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Overview
Karen Spears and Bob Parsons meet in college and embark upon the kind of enviable, picture-perfect relationship featured in romantic movies. Bob is ambitious and adoring; Karen is bright and beautiful. And nothing seems more natural to them than getting married right after Karen's graduation.
Newlywed life meets all of Karen's expectations. Bob's career is soaring and Karen has a fulfilling job of her own—one that's put on hold when she becomes pregnant. But their caring partnership begins to slip away as Bob's single-minded pursuit of the next promotion blinds him to how overwhelmed Karen feels as a stay-at-home mom. When resentment and disenchantment build on both sides, Karen finds herself at a crossroads. What happens when reality erodes your ideal relationship? How do you know when to stay and when to go? And how much can any marriage endure before it becomes just another statistic?
Profoundly honest and revealing, A Changing Marriage is a vivid portrait of relationships at their most intricate—and most familiar.
Praise for Susan Kietzman's The Good Life
"Kietzman's well crafted characterizations give the narrative its depth. . ..Readers will find themselves drawn into the tragedies and triumphs of this fictional family—distinct and yet utterly relatable." --Hartford Books Examiner
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780758281357 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Kensington |
| Publication date: | 02/25/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 336 |
| Sales rank: | 630,989 |
| File size: | 878 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
A Changing Marriage
By SUSAN KIETZMAN
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
Copyright © 2014 Susan KietzmanAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7582-8135-7
CHAPTER 1
November 1988
He had never seen her before, even though he walked that same route from his dorm through the student center to class three times a week. She was sitting in the reception area next to the café, in an upholstered armchair. Lit from behind by the morning sunlight blasting through a wall-sized window, she looked more vision than human. Bob stopped walking. She read a book she held in her lap, as if she were alone in her dorm room or sequestered in the library, with nothing but silence for company. Bob took a step closer, and, as if on cue, she looked up at him. A second later, he was jostled by a passing student's overloaded backpack, momentarily dislodging his focus. Bumped a second time, Bob looked around, again aware of the moving people, of the noise, of the sense of urgency. He looked at the large analog clock on the wall behind him and discovered he had just five minutes to make it to his marketing class. As he cut through the lane of scurrying students, he glanced back, but the girl was gone.
Bob took his assigned seat in Mark Gladwin's class just as the professor entered the room. Gladwin, a short, trim man with wiry black hair and matching bifocals, glanced up at the auditorium rows of students on the way to his desk. He set his briefcase down and ushered his worn cardboard folder of notes to the podium. Bob opened his notebook and took a pen from his back pocket. Less than a minute later, it was as if both of them had been there for hours, Gladwin talking and Bob taking notes. He was a long-distance runner, Gladwin, and carried that unusual combination of drive and patience into the classroom. And he lived up to his reputation as a storyteller, offering a relevant case for just about every question that had arisen in class. He was different, certainly, from most of the professors at the mid-Michigan community college Bob attended for two years before transferring into the state university system. But, unlike those other professors, Gladwin appeared to have no concept of transition: He didn't say good morning; he didn't take roll; he never wasted time. He talked quickly, so that even the serious students had to strain forward in their seats to keep up. Bob knew all this; he had been Gladwin's student for more than two months now. But he still allowed his thoughts to wander. Who was that girl?
He had seen her for only a moment, but a picture of her encompassed his entire brain like an image projected onto a movie theater screen. He looked back at the professor and tried to reengage with him, but Gladwin had become like a word Bob couldn't remember, available but inaccessible. Instead, Bob's mind had become her prisoner, entangled by her auburn hair. The stillness of her pose juxtaposed with the atmospheric chaos of the student center was noteworthy. How could anyone read quietly and utterly without movement in the midst of madness? And the light from the window behind her had been white, unfiltered. Its intensity creating an aura, he mused, an aura of goodness, of serenity, of something intangible and uncommon in busy twentieth-century life.
Bob shifted his weight in his chair in an effort to change gears, to rid his mind of fantastical thoughts and to return to Gladwin, who had turned from the podium to write on the blackboard that covered the front wall of the classroom. Bob wrote in his notebook what Gladwin wrote on the board, even though it made little sense. Maybe his roommate, Evan, knew her. Maybe, if Bob explained where and when he had seen her and what she looked like, Evan would tell him her name. What was her name? Bob jotted down several possibilities in the margin of his notes: Sarah, Jennifer, Catherine, Christine ... Annette? Bob liked Annette. It was different enough to warrant her outstanding qualities. He wrote Annette below the list of other names and then wrote Parsons, his last name, after it.
Not by chance, Bob found his roommate in the library that evening. Evan Blackhurst, who referred to himself as a book nerd, always sat on the third floor in the northeast corner carrel, walled in by heavy physics books, shed clothing, and assorted caffeinated beverages he smuggled into the building in his oversized pockets. The third floor was the designated quiet floor with absolutely no talking, nothing but the occasional rumble from the heating and air-conditioning ducts for distraction. The third floor, according to Evan, was for the student who went to the library to study rather than socialize. Yet, didn't Bob find Evan every time he looked for him? Didn't they have a quick conversation every time Bob hung over the top of Evan's carrel? And hadn't Bob convinced Evan twice already that semester to quit studying and go to the bar?
