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DNA.
    It was after she became convinced her mother was trying to ruin things for her and Craig she sought professional counseling.  Wisely, her counselor suggested one solution might be to step back, distancing from the conflict rather than trying to persuade her mother.  She warned Brittany, how by overreacting, by pushing him on her mother might result in Craig’s choosing to remove himself from an unpleasant dynamic. She called it a deliberate type of distancing—“Going up into the balcony”—the ‘balcony’ serving as both a mental place of separation and a vantage point to recalculate, while still maintaining the ability to reconnect, rather than crossing a bridge and burning it behind her.
    What Brittany took away from those sessions was how her mother had, in part, established her dominance over her because Brittany perpetually remained on the defensive, requiring no effort on her mother’s part to keep her there.  Her counselor further suggested she observe and journal her own behavior to help her better understand how it played into her mother’s ability to manipulate her guilt. Once Brittany could see the ground she had given her mother, with so little effort on her mother’s part, she realized how, in almost any scenario, defensiveness did not lend itself to a particularly flattering picture of human behavior, vowing she would correct how she postured herself when confronted. 
    Craig proved equally weak with issues of conflict, only his tactic was to avoid them altogether. After they were married Brittany was very proud of the fact that she and Craig never fought, bragging about it often to friends.  While she prided herself in their conflict-free marriage, she now wondered if some unpredictability in either of their behavior might have added a vitality that would have kept him from wandering to find it elsewhere. 
    With her thought life on overdrive, she turned her attention toward scrutinizing the house, for the first time realizing how it represented compromise to a fault.  When they first bought it, it was agreed they would blend their tastes, rather than having either of their preferences dominate.  In keeping with their insistence on a conflict-free life, and looking around now, she could see how their approach to decorating had resulted in one very boring sense of style. Their walls, furniture, and even their accessories—nearly everything was neutral.  Even my cat matches , she thought ruefully, looking around her.  If she was going to stay in the house she was determined to make it hers.
    After finishing her soup and every last crumb of the scones she picked up the mewing kitten from of the floor, walking with him from room to room, and turning on all of the lights. For the first time the realization hit her how she and Craig had painted the entire house degrees of the same color, taupe.   “How come I never noticed this before?”  She asked Shadow, noting for the first time that taupe might resemble the residue left in a glass jar after an artist had cleaned brushes in it all day.
    What came to mind was a question she had read in an article she recently edited. ”What defines you?”  Rarely did what she was editing sink in, but that phrase struck a nerve. Perhaps because she was struggling to answer that very question for herself—and that was before Craig left.  As she walked through the house she knew with certainty she did not want to be defined by taupe! Her house needed editing.
     
    ***
     
    Brittany brought in the New Year zealously peeling long strips of blue painter’s tape off the walls of her kitchen, balling them up, and tossing them to the floor below.  She concluded that rather than overwhelming herself with a huge project by starting over, she would retain the taupe tone that was already on the walls, use it as the undercoat, and tape off broad stripes around the room, painting every other stripe black. In theory it seemed easier than it was, but by the time