Anne Tyler

Treat your husband any way you like,” she said, “but I pity him, whoever he is. It’s hard being a man. Have you ever thought about that? Anything that’s bothering them, men think they have to hide it. They think they should seem in

charge, in control; they don’t dare show their true feelings. No matter if they’re hurting or desperate or stricken with grief, if they’re heartsick or they’re homesick or some huge dark guilt is hanging over them or they’re about to fail big-time at something—‘Oh, I’m okay,’ they say. ‘Everything’s just fine.’ They’re a whole lot less free than women are, when you think about it. Women have been studying people’s feelings since they were toddlers; they’ve been perfecting their radar—their intuition or their empathy or their interpersonal whatchamacallit. They know how things work underneath, while men have been stuck with the sports competitions and the wars and the fame and success. It’s like men and women are in two different countries! I’m not ‘backing down,’ as

you call it; I’m letting him into my country. I’m giving him space in a place where we can both be ourselves. Lord have mercy, Bunny, cut us some slack!”

Bunny sank

“However,” Cass announced in her ringing voice, “I’d like you to look at this from another angle. Some of those people get to see children only once a year at Christmas, when our school comes to carol. And even the grown-ups they knew are mostly gone. Their parents are gone, their friends are gone, their husbands or wives gone—whole worlds gone. Even their brothers and sisters, often. They remember something that happened when they were, say, nine years old—same age as you all are now—but nobody else alive remembers it too. You don’t think that’s hard? You’ll be singing to a roomful of broken hearts, I tell you. Try thinking of that when you decide you don’t want to bother doing it.”