here, but my treating psychiatrist had been in practice precisely 50 years, since 1954, around the time my grandmother started her 3 two-year hospitalization for hysteria after slapping my grandfather’s 13-year-old mistress. They gave me lithium and antipsychotics. I couldn't keep my eyes open, let alone interpret any texts.

A year later, Alex left me alone for the night in Baltimore, at the train station, after one of my law school classes ran late. He said he wouldn’t pick me up, and I didn’t cry or protest because I knew this is where our texts could converge again. The next day, when I got home, he said he wanted a divorce. I was relieved, flushed my medications down the toilet, and sat outside and wrote most of the night, for the first time asking How? How did I get here? That girl, once with potential, who screwed her professor and ended up an overmedicated sell-out? For the first time, I had two texts.

I moved into my own house, a three-story row house in Baltimore that overlooked the Inner Harbor. We were equitable in the division of furniture. I got the couch and Alex got the dining table. He got the curio cabinet and the memory foam mattress while I got the dressers and all of the literary theory books--except Stanley Fish. Why that one? I asked him. He didn’t have an answer. My name is in the front, I told him. I gave it to you, he said. He had possession of the book but refused to sign my proposed settlement agreement and hired an attorney.

We went back and forth for two years before a hearing that I didn’t bother to show up for, where the judge granted our divorce. I got a copy of the degree in the mail a few weeks later, and then a package from Alex. I tore open the envelope to find the telltale blue cover: Is There a Text in This Class? I called him, although we hadn’t spoken one-on-one in years. Why? I asked him. Why now? I asked. Why what? he replied. Alex had always had a stutter, but it only came out when he was uneasy, so I forgot about it for most of our marriage. The stutter was for strangers and in this conversation he stumbled through his words. I hope you’re well, I told him as I tucked 4 the book into the corner of my living room, with the other stacks of text I didn’t have time to read, let alone interpret.

March 22, 2024

About the writer

Rebecca Anderson is a writer, visual artist, and mental health clinician who works and writes from a small farm in central Maine. She is an MFA candidate at Mississippi University for Women's low-residency creative writing program where she is a poetry editor for Ponder Review. She was nominated for Best American Short Stories 2019 and has had recent work featured (or forthcoming) in Barnstorm Journal, The Inflectionist Review, Anodyne Magazine, Waxing & Waning, and Passengers Journal.