Three D’s

“Three D’s” is Jo Henniger’s compressed name for Driss, Day, and David. In her reflection, the phrase gathers together the death she and David caused, her affair with Day, and the upheaval she understands as having broken down and remade her.

The Three Referents

Driss is the boy Jo and David killed; Day is the man with whom Jo slept; David is her husband, whose presence at her side, she thinks, would have prevented the events that changed her. The phrase places these three names together without making their roles interchangeable: one is the cause of a death, one the partner in an affair, and one Jo’s husband and fellow participant in the fatal event.

A Chain of Consequences

Jo sees the three men as part of a grim sequence. She reasons that if she and David had not killed Driss, nothing would have happened; she also believes that without Driss she would not have slept with Day. She calls the result a liberation, while recognizing that it came through destruction and through choices tied to loss and guilt.

Meaning in Jo’s Reflection

The phrase gives Jo’s account a compact, memorable form: the repeated initial links the men in her mind as she tries to understand the events of the preceding forty-eight hours. Her description of them as “her Three D’s” expresses a personal connection among consequences that she does not regard as ironic or paradoxical. It marks her attempt to make sense of a transformation she attributes to Driss, while acknowledging that the affair with Day and the death caused by her and David are inseparable from it.