"Menudo" (1987)

I like this story by Raymond Carver, but it probably bears comparison with John Updike's philandering suburban dwellers. It also hits really close to home if you know Carver's biography or anything about his first wife. The ex-wife in this story ("Molly") is obviously her. Molly's New Age chatter and other details, as reported by the first-person narrator, may be exaggerated but the story is never kind to her. Still, the premise is instantly affecting, even gripping. Our man has been having an affair with the married woman across the street. Her husband found out she was cheating, though not with whom. At the same time, or recently, our guy's second wife discovered his affair, though also not with whom. He won't tell her even as she keeps guessing and he lies when she guesses right. Amanda, the neighbor he has been sleeping with, has been given an ultimatum by her husband to leave within the week. Amanda wants to marry the narrator. He doesn't think he wants that but he doesn't know what he wants. He can't sleep. It's 4 in the morning. He sits in his kitchen and watches the lights in Amanda's place. She evidently can't sleep either. But he can't call her. His wife is in the house with him and she's having her own sleeping problems and mad enough already. Mostly the story follows the narrator's distraught thoughts and memories, many about his first wife. He's trying to sort out what it all means: love, commitment, change. He and his first wife grew apart even as it was the great love affair of their youth, if not their lives. His present wife and Amanda don't feel like deep commitments. Now he's middle-aged. His first wife has changed forever. He has nothing. As usual with Carver, it is vivid, strange, sharply thrown in our face. The narrator is not looking for advice. He would snarl at us if we tried. He is looking for relief. Suddenly he is middle-aged and he still doesn't know what he wants. It's a great portrait of a desperate state of mind, but also painful to read in its treatment of the first wife. I think it's also good enough it has a chance, circumstances allowing, of outliving us all.

Raymond Carver, Where I'm Calling From (Library of America)