Absolution

by Alice McDermott

But also something feral, as I said, fox-like, not only in her determined reddish hairline but in the sprouted thickness of her well-groomed eyebrows. The look of something on the hunt. A face utterly incapable of aligning itself into any expression that might indicate introspection or self-doubt.

Righteous indignation was exhausting to maintain, even as a silent partner. And you have to remember the times. At the time, my political understanding was inchoate and Saigon was an adventure.

Followed immediately by an utter sense of devastation: the collapse of something precious and irreplaceable, that gale of disbelief that follows the news of any loss, that follows the sudden, slipped-from-your-fingers loss of something invaluable.

I was beginning to suspect that Marilee was the kind of woman, numerous in those days, who strove to parrot her husband—not as an act of fealty, not even of admiration or love, but as an attempt, I think, to appear masculine herself. Strong and wise. A kind of verbal cross-dressing. Talking down to other women in this husbandly way was just a part of it.