There’s no story here.

There was once a woman whose husband had an affair with another woman. She was gradually made aware of its existence once, twice. The third time from the other woman herself, who called her up on the phone and described the affair in livid and explicit detail, so there was no getting around the fact that it had actually occurred, that it was not a figment of a paranoid imagination—as the husband had asserted.

She knew about it for three years before she and her husband finally filed for a divorce.

The husband and the girlfriend. Now that was a story.

But the woman. There’s no story there because in all that time, all those three years, she did not have an affair of her own.

She got a big promotion and wrote a couple of books.

She took care of her three kids.

She had lots of laughs with her friends. One year they each sent her a card for her birthday.

But nothing happened.

There was no new man. Or woman either, for that matter. Nothing. No one. No story.

I know her story–or lack thereof–for that woman is me.

And it never fails to mystify me how there is just no story here. No affair. No flirtation, even. Nothing. In all these past three years.

Once, it seems like ages ago, I wrote that I was tired of the same old plot.

The boy meets girl plot. The boy screws girl plot. The girl screws girl plot. The involvement. The relationship. The marriage. The jealousy. The break-up.

But what is there without it? Isn’t that the only plot?

Go to the movies. Open any book. Turn on the TV. Someone is unhappy. Divorced. Widowed. Needy. Unappreciated. Lonely. Feeling blue. Pretty soon, someone else, an Other appears in the picture. Because that’s how the story is supposed to go. That’s what makes it a story. The multi-faceted dialoguing between self and other. Without it, what’s there to tell?

There’s this person, needing something. Wanting something. Then there’s this other person. Together they become a story.

The husband now. He even seems to be involved in yet another story.

But not for me.

It’s the fourth fall. The crickets rhythmically pulsating in the chilling night air. I am still alone and story-less.

Is it my punishment for expressing boredom at the tired old plot? Where are the new ones then?

Do I seem so self-contained? Am I scary and off-putting? No gap in which The Story could begin.

Is it because for so long I still hoped for my ex to come around? And maybe I still–how foolishly–do?

I guess it must be up to me to write the story. No one else seems about to.

Like the story I wrote when I was thirteen and was also living a life with no story.

That story was about the glamour of teenaged hoods, a life that seemed filled with freedom and possibilities. One in which I desperately wanted to participate. But I could find no way in except through words and imagination.

I guess it must be up to me to write my story now, once more. So here goes.

Once there was this dynamic middle-aged woman. A woman in her forties. She didn’t look like a college student, or even like a woman in her thirties, but she did run three times a week and lift weights. Her hair was turning gray and she couldn’t quite decide what to do with it. She had three sons to whom she gave tough love. She was a terrific cook, especially of simple food that prepared easily and tasted delicious. Her sons loved her cooking and so did her ex. She was a professor, a full professor at that, and a published writer. Her third book had just come out around the time of her divorce.

One day her middle son–he was of a care-taking bent–decided she was lonely and in need of companionship so he introduced her to his social studies teacher. The social studies teacher was quite impressed. He had always wanted to meet a woman who could discuss semiotics while whipping up an apple pie with streusel topping. He had become tired of the barbie doll types who always told him yes dear what ever you say but left him with the vague feeling that something was amiss. Who looked like clones of sitcom starlets, but never really quite made it. What a relief to finally know a spunky, natural woman. He revelled in and with this mature woman of heart and mind who loved to eat, drink, read, laugh, argue and was also good in bed.

Yeah, yeah, what a laugh. This certainly is fiction.

The social studies teacher is only thirty himself. Married with two kids.

And it never even occurred to the son that maybe it would be good for his mother to meet a man. Why would it? After all, such things only happen in movies. And then only to single fathers who some how once they’ve managed to get rid of their wives are able to transform into great, loving, expressive, nurturant guys. Who are great catches for a smart woman (smarter than nasty old mom who left).

But the really strikingly fictional part here is, honestly, what man would find it a relief to meet a woman like this? Who wouldn’t be as intimidated as hell–and as the ex-husband–by a woman who did not look like a good girl, which for a woman of forty means trying not to look like forty i.e. grown-up and scary like mom; who did not sound like a good girl, which means trying to be sweet, soft-spoken and compliant, whose voice and the words it speaks pose no serious competitive threat; and whose life certainly did not seem to follow the subservient pattern of a good girl’s life, which, by definition does not in any serious way compete in the same arena as the boys.

And if, by some fluke there might have happened to have been such a man available in Durham, N.H. within the past decade, he was snatched up in a nanosecond. Ditto for the one that might have been available in New York City.

So here we are, back to no story. Because as we’ve determined, it takes two.

And though I’m here, the other is only available through imagination.

And even so, not with any real conviction.

Mara Witzling

October 1994