Three Days in June

by Anne Tyler

I don’t think I’d ever come home from a social event without feeling drained and exhausted. Max, on the other hand…Max was oblivious. Really he was no more adept than I was, but he just muddled through anyhow.

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.

I envisioned him as he had looked in his dead-black suit, so hopeful and so unaware, the kind of man who would never, ever in his life knowingly harm another person, and my mood lifted, gradually.

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

Ironic? Because I hadn’t forgiven Kenneth even though Debbie had, I guessed. But more than that: because I of all people hadn’t forgiven him.

“People look at where they’ve arrived and say, ‘Huh! So that’s how it is!’ as if they themselves had nothing to do with it.”

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.

But of course I couldn’t say this aloud. What I said was, “I know I can’t expect you to feel the same about me as you used to.”

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