Three Days in June

by Anne Tyler

I am not the kind of woman who dreams of doing things.

I’m a worrier; I admit it. I’m always jumping to the worst-case scenario.

I said, “You had the chicken dish too?” “I did.” “I thought you were vegetarian!” “I am, but I’ve never really felt that chickens were sentient beings.”

“I suppose I could have caught a ride with a friend,” she was saying, “except they’ve all turned into such bad drivers lately. I would hate to end up dead on my only granddaughter’s wedding day.” “Oh, we just wouldn’t have told her till after the ceremony,” I said in a soothing voice.

Because one of life’s frustrations is that sometimes, it’s best to say nothing.

He had a tendency to wander off course halfway through a project, as if his life were just a casual experiment.

Someday I’d like to be given credit for all the times I have not said something that I could have said.

That’s something you forget when you’ve been on your own awhile: those married-couple conversations that continue intermittently for weeks, sometimes, branching out and doubling back and looping into earlier strands like a piece of crochet work.

“I’ll have the crab-and-rhubarb strata,” Max told her. “If that’s your decision,” she said.

“Cats are not coldhearted!” I said. “They’re only protecting their dignity, in case they get rejected. ‘I’ll just reject you first,’ they’re saying.”

I’m too young for this, I thought. Not too old, as you might expect, but too young, too inept, too uninformed. How come there weren’t any grownups around? Why did everyone just assume I knew what I was doing?