Tuesday, the dishwasher, and March

It's Tuesday, about half past eight. You come into the kitchen and the dishwasher is open and full and clean, and the dirty things from dinner are on the side next to it, and you say something. Not much. "You didn't empty it, then." Your partner, on the sofa, says they were going to. You say that's what they said on Sunday. They say they did it on Sunday, you just didn't notice, and in fact they do it more than you do. You say that's not the point. They say what is the point, then, and they've got the tone now, and so have you.

Four minutes later it isn't about the dishwasher. It's about how you always have to ask, and how they can never do anything right, and how you were on your own with the children all of Saturday, and how they work every hour they have, and then one of you says the thing from March, and the other says that's typical, dragging that up, and it's over. Not resolved. Over. You're in different rooms, and the dishwasher is still full, and some part of you knows, with a tired certainty, that you've had this exact evening before. Not a similar one. This one.

That's invented, but I'd guess yours is close, and I'd guess it's got a different costume. Some words. The one row is the argument the two of you keep having, whatever it's wearing. The costume is what it's about tonight, the dishwasher, the in-laws, money, the phone, the plan for Saturday. An instance is one appearance of the one row. The fresh case is what this book is about, the habit of treating each instance as a new argument with its own facts and its own verdict. The record is the past instances brought into tonight's, the thing from March, the thing from Sunday, and the record shut is what it looks like when you don't. The underneath is what the one row is actually about, which chapter 11 goes into. The final version is the conversation you keep imagining, the one after which the row never comes back. The between is the days between instances. And the name is what chapter 20 is for.

Before you go on, do one thing, and do it on your own for now. Write down the last five rows you can remember with your partner. For each one, write the first sentence anyone said, as near as you can get it, and the last sentence. Then look at the five first sentences, and then at the five last sentences. The first ones will be five different topics. The last ones, I'd expect, will be about two, and you'll have heard them before.