Since my fiancée and I seemed to be the last couple in the world to read the novel, we were sure that all the hype would have ruined it. There was not a chance that the hyperbolic reviews—in the magazines and papers, on the sites and blogs, from our older trusted friends and our even more experienced friends who had children, the married couples bent toward iconoclasm—would be perpetuated by us, we Johnnies-and-Janies-come-lately. No way our expectations could be met. We considered waiting until the novel was released in mass market paperback, until there would arrive a string of days in which we hadn’t heard mention of the book, and when that happened, we would purchase An Exact Thing from a used bookstore, peruse it on a chaise with a cocktail, where a reader’s expectations are reduced to mere entertainment, and the story must compete with the pool and sky and buzz. But Kathy and I were being excluded from conversations. Friends would speak the novel’s title or recite a character’s line, then another friend would shout: “Stop! Stop! Mitchell and Kathy haven’t read it!” The reciter would then whisper the line’s remainder, turn away from us, and declare, “Well, they must read it,” before leading the conversation into another room and finally sealing the door between us, the reads and the read-nots. When we heard that around their twentieth anniversary, Steven and Lydia had not invited us to a party to discuss the book, we’d had enough.
The book’s publisher had nowhere near the marketing budget of at least fifty other titles on the new releases shelf, but An Exact Thing remained the #1 Bestseller for the entire summer. It was a “small” novel, authored by someone who had written two even smaller books without commercial success but suggestive of great potential—a collection of stories, a chapbook of poems. No one knew these works. Out of print. They couldn’t be found.
When we asked for An Exact Thing at the used bookstore, the cashier laughed. Apparently no one was relinquishing their prized copy. When we brought the books up to the register at the chain bookstore, the clerk asked, because he had to ask everyone now, “How many gifts does this make?” We hesitated. We were embarrassed to admit that this was for us, that we were new. But before we could answer, he warned us: “No one can figure out who Ms. Taylor was going to write to” and handed us our receipt. This hint, this reference, made little sense to us. But we remembered the reviews, which mentioned the execution of a scene that described “in achingly beautiful detail a hand reaching slowly, feebly, terribly toward a pen listing in an inkwell, blood leaking from a pointer finger.” That must be the question of the story, we decided. That must be Ms. Taylor’s hand in the scene. This must be the central choice of the story: Whom does she love? We were excited at a chance to solve this mystery.
Great novels ask questions. Great works of art understand the difference between vague and subtle, puzzlement and mystery, not knowing and the unknown. In this way, An Exact Thing proved, unquestionably, to be sublime. What was so fascinating, though, was the simplicity of the story, how straightforward, how strikingly unstriking the moves were. It told the story. It knew it had one to tell and went right after it. Wonderful exchanges and lines, to be sure, details, moments along the way: Buck, a poor and gentle old alcoholic character pausing after pulling a can of beer free from the plastic yoke of a six pack to recall twisting apples free from branches with his deceased lover; Ms. Taylor mistaking, quickly, sunlight lying on a wide green maple leaf for brilliant snow in July, revealing her split desire for both the younger and the older gentleman; Clarence, the other man, donning a black suit for another day of trading, folding his unseen love letter into a pocket square. But to whom she would write the letter and what it would say, finally, was the entire story. However chilling and serious, An Exact Thing wasn’t without humor. The tale approximated true. One scene was a meta-criticism of pat romance novels. A character asked, “What author, living or dead, would you like to have to dinner?” Another character answered, “Danielle Steel: dead.”
We got it. Not the answer to the final question of the book. We understood why everyone had told us to read it, why everyone wanted to talk about it. How readers’ interpretations could reveal so much of their true character. We had ideas of our own. After finishing An Exact Thing for the first time, we read through the acknowledgments, through the author bio, read the blurbs again, the reviews, read the opening chapter repeatedly, read the copyright page, the legal disclaimers, the note on the font. We looked up from the book in cafés and caught eyes with other couples holding An Exact Thing in their hands. They laughed, shook their heads, and dived down into the words again. Kathy whispered to me, not lifting her eyes from the page: “She’s writing to Gregory, the valet. She loves him.” I laughed politely, not able to place the likely minor love interest she was referencing. Ms. Taylor had a choice to make. A big one that she made only when it was too late. And we would never know. But we could believe whatever we wanted.
