A hand exchanged my beer for champagne. I raised my glass, met the eyes of each person around the table in turn, ending with Elsa.

Seventeen years, mouthed Elsa.

I know, I mouthed.

Elsa stood up, raised her glass to me. We drank to each other, standing at the head of the table, as around us our friends got to their feet. Knives chinked on glasses. People at the other tables were watching us. I rested my hand in the small of her back. “Well, this isn’t in any way embarrassing.”

A half smile from Elsa, knowing and complex. She leaned in very close. She smelled of sunlight on clean skin. The white-blue iris of her left eye; the amused curl of her lip; and below her the faces of our friends, smiling up.

“Speech, Cal,” someone shouted.

“Yes, speech!”

“Elsa,” I said. “Did you say I would speak?”

“I did.”

“I don’t understand you,” I said. Elsa looked at me, serious now. I stood at the head of the table, looking around. Faces were turning toward me, our friends becoming an audience. “Seventeen years married,” I said to them, “and still that question: Who is this woman I share my life with?”

People from other tables were watching too.

“I don’t know where the rest of you are in modeling the psyche of your wife, your husband, your—forgive me for saying this, Jo—your life partner, but I’m stuck in the black-box model of marriage.”

No one laughed.

“Tough crowd. Okay, let me give you an example. The sexist version of this joke is this: I know, through observation, that a dropped pair of underpants on the bathroom floor—that’s stimulus A—results in icy atmosphere at dinner—that’s response B. But the route from A to B cannot be mapped, because it’s taking place inside a black box.”

Sporadic laughter.

“For anyone who hasn’t figured it out, the black box in this joke—the sexist version of this joke—is the inside of my wife’s head. Because women are a mystery to men.”

A couple of good-natured boos.

“Okay, good. We agree that no one looks good in that version of the joke. Right?”

People nodded.

“Right. But you guys are way beyond the black-box model, right? You formed a hypothesis about why underpants on floor equal icy atmosphere at dinner.

I selected Hedda.

“Hedda, you hypothesize that Elsa is mad because I left my underpants on the bathroom floor, and she feels—reasonably, I should stress—that as an adult . . .”

Hedda smiled. “. . . you should pick up after yourself.”

“Now my wife is no longer the butt of the joke, and I come across as an imbecile who is incapable of change. But . . .”

Elsa’s eyes locked on to mine.