"How's it going?" said Bob, popping his head over the top of the carrel. Evan didn't respond, didn't even look up. "You about done?"
"No."
"So, how much time do you need? Thirty minutes?"
Evan looked at his watch. "More like ninety."
An annoyed "Sssshhhhhhh!" emanated from a nearby carrel.
"That's too bad," said Bob, whispering. "There's a party at the complex."
Evan laid his twice-read-already copy of A Brief History of Time on the crowded tabletop in front of him. This was Evan's go-to book when he needed a quick break from studying but still wanted to stimulate his brain. Most walked to the student center for coffee when they sought diversion; Evan turned to Stephen Hawking, his idol. Evan gave Bob his best disinterested look, a challenge for a boy whose thick blond hair, although cut in the traditional men's style, grew out instead of down. And because he hadn't made time for a haircut in several weeks, he looked like someone out of the 1970s rather than the late 1980s. "Didn't we go to a function last night?"
Bob nodded his head. "It was a good function."
"I'll grant you that," said Evan, returning to his book.
Taking Evan's concurrence as an opening, Bob pulled up a chair paired with a vacant carrel. Evan sighed, putting his head in his hands for dramatic effect. "Let's go for an hour," began Bob. "I'll let you tell me, again, why Mike Dukakis should be our president. Then you can come back here and continue studying."
"After I've had a couple of beers?"
"You don't have to drink."
Evan raised his head and looked at Bob. "Then why do I want to go to this party?"
"Go to the party and leave us in peace," said the voice from the other carrel.
"I want to see if you know someone," said Bob, lowering his voice that he had inadvertently raised. "I met this girl today; actually I only saw her, in the student center on my way to class. I have to find her."
Evan removed his glasses, which Bob took as a good sign. "Since when have you needed me to meet girls?"
"This is different. She's different. She's absolutely radiant, and I don't want to mess things up. I thought if you knew her, you could introduce us or something."
"Tell me you have a crush," said Evan, the beginnings of a smile around his mouth and eyes for the first time since Bob's arrival.
"Does anyone out of elementary school use that term?"
"I just did."
"Then yes, I do." Evan looked at his watch. "Ev, you've been here all day. One hour. It will be good for you."
"Okay," said Evan, pushing back in his chair. "I'll go for one hour. But not because it will be good for me."
"Thank God," said the voice.
* * *
Harrison Complex was a cluster of dorms connected by glass hallways at the north end of campus. While not the most attractive or desirable place to live — it was a good ten-minute walk from everywhere else — it housed the perfect location for parties. Shay, the northern dining hall, was large enough so that when the tables and chairs were stacked at the perimeter, there was ample room for a couple hundred college students to socialize. It was built in the 1970s, when the energy conservation effort dictated low ceilings, an architectural feature that created an air of intimacy in utilitarian spaces like Shay, which, with support columns, was able to stretch the length of a basketball court. The setup was always the same: admission tables at one end, beer tables in the middle, and whatever the Alternative Club was promoting — chess, Pictionary, card games — at the far end.
As Bob paid the two-dollar entrance fee and had his hand stamped, he began to scan the room. Twenty-four hours ago, when he and Evan had wandered into the Delta Phi keg party on their way back from the library, Bob's sole focus had been a beer blitz on his stress level, heightened by recent midterm exams and finals in a month. Tonight, he was focused on her, the adrenaline rush from his chance meeting with her resurfacing and prompting his heart to beat faster. This could be the night he talked to her. This could be the night he put the lingering unpleasantness of an impromptu, two-week romance with a girl in his dorm to rest. God, he hoped she and her pleading looks didn't show up. He and Evan walked to the beer table and stood in line. Evan looked at his watch. "We've been here five minutes," said Bob.
"Ten."
"You walked here on your own legs. No second thoughts now."
"Fine," said Evan, which is what he always said when it wasn't.
Bob reasoned that the chances of seeing the girl at the party far outweighed those of another chance sighting somewhere else on campus. Large universities were funny that way. On his way to a class, Bob could see the same person every day for a week and then not at all the following week. An extra minute in the shower or a room scan for a missing glove was all it took to change the faces on his trip across campus. It was so unlike life at Winslow Community College, where Bob saw the same people every Monday through Friday. They parked their cars in the same spots. They walked the same wide cement sidewalks to the classroom buildings. They ate the same reheated food in the cafeteria. They sat under the same trees, smoking and drinking coffee, in the courtyard in good weather. While these were comforting features when Bob was first starting out and knew nothing about college life, they quickly turned stale. So much so that Bob had wanted to transfer to the big school after his first semester. It was his parents, citing financial constraints, who kept him home until he completed his sophomore year.
On the other side of the beer table, Evan's friend Matthew, a senior, ignored the red underage ink on their hands and handed them each two twelve-ounce plastic cups of draft beer. Cups in hand, Bob and Evan slowly walked the length of the dimly lit room, sipping as they strolled. There were so many people; it was an effort to distinguish one face from another. Strangely nervous and already discouraged, Bob chugged the second half of his first beer. "I didn't think there would be so many people here," he shouted over his shoulder and the dance music to Evan, two steps behind him.
