Out of Love

By Hilma Wolitzer

After her parents’ divorce, Teddy realizes that love is not as easy as it looks
In Teddy’s daydreams, the elevator is never broken and her father comes home every day. But in reality, her dad has a new home and a new wife, Shelley, who is glamorous in a way Teddy’s mother could never be. Still, Teddy holds out hope that one day her dad will come to his senses—and when she finds a shoebox full of faded love letters in the closet, she knows her mother is hoping for the same thing.  In the letters, her father calls her mother “my own true love.” If Teddy can just fix her mom up a little bit, maybe her dad will realize he loves her still. But after exercise classes, a visit from the Avon lady, and a furious campaign to get her mom to stop smoking, Teddy learns that real love is far more complex than those old letters make it seem. And though her parents love and support her, Teddy’s perceptions of her family will have to change. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Hilma Wolitzer, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Dec 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781453287927

Hilma Wolitzer

Hilma Wolitzer (b. 1930) is a critically hailed author of literary fiction. She is a recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and a Barnes & Noble Writer for Writers Award. She has taught writing at the University of Iowa, New York University, and Columbia University. Born in Brooklyn, she began writing as a child, and published her first poem at age nine. Her first published short story, “Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket,” appeared in print when she was thirty-six. Eight years later, she published Ending (1974), a novel about a young man succumbing to a terminal illness and his wife’s struggle to go on. Since then, her novels have dealt mostly with domestic themes, and she has drawn praise for illuminating the dark interiors of the American home.  After publishing her tenth novel, Tunnel of Love (1994), Wolitzer confronted a crippling writer’s block. She worked with a therapist to understand and overcome the block, and completed the first draft of a new novel in just a few months. Upon its release, The Doctor’s Daughter (2006) was touted as a “triumphant comeback” by the New York Times Book Review. Since then, Wolitzer has published two more books—Summer Reading (2007) and An Available Man (2012). She has two daughters—an editor and a novelist—and lives with her husband in New York City, where she continues to write. 

Book preview

Out of Love

Hilma Wolitzer

To my sisters,

Eleanor and Anita,

and to my aunts,

Margie and Annie

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A Biography of Hilma Wolitzer

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IF I HAD A penny for every time Karen-Bunny-Aurora-Elspeth looks in the mirror, I’d be rich. My mother says it’s a stage she’s going through, but I’m two years older than Karen and I don’t remember going through that stage. In fact, I avoid mirrors whenever I can. Now and then I get caught, though, when I’m walking by one, or I have to look to comb my hair or wash my face, and there I am. Hair-colored hair, matching eyes, a nose-shaped nose. Nothing special and nothing new, except for something horrible that pops out on my skin every month. Karen’s skin is nice, smooth and flawless, as they say in the cold-cream ads, but she doesn’t get her period yet. She’s still only a kid and maybe that’s why she pretends so much. Once in a while she’s Aurora, a perfect little housewife, chattering about recipes and helpful household hints. Sometimes she’s Bunny, acting as sweet and cuddly as the name. And sometimes she calls herself Elspeth and talks with a phony British accent. It’s hard to keep up with her.

One Sunday, when Daddy came to get us, he listened to her for a while, raising his eyebrows and smiling at me. Then he started talking like Cary Grant, but Karen-Elspeth was so busy being British she didn’t notice.

When we came home Mother was waiting at our window on the fifth floor. The minute we walked in the door she said, Did you have a good time? Where did you go? and I thought how lonely she must have been all day without us. Karen dropped her accent then and started acting like a baby instead, sitting in Mother’s lap and fooling around.

Sometimes it’s very cheerful in the apartment with just the three of us, and sometimes it’s awful and we all go around moping and thinking of Daddy and the old times.

In my heart of hearts I always thought he would come back someday, as soon as he got over it, as if he had a sickness instead of being in love with Shelley. That’s the expression everyone used when they tried to cheer Mother up. He’ll come back, they said. Don’t worry, Jean, he’ll get over it.

Just before I went to sleep at night, I would pretend that it was true. I imagined Daddy coming up in the elevator (it was never out of order in my dreams), with presents in his arms for all of us, but especially for Mother, his own true love. That’s what he called her in the letters he used to send when he was in the army, before they got married. She always kept the letters in the back of her closet in an old shoebox that said BRN SUDE PMPS 7½B on the outside. Inside, there was all this mushy stuff about how he missed his own true love, the girl of his dreams. Sleep tight, he begged her, and dream of me, darling.

