Illustration by D.G. Strong

For the first time in 20 years, my books stand in crisp rows and the shelves have room to spare. It’s awful.

In theory, a constant goal of the marriage was an orderly library. In reality, the abiding aesthetic was piles and heaps all over our Far West Village loft, the smart chaos typical of two people who are each reading six different books at any given time and persist in buying more. With so many sentences waiting, who had time to separate the plays from the short stories, much less alphabetize? If the collected poems of Yeats didn’t come to hand when needed, we’d buy another copy; a marriage can’t have too much Yeats. And in case of divorce, we dared joke — because we were that sure of each other — a second copy would simplify the divvying up.

As well as I remember our wedding, I recall the ceremony of unpacking the thousand or so books each of us was contributing to our midlife union. We sat on the floor, in front of the oak-faced shelves built by a talented neighbor, reveling in the blessings conferred by our duplicated authors: Dickens, Austen, Heinlein, Borges, Greene. He, the mathematician, was pleased that I owned Flatland, which suggested I knew a cube from a square. I, the novelist and cook, felt honored to have been chosen by a man who collected Laurie Colwin.

But the real thrill was the added dimension that each of us brought. I might not inhale Moller’s Theory of Relativity, but I’d be brighter for seeing the title every day. The children of our blended library would grow up knowing how much there was to learn — more than either of us alone could teach or hint at.

Over the years, my husband and I fought about time and money, but we never hurried the other out of a bookshop or chafed at the cash register. When we were most in love, we said it with signed firsts. During our bellicose periods, when our own words made things worse, we brought books along to restaurants and almost forgot to hate.

Having jammed those oak-faced built-ins and then a two-sided shelving wall in the living room, we installed ready-mades in the dining room, even though it meant downsizing the space available for plates and glasses. And still we had the heaps and piles. “Really, we’ve got to organize the books,” one of us would say, while placing another order with Amazon. Then life took care of the problem.

“I think this is your Flatland,” I said yesterday. Mine turned up a few minutes later. “I bought this at Arthur’s, but you should have it,” he said of a Brian Moore I coveted. I gave him my mother’s copy of Prospero’s Cell because he appreciates Durrell more than I do. He offered a Thurber I’d overlooked for two decades. Our divorce is as disgusting as any other, but our revered authors made us behave for an afternoon.

Aside from the his-and-hers boxes, we filled cartons for my favorite AIDS organization and for the hospital thrift shop where he has found many a treasure for a quarter each. Others we plan to sell. We’re not just being generous, letting go; we’re expressing a sense of betrayal. Our books were totemic, the household gods. We thought ourselves properly obeisant and yet the foundation cracked beneath us.

So two neat libraries instead of one vital mess.

“I sing what was lost and dread what was won,” says my copy of Yeats. I hope my husband’s copy says the same.