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In Jane Green's "Another Piece of My Heart," the celebrated novelist explores the complicated, emotionally charged dynamic when a woman marries into divorced father of two. Here's an excerpt.
On their first date, Ethan talked about his children nonstop, which was, as far as Andi was concerned, an unexpected bonus.
They met through Match .com, a continual embarrassment to Andi. But where else did anyone go to meet people? she wondered.
She had done a series of evening classes with what she thought was a masculine bent— Fundamentals of Investing, Estate Planning 101, and Beginner’s Best Barbecue. (Which was a dud. What red-blooded American man, she realized, as she sat in an empty classroom, would admit to not being able to barbecue?)
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None produced so much as a date. There were, admittedly, random times she would meet men, or be flirted with in a coffee shop, but they never led to anything permanent.
At thirty-seven she realized, with a shock, she had to be proactive. Sitting back and assuming, as she always had, that she would be married with a large group of smiling kids wasn’t the natural order of her life, and unless she took the bull by the horns, she was possibly going to fi nd herself single, frighteningly, for the rest of her life.
It wasn’t as if her life wasn’t full. Her twenties were spent working in interior design, for a small store in Fairfield, Connecticut, where she had grown up. As she approached thirty, her mother suggested she get a real-estate license, and although Andi enjoyed selling houses, it was what she had to suggest to the homeowners they do, in order to sell their houses, that was her true passion.
Andi loved design. She saw how the addition of new rugs and curtain panels, and moving furniture could transform a home. She started off ering her ser vices as a “home- stager”—someone who would come in and beautify the interiors, for minimum cost, in order to sell. Soon she had a ware house fi lled with furniture she would rent out to her clients, and reams of fabrics from which she could have curtains, or pillows, or bedspreads quickly made.
Hear Jane Green read an excerpt from the audio book, "Another Piece of My Heart."
It wasn’t long before it was her primary business.
Her mother got sick after that. Breast cancer. She fought hard, and won a reprieve, for a while. She assured Andi that moving to California with Brent, the man Andi thought she would marry, was absolutely the right thing to do.
Even when the cancer returned, spreading to her bones, then finally to her liver and lungs, she insisted that Andi stay in California. She knew that Andi had found a peace on the West Coast she had never found at home.
It was true that one week after landing in San Francisco, despite having spent her entire life on the East Coast, Andi knew that at heart she had always been a West Coast girl, through and through.
The sunshine! The warmth! How laid- back everyone was! San Francisco! The Pacific Coast Highway! The redwood forests! The wine country!
The list was endless.
Brent married someone else: in fact, the woman he had started sleeping with almost as soon as he began his new job in San Francisco, and Andi stayed, staging homes all over the East Bay.
Match.com was fun for a while, then disheartening. She always prepared for a date, terrified he wouldn’t like her, that somehow, although she was blond, and green- eyed, and girl-next-doorish, they would be disappointed.
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All of them wanted to see her again, but she rarely wanted to see them. Until Ethan. He seduced her with his open face, his wide smile, his easy charm. They had met for drinks, which had become dinner, and when he left to go to the bathroom, Andi had watched him walk through the restaurant with a smile on her face. He has a great butt, she found herself thinking, with shock.
He had been divorced three years. His little one, Sophia, was great, he said, but Emily was harder. His eyes had welled up as he talked about Emily—how much he loved his firstborn, how difficult this had been for her, and how he would do anything, anything, to bring her some happiness.
I will help you, Andi had thought, her heart spilling over for this sensitive, kind, loving man. One date led to two, led to them sleeping together, led to Andi realizing, very quickly, that for the first time in years, she could see herself spending the rest of her life with a man. With this man.
She could see herself building a life with him, having children with him. He was clever, and creative, and hardworking.
Hear Jane Green read an excerpt from the audio book, "Another Piece of My Heart."
Ethan was supposed to have been a banker, he told her soon after they met. Or have run a large corporation. He was supposed to have done something that would make his parents proud, not to have started a landscaping business in school— merely to pay off his loan—a business that became so successful, so quickly, he had decided to devote himself to growing it once he had left school.
He’d started mowing lawns himself, paying a cheap hourly rate to Carlos and Jorge, who had recently made the arduous trek from Mexico.
“I was a clean-cut college kid with good ideas.” He dismissed Andi when she said how talented he must have been. “And I was willing to work hard. That was all. I’d show up with some men to mow a lawn and start chatting with the homeowner, asking the wives if they’d ever thought of planting a lavender bed next to the path, or the husbands if they’d ever considered a built- in barbecue, or fire pit.”
“I bet they always said yes.” Andi’s eyes sparkled in amusement.
Ethan just grinned.
He took on a mason, and by the time he had graduated from Berkeley, he had four full- time crews working for him.
When he met Andi, he had six. Now he has ten, plus a thriving landscape- design business.
Andi couldn’t have imagined a more perfect man for her had she tried.
© 2012 MSNBC Interactive
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