"There are always this many people here," Evan yelled back. "This is the reason you wanted to come!"
"I'll never find her here!"
"What?" shouted Evan. Bob pointed to a set of doors and walked in their direction. They walked through them and out into the long hallway that ran the length of the dining hall, the party noise fading with a click. "What is your problem?" asked Evan. "We are now on the wrong side of locked doors. If we want to get back into the party, we have to go all the way around and through the line again."
"I couldn't hear in there; I couldn't think. How am I ever going to find this girl?"
"What," asked Evan, taking the last sip from his first cup, "is so special about this girl?"
Bob ran his hand through his short, dark brown hair, a habit more than a style correction. His older brothers had called him Brillo since junior high, a cruel but apt nickname. "I don't know. I don't even know her. It was just something I felt when I saw her today. I haven't been able to stop thinking about her."
"What does she look like?"
"She's got brilliant reddish hair," said Bob, "that goes past her shoulders. And she's got a pretty face, although it was hard to see all of it because she glanced at me for just a moment. I think I told you she was reading a book. Oh, and she's got great posture."
"Great posture?"
"Yeah. She was sitting in a chair and her back was straight, not curved and sloppy like most people's backs."
Evan started walking down the hallway, and Bob followed. "So, I'm looking for a girl with good posture?"
"Yes."
Evan took a sip from his second beer. "We're not going to find her."
"I know."
"Do you want to go back in?"
"You go in," said Bob. "I'm out of here."
Evan watched his roommate walk up the set of stairs at the end of the hallway, then looked at his watch. He decided to go back into the party for another thirty minutes before returning to the library. Maybe he'd meet a girl, a girl with nice eyes, a broad smile, and a lithesome body — good posture optional.
Bob walked back to the library, quiet and bright after the party, and up the stairs to the second floor. His books lay undisturbed in the exact position he had left them almost an hour before. Leave stuff anywhere else and it wouldn't be there an hour later; most unattended things wouldn't last ten minutes. School libraries, it seemed, were one of the last trustworthy places left. Bob breathed in, hesitated, then sat, picked up his market strategy book, and began rereading the first page of "Chapter Eight: Making Your Product Available to the Global Customer." Halfway through the second paragraph, Bob set the book down. He stood, packed all of his belongings into his backpack, and quickly descended the stairs to the first floor. What he needed, he decided on his way out the door, was a couple hours of mindless television in his room. With Evan sure to return to the library after the party, Bob could watch whatever he wanted.
Bob took his usual route through the student center on his way back to the dorm. It was a little longer than going directly to his room — and this was a consideration in mid-November, when the first snowfall was already a week old — but it provided the opportunity to enjoy light conversation as well as forced-air heat on the long walk between the library and John Adams Hall, one of six smaller dorms named after early U.S. presidents at the eastern end of campus. He opened the glass door to the café and was welcomed by sounds of relaxation. Bob wove his way around people and tables that had been moved to accommodate them and into a line of more people waiting to buy food. He reached into his back pocket for his wallet, taking out three singles for a root beer and a large bag of chips. He smiled as he paid the cashier, a cute girl with enormous brown eyes. He had seen her somewhere before, his economics lecture maybe. Bob meandered through another crowd of people gathered just outside the reception area where he had seen the girl that morning. Several games of euchre were in process. Bob stopped for a moment and looked at the chair where she had been reading. It was empty now, and he was tempted for a second to place his hand on the cushion to see if it still held the heat from her body.
The far end of the building housed one of the three campus bars. The Intellectual Grape was a mellow wine bar that attracted girls and guys trying to impress girls on dates. It was not, as Bob had learned, a good place to start a conversation with a stranger. People at The Grape walked in with the company they wanted to keep that evening. Was she in there with another guy? Bob resisted the urge to walk in and have a look around, instead heading for the doors at the far end of the hallway. As he was about to walk back out into the cold night air, she appeared on the other side of the glass. Bob froze, unable for a few seconds to even breathe. Was she real, or was she a product of his longings? She smiled at him; Bob thought he smiled in return. He wanted to speak to her, but the glass was in the way. It separated them, a transparent but formidable wall, and Bob had no idea how to reach her. He pushed against it, but it wouldn't move. Perhaps he could scale it. If only he could find a rope. He checked the ground, but found nothing. When he looked up, she was still there, only now she was reaching for something, and before Bob knew exactly what was happening, the door was opening, as if released by incantation. "How did you do that?" Bob asked, transfixed.
"I pulled on the handle," said the girl, facing him from less than three feet away. "Your side's locked."
"Ah," said Bob, still submerged in fantasy, but swimming toward the surface.
"Are you okay?"
"Yes, most definitely."
"Okay then," she said, turning to leave.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Changing Marriage by SUSAN KIETZMAN. Copyright © 2014 Susan Kietzman. Excerpted by permission of KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP..
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