Introduction

In this stirring new collection, Ronna Wineberg explores our essential bonds to partners, children, parents, and friends. Intimacy, marriage, parenthood, adultery, divorce, and the legacies left by the past unfold in these beautifully written stories. Men and women search for happiness and love, yet face longing, disappointment, and loss. The characters in Nine Facts That Can Change Your Life struggle with unexpected changes in their own lives but discover the power of kindness, the joy of connection, and the ways in which we can be renewed.

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Excerpt

BARE ESSENTIALS

The room had just the bare essentials: a king-sized bed, desk, armchair, a dresser and coffeemaker, and, of course, a bathroom. It was in a functional hotel, but the space had everything a traveler needed. Todd and I met there three or four times a year, some years more, some years less, in a city where I once lived. I’ve lived in so many places: Chicago, Boston, Detroit, LA, even London. The exact location of the hotel doesn’t matter. It could be anywhere. We had all we needed there. The place was without frills or pretension, without art or sentimental personal objects. It was bare enough to make room for passion.

Of course, it’s difficult to try to quantify passion or the quality of feeling between two people. How can you be sure the same feeling is shared by the two who are together in the hotel room, in bed, in each other’s arms?

I know that people can experience an act, an event, or a shared life differently. I’m aware of this from my own experience, from the end of my marriage. Perceptions can be so at odds that it’s sometimes difficult to believe two people have shared time or even conversation. In the case of my ex-husband, this was true. My ex-husband, my former husband, my husband no longer, the man I once adored who fell out of love as easily as falling in love, a man I detest but sometimes miss.

In the hotel room, I don’t think about my ex-husband. He is a vague, unpleasant memory, part of a past life, though we have been divorced only two years. I have forgotten the sound of his voice. I don’t remember the characteristics of his body or the curve of his smile.

I know the length of time Todd and I have been meeting in the hotel, the exact number of years and number of times we’ve fucked or argued. I would never tell him this. I told my ex-husband too many things, and with Todd I am circumspect. What happens in real life seems beside the point.

Todd is married, and that’s no surprise, I suppose, except to me, who was raised to believe that marriage was sacred.

*

The demise of a marriage doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and I’ve come to believe intimacy may be an unattainable fantasy. Our first marriage counselor told Lou and me this. “He robbed the bank, and you’re driving the getaway car,” the counselor said. He was middle-aged, wore a wedding ring, and spoke in a warm but ironic voice.

Lou and I laughed uncomfortably.

“Maybe I should be driving the getaway car,” Lou said.

“You’d leave me with the dirty work,” I countered. “Rob a bank. Typical.”

“I’d be better off robbing the bank and driving away myself,” he said.

Lou was an angry, dissatisfied man, an economist who wanted everything to run perfectly. I had fallen for his quick charm and knowledge of the world when we met. He said he loved my sense of adventure, but in later years he accused me of being flighty, indecisive, indefinite. This was true, but I behaved this way only with him.

I edit medical research papers for a journal, studies about bacteria, Campylobacter or C. difficile. In my work, I am precise. I know that a hundred trillion good bacteria call the human body home. Even the mouth has several species of bacteria, and each tooth has its own ecosystem. The body is like space or the ocean, a vast unknown, like the mind. Like a relationship.

My work is painstaking, but in my life with Lou, I was anything but precise. I became carefree while he was dour. I rushed out at a moment’s notice, leaving dishes in the sink and clothing on the floor, while he was meticulous about putting things in the correct place. I was flexible in reaction to his inflexibility, willing to give into his ideas about where to live, how to raise our two sons. He balanced the checkbook, and I didn’t subtract my spending. He balanced our budget. I lost receipts and bills.

The demise of a marriage is a failure. Lou may have fallen out of love with me, but in my own way, I fell out of love with him. I did nothing to repair our fissures or leave them behind. I brought the fissures with me to the hotel, and only there, left them in the hallway before I entered the room to see Todd.

*

I’ve met Todd’s two grown children. I know what his mother and sisters are doing with their lives. I know that Todd’s sister is ill with lupus and lives near him. He takes care of her. His father died when Todd was young; his stepfather was a parent to him. Todd knows about my parents who are no longer alive, my brother and sister who live in different cities—the successful one, and the other who struggles—and about my sons, one of whom wants to live in a Zen monastery. They’re in high school. The divorce has been hard for them. Todd doesn’t know that in anger I slapped one son’s face and feel great remorse, or about checks I’ve bounced, or my fear of being unable to support myself, or how I really feel about my divorce—fissures or not, I’ve failed.

I know he likes cream in his coffee, and apple pie, and he knows I am mostly punctual.

Todd is unerringly on time. He’s worried that the years ahead of him are fewer than those behind

him, and there is not a thing he can do about this. He’s growing older. I am, too. This is an intractable fact.

*

“Sometimes I think we have a love that’s not usable,” I say to Todd today. “I read that phrase in a book.” view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. Discuss the major themes in Nine Facts That Can Change Your Life.

2. What role do secrets play in the characters’ lives? In people’s lives in general? What role does loneliness play? Desire?

3. The book explores marriage from different perspectives. What are the joys, limitations, and challenges of marriage as described here?

4. Some of the characters have love affairs. How do the affairs affect those involved in them? How do the affairs affect other people?

5. The book also explores divorce. What are the different characters’ reactions to divorce? What is the emotional cost of divorce?

6. Letters, notes, and writing appear in the book. What do the characters learn from pieces of writing? Does writing or reading others’ writing help the characters come to terms with their lives? Or does the writing of others’ bring up more questions than answers?

7. What do the stories tell the reader about the past? Does the past have a place in the present? Are there dangers in forgetting what happened earlier in one’s life? Are there dangers in allowing the past to dominate the present?

8. In the story, “Adjustment”, the narrator writes: “The idea of home seemed more elusive and important than ever.” What is the role of a home in the book?

9. How do the men and women in Nine Facts That Can Change Your Life deal with difficulties and traumas? Are they able to overcome adversity?

10. What is the role of mourning in the stories?

11. What does the final story, “A Celebration of the Life of the Reverend Edward Henry Jamison”, tell the reader about family relationships, the passage of time, and love?

12. Why was the book titled: Nine Facts That Change Your Life? Discuss how the title reflects the book’s themes.

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