The Choice

help me feel freer and more joyful. I try a new therapist, for fresh
perspective on my marriage, but her approach isn’t useful—she wags
her ĕnger at me, telling me that forcing Béla to do the grocery
shopping was emasculating, that I should never have mowed the lawn
and taken his male responsibilities from him. She picks at the things
that were working in my marriage and recasts them as problems and
faults. I try a new job, this time at a high school, where I teach
introductory psychology and serve as a school counselor. But the sense
of purpose I felt at the beginning of my profession begins to be eroded
by the bureaucracy of schools, the huge class sizes and case loads, the
inability to work effectively with individual students. ere’s more I
have to offer—I know this, although I don’t yet know what it is I am
meant to do.
is theme prevails: that my deepest and most important work,
professionally and personally, is still to come, and still blurry,
undeĕned. My friends Lili and Arpad are the ĕrst people to name for
me what this work will entail, though I am not yet ready to
acknowledge it, much less take it on. One weekend they invite me to
visit them in Mexico. For years, Béla and I have vacationed with them
together; this time, I go alone. e Sunday I am to return home, we
linger over breakfast—coffee, fruit, the eggs I’ve cooked with
Hungarian peppers and onions.
“We’re worried about you,” Lili says, her voice easy, gentle.
I know she and Arpad were surprised by the divorce, I know they
think I made a mistake. It’s hard not to read her concern as judgment.
I tell them about Béla’s girlfriend, she’s a writer or a musician, I can
never remember which, she isn’t a person to me, she is an idea: Béla
has moved on and le me behind. My friends listen, they are
sympathetic. Then they share a glance, and Arpad clears his throat.
“Edie,” he says, “forgive me if I’m getting too personal, and you can
tell me to mind my own business. But I wonder, have you ever