She agreed to refrain from commenting on everything he did all the time and he agreed to try and say Fuck You. The counselor said it was interesting. She was a person who liked to disagree—yet tended to make it difficult for others to disagree with her. Meanwhile, he was a person that wanted most desperately to avoid any disagreement whatsoever.

That Saturday when he was installing the new curtain hardware, she decided to leave the apartment. It was a preventive measure so he would not feel be so anxious about his performance, and also so she did not direct his every movement — a measure to contain herself.

She went to the local coffee shop, returning to the living room several hours later to find one curtain rod hanging askew from the side of the window frame, the other not installed at all. He sat on the new speckled couch with a computer on his lap.

She shouldn’t have asked him about the status of things or what he was doing on the computer while installing curtains, but when she did, he said he was researching how to mount this or that piece, which was giving him trouble. At which point she looked at the rods and suggested doing x, which seemed an obvious solution, although she didn’t say so.

She knew it was obvious to her only because her father taught her things like how to use a hammer and nail, how to spackle and paint, how to change oil or a flat tire on the highway. She was lucky. His father had not taught him these things. She wasn’t sure if his father never tried or if his father tried in a way that made it very unpleasant to learn. Likely both, she concluded. It was also true he was not so interested in learning these kinds of things, the kinds of things he was not immediately good at. That was also part of it, she thought, and she imagined him, sometimes at least, pouting during his father’s lessons because Mark very much liked to know things, be the boss of things, just like his father.

She also didn’t like to admit certain things, of course. Like the fact she was at times just like her mother, sharing an overwhelming need to control everything and be correct. She, like her mother, preferred everything aligned.

In any case, she didn’t actually say her solution was obvious, but it was likely her tone gave her away. She often said things without words at all. In fact, despite disliking dramatics, she could be quite theatrical. It was true she had very little control over her facial expressions or tones or body language. She was not a good actor at all. She was communicative whether she intended or not. It was also likely she intended it more often than she understood.

Nonetheless, when she suggested he do x, he said her idea was good. She wanted to leave the living room again, give him space to work, but she couldn’t stay out of the apartment forever so she sat in the orange puffy chair to work on her computer as he resumed. This, his project to complete, for once, so she didn’t have to. Allow him to contribute to their home, she thought, when she initially conceived of the task. Now, in the midst of it all, it did not even occur to her to get up and help him.

It was then she noticed he was using the yellow kitchen stool, which was too short. She suggested he use the small ladder the landlord had conveniently left in the hallway so he might gain some leverage, and he said yes that was a good idea, which she already knew.

It was the way in which he moved in space trying not to take up any, adjusting to things he shouldn’t adjust to, moving himself around objects that ought to instead move around him. It was the way he let things govern him. It was the way he didn’t move the world.

She watched from the puffy chair as he stood in the small area between the planter and the end table and the couch and the radiator, trying to fit the ladder and himself in that tiny, empty space. She watched him bang around and turn in circles until she couldn’t stand it. It was hilarious and disturbing and much too symbolic even if the counselor had said directly she shouldn’t catastrophize things by generalizing them unnecessarily. Like the way she thought his particular method of using the ladder in the living room illustrated something about his personhood and made her wonder how they would ever raise children or decide where to live, how they’d accomplish anything really, if they just stood in one spot turning in circles, banging into things, adjusting to spaces that were too small, not moving the world.

What worried her was that she was the only one who worried.

Despite her agreement to refrain from commenting on everything he did all the time, she proposed he move the end table, planter, and couch to make enough room for himself so that he might accomplish the task. Why don’t you move the furniture, Mark? You can just move it. She said. She laughed only because it helped quell her ever-increasing anxiety.

And so, discouraged and having broken her part of the agreement at this point anyway, she added that, for reasons beyond just being able to move about, in the future he might consider moving things before starting projects like this, thereby preventing other items from being damaged. For instance, the brand-new couch, which, she noted, he kept slamming with the ladder.

He did not say Fuck You.