Three Days in June

by Anne Tyler

Anger feels so much better than sadness. Cleaner, somehow, and more definite. But then when the anger fades, the sadness comes right back again the same as ever.

Sometimes when I find out what’s on other people’s minds I honestly wonder if we all live on totally separate planets.

It did occur to me that it might be fear that made me feel this way—fear of losing everything I valued most—and I wondered if maybe much later I would allow myself to mourn him. But in fact, that never happened. I forgot about him, basically, and in the rare moments when he came to mind I wondered what had ever drawn me to him. Why had I, who truly loved my husband—at least in the on-again-off-again, maybe/maybe-not, semi-happy way of just about any married woman—broken apart my whole world for a man I never really knew? But maybe that was just it: I hadn’t known him. There are times when that can be the strongest draw of all.

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.