The Wife Between Us

by Greer Hendricks

“Sorry, Sigmund, but this cigar is just a cigar.”

“Tequila. It’s always the answer.” The next line in their routine sprang from Nellie’s lips instantly: “Even if there isn’t a question.”

But Aunt Charlotte understands the intertwining of emotional and physical health—how the former can ensnare the latter, suffocating it like a thick vine.

One of my psychology podcasts featured the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. It’s when you become aware of something—the name of an obscure band, say, or a new type of pasta—and it seems to suddenly appear everywhere. Frequency illusion, it’s also called.

paramour?”

I was happy, I think, but I wonder now if my memory is playing tricks on me. If it is giving me the gift of an illusion. We all layer them over our remembrances; the filters through which we want to see our lives.

I never knew what had made her commit such a desperate act—if she’d been planning it, or if something inside her had suddenly snapped. I think I’ve figured out the answer, all these years later: It was both. Because something inside me has finally cracked open, but I’ve come to realize I’ve also been heading toward this moment all along.

impulsively dramatic reactions?

I desperately wanted to know which invisible attributes I’d inherited from each of them.

we lay on our backs looking up into the sky, and she explained that although we perceive the glow from the sun as white, it is really made up of all the colors of the rainbow.

‘I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.’ Well, I’ve never feared bad weather, either.” Then my aunt does one of the bravest things I have ever seen. She smiles.

Maybe being in love carries the requirement of filtered vision; perhaps it is so for everyone.

In my marriage, there were three truths, three alternate and sometimes competing realities. There was Richard’s truth. There was my truth. And there was the actual truth, which is always the most elusive to recognize. This could be the case in every relationship, that we think we’ve entered

into a union with another person when, in fact, we’ve formed a triangle with one point anchored by a silent but all-see...

“You need to remember that even when I’m not there, I’m always with you.”

I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.

innocuous