In the evening I'm imagining, the dishes are done and neither of us has left the table. She has a book open beside her glass. There's a paragraph she wants to read me, and I've got nowhere I need to be.
Suppose the author says people don't change much after thirty-five. Their habits shift a little, but by then the important parts are settled. I'd probably object before she'd finished, which would give her a fair reason to ask why I was in such a hurry.
At forty-one, with eleven chapters of plans in front of me, I might be rather invested in the answer. That's a useful thing to discover about myself before I start explaining why the writer is wrong.
We could spend a while looking for examples. She might think of people who seem much as they did ten years ago. I'd have people in mind who had changed, though we'd need to ask in what ways and at which point in their lives. After an hour, the original claim might look less obvious in either direction. We might also discover we'd been using the same word for quite different things.
I'd enjoy an evening like that. She could pursue a question without having to reassure me at every turn, and I could take her answer seriously even if I hoped for another one. I don't expect being wrong to feel pleasant straightaway. I'd like to get better at recognizing it before I've spent the rest of the night making myself harder to convince.
Sometimes I could simply admit to answering too quickly. Perhaps the author's case deserved a closer reading, especially given how much my own hopes depended on the outcome. We could go on from there. She could leave out the victory speech while I resisted pretending to have meant something else from the beginning.
There are subjects where that would cost more. A belief can become familiar enough that questioning it feels like letting down the people who taught it to me. I'd still want to be able to look at the evidence. So would I want her to have room to reach an answer her friends, family, or husband didn't share.
I have strong views, and I hope she does too. Agreement would be welcome when we'd each thought something through. I'd be less comfortable if either of us began accepting a whole collection of opinions simply because the people we liked held them. We could share a home without arriving at every subject as a pair.
What we read would help determine what we had to talk about. I'd like books around that either of us might pick up, including some we'd chosen because we expected to disagree with them. When an argument mattered, we could read the person making it, then find a thoughtful response. That would give us more to work with than trading summaries of what the other side supposedly believes.
The phone would still be within reach. Some nights we'd choose it, or watch a terrible film and enjoy ourselves. I don't want dinner to become an examination neither of us can leave. There should be evenings when the most interesting thing we do is make each other laugh.
But on the night with the book, perhaps we'd still be talking after the tea had gone cold. We could leave the question open and come back to it on Sunday. Neither of us would have to settle it just to get some sleep. I'd like the unfinished conversation waiting there as something we were looking forward to.
I already spend time reading and questioning what I find, and the investigations are one way I put that work in public. It has taken years of attention. Some of the other chapters have waited while I did it, though I can't credit every delay to useful preparation. There are things I've been more comfortable thinking about than beginning.
Sharing the table would bring someone else's questions into that habit. She might notice where I'd stopped looking, or follow a thought that hadn't interested me. I'd have the chance to do the same for her. By the time we finally went to bed, I'd like us to have enjoyed the company enough to forgive the cold tea.
