▸ Column · Modern Gotham City, contemporary domestic setting
TWO-FACE replies.
Replied to by Two-Face, with a rebuttal from The Penguin.
The letter
Dear Two-Face,
My daughter Wren just turned fourteen months, and I honestly cannot remember the last time my husband Bastian and I occupied a room with nothing between us — not the monitor, not one of our mothers, not the sound of her screaming from the next room. We "co-sleep," which in practice means he migrated to the futon in the office eight months ago and we now text each other goodnight from roughly twelve feet apart. I tried to plan an actual evening out last week, but my mother had a city-alert scare, Wren spiked a fever, and we ended up eating cold noodles standing at the kitchen counter while she shrieked herself pink. I love him, I think. But we've come to feel more like shift workers running a very small, very loud operation than a married couple, and I don't know how to find my husband underneath all the bottle-washing. Is it crazy to spend money we don't really have on a room at one of the midtown hotels — nothing extravagant, just enough distance to remember what it's like to be alone with him?
—Buried Under Diapers
Two-Face replies
Two co-workers running a very small, very loud daycare. I wrote that down.
The prosecution would like to note: you said "I love him, I think." That two-word hedge — that's the whole case. Either the verdict is still being deliberated or you've already reached it and you're afraid to read it aloud.
I was a husband once. I know what it is to watch yourself become a function — Harvey Dent, White Knight, Gotham's conscience — until you can't locate the man underneath the titles. The man gets buried. Both faces do. And then you text goodnight from twelve feet away like that's a marriage.
Everybody's got two faces. You and Bastian have spent fourteen months wearing only one of them each, and now you're both wondering whether the other one dried out and fell off.
Half of me says the hotel room is a patch job, not a cure. Half of me says it's the only honest act either of you has attempted in fourteen months — two people locked in a room, forced to be a marriage again instead of a rotating duty schedule.
Two answers. I don't pick between them.
I flipped. Heads.
Go. Not because it fixes anything — you're not broken, you're buried — but because the coin says you owe yourself the chance to find out. That's the only verdict that's actually fair: give chance a shot before you let exhaustion rule against you forever.
— Two-Face
The Penguin weighs in
A coin flip. Waugh! Dent, you absolute lunatic — this woman's marriage is a depreciating asset and you've handed the audit to a slug of tin.
My dear correspondent, let me correct the premise. You are not asking whether to spend your money on a hotel room. That is the suitor's burden — Bastian has spent eight months nesting comfortably on the futon, which means he has not yet declared his stake in the enterprise. Let him book the room. Let him name the night. A gentleman who wants back into the partnership puts his own capital on the table first, not his wife's grocery money.
If he won't invest, well — now you know precisely what this asset is worth to him. That is not heartbreak, my dear. That is due diligence. Waugh-waugh!
— The Penguin
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