The Good Good Pig Read Online Free Page A

for two years. I enjoyed everything about him—his brilliant wit, his bewildering abundance of ideas, his forceful, surprising writing, his commitment to bettering the world. I loved his loud laugh and his bushy black eyebrows and his mass of unruly curls that reminded me of a Cotswold sheep. But we were friends. We’d never dated.
    Three months after graduation, with a contract to publish his first book, Howard was temporarily without an apartment. Since I had a job on a New Jersey newspaper and a rented cabin at the edge of a wood, I invited him to stay with me. He said he would only need to stay till Christmas.
    He didn’t say which Christmas. But in the meantime, each morning he would wake me by playing my favorite record,
Songs of the Humpback Whale,
and place a ferret or two in my bed. By day, we would both write—he at the cabin, me at the newspaper—and phone each other with writing questions. Would this lead work? How to handle that transition? We would both write about fourteen hours a day, often six days a week. We were on fire with words we hoped would elucidate and preserve what we found beautiful and important in the world—its historic and natural landmarks, its wild lands and creatures, our understanding of our place on the planet. Howard inspired me with his dedication and intellect, and delighted me with his gentleness and humor; he came to love my intensity and joy.
    Eight years later—after I’d quit the paper, lived for six months in a tent in the Australian outback, rejoined Howard in a rented carriage house at the New Hampshire–Massachusetts border, and moved, again, to the house our friends owned—we were still living together. I had not mentioned this to my parents. I hadn’t, in fact, mentioned Howard at all. My mother had strong views about the “right kind” and “wrong kind” of people to “cultivate.” This tall, skinny Jewish liberal with wild, curly hair was not one of them.
    When we announced our plans to marry, Howard came to Virginia. My father was pained. He knew what was in store. My mother was livid. Speaking to me even more slowly than her Arkansas accent normally flowed, as if belaboring the obvious, she detailed Howard’s unsuitability: he didn’t have a “real” job, he laughed too loudly, his hair was wild, and his sneakers were coming untied. Then, attempting to sound sympathetic, she added, “And he can’t
help
it that he’s Jewish.”
    Howard’s parents, on the other hand, had known about me all along. Relieved we were going to legitimize our relationship, they forgave the cross around my neck. They assured me my parents would come around. After all, they said, we were family.
    Frankly, family meant little to me. Almost everyone in my extended family was dead before I was born—my father’s mother and brother, my mother’s father—and those few who survived to my birth lived too far away to often see. If family was really some cohesive, committed unit, how could my parents so adamantly reject the chosen spouse of their only child? To me, family meant a mother and a father and the offspring that biology dealt them—often to their mutual sorrow. I wanted none of it.
    After our wedding, which they did not attend, my parents sent me a letter in which they formally disowned me. I can’t remember the words—Howard took the letter away—but I remember the shock of seeing the handwriting: it was written in the forceful, familiar, beloved hand of my father.
    Why had my father written it? The question plagued me. My father was less prejudiced than most men of his era. He got along with everyone—black, white, Christian, Jew, Yankee, Southerner. He did not even hate the former enemy, the Japanese. But on the issue of my husband, I finally decided, he had capitulated to my mother’s vehemence; after all, he lived with her, not me.
    We had no