He simply, over twenty-two years, stopped seeing me, and I, over the same twenty-two years, let myself be unseen, and between the two of us we made a marriage in which I gradually disappeared.

It happens so slowly you cannot name the day.

You are a young woman with a career you love and opinions and a laugh people turn toward, and then you marry, and the marriage has needs, and you meet them, because meeting needs is what you’re good at and what the world praises in a woman.

His mother gets sick and you nurse her, because you’re the one who’s home.

His business has a hard year and you go quiet about your own hard year so as not to add to his.

He likes dinner at seven so you have dinner at seven.