Sue Miller

I was recalling that other world in which it had thrilled me, in a way, the surprise of thinking that I could be a person who would betray Daniel. Now I wondered if Daniel could surprise himself, could surprise me, by being such a person too. Would he let himself do such a thing? I didn__ think so. And then I wondered: Is it by will, then, that we are who we are? Do we decide, do we make ourselves, after a certain point in life?I tried to call up the moment when I had decided I could be such a person. It seemed to me I hadn__ quite got there, not really. That I was still just playing with the idea of it when the ground shifted under me. But perhaps to play with such an idea was already to be a certain kind of person.

This was all of it, no doubt, the strange passing feeling that had come to me in the boat. Age. Vanity. The impossibility of accepting the new versions of oneself that life kept offering. The impossibility of the old version__ vanishing.

And I was remembering that time in our lives together, the time of those ritual walks. I was remembering the way it feels at just that moment when you begin to turn, when you__e poised exactly between the things in life you want to do and those you need to do, and it seems for a few blessed seconds that they are all going to be the same.

It seems we need someone to know us as we are--with all we have done--and forgive us. We need to tell. We need to be whole in someone's sight: Know this about me, and yet love me. Please. ...for...others it seems there must be a person to redeem us to ourselves. It isn't enough, apparently, to know oneself. To forgive oneself in secret.

But perhaps this is all to the good. Perhaps it__ best to live with the possibility that around any corner, at any time, may come the person who reminds you of your own capacity to surprise yourself, to put at risk everything that__ dear to you. Who reminds you of the distances we have to bridge to begin to know anything about one another. Who reminds you that what seems to be__ven about yourself__ay not be. That like him, you need to be forgiven.

...the words make our silences easier--they're the current that runs under them.

But then he returned and our life went on. Three days gone. A week. I measured the time in the faint waning of my consciousness of my misery, and wondered if this would one day be enough: simply not to be consciously miserable anymore.

I felt the kind of desperation, I think, that cancels the possibility of empathy...that makes you unkind.

A secret weighs on us, a terrible secret weighs with a terrible weight.

And then heard Detective Ryan__ pleased voice talking about Eli, about killers who__e gone free: __hey have to tell,_ he__ saidWell, apparently so.But why? What is it that comes from the telling?Some of it must be relief, of course. A secret weighs on us, a terrible secret weighs with a terrible weight.It seems as we need someone to know us as we are__ith all we have done__nd forgive us. We need to tell. We need to be whole in someone__ sight: Know this about me, and yet love me. Please

The abundance of ordinary things, their convenient arrangement here, seemed for the moment a personal gift to me. As did my ability to notice this, to be grateful for it.

For it wasn't the secret--the secret that wasn't a secret anyway--that led to austerity in our lives. It was the austerity that led to the secret. And what I had been marked by, probably most of all, was the austerity. It had made secrets in my life too. Or silences, anyway, that became secrets. That became lies.

And what if we__ been utterly open? Made jokes about the first wife? What if we__ been that kind of family? Well, I would have been different, surely. But not because I knew the secret. For it wasn__ the secret__he secret that wasn__ a secret anyway__hat led to the austerity in our lives. It was the austerity that led to the secret. And what I had been marked by, probably most of all, was the austerity. It had made secrets in my life too. Or silences, anyway, that became secrets. That became lies.

People think they know what you're feeling. What you must be feeling. And because it's easier not to expose yourself, what you're truly feeling, you don't disabuse them. You go through the motions for them.

But even then I knew how it was going to be, I could feel the coming silence in the long, poisonous pauses that expanded as the night progressed.