At Home in the World: Chapter 19 Excerpt
by Joyce Maynard

My inabilty to speak with true honesty leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. But in spite of my failure to be completely real in my column, I have come a long way from my old Looking Back days. All my life I've been haunted by the sense of isolation and failure I used to experience, watching those early situation comedies of perfect family life. In small ways, I try to make it clear in what I write, that the family living at the end of this particular dead end road in New Hampshire, like the families of most people reading the column, is struggling every day, and falling far short of perfection. I also mean to honor the un-glamorous and un-celebrated work of people raising children and the life of the home.

"Domestic Affairs" never makes a lot of money. But for the second time in my writing life, I begin hearing back from readers in a big way. Every week now a large envelope arrives from my syndicate in New York, full of long, heartfelt letters from readers all over the country -- mostly women raising children themselves.

The relationship with readers that I develop after I've been writing the column for a while is unlike any I have ever found. People write to say they feel they know me. They make it part of their routine, Saturday mornings, to check in and see what I' ve been thinking about, and what's been happening at our house. I come to know the look of their handwriting on the envelope, and the names of their husbands and children. I put their photographs on my bulletin board, and soon it's covered with the images of women I've never met, although, as the years pass, I come to meet many of them. These voices of strangers in my mailbox -- the very kinds of voices Jerry Salinger once warned me about -- become a sort of lifeline.

The reason why so many women send me letters is that in a quiet and cautious way, I have been talking about the dark side of motherhood and marriage in the pages of their newspaper. Some people may suppose that all I'm doing here is telling funny little stories about kids' hijinks and comical husband and wife tiffs, but the women who write to me know better. They also feel sadness and loneliness and longing, as they go through their days. They go a little crazy themselves sometimes. They recognize the sound of a woman whistling in the dark. They are such women themselves.

The letters these women write to me have a powerful effect over the eight years of publishing Domestic Affairs. They make me more honest. The columns I write, in the later years, still contain funny stories. But they are less likely to conclude with tidy endings.

In the town where I live, I have a few friends. But one of the things I know, from my years growing up in an alcoholic family, is that when you're carrying around a secret, it's very hard to develop close relationships. If you do, sooner or later you'll have to tell what's really going on.

Some years later, when I announce in my newspaper column that my husband and I are separating, many readers write to express shock and dismay, or even sharp criticism. They knew things weren't perfect, they write. Things never are. But we had such a loving marriage.

Other people write to say they saw it all the time. It was always there between the lines. It was even in the oddly melancholy, tense-looking photograph on the cover of my book of collected "Domestic Affairs" columns -- a picture of me with our three children at my side, standing in front of our house in New Hampshire. My eyes look red for good reason: I had been crying before the photographer arrived. I had just had an argument with Steve, who didn't want to appear in the photograph.

Perceptive readers could see my marriage was falling apart. One, a columnist in the Portland Oregonian, even wrote a column herself, speculating that "Joyce and Steve are in trouble" and pointing to, among other things, a poll I had recently conducted, in which I'd invited readers to write to me with their views concerning marital fidelity. When I travelled to Portland for the first time to address an audience of column readers, I was amazed at the size of the crowd that showed up to hear me. The first thing one of them wanted to know, when I opened the discussion for questions, was, "Did you ever get another oriental rug?"

"No," I said, smiling.

"Do it," she told me. "It's cheaper than a divorce."

That night I called my husband, home in New Hampshire with our children. "You wouldn't believe it," I told him. "A thousand people turned up to hear me speak."

"Just don't come home with a swelled head," he said.

Later, when people would ask me how I knew my marriage was over, I would say, "I read it in the paper."

One day the town surveyor drives up. "We're making new maps of town," he says. " You and your family being the only ones that live on this road, you can pick the name."

I save the announcement about naming the road as a treat to lay out for the family over dinner. "Imagine," I say. "From here on out, every map they make of this town will show the name we choose printed for everyone to see."

Willy, who is three, wants to name the road Dead End Road. Charlie's choice is Happy Road. Audrey wants to call it "Fifth Avenue." Steve wants the road to bear his own last name.

It's not that I dislike his name. I took the name when we married. But giving Steve's family name to this piece of property feels like an eradication of me. I wouldn't want to name the road Maynard, either. I wanted a name that represented all of us.

