Doug and Charles were completely different, was El’s first idea when she considered the question. One was a hippie and the other was straight about everything but sex. One was a lefty liberal and the other voted Republican. One was born after the big war and the other had childhood memories of D-day. And yet…

They were both Protestant white males born in the noncoastal West. Doug was from Wyoming and Charles’s first home was in Montana. Each had an older sister with whom he was never close – in fact both of those siblings died of rare accidental conditions in their 40s and neither was much mourned by her brother. Doug’s and Charles’s ancestors had been in the U.S. almost as long as the U.S. Each had a quasi-professional father with middle-class aspirations and a pallid, often-silent mother. Doug’s mom was mean-minded and stingy with affection and praise. Charles’s mother doted on him but was submissive to his father’s plan for him, so she permitted her boy to be sent out of state to a military high school.

El had been a seeker of intimacy each time she married, so she got to know her husbands well. She concluded long ago that what she’d thought was silent strength in each of them was really just silence. She had come to understand that both Doug and Charles had received early parental approval for acting like brave little soldiers. Each grew up with a hole in his soul, and acted like the only patch for that was a mate.

She’d never noticed how similar they were. She started to ask herself why she chose that type but her brain slammed the realization into her that she didn’t choose Doug and Charles so much as allow each of them to choose her.

Really. Now that she thought back on events, she admitted that the marriages were their ideas. As much as El always intended to try the institution, if for no other reason because that was the only way to be recognized as an adult in her family of origin, she’d been surprised when Doug had left the waterbed that spring morning to fetch a ring he had hidden in his bureau and to formally propose. She’d been startled by the speed with which Charles turned their affair into an engagement. Both of her husbands had made it excitingly clear that their happiness rested on her consent. They were like thoroughbred stallions who would only let her ride them. Yeah.

El asked herself what sort of man she would have chosen instead. She reviewed old crushes, from high school to the recent past. She was attracted to creative men. She liked a guy who was selfish enough to have his own agenda and not back away from it. She thought nothing was sexier than a well-developed sense of humor. And she knew that neither Doug nor Charles shone in those aspects.

She took five deep breaths as she finished her exercise. She still needed to figure out what to wear. It was time to move toward the office. She and Patrick were going out for lunch at her favorite restaurant; that made the commute worth her time. She started to frame her epiphany for presentation to her brother as she flipped on the shower.

I just googled PGIO. I assumed the Internet would say it stood for Penetrating Glimpse Into the Obvious, but no. I first heard the acronym in 1978 and I’m sure it wasn’t original – Joe was entertaining but not original. I immediately adopted it, in place of the word Ellen and I agreed to call a “no duh” insight: profunditty.