Summary

"I feel like I've joined an enormous club, something like the Veterans of Foreign Wars. We are weary with battle fatigue and sometimes even gripped by nostalgia for the good old, bad old days, but our numbers are large," writes Theo Pauline Nestor in this wry, fiercely honest chronicle of life after divorce. Less than an hour after confronting her husband over his massive gambling losses, Theo banishes him from their home forever. With two young daughters to support and her life as a stay-at-home mother at an abrupt end, Nestor finds herself slipping from "middle-class grace" as she attends a court-ordered custody class, stumbles through job interviews, andmuch to her surprisefalls in love once again. As Theo rebuilds her life and recovers her sense of self, she's forced to confront her own family's legacy of divorce. "I'm from a long line of stock market speculators, artists of unmarketable talents, and alcoholics," writes Nestor. "The higher, harder road is not our road. We move, we divorce, we drink, or we disappear." Nestor's journey takes her deep into her family's past, to a tiny village in Mexico, where she discovers the truth about how her sister ended up living in a convent there after their parents divorced in the early sixties. What she learns ultimately brings her closer to understanding her own divorce and its impact on her two daughters. "I knew from experience that for children divorce means half the world is constantly eclipsed. When you're with one parent, the other must always slip out of view," Nestor writes. Funny, openhearted, and brave, How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed will speak to anyone who has passed through the halls of divorce court or risked tenderness after loss. It marks the debut of an enchanting, deeply truthful voice. From the Hardcover edition.

Author Biography

THEO PAULINE NESTOR teaches writing at the University of Washington. Her essay “The Chicken’s in the Oven, My Husband’s out the Door” was published in the New York Times “Modern Love” column and was the genesis of this book. She lives in Seattle, Washington, with her two daughters.

From the Hardcover edition.

Supplemental Materials

What is included with this book?

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

Excerpts

1
Things Fall Apart

Some marriages grind to a halt; two tired people lock down into a final frozen position like the wheels of rusty gears that refuse at last to mesh again. Other marriages, like mine, blow apart midflight, torn asunder by forces larger than themselves, viewers watching numbly as the networks broadcast the final surreal seconds over and over again.
It's late September, a time when Seattle always seems so easy and forgiving, as though you'll forever be padding barefoot out to the garden for a handful of basil and rosemary, as though the skies will never turn gray and close down around you. It's warm still, but past the last hot days of Indian summer. I've waited for this day for at least half the summer--a day cool enough to roast a chicken. When I put our five-pound chicken in the oven, a shower of fresh green herbs clinging to its breast, I am married. As far as I know, nothing is wrong, or at least not really wrong. By the time I pull this chicken out of the oven, I will have asked my husband to leave our house, and he'll have driven away with his green car stuffed with clothes slipping off their hangers.
Last night we went to sleep beside each other as we have for the last twelve years, neither of us knowing it would be for the last time. Could I have seen this coming? I ask myself this now, and I realize that I might have, had I been watching rather than living, had I not been scrambling to and from Jess's preschool and Natalie's science fair and the Children's Theater portrayal of Go, Dog. Go!, had I not been writing and teaching part-time at the university and squeezing in walks around Green Lake with my friends.
But even if I hadn't been busy with all that, I probably wouldn't have sat still, still enough to realize that something was wrong, to say to myself: There's a reason why you feel this way. That nagging feeling that you've misplaced something or that you're working too hard to hold the universe together--that's real. You've felt it before, long ago, when you were too young to know the words for all the ways that life could go wrong. You've gotten too used to that barely audible hum of doubt. And now, here it is again. Quiet. Listen. It's the voice of that part of you that hasn't missed a thing.
At four-thirty, the chicken's in the oven, and I'm waiting for Kevin to return with Natalie from soccer practice. Jessica is sitting at the counter, mashing Play-Doh into patties, while I pace around the kitchen trying to figure out something I'm refusing to see. I have this sinking feeling something is wrong, and it has to do with money. It's odd how I can be obsessed with a problem--scouring bank statements and frantically pawing through bills--yet blind to the real source of the trouble. The thing is, Kevin has been very busy with his real estate business these past few months, but he still hasn't made any real money. It's nothing we haven't seen before in his business--a deal falls apart, a commission is unexpectedly reduced--but this time things just don't add up; the busier he gets, the less money he seems to make. But every time I try to crack the code of where all the money is going, one of the kids asks whether we can go for ice cream or to the park and the facts and numbers slip back into the fuzzy abyss that I've come to consider Kevin's half of our family's concerns.
I decide to call the bank once again to confirm the balance on my checking account. A hundred dollars was withdrawn from a nearby ATM two nights before at midnight. But I know that's impossible--we were all in bed on Sunday at midnight. I remembered we all watched Daddy Day Care in the big bed and had the kids asleep in their bunks by nine. So I cancel the card and ask the nice customer service person to start a fraud report. Then I look again in my wallet. How can the card be in my wallet if someone else used it? Does someone have my bank card number? Is it identity theft? My mother sends me at least

Excerpted from How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed: A Memoir of Starting Over by Theo Pauline Nestor
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.