Broyard

"It takes a while for betrayal to register. At first you deny it. You say, Don't be silly, or It's not possible. Then there's a dead spot, a silence, a regrouping. After that you go slowly, gradually through the character of the other person. You examine all the evidence against the idea of betrayal and you say, No, it can't be.
Then, like a door swinging on its hinges in a draft, you go back over your history together. You begin to imagine betrayal as a hypothesis- an absurd hypothesis, a bad joke. Skeptically, playfully, you concede that the circumstances could be interpreted that way, but only if it was somebody else who was betrayed, not you. And then, suddenly, you know that it's true."


January 23, 1996