She could think of nothing more horrifying than not being able to hide what she wanted. She couldn’t have said no to him, she’d since realized, but she didn’t want to. And maybe that was the difference, or maybe, the difference was in thinking that there was one at all.

She draws in her breath: a husband who groomed her as a fourteen-year-old child; a narcissistic mother; two problematic children; and brushes with social services. But the compelling things feel precious somehow, half-formed and delicate, not yet ready for the judgment of her husband.

can still remember the morning when Deanna tearfully explained to me her experience of this natural season in a woman’s life—the way her body felt like it was a stranger, recalcitrant, behaving in ways she couldn’t predict and didn’t like; the way she resented this diminishment of desire, even as she grappled with its chemical reality; the way she