“I’ve decided to quit rectangles.”

I threw my keys where the coffee table should have been. They fell to the floor.

“I’ve been wasting my life staring at rectangles inside of cuboids,” he said. “Computers, smartphones, TVs. Books are no better. And what’s a house but a bunch of rectangles stuck together? I’m a right-angle addict.”

Even for Anthony, this was extreme. It wasn’t the first time he’d gotten carried away with one of his ideas. But usually, his ideas made more sense.

“What’s a cuboid?”

“I’m scaring you, aren’t I. Don’t worry, I got rid of your rectangles, too.”

“You what?” I went in my office, where my desk was missing. “Anthony, where is my laptop?”

“I’ve been going to a support group,” he said. “You should come with me tonight. We sit in a circle.”

“I need my laptop for work, Anthony. How do you think I buy us groceries?”

He put his hand on my shoulder. “You don’t need to worry about that anymore. I’m going to take care of us.”

I walked through each room in the house. The coffee table, kitchen table, and dining table were all gone, as were the fridge, dishwasher, and washing machine. Anthony had gotten rid of every rectangular object he could find. Multicolored credit cards were cut into triangles. Bank statements balled up into spheres. All three types of certificate—birth, wedding, and death—destroyed. All three phases of life out with the trash, which had already been collected. Dad’s letters. Mom’s photo albums. My baby pictures. The only rectangle left was the phone in my back pocket.

“Why do you need a photo of me?” he said. “I’m right here.”

“Those albums weren’t yours to throw away.”

“You’re not a baby anymore. The photos of you as a baby are a lie. Mom and Dad are dead. The photos of them living are a lie.”

I sat down on the backyard steps. Outside, asymmetrical autumn leaves floated in a lopsided puddle. Inside, Anthony started taking a door off its hinges. When our parents were still alive, I might have yelled at Anthony in retaliation, might have trashed his circular CD collection, might have slammed every rectangular door in this stupid rectangular house. But now that they were gone, I just felt tired. I couldn’t do this anymore. I needed to find somewhere else for him to live. I just didn’t know where.

Anthony sat down beside me. “I know what you’re thinking. You don’t want to live in a cuboid anymore.”

“I still don’t know what a cuboid is.”

“It’s a rectangular parallelepiped.”

“Right.”

I leaned back and looked up at the sky. The clouds were not rectangles. For that matter, they weren’t squares, circles, or triangles. Each white formation was different than the last. An amorphous outline I’d never seen before. A new shape that I’d never see again.