Introduction

Eve is eight months pregnant and in the middle of a Thanksgiving celebration when she discovers that her husband, Jonathan, has developed an emotional affair with another woman over the past year. What Jon has done seems so terrifyingly out of character that Eve finds herself questioning her entire world.

Editorial Review

No editorial review at this time.

Excerpt

Some years, I gaze around the Thanksgiving table and I feel almost painfully grateful for my own bounty, for the abundance that is my life, for everything that brought me to this moment, with these people, inside this light.

And some years, I just eat turkey.

This Thanksgiving had been off to a promising start. Jacob was at his most adorable, regaling us all with what, at five years old, was a new tale of Pilgrims and Indians and friendship. My husband, Jonathon, was the consummate host, topping off my friend Tamara and her boy friend Clayton's wineglasses from the decanter, expertly cuing Jacob whenever he was about to struggle for a word or detail. Jonathon's mother was getting along with mine, meaning Sylvia wasn't openly disapproving of my mother. (Nothing feeds gratitude like lowered expectations.) And I thought, looking down at my swollen belly, about the party crasher inside - boy or girl, we didn't know yet. Jonathon and I wanted the surprise.

My happiness was magnified by this being our first Thanksgiving in our own home. I'd never had a dining room before, let alone a house, having grown up in small apartments in Southern California with my mother and brother, and then living in San Francisco, land of low square footage. Who knew I could get this much pleasure out of a dining room? Who knew I could be so happy living in the suburbs?

When Jonathon and I first had Jacob, we pledged to be urban to the end; we were going to raise street-smart kids who'd osmotically pick up four languages by the time they were ten. We resisted suburbia for as long as we could, mourned the friends who had fallen, and sworn we'd never go to the dark side (meaning, shopping centers perennially anchored by Starbucks and Bed Bath & Beyond). We told each other that we loved the authenticity of our city block - i.e., the smells of sulfurous cooking and urine, the reek of real life - as we seemed to be in the only San Francisco neighborhood undergoing a degentrification. But my bubble of self-delusion burst the day I'd circled twenty minutes to find a parking space, and as we walked along, Jacob asked a homeless man where his mommy was and the guy let out a string of invectives that followed us half a block. Since Jon and I couldn't afford a house in any decent city neighborhood, the burbs it was.

The phone rang, and Jonathon said he'd get it, he was already up. From the dining room, I could see into the kitchen, and I didn't expect Jon to reach out and shut the swinging door between the rooms. But it wasn't until he'd been gone awhile, maybe as long as fifteen minutes, that it truly registered as anything out of the ordinary. It wasn't like Jon to disappear when there were people to attend to. What was going on? Could there have been an accident? Or - and fear gripped me most as this thought hit - what if something was wrong with Jon? A doctor calling with test results? A doctor wouldn't call on a holiday unless it was really bad - impending- coronary bad. That was how Jon's father had died, just keeled over at the age of fifty- two. Of course, he'd been married to Sylvia, and that could weaken any man's heart.

When I was pregnant, I was prone to panicked worstcase scenarios. In the later part of my pregnancy with Jacob, and for much of the first year of his life, I turned into one of those people who couldn't watch the news. Jonathon and I developed a little ritual around it where I'd ask him for highlight reels. He'd tell me a bunch of true things and one that was made up and I'd have to guess the falsehood. He started really getting into it, reading different Web sites that specialized in true and wacky news items from around the world. It was surprisingly hard to guess the faux item. For example, there really were two blond twin girls who called themselves Prussian Blue singing perky songs about white supremacy, the Olsen twins of the White Nationalist Movement. Jon and I both loved the ritual, which served to divert me from some truly awful things that were occurring in the world, things utterly beyond my control, and reminded me of the fun and silliness and connection that we shared. It made me feel safe.

