Rodham

by Curtis Sittenfeld

courage being the mastery of fear rather than the absence of fear?

he didn’t need to ration his energy or thoughts. What was unfolding between us felt continuously replenishable, regenerative.

But the general impulse to destabilize a group, to reclaim attention and make life mildly unpleasant for everyone—these were tendencies I knew well.

Sometimes I think I’ve made so few mistakes that the public can remember all of them, in contrast to certain male politicians whose multitude of gaffes and transgressions gets jumbled in the collective imagination, either negated by one another or forgotten in the onslaught. The less you screw up, the more clearly the public keeps track of each error.

I thought of the minutiae and specificity of all our lives, how tightly fixed we are within the present moment even as the moment passes.

But there is something about another person caring when you go to sleep at night and when you wake up in the morning—caring not because of what they need from you but just because they love you—that is a novelty for me. There’s a sweetness and solace in it that I don’t take for granted.