Sweet excerpt from a sweet book
I threw the hairbrush at him. It caught him in the forhead, just above the eyebrow, and his hands rose quickly, covering his pain struck face. I thought, unexpectedly, of how his face looked when we made love, the same sudden wrench of agony at the end. I stood up and walked across the bed. Standing above him, I hit ihm several more times before he turned to me and pulled me down. He held me gently, sitting on the edge of the bed, as if I were a child. He was crying again. I understood that he thought I was angry because he'd hurt me, and I tried to cry, too, but I couldn't. I felt miles away from my body, from his sorrow. I was thinking all the wrong thoughts, I knew. I was thinking that now everyone would believe that this was why we were getting divorced. That our kind, careful separation would be public property, would be explained by this ugly twist. That I would seem what I wasn't-- an enraged, abandoned wife. I let Brian hold me and comfort me because of the pain he thought he was causing me, and felt nothing, felt like a woman I didn't like. But it made palpable for me, finally, the unabridgeable distance between us, and I understood, as I hand't understood before, the real emotional necessity for the divorce. I let him think I was nobler, more generous and forgiving than I was, because the alternative was to tell him how little it all mattered.