But right then, I was picturing Jon collapsed on the ceramic kitchen tiles, gasping for air. (Did people gasp when they were having coronaries?) I excused myself and pushed open the swinging door, relieved to see he wasn't lying prone, but surprised that he wasn't in the kitchen at all. Maybe it's just hindsight, maybe it's too much TV - the “Did I put the dog in the washing machine, or was that on The Brady Bunch?” syndrome - but the rest of the house seemed eerily still in that moment and my stomach was pretzeled as I walked down the hall toward our bedroom. I don't think this next part is hindsight, I think it's memory: Though nothing in our marriage to that point indicated that I should, I was moving deliberately, stealthily, like I imagined a hunter would stalk big game. I could hear Jon's muffled voice behind the closed bedroom door. I don't know what made me put my ear up to it, but when I did, I heard Jonathon speaking to someone with great tenderness, saying things like, “Shhh, you're going to be okay. This day will be over soon. And you'll be just fine.”

My heartbeat accelerated; I had to remind myself to breathe. There were two options, as I saw it: continue eavesdropping, or open the door. Walking away was an impossibility. If I listened longer, he could say something like, “I love my wife more than anything in the world, and I have to get back to her.” Or perhaps, “Henry . . .” Any man's name would be acceptable. Of course, there were those androgynous names like “Sam.” Unless . . . ?

I pushed the door open, and Jonathon looked up, his eyes widening. We held the gaze a few seconds, and then he said into the phone, “Hold on.” To me, “I'm sorry this is taking so long. I'll be out in a minute.”

Like it was an ordinary call. Could it be an ordinary call? I wanted to think that it was. But somehow, I didn't. That alone seemed damning, but of whom? Of him? Of me? “Who is that?” I asked.

“It's just a friend,” he said. Nothing strange in his tone, but that wording. Does anyone say “just a friend” if someone really is just a friend? Wouldn't you say the friend's name?

But this was Jonathon. He only had just friends. “Which friend?” I tried to make my tone match his, but failed.

He put his hand up to indicate it would be one more minute, and addressed the receiver again. “I need to go now, okay?”

Whoever was on the other end actually kept talking. I could make out a female voice, though I couldn't hear what she was saying. She prattled on at breakneck speed as I stood there waiting. I wasn't just waiting for her to stop talking; I was waiting for him to interrupt her. Who was this woman with the audacity to call my husband away in the middle of Thanksgiving, who hears my voice in the room, who hears him say he needs to go, and keeps talking?

But, I countered, maybe that was what made her harmless. Maybe she had the audacity because she didn't need to fear discovery, she didn't need to fear the wife. She was just a friend who was too upset on Thanksgiving to observe social graces.

I couldn't take it anymore. If he wouldn't interrupt, I would. “We have guests.”

Jonathon mouthed the words “I'm sorry” in an exaggerated way, like we were sharing the joke of how some people can't take a hint. “I've really got to go now,” he told her. “Take care of yourself, okay?” He clicked the disconnect button on the cordless phone. Then he turned to me and smiled. “Let's get back in there.”

I couldn't stop hearing: “Shhh, you're going to be okay”. It was the intimacy of that “shhh”; not how you shhh the loud guy behind you at the movie theater, but the way you quiet a distraught lover.

“Which friend did you say that was?” I asked. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1) Which is a greater betrayal, a physical or an emotional affair? Or are they equal? Did your opinion flip back and forth during the book, or did it stay consistent throughout?

2) Eve is a complicated character. When did you most identify with her and/or feel most sympathetic? Were there times when you disliked her and/or understood Jon better?

3) Eve ultimately realizes she's responsible for behavior that weakened her marriage and made it more susceptible to an affair. Do you agree that when one partner has an affair, the other should look at his/her own role?

4) How are the issues in this book reflective of our changing times (cyber affairs, divorce, notions about sexual fulfillment, etc.)?

5) The book ends with a hopeful ambiguity. What do you think the future holds for Jonathon and Eve?

Weblinks

»	Publisher's Book Information

Book Club Recommendations

Recommended to book clubs by 0 of 0 members.

Member Reviews

There are no user reviews at this time.
Rate this book