Pie Chart
by Kim Magowan
My ex-husband calls me out of the blue, freaking out. He’s just discovered his wife, the woman he left me for, is cheating on him. If he confronts Daphne, he’s afraid she’ll leave him for this co-worker dude. What if he doesn’t confront her?
It’s not like confronting my ex-husband about Daphne saved our marriage. I clearly remember his face when I did—20% horrified, 80% relieved, is how I’d have depicted his expression on a pie chart. That’s how I knew we’d split up. Because his relief so visibly outweighed his horror.
I’m tempted to say something harsh. I say, “Wow, I’m so sorry.”
In a sense, that’s true: I genuinely pity him. But it’s also false, because I don’t see his loss of Daphne as regrettable. I could never understand what he saw in her, why he preferred her to me. Daphne can’t even finish her sentences; talking to her is a chore. That’s why it took me forever to realize my ex-husband was in love with Daphne, because I found his infatuation so baffling. Even knowing, I still felt like saying “Really?”
If fifteen years ago my ex-husband had never met Daphne at the Po’ Boy food truck at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, we might still be married. I can’t say I wish for that outcome, that I would rewind time and intercept him. In that case, I wouldn’t currently be toasting pine nuts, which my ex-husband hated. I wouldn’t now be married to Oliver. Our kids with Oliver’s hazel eyes would not exist. I picture that Back to the Future scene where Marty and his siblings disappear from the photograph.
But if I could time travel, here’s what I would tell my twenty-eight-year-old husband, marching to the food truck where Daphne waits: the perfect partner does not exist. Reset your expectations. If you’re happy with your partner 51% of the time, shut the hell up.
Tonight the kids are at sleepovers. Oliver and I will watch Succession with bowls of pesto linguine in our laps.
“What should I do?” my ex-husband says. He lays out the pros and cons of confronting Daphne. If he pretends he doesn’t know, he thinks it’s “highly possible” Daphne will grow disillusioned with the new dude. “He isn’t worthy of her,” my ex-husband says. “She’ll realize that, right?”
I keep this thought to myself: You never did.
Kim Magowan is the author of the short story collection How Far I’ve Come (2022), published by Gold Wake Press; the novel The Light Source (2019), published by 7.13 Books; and the short story collection Undoing (2018), which won the 2017 Moon City Press Fiction Award. Her fiction has been published in Colorado Review, Craft Literary, The Gettysburg Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Wigleaf, and many other journals. Her stories have been selected for Best Small Fictions and Wigleaf’s Top 50. She is the Editor-in-Chief and Fiction Editor of Pithead Chapel. www.kimmagowan.com
See what happens when you click below.
What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Pie Chart”? My father once told me that if you’re happy with 70% of your job, you should count yourself lucky. I remember at the time (I was in my early 20’s) thinking 70% didn’t sound so great; barely a C-, after all, in a test. But I often think of my father’s satisfaction assessment now. When I was younger, I had much more inflexible, idealistic, and, I now think, unrealistic standards for what kind of profession, or accomplishment, or relationship was “worth” investing in and maintaining. I’m using all the monetization language deliberately, because the image that generated this story was the pie chart. I liked the concept of using something as corporate, mathematical, and (literally) flat as a pie chart to characterize something as nuanced as a betraying partner’s expression, or as amorphous and squishy as marital happiness. The narrator is older and wiser now. She’s feeling a bunch of things during this phone call with her ex: sympathy mixed with serves-you-right vindication, regret mixed with relief. But she’s learned discipline. She keeps her crueler thoughts to herself—well, we get to hear them, but her ex-husband is spared.
Check out the write-up of the journal in The Writer.
Matter Press recently released titles from Meg Boscov, Abby Frucht, Robert McBrearty, Tori Bond, Kathy Fish, and Christopher Allen. Click here.
Matter Press is now offering private flash fiction workshops and critiques of flash fiction collections here.
Submissions
Poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction/prose poetry submissions are now closed. The reading period for standard submissions opens again September 15, 2025. Submit here.
Upcoming
09/15 • Abbie Doll
09/22 • Karen Regen Tuero
09/29 • Amy Speace
10/06 • Jennifer Edwards
10/13 • Joseph O’Day
10/20 • Carolyn Zaikowski
10/27 • Sunmisola Odusola
11/03 • Sara Cassidy
11/10 • Liz Abrams-Morley
11/17 • Alison Colwell
11/24 • Lucy Zhang
12/01 • TBD
12/08 • TBD
12/15 • TBD
12/22 • TBD
12/29 • TBD
11/17 • TBD
11/24 • TBD
12/01 • TBD
12/08 • TBD
12/15 • TBD
12/22 • TBD
12/29 • TBD