By the time my husband graduated from medical school I had spent eight years paying for it. On the lawn afterward his mother took the flowers out of my hands, he pushed an envelope into them, and I opened it standing in front of eighty people.

Nobody said one word.

I opened it standing there.

Divorce papers.

For a second the words would not resolve into anything. I kept reading the top line, waiting for it to become something a human being had done.

“Teo?”

His face had gone completely blank.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Then he turned around and walked away across the grass in his gown.

I do not know how long I stood there. Somebody popped a bottle about forty feet away and people cheered.

I started walking because I needed my body to be doing something.

I had almost reached the parking lot when somebody said my name.

It was Idris Kalu, one of his classmates. I had met him maybe four times in eight years. He is one of those people who looked rested all the way through medical school and it made everybody hate him a little.

He took one look at my face and slowed right down.