Once, I mentioned that gourmet-market olive oil costing thirty dollars was fourteen at Costco.
Carla laughed.
“You always know the price of everything.”
I smiled.
What I wanted to say was that knowing prices was part of how my husband and I had built anything at all.
I stayed quiet.
For years, I called that maturity.
I thought swallowing enough small humiliations would preserve peace.
I eventually understood that peace maintained by one person swallowing discomfort is not peace.
It is permission.
Hugo saw most of it.
Sometimes he stared at his plate or changed the subject. At his best, he walked me to my car and said, “Don’t let Carla get to you. You know how she is.”
That became his excuse for everything.
You know how she is.
As if her behavior were weather.
Three days before Hugo excluded me from Christmas Eve, I had signed fourteen times in a La Jolla title office.
