They both had Johns. Jeanie’s had been such a close friend in college that he stood up with her, her man of honor, when she married Keith. They’d been what is now called “friends with benefits” then, and they saw no reason not to continue after she and then he married others, until kids and other dependents crowded each out of the other’s life, and they quietly tapered off to never.

It was different with Meg. She met her John through after-work drinks with me. She was drinking with me because home evenings had become stale for her; Meg said she loved Bill but she was bored with the same routines, meals, conversations. A little transition time with friends and vodka became a better routine, and the conversations, usually with males who looked at her with obvious admiration, were much more stimulating than what she experienced in the comfort of her home. But I know she talked to Bill about it. He knew where she was and even that she was flirting. They didn’t have an open marriage exactly, but it got to where they both understood that it would be okay, if it happened, not great but acceptable, provided it was no one he knew and she didn’t bring it home.

John was just one of the guys Meg met, but something clicked immediately. It was strange; their relationship was utterly selfish and sexual, but she reported that they conversed first and often about their kids! But they had some good times, cold drinks, humorous stories, rampant rolls. They each made the other feel sexy and it sounds like they shared active senses of humor coupled with digestive and dermatological ailments. They were a successful extramarital pair for a year.

And she had to tell. Meg never seriously considered spending her life with John, but the relationship with him changed her. She started to amass his memories. She collected his stories and refined on him her own. They developed private jokes. Of course. Her husband Bill was supposed to be her best friend, yet Meg realized she couldn’t let him in on any of the expressions that came out of her hours with John. She was like the priest who sneaked off to golf on a Sunday and then couldn’t tell anyone about his hole-in-one.

Maybe that was the rub. Hidden intimacy with John frayed her future with her spouse. It took awhile but she ended up with neither.

Jeanie stayed with Keith. Keith never learned about her John. Keith never learned about her secrets. Keith never learned about her.

It’s obvious now that Jeanie was faking it. Not just her marriage: she didn’t express any of her disagreements, and she let the world take her silence as acquiescence. She was like an embezzler of mainstream approval, and the more she did it the deeper she went and so the more she did it the deeper she went…

The fact is, an embezzler almost always stays too long at the job.

Jeanie and Meg have digressed. In 1975 they stood alike in marriage and early parenthood and much attitude. We three spent a lot of time together then and agreed about many things, even though I was single and childless. Since then Meg has dispersed her spouse and launched her kids, and learned to love living single. We’ve stayed close. My perspective has widened like I’m a lone climber on top of a mountain, gazing all around at the choreography of connection, taking it in and mostly loving it. As happy a spinster as I’ve been, I’m now maybe receptive to the idea of marriage, although I suspect that boat has sailed. But Jeanie has held all close, and now she’s like one of those robot vacuums, motoring blindly about until she bumps into something and then randomly changing direction, except it’s as if she gets burned whenever she bumps, flinching deeper every time, twisting more inward, ever slowing like she’s turning into a hump-backed pillar of carbon.

I sometimes think Jeanie hasn’t really had a life. And even if she has, she faced it backwards.