Gary and I fight, and afterward, I go shopping. I drive downtown, park behind the library, and walk the rows of boutiques that line both sides of Main Street. I go into one store, then another, touching everything: the wispy ocean-printed scarves, the hand-beaded jewelry, the wooden coaster sets carved with Bible quotes.
       In the third store, the shopkeeper approaches me. "Looking for a gift?"
       "No, thank you." God, my voice sounds bad. It sounds like I've been crying. I have been crying, but only because I am a very emotional person. I cry at everything: kitchen mishaps, most Fleetwood Mac songs, the mere possibility of being late for an event. I have cried every single time Gary and I have had an argument, even when it is over something very stupid; for example, the fight we had today, which was over the fact that the wallpaper I picked out for the bathroom was apparently too loud. Gary finds the tears manipulative, which I understand, but I've never been able to make myself stop.
       "Are you okay?" asks the shopkeeper.
       "Yes. Yes, sorry."
       "Looking for anything in particular?"
       "Just browsing." My voice sounds a little annoyed. It's not this woman's fault I don't want to talk to her, so I give her a smile to make up for it.
       "Are you local?" she asks.
       "Not exactly," I say, still smiling. "My husband and I just moved here. He got a position at the college."
       "Oh, how lovely!"
       It is not lovely. Eventually, when I get over the fight, it can go back to being lovely again, but right now, it's just annoying, and it's difficult to be pleasant. Getting uprooted across the country so your husband can take a job that isn't even tenure track at some probably-failing liberal arts college in the middle of nowhere is not lovely, and I can feel the muscles of my shoulders getting mad about it. But I'm being unreasonable, again, because we'd talked about it when the offer came in, and of course, he had to accept. It's just that I'm bitter about the fight and him calling me immature and me crying, which proved it.
       The shopkeeper returns to the counter. I keep wandering through the shop. Everything, even the furniture, is for sale, and nothing is in order: socks folded and laid in a half-open drawer of a wooden hutch, candles stacked in front of a rack of crystal keychains. I don't mean to buy anything, but it's grounding to look, to touch. I come to the jewelry, hanging off hooks and dowels at the back of the store, and pause.
       The necklace is amber. You can tell it's real and not glass because there's an insect frozen in the middle of the stone. A tiny, spindly, ancient mosquito. I turn it to see the price tag: $40.00. More than I should be spending on jewelry right now, almost certainly more than it's worth, but holding it makes me feel calm, somehow. I can feel the weight of the fight lifting. Maybe it's the stone, how smooth it is, how few air pockets there are, as if its tiny prisoner were simply absorbed without a struggle.
       "That's a beautiful piece," the shopkeeper says from behind me. She's looking over my shoulder, still holding her knitting. I go to put it back on the rack, but she says, "You should try it on."
       I do. There's no clasp; the chain is long enough to slip easily over my head. The pendant rests at the base of my ribcage, comfortable in its weight.
       "It looks good on you," the shopkeeper says. She's right. It does.
       I let her lead me to the counter. I swipe the credit card I'm only supposed to use to buy essentials. Then I leave, tucking the necklace into my blouse, and head home.
       When I get back, Gary's putting up the wallpaper. He's right; the print is a little loud. When he hears me in the doorway, he glances around and nods just once before returning to work. I toe into my slippers and get to work making dinner. There's none of the usual post-fight brittleness as I quarter the potatoes, debone the chicken. I'm not sure if the difference is me or Gary, who comes out just as I'm wrapping up, wallpaper hung, and glue washed off his hands, to ask if I need help setting the table.

       The week that follows doesn't feel strange. It doesn't feel strange not to cry for the neighbor's cat, mangled on the side of the road. When Jason, my supervisor at the admissions office, yells at us for taking too long at lunch, I sit through it without my ears ringing, without my teeth clenching, and I smile at him later, to show there's no hard feelings. It's sad to see the cat dead. And to tell the truth, I think Jason is being a bit unreasonable. But whatever I might think, it doesn't pass into my body. It doesn't show.
       Gary doesn't say anything, but our fights get easier, even when things get stressful at the college, with rumors about the budget and cuts in the English department. He's started looking for work again. The stress bleeds into the admissions office, too, but it hardly touches me.
       I consider going back to the shop, not to buy anything, but to ask about the necklace. Where did it come from? I want to ask. Did you make it? Did someone you know? I want to ask, Is it magic? because I'm pretty sure it is. It's not just that I haven't cried in months; I can hold my face completely impassive now. It's the way Gary's eyes look through me half the time. At work, no one talks to me. It's fine. I don't feel it.
       But I want to ask, Do I sometimes go invisible to you? Only I can't think of a way to ask that doesn't sound passive-aggressive. I don't mean it passive-aggressively. I mean: Yesterday, I stood at the pharmacy counter for ten minutes, ringing the bell, before the clerk noticed me and rang me up. I mean: Tuesday, the marketing team came by to do a photo shoot at the office, and I swear I went and posed on the front porch with everyone else, but I'm not in any of the pictures.
       I mean: I think I go away sometimes. Before, I would have thought I was going crazy. But then, before, I thought I was going crazy half the time, the tears and the anxiety and the simmering anger. These days, I feel quiet. Soft. Not crazy at all.
       But I think I might be literally disappearing. I just want to know.
       I must be at least a little bit here. I get my work done, and the paychecks show up on time. Gary and I still eat dinner together. Sometimes he talks to me, and sometimes he doesn't. We never fight.
       I go back to the shop. The shopkeeper is there, sitting behind the counter, knitting something. I go up to the counter. I try to show her the necklace, lifting it from where it hangs just below my collarbones. It doesn't fit over my head anymore.
       "Should I take it off?" I ask her. "Can you help me take it off?" She doesn't answer. I don't think she sees me. I don't know if there's anything to see.