Dept. of Speculation

“He gave me a CD to take home. On the cover was an old yellow phone book, ruined by rain. I closed my eyes and listened to it. Who is this person? I wondered.”

The soundscape CD the philosopher gives to the narrator marks the inception of the narrator’s interest in the husband. Listening to the CD affords her a rare sense of calm, illustrated by the image of her closing her eyes, and thus incites her curiosity over the husband. This passage foreshadows the couple’s forthcoming relationship.

“We walked for a ways along the edge of the cliff until we came to a bus stop. There we waited, holding hands, not talking. I was thinking about what it would be like to live somewhere so beautiful. Would it fix my brain?”

The narrator and the husband’s overseas trip inspires new intimacy between them. The image of the cliff near the bus stop suggests notions of danger—representative of the world beyond the couple’s developing connection—while the image of them “holding hands” in patient silence suggests comfort and safety. The narrator imagines herself living in this place because she longs to preserve the beauty and security that she feels while traveling with the husband.

“The reason to have a home is to keep certain people in and everyone else out. A home has a perimeter. But sometimes our perimeter was breached by neighbors, by Girl Scouts, by Jehovah’s Witnesses. I never like to hear the doorbell ring. None of the people I liked ever turned up that way.”

The narrator’s description of her home life foreshadows how marriage, motherhood, and domestic life will fragment her sense of self. She sees the home as a protective barrier against the world—a way “to keep certain people […] out.” This statement implies that the narrator has self-isolating tendencies and foreshadows how these tendencies will intensify over time. As the passage portends, the narrator’s home will evolve from a safe haven into a trap.

“What the baby liked best was speed. If I took her outside, I had to walk quickly, even trot a little. If I slowed down or stopped, she would start wailing again. It was the dead of winter and some days I walked or trotted for hours, softly singing. What did you do today, you’d say when you got home from work, and I’d try my best to craft an anecdote for you out of nothing.”

The narrator’s description of her life at home with her baby establishes the novel’s theme of the Conflict Between Motherhood and Personal Aspirations. The narrator loves her daughter, but motherhood rapidly shrinks her life. She spends her days “walking,” “trotting,” and “singing”—activities that imply productivity but, in this instance, feel devoid of true meaning. Her inability to articulate how she spends her days with the baby to the husband captures how motherhood has robbed her of her creative spirit—she is a writer who has lost the ability to articulate.

“The most charismatic people—the poets, the mystics, the explorers—were that way because they had somehow managed to keep a bit of this light that was meant to have dimmed. But the shocking thing, the unbearable thing it seemed, was that the natural order was for this light to vanish. It hung on sometimes through the twenties, a glint here or there in the thirties, and then almost always the eyes went dark.”

The narrator and her friend pontificate over the evolution of the human spirit over time, but it is implied that they are discussing this subject in the context of how motherhood and marriage alter the individual’s sense of self. The passage affects a despondent tone with the use of “shocking” and “unbearable” to describe this gradual loss of light. The friends fear that it is “the natural order” for their “light to vanish”—a phenomenon the narrator has been experiencing ever since getting married and having a baby. The passage highlights the Fragmentation of Identity in Marriage, particularly over time.

“There is a picture of my mother holding me as a baby, a look of naked love on her face. For years, it embarrassed me. Now there is a picture of me with my daughter looking exactly the same way. We dance with the baby every night now, spinning her round and round the kitchen. Dizzying, this happiness.”

The narrator’s use of descriptive detail and figurative language illustrates her contentment in this scene. She is basking in her new family life and uses diction like “naked,” “dance,” “spinning,” “dizzying,” and “happiness” to affect a lighthearted mood. The image of her dancing with her husband and the baby “round and round the kitchen” suggests that the family is lost in their own intimate sphere.

“Sometimes I find myself having little conversations in my head with the punk rock kids upstairs. You know what’s punk rock about marriage? Nothing. You know what’s punk rock about marriage? All the puke and shit and piss.”

The narrator uses a sardonic tone to describe her marital life, which contrasts sharply with the punk rock kids’ lives. The narrator imagines communicating with them because she feels separated from their more liberated, youthful phase of life. The latter lines of the passage use humor and irony to subtextually gesture towards the narrator’s wit and creativity—both of which still exist despite her frustration in the narrative present.

“Sometimes at night I conduct interviews with myself. What do you want? I don’t know. What do you want? I don’t know. What seems to be the problem? Just leave me alone.”

The narrator’s use of repetition enacts her Search for Meaning in Everyday Life. She is interrogating herself in the privacy of own her mind, looking for answers. The pastime, although essential to her internal journey, doesn’t produce any definite results—affected by the repetition of her questions and answers. At the same time, by asking herself these questions, the narrator demonstrates her desire to make sense of her own mind and heart.