We don't argue so much. Our disagreement leaves us, as they often do, with silence. Though in the end, the road will bear my husband's name.

Charlie has sucked his thumb since he was a baby. As he approaches kindergarten, he decides he wants to quit. I take him to an orthodontist, who -- for $150-- fits him with a retainer that will make thumb-sucking so uncomfortable he'll give it up The first night he gets the retainer he cries softly in his bed. When I can't stand his sorrow and suggest that he take the retainer out, just this first night, he shakes his head and says, "I'm going to stick it out."

The next day I drive Audrey and two of her friends to the city of Keene, thirty miles from Hillsboro, where they take a gymnastics class. I always take my sons along, and afterward we all go out for hamburgers.

It's close to eight o'clock by the time we leave the restaurant. We're halfway home and everyone exhausted when Charlie lets out a small gasp. He has left his retainer on the table at the restaurant.

I turn my station wagon around and make the drive back to Keene. Friendly's is just closing as we pull up. Our waitress didn't find any retainer when she cleaned off our table. "Maybe it's in the trash."

"Where's the trash?" I say. She points to a large dumpster on the side of the building.

I rearrange the children's backpacks and gymnastics clothes to make room for four enormous bags of garbage.

When we get back to our house, I put the children to bed and lay newspaper over our entire kitchen floor. I drag in the trash and, bag by bag, spread it all out on the newspaper and pick through french fries and bits of burger buns and pickles. The next morning, hearing that I didn't find the retainer, Charlie tells me he will give up sucking his thumb, and he does.

I am patient and tender with my children most of the time. But I'm exhausted and depleted and lonely and frustrated. Now and then -- more frequently, as the years pass -- I explode. Sometimes at my husband. Sometimes our children.

It happens once on Christmas morning. For the last two weeks, I've stayed up late, baking and sewing, shopping at three a.m. one night, when a local department store announced it would stay open for twenty four hours, to help busy shoppers. We've thrown a party for fifty people, for which I felt the need to prepare a dozen gourmet dishes -- the most elaborate being one from a Julia Child cookbook that called for me to hold an uncooked chicken to my lips and blow so forcefully that I am able to separate the skin from the meat, which I throw in a food processor with an assortment of expensive ingredients, and then stuff it all back into a casing hand-sewn by me, out of the chicken skin to form the shape of a basketball.

I have driven several hours, in search of the child-sized store mannequin Audrey has her heart set on, and a Caribbean steel drum for Steve. I've mailed out a hundred Christmas cards, with a photograph of the five of us -- taken with an automatic timer -- sitting on our couch beside the tree, looking happy.

I'm in the kitchen Christmas morning after the presents have been opened, and wrapping paper is all around the house . Having just finished making a chocolate sheet cake and a bowl of mocha cream, I'm trying to prepare meringue mushrooms for a buche de noel, while Steve and his brother watch a football game. Willy is crying.

I ask Steve to help. "Just a minute," he says.

I look into the living room, with its perfectly constructed scene of family happiness, and it begins to spin. I watch the scene unfold with horrible fascination.

Now Joyce picks up the yule log she's just assembled. Now she stuffs it down the garbage disposal. She's grabbing a garbage bag. She tears into the living room. She's not just throwing wrapping paper into the bag though. She gathers up the new stuffed animals, her husband's Christmas sweater, her daughter's Christmas Barbie and ski parka.

"Christmas is over!" I scream. My family watches in shock. Audrey tries to hold me back. "Sit down a minute, mom." Charlie begins to suck his thumb again. Willy is yelling. Steve says, "Get a hold of yourself , Joyce," and leaves the room. His brother is already outside.

I end up crying and apologizing to everyone. I take the toys back out of the garbage bag. I make another cake. I end up being even more tired and unhappy and frustrated, and also guilty and ashamed.

"If you could see yourself, Joyce," my husband says, shaking his head. I'm gasping for breath. His voice is icy calm as he points the video camera at me. The red light goes on.

More from At Home in the World:

Chapter 8
Afterword, only found in the paperback edition, and here
Reader's Group Guide
"Private Parts, Public Women," from The Nation
JOYCE MAYNARD interviews JOYCE MAYNARD

Order the hardback or abridged audio version of At Home in the World, from the Joyce Maynard Catalogue.

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