“It’s not working,” Patty says, coming in behind him.

“I can see that,” Frank says. He sniffs the air. “Are you making gnocchi?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And did you peel all the potatoes and try to put them down the disposal?” Frank asks as he rolls up his sleeve, plunges his hand into the dirty water, and feels around the drain.

“Potato peels are garbage,” Patty says. “I tried to dispose of the garbage. Isn’t that what a garbage disposal is supposed to do?”

“It’s ‘garbage disposal,’” Frank says. “Not ‘garbage dispose-all.’ I mean, you don’t put tin cans down there, do you? Ordo you?”

“You want some coffee?” she asks. “I’ll make some fresh.”

“Sounds good, thanks.”

He goes to a hallway closet to get his tool chest. They go through this routine every time. She’ll make some fresh, weak coffee in the Krups maker that he bought her and that she refuses to learn how to run properly, and he’ll take a polite sip while he works and then leave the rest in the cup. Frank has discovered that rituals like this are even more important to a peaceful relationship when you’re divorced than when you were actually married.

But when he comes back down the hallway, he hears the whir of a coffee grinder, and when he reaches the kitchen, there’s a French press sitting on the stove beside a kettle of water on the boil. He raises his eyebrows.

“This is the way you like it now, isn’t it?” Patty says. “Jill says this is the way you like it.”

“That’s how I make it, yeah.” He doesn’t say a word when she pours in the boiling water and presses the plunger down right away instead of waiting the requisite four minutes. Instead, he keeps his mouth shut and crawls into the cabinet under the sink, stretches out on his back, and starts to work the crescent wrench on the disposal trap, where the potato peels are no doubt trapped. He hears her set the coffee cup on the floor by his knee.