“There is still such crookedness in my heart. I had thought loving two people so much would straighten it. What the Yoga People say: None of this is banal, if only you would attend to it. All right then, this thing clogging the sink. I reach my hand into the murky water, fiddle with the drain. When I pull it back out, my hand is scummed with grease.”

The narrator’s domestic life dampens her spirit and distracts her from her personal and creative aspirations. She fears that something is wrong with her because “loving two people” hasn’t entirely fulfilled her. However, because the narrator is spending her days “[un]clogging the sink” and “fiddl[ing] with the drain,” she has no time to devote to her creative practice. The images of the “murky water” and “grease” on her hands highlight the mundanity of her tasks while also describing the remnants they leave behind.

“So lately I’ve been having this recurring dream: In it, my husband breaks up with me at a party, saying, I’ll tell you later. Don’t pester me. But when I tell him this, he grows peevish. ‘We’re married, remember? Nobody’s breaking up with anybody.’”

The narrator’s “recurring dream” foreshadows her husband’s affair with the girl. The husband assures her that “[n]obody’s breaking up with anybody,” but the narrator’s dream is prescient. The narrator is unconsciously anticipating marital unrest, which reiterates how marriage has upset her sense of internal balance and security.

“I find a cheap piano and surprise my husband with it. Sometimes he composes songs for us after dinner. Beautiful little things. If it is after eight, the neighbors complain. Anyway, the bugs get in it.”

By giving the piano to her husband, she is demonstrating her love for him; and by composing songs for the narrator and their daughter, the husband is demonstrating his love for his family. However, the bugs quickly infest the piano—which symbolizes the yet unrecognized turmoil developing between the couple. In addition, the neighbors who complain are an intrusion of the outside world that hampers their attempts to maintain intimacy.

“Survival in space is a challenging endeavor. As the history of modern warfare suggests, people have generally proven themselves unable to live and work together peacefully over long periods of time. Especially in isolated or stressful situations, those living in close quarters often erupt into hostility.”

The narrator’s musings on survival, space, and warfare provide insight into her marital situation. She is literally reflecting on the “challenging endeavor” of maintaining one’s mental health and personal relations in outer space, but these reflections are metaphors for how the isolation and stress of married life can also test the individual’s and the couple’s ability to survive. This quote also highlights the narrator’s writerly mind with her well-informed reference to two NASA space shuttles, the Endeavor and the Challenger, one of which retired peacefully at the end of its tenure, while the other exploded in a tragic disaster.

“I’m spending a lot of time online trying to buy a deserted ramshackle bungalow colony. As soon as I find one (and the money to buy it), I’m going to get ten friends to stay up there with us all summer. Kind of a commune minus the hallucinogenic drugs and the mate swapping. My husband is unmoved by my scheme.”

The narrator’s new pastime of searching for “a deserted ramshackle bungalow colony” contributes to her search for meaning in everyday life. She feels in constant conflict with herself, her marriage, motherhood, and family life. In looking for new properties to buy where she can host her friends, she is looking for a way to infuse her life with purpose. The latter line of the passage dampens the narrator’s more hopeful tone at the passage’s start; the husband’s disinterest in her plan conveys his growing emotional distance.

“Hard to believe I used to think love was such a fragile business. Once when he was still young, I saw a bit of his scalp showing through his hair and I was afraid. But it was just a cowlick. Now sometimes it shows through for real, but I feel only tenderness.”

The narrator’s reflections on love capture her deep and abiding care for her husband. She is noting how she thinks about her husband in the past versus in the present; in the past she was afraid of how he’d change—for example, losing his hair—but in the present, she feels “only tenderness” at the prospect of watching him change. Although the couple will soon experience significant marital unrest, this passage underscores the authenticity of their connection.

“Stop writing I love you, said the note my daughter wrote over the one I left in her lunchbox. For a long time, she had asked for a note like that every day, but now a week after turning six, she puts a stop to it. I feel odd, strangely light-headed when I read the note. It is a feeling from a long time ago, the feeling of someone breaking up with me suddenly. My husband kisses me. ‘Don’t worry, love. Really it’s nothing.’”

The narrator’s daughter’s note marks a change in the narrator’s maternal journey. The narrator compares her upset over the daughter’s note to “the feeling of someone breaking up” with her; this metaphor evokes notions of rejection and heartbreak. The narrator is still adjusting to her role as a mother, and this experience shows how her maternal identity will keep changing as her daughter continues to grow up. Therefore, as the daughter matures, the narrator’s understanding of her mothering role will mature in turn.