When we entered Steven and Lydia’s apartment for drinks, before heading out for dinner, all of our friends, all these beautiful couples, greeted us with applause. We bowed. Lydia declared, “Welcome to the club!” We were accepted. We felt older. We felt the same age.
All the gossip about work—how LeReux was now likely having an affair with the receptionist; how the boss’s presumed mistress inexplicably outperformed almost everyone who’d been at the office for twenty years and immediately took over as VP; how Steven joked about staying late one night to sneak into my office and go through my computer to see if I had been on sex chat sites instead of working—and all the gossip about home—how we were twelve weeks pregnant; how Steven’s ex-girlfriend showed up one night, drunk, and proposed to him in front of Lydia; how their daughter was now in an open relationship with two men and one woman—this was all prelude, was all forestalling, was all bullshit. We wanted to know about the book. We wanted to know what we all thought. So, we finally began talking.
It was the kind of conversation you always wanted to have with your friends. A real discussion. There was something, An Exact Thing, that we were all passionate about, a piece of artwork, something that gave us real questions, a zeitgeist that we had all experienced. We felt intelligent, like people with something to say. Although Kathy and I were the youngest and the only engaged couple, we believed we were now of value. It was possible—if we could all work together, with all of our experience informing our theses and all of our hearts in the right place—to come to a collective decision, a truth, a universal understanding of which characters belonged together. We could figure it out, once and for all. Steven halted our feverish questions and claims by positing: “First we must decide why she keeps the necklace Isaac made for her.” We pondered it. Fingers tapped the tabletop. Tongues prodded cheeks. Brows wrinkled. No one laughed. No one guessed. And then my Kathy said: “Who is Isaac?”
It is not a joy of mine to apologize for my fiancée. She is not someone who needs a regular apologist. I am just as young and naive. I could not remember Isaac in the story either, but I was more reluctant than my bride-to-be to announce my ineptitude for close reading, a skill Steven clearly possessed. But when she asked a question with such an obvious answer to readers of our friends’ caliber, I cleared my throat and dropped my napkin to the table. Although her actions should not reflect on me, it is my instinct to think of Kathy and me as one person. It is as if the sounds from her mouth could just as well have emanated from mine, given the glances I received in that moment. I accept the fact that she and I are linked, which is actually something I love. I did see it as an insult to her that Steven chewed his well-done filet, and raised an eyebrow at me, not Kathy. So, in defense of her, with frustration for the dynamic, I clarified for her, to them: “We don’t know who Isaac is, as in we don’t know his intentions.” This settled the table, or at least my stomach, for the moment.
“Shall we change the subject?” Lydia suggested.
And we did, without anyone talking.
Great novels need to be read several times. The second time I read An Exact Thing was in private. I showered, dressed, ate breakfast, and kissed Kathy goodbye for the day. I took my briefcase, walked around the block once and entered a café kitty-corner to our building’s entrance. I watched for Kathy to exit a half hour later, headed to her office. Back inside the apartment, I drew the shades, loosened my tie, and extracted An Exact Thing from the shelf. I entered the words in my stolen way. Great novels hide greater meanings in little moments. We may read a scene as simply character-building or plot-developing, a line as filler or superfluous. But great books measure every breath of a narrator, and the reader, being only human, does not realize the economy and layering in each phrase. The reveal in each word and each unmade bed. I knew I would read it several more times. I would find time, make time, hide away. The second read showed me so much that I had missed before. It was as if I had been allowed the experience of someone else’s read. What is the best analogy? The book first shows its surface. The big idea. The second time, you follow a secondary character and see another story develop. You notice that a specific expression is used repeatedly, which you couldn’t possibly catalog, reading it only the once. It’s like meeting a person at a party. Then seeing her on the street. Then kissing her in the dark. Then lying to her. It’s you, though. You are the changing thing.
