Summary

The narrator describes how her husband makes her delete a manuscript she is working on because she includes the word "lover." The narrator knows that at some point in the future, she will be writing about this, and this gives her hope because she knows if she will write about it that it means she will escape. She considers what her husband actually knows about love because he seems to believe that deleting the word can delete the memories and feelings.

To enact revenge, the narrator writes letters to imaginary lovers and deletes them before her husband can find them. To one lover, she writes about her husband’s affiliation with the Communist party, a party she respected, and she wonders how a party that values introspection could have allowed a man like him in. She wonders if the other Communist men...