The children had left for college. It was just us. And it felt like some truth was in order.  And that one of us or both of us was set to administer it to each other other over time.

She said to me, “You’re not as good looking as you think.” She said this at a time when it was especially hard to lie to oneself.

And she wasn’t being mean in any stretch of the imagination. She just wanted me to shut up about my thinning hair and my bulging belly and my lack of sexual appetite toward her. She wanted to say it as a joke. And in a way, she did.

“Now tell me a truth,” she said.

“But that was only an opinion,” I countered.

“Right,” she said. “It’s the opinions that bother us more that fact.”

I agreed, and told her that she wasn’t as good-looking as she thought. She laughed agreed.