There’s a light in the closet that goes on automatically when you open the door, and the day I discovered the shoebox I stayed on the floor of the closet for a long time, leaving the door open a little for air and so the light would stay on. I read all of the letters with the hems of Mother’s dresses brushing against my face.

I felt guilty afterward. My mother makes a big thing about privacy. She wouldn’t even open a chain letter or an advertisement that’s addressed to Karen or me. But I couldn’t help it. It was back in those days when I thought he would come back someday, and reading the letters gave me a lot of hope. I promised myself that I wouldn’t ever look at them again, but a few days later I did. I sat on the floor of the closet and daydreamed about the way it would be when Daddy came back to live with us. It would be different, I decided. There wouldn’t be any quarrels, and we wouldn’t have any of those awful times when Mother and Daddy didn’t speak to each other at all. It would be more like the way it used to be when I was little, like those mornings when Karen and I climbed into the big bed and lay down between them in that warm place.

I never showed the letters to Karen. There was some stuff in them that was too mature for her, and besides, she didn’t seem to care as much as I did. She liked Shelley right from the beginning, as if she were only an old friend of the family. Karen thinks Shelley is glamorous, and I guess she is, compared to Mother, who never does anything much about herself. Mother tends to be a little overweight too. I used to wonder if Daddy would come back if she fixed herself up, if she lost a few pounds or wore eye makeup or had her hair done in the latest style. Of course I was younger then and pretty dumb.

One Saturday the Avon lady came to the apartment when we were in the middle of the Weekly Cleaning. Karen likes to dust and polish and look at herself in every shiny surface. Mother does the horrible jobs like cleaning the bathroom and the oven. I do the vacuuming, moving that fat, noisy thing across the floor while it swallows everything in sight: dust, pennies, lint; and once in a while a sock gets stuck in the hose and has to be pulled out with the end of a knitting needle.

The doorbell rang, not musical chimes like in the television commercial, but the ordinary loud buzz. The Avon lady was just beautiful, though, and I could practically smell her perfume through the peephole.

Hello! she said. I’m from Avon and I’d like to show you some exciting new things.

I was a little disappointed that she hadn’t said, Avon calling! but I opened the door quickly and asked her to come in.

Mother yelled from the bathroom, where she was washing the floor. Who is it? Don’t open the door, Teddy!

I smiled at the Avon lady, as if I couldn’t hear what Mother was saying. I took her into the living room and she sat on the edge of the sofa with her sample case in front of her.

Karen came in from the bedroom and stared.

It’s the Avon lady, I said. This is my sister, Karen. I poked Karen with my elbow because she wouldn’t stop staring. Get Mommy, I whispered, and Karen disappeared. In a few minutes she and Mother came into the living room.

The Avon lady looked the way actresses always look in Technicolor movies. Very pink and white and powdery. My mother’s face was shiny and flushed. The Avon lady’s hair was blond, almost silver, and it fell to her shoulders in soft waves. My mother’s hair was all over the place. She cuts it herself and sometimes she doesn’t get it even. Well, I could go on and on, but it wouldn’t be fair. I knew that if the Avon lady was busy cleaning her toilet, she wouldn’t be wearing pink suede boots and that lacy blouse, but it was hard to picture her in Mother’s old blue flowered bathrobe, with the button missing right in the middle. Mother was embarrassed and she patted her hair and pinched the robe together where it gaped open. My goodness, she said. You’ll have to excuse me. I was just ... She fluttered her hands, but the Avon lady only smiled, showing us her gorgeous teeth. Of course, she said. Just don’t catch me on Thursdays! Now I’d like to show you our exciting new line, she continued, and she unlocked her sample case. Karen nearly fell over trying to peek inside.

Before we knew it, there was a lot of stuff arranged in front of us on the coffee table. There were bottles and jars and tubes and darling soaps shaped like animals and fruits. We all smelled terrific from something the Avon lady had sprayed on us. And we have a whole line of men’s toiletries as well, she said.

Nobody said anything for a moment and then Mother cleared her throat and said, Maybe that would make a good gift for Father’s Day from you girls.

In the end Mother bought a few things, but she kept making jokes. She said nobody would recognize her at the bank Monday morning. Everyone would beg her to take a screen test and then we’d all be in Hollywood.

Karen got that faraway look in her eyes that she gets when she daydreams about a talent scout discovering her and in a few minutes she was Karen-Bunny talking in her cute little-girl voice.

I couldn’t help thinking that this might be the beginning of something important. Mother was buying makeup, even if she was making jokes about it. Later on she might go on

Reviews for Out of Love

[Lily Lee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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