An Exact Thing finally left the bestseller lists in the winter. Galley copies, early printings containing typos, European versions with varied covers, translations with newly intoned lines, review copies with missing page numbers, these sprouted up for sale by Christmas. Kathy and I exchanged coveted United States First Editions. We retreated to separate rooms, rereading before New Year’s. The book remained novel, and I was delighted to find that in the first edition, my least favorite character, Jaden, an aspiring actress who seduced Buck and was the ruin of his life, was no longer a part of the story, and that Buck was not an old alcoholic but now a gifted nineteen-year-old cellist, studying in Vienna and falling for a prostitute.
Steven and Lydia had a party at the turn of the decade. Kathy and I spotted three iterations of the novel’s dust jacket: one lying next to the television, one on the kitchen counter, and one half concealed under sheets in the guest bed. We asked, because we had to ask now, how many times had they read it? We admitted to repeat offenses, and to reading it in private, occasionally in secret, embarrassed to be discovered with An Exact Thing yet again by our spouse. No number of reads would have shocked. What was shocking was that Steven and Lydia had also kept their numerous reads secret. We crept back into the discussion again, the debate that had made us all so uneasy, back in the fall. Who belongs together?
Kathy, hardened by months of feeling foolish for her analysis of the work, her inability to read subtext and subtlety, hesitated but soon offered penetrating questions. I, now open to more and more interpretations, offered that I wasn’t sure anymore if Ms. Taylor was the one about to pen the letter in the end. As far as I knew, now, Ms. Taylor wasn’t even the protagonist. Her scenes had diminished over time, and in my last read I encountered her in only one sequence, as the flirtatious secretary of Mr. Janz, whose storyline had finally appeared to me in my third read and now seemed much more central than Buck, whose character had vanished in my eighth read. It was Florence in the end, the woman left at the altar. She had someone else’s blood on her. It wasn’t her at all, probably. It seemed possible to me. It seemed almost obvious at this point.
Lydia asked: “Who is Florence?”
As the coincidence of bewilderment registered with the group, I, now holier-than-no-one, shot Steven a raised eyebrow, not Lydia. I searched for his embarrassment. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was staring up to the posts and beams, agape. He shouted: “How many times do we have to do this?”
I wasn’t sure if Steven was angry with me for bringing up the book, if he was bored with the subject, or if he was furious with his wife for her carelessness. I apologized, but Lydia waved me off.
“We’ve had this fight a million times,” she said and patted my shoulder. “You couldn’t have known.”
“I’m sorry. What fight? About the book?”
Steven growled and threw his champagne flute into the fireplace. He brushed by me, crunching the glass shards on his march to the kitchen for, presumably, something stronger.
Lydia stumbled into the dark bedroom. Then Steven emerged from the bedroom with a dustpan and set to sweeping up the mess. Lydia fluttered into existence in the kitchen entry, clutching a tumbler of amber liquor and shaking her head.
Kathy and I went home that night and looked at each other, wide-eyed, shocked that the debate over the meaning of a book could crack open a chasm between two intelligent, reasonable people, a couple that had been together for years, whom we looked up to. Great novels should create fans, theses, courses, and literary heirs, not separation. Great novels inspired the passion of those first conversations, parties, amusing and enlightening debates. Great novels did not divide people. I didn’t know how An Exact Thing could possibly transform from a beautiful, tantalizing, endlessly intriguing topic to a source of pain and jealousy, to a blade. Kathy and I were on the same page. So, I asked Kathy—after not having done so since defending her ridiculous question that first night—what she thought of the book. Now that she had been with An Exact Thing for so long, what were her feelings? Who belonged together? We were picking up blankets and folding them, washing dishes, turning on and off the faucet, putting glasses in the cupboard, unbuttoning and buttoning.
“I’m afraid,” she told me.
I laughed. “You don’t need to be afraid with me,” I assured her, because we could tell each other anything, because Steven and Lydia were foolish for taking something made for entertainment so seriously, were foolish for allowing a stranger’s work to invade their relationship. If something should enter our relationship from outside, if it was this story, however seductive, it should not ultimately matter. We made this relationship together. A story could not be more powerful than this bond. I would understand.
“Do you believe yourself?” my Kathy asked. “Do you?”
With hope that we both felt the same for An Exact Thing, but an irresistible and dangerous curiosity to discover that we did not, I said, “I do.”