Laurie Colwin

Josephine "Billy" Delielle and Francis Clemens are happily married--just not to each other. Another Marvelous Thing is the story of their affair, from its fabulous inception to its inevitable end. Billy and Francis couldn't be more different, at least when it comes to age and disposition, but that doesn't prevent them from falling in love and settling into the easy rhythms of romance--phone calls every morning, rendezvous every weekday afternoon, the odd out-of-town escape--despite both still being very partial to their spouses. In interconnected stories, Laurie Colwin deftly reveals each character's point of view and examines, in razor-sharp detail, the "marvelous" and messy glory of modern love and the curious desires of the heart. This whirlwind romance, perfectly captured in Colwinesque frank and funny style, is firm proof that oppositesreally do attract.

Another Marvelous Thing

bianca

No one, he reflected sadly, ever possesses anyone else. The act of love can be performed by complete strangers, but it is quite another thing to have access to what someone else actually thinks.

It was one thing to be in love. It was quite another to be loved back.

He asked for tea and it was several months before he realized that he had chosen it over the drink he really wanted because its preparation might keep him with [her] for a few minutes more.

I imagine that some day she will turn to me and with some tone in her voice I have never heard before say: “We can’t see each other any more.” We will both know the end has come. But meanwhile she is right close by.

The awful day will doubtless come. It is like thinking about the inevitability of nuclear war. But for now, I continue to ring her doorbell. Her greeting is delivered in a bored monotone. “Oh, it’s you,” she will say.

That week together haunted us. It dogged our heels. It made us long for and dread—what an unfortunate combination!—each other.

One evening I revealed to her how I sometimes feel as I watch her walk up the stairs to the door of her house. I feel she is walking into her real and still fairly young life. She will leave me in the dust, I think. I think of all the things that have not yet happened to her, that have not yet gone wrong, and I think of her life with [him], which is still fairly unlived.

Yes, love is undeniable and that is the tricky point. It is one of the sobering realizations of adult life that love is often not a propellant. Thus, in those romantic movies, the tender mistress stays married to her stuffy husband—the one with the mustache and the stiff tweeds—while the lover is seen walking through the countryside with his long-suffering wife and faithful dog. It often seems that the function of romance is to give people something romantic to think about.

She said that the small doses we got of one another made it possible for us to have a love affair but that a taste of ordinary life would do us in. She correctly pointed out that our only common interest was each other, since we had such vast differences of opinion on the subject of economics. Furthermore, we were not simply lovers, nor were we mere friends, and since we were not going to end up together, there was nothing for it.

“What do you mean?” Do you mean you want to break this up?”

“No. It would be nice, though, wouldn’t it?”

“I think it would. Then I wouldn’t spend all my time wondering what we are doing together when I could be thinking about other things, like my dissertation.”

[she] will turn to me and in a voice full of the attempt to stifle emotion say something like: “Sometimes I don’t understand how I got so fond of a beat-up old person such as you.”

Another Marvelous Thing

Reviews

Highlights