“They were in the coffee shop that day he asked her. When were you the happiest? Something she should have seen then, something about the look on his face, the way the air changed in that moment. So how come it took her a month to think of her own question? The one he answered rhetorically.”

The narrator uses a reflective tone to capture her desire to understand changes in her marriage. She remembers the day that she discovered the husband was having an affair; in retrospect, she is unsure how she didn’t make sense of the situation sooner. Her questioning state of mind shows her desire to make sense of her altered circumstances and understand how changes in her marriage will change her sense of self.

“There is nowhere to cry in this city. But the wife has an idea one day. There is a cemetery half a mile from their apartment. Perhaps one could wander through it sobbing without unnerving anyone. Perhaps one could flap one’s hands even.”

The images of the cemetery convey notions of grief and immerse the narrative in the narrator’s intense emotional experience. After the narrator discovers that her husband is having an affair, she longs to be alone somewhere that she can cry with shame or embarrassment. The city feels more entrapping than ever and the cemetery—a setting symbolic of death, loss, and mourning—seems the best place to express her sorrow. The emotionally resonant passage reiterates the fragmentation of identity in marriage.

“Lately, the wife has been thinking about God, in whom the husband no longer believes. The wife has an idea to meet her ex-boyfriend at the park. Maybe they could talk about God. Then make out. Then talk about God again.”

The narrative shifts out of the narrator’s reality and into her imagination, a movement that conveys her desire to escape her marital and emotional unrest. She imagines talking about God and making out with the ex-boyfriend because she wants to explore her body and mind beyond the confines of her marriage. God is symbolic of religious belief—and thus the spiritual world—while the act of kissing someone is rooted in the physical world. The narrator wants to find meaning in her life and is searching for it in both the spiritual and physical worlds.

“In the book, he is referred to as the participating partner and she as the hurt one. There are many other icky things, but there is one thing in the book that makes her laugh out loud. It is in a footnote about the way different cultures handle repairing a marriage after an affair.”

The narrator’s adultery book reifies her search for meaning in everyday life. She becomes reliant on the book after discovering that her husband is having an affair because she doesn’t know how to navigate her unfamiliar circumstances. She wants to repair her “marriage after [the] affair” and thus looks to the book for guidance. The passage underscores the book’s symbolic significance and demonstrates the narrator’s desire for understanding.

“The wife has never not wanted to be married to him. This sounds false but it is true. She has wanted to sleep with other people, of course. One or two in particular. But the truth is she has good impulse control. That is why she isn’t dead. Also why she became a writer instead of a heroin addict. She thinks before she acts. Or more properly, she thinks instead of acts.”

The narrator’s reflective tone reiterates her longing to make sense of who she is and what she wants in the context of her relationship with the husband, furthering the novel’s explorations of fragmentation of identity in marriage. She compares her identity as a wife to her identity as a writer, facets of herself she’s previously believed to be in conflict but is beginning to understand are parts of the same whole—her complete identity.

“There are many ways in which she has been a good wife, some that would hold up under cross-examination even. But when she thinks of listing them, she keeps hearing the voice of a TV lawyer in her head.”

The narrator repeatedly interrogates herself after she discovers the husband’s affair because attributing his infidelity to her own actions affords her the illusion of control. At the same time, the narrator isn’t sure how her actions have affected her husband and their marriage, which is why she hears “the voice of a TV lawyer in her head”—a voice that implies notions of accusation, accountability, and punishment.

“She puts on yoga pants and says she is going to yoga, then pulls off onto a country lane and writes in tiny cramped handwriting on a grocery list. She thinks she should go off her meds maybe so as to write more fluidly. Possibly this is not a good idea. But only possibly.”

The narrator’s move to Pennsylvania helps her to become reacquainted with her artistic self. The image of her pulling “off onto a country lane” and writing in her car conveys the narrator’s work to reignite her writing practice. She has liberated herself from her entrapping life in the city and now feels comfortable suspending her anticipated activities to prioritize her artistic life. Doing so offers her the space and clarity to rediscover herself in a more peaceful environment, marking a turning point in her search for meaning in everyday life.

“In the morning, the wife lets the dog out: Hey a squirrel! Hey a tree! Hey a piece of shit! Hey! Hey! Hey! They bathe him together, toweling him off gently. Afterwards, the wife gives him peanut butter and watches him lick it from the spoon.”

The image of the narrator and husband playing with and cleaning off the dog together conveys notions of love, togetherness, and reconciliation. The couple is coming together to work on a common goal. The dog brings them together and helps them to let go of their conflict and remember who they are to each other. This scene thus foreshadows their redemptive end at the close of the narrative.