Summary

“presence” opens with Jill Akkermann afraid that her husband, Jacob Wallace, wants to ask her for a divorce. She has been avoiding her husband for weeks and, lately, has been feeling jealous of her husband’s new, stylish colleague, Viviane. Jill accuses her husband of wanting to run off with Viviane to be part of the “beautifully black intellectual couple just like you’ve always wanted” (181).

Jacob ambushes Jill at a London Tube station to ask his question. Jill remembers how Jacob proposed to her that they get married and have “sublime blasian babies” (185) together. When Jacob asks Jill if she had been thinking about leaving him, Jill reflects on their childhoods as foster children. Jacob takes Jill out for dinner, where he tells her his plan of dedicating part of their summer to a new psychological experiment he has been working on called...