Summary

The author describes how, in the early stages of her domestic happiness with Harry and Harry’s son, there were also difficulties: illness in both their families, and tensions between them arising from Harry’s struggle with security and comfort in gender. The language here directly addresses Harry as “you.”

During this time, the author writes, she thought a great deal about George Oppen and Mary Colby, whose life she came to believe was too happy to be credible; she found herself, she says, searching for flaws. She eventually found them, she says, in stories of Mary’s long-standing inability to discuss with George the experiences of pregnancy and giving birth, an experience that, the author says, she can identify with. The author writes of finding echoes of this belief in the work of feminist writer Luce Irigary, and refers to Irigary...