- Plot
- Writing
Anyone who watches baseball on TV has heard about the quality of a pitcher’s “stuff”, but what really wins games is consistency. Because its often not your best pitches that make the highlight reel, but those three you left hanging over the plate that got taken for a homerun. This is what I experienced reading Larry Duberstein’s novel, The Twoweeks. His best stuff is really good, but they have trouble escaping the shadow of his missteps, lending to a rather inconsistent reading experience.
The Twoweeks—always one word and always capitalized—is the name given to a period of fourteen days that two friends, Lara and Cal, have given themselves to spend together in the summer of 1974. The two were acquaintances in Cambridge, Massachusetts before they became coworkers at Gallery Allison. Both were already married to other people but they grew quite close until February 22, when their close friendship exploded in a night of lackluster passionless sex. The painful awkwardness does not end that night, but overcomes their entire relationship, until Cal is driven from the gallery.
Mr. Duberstein spends a fair bit of time on “The Backstory”, and while there is plenty of detail about the interactions between Lara and Cal leading up to the Twoweeks, there is a disappointing lack of insight into what would drive two people to such an odd and risky arrangement. Perhaps the novel would have benefitted if Lara got her way and the Backstory was skipped entirely. Rather than illuminate what brought Cal and Lara to this juncture, each new fact only raises more question. Duberstein’s writing is generally forgoes sappy sentimentality and melodrama—which is generally to its benefit—but here it makes the story seem dry and the affair uninspired. There is no overwhelming attraction, or much more than a particularly close kinship among coworkers. Their one night of sex is admittedly bad and though they clearly share a connection there is nothing particularly compelling about their relationship until Lara’s odd proposal, “I have two weeks, maybe late June”.
The Twoweeks itself is retold through Lara’s journal, with brief interruptions from Cal and Lara in 2008. This is where the novel is at its best. Duberstein’s portrait of two lovers in a trap of their own making is both convincing and compelling. In the midst of their carefree gallivanting we see Cal and Lara as they gradually realize that the effects of their time together will extend beyond the fourteen days they have allotted. They stay at Lara’s apartment which has been made available for the event by her husband, Ian, who, unlike Cal’s wife Winnie, is privy to knowledge of their arrangement, and somehow okay with it. Cal and Lara use the time to go hiking, kayaking, swimming at Cape Cod, skinny dipping in Wesleyan, watching fireworks, and, of course, making love, both in the apartment, and at most of the places they visit. Considering their known attraction, it would be surprising if they did not find love in those circumstances.
Duberstein’s prose takes center stage during the Twoweeks, but it is not until they part that the plot offers any real drama. If putting two people together for a two week vacation/ sex romp offers predictable results, then the return to their respective partners and lives offers the kind of dramatic tension that keep you reading to the end.
Lara’s story is recounted through her writings which detail her and Ian’s attempts to rebuild their marriage. At first, Ian acts as you might expect—that is, after you have accepted the fact he let his wife cheat on him for two weeks. When he and Lara fail to reconnect, they take their own vacation to Maine. Still failing to reconnect, Ian sends her to Europe and encourages her to engage in more indiscretions, hoping that this will somehow provide perspective, but this fails as well. Ian’s well of patience seems to run infinitely deep, spilling over only once in the form of some spiteful comments, and eventually an acerbic aside to his counterpart, “You look relieved, Cal” during a chance encounter at a restaurant. Despite Lara’s determination to leave the Twoweeks behind, she is unable to shake her feelings for Cal. Even during her time in Europe, her despair is only deepened by the constant rain and the prospect of single life. Her return to Ian is a moment of great relief, but even this proves to be temporary.
Cal, an actor by trade, is able to put on a much braver face despite his own longings to reunite with Lara. While Cal is less concerned with getting over Lara he also has no intentions of breaking up his family, if only for the benefit of his children. Cal’s son Jake comes to embody his guilt over leaving his family for the Twoweeks. Jake’s seemingly innocent questions constantly remind Cal that there is more at stake than just a relationship with Winnie. Away from his family, Lara moves to center stage in his mind, and as the year goes on his desire only gets stronger. Though Winnie was never told about his affair—in their household it was seen as just a vacation he took on his own—she did eventually catch on to his changed demeanor. He had become distracted, mentally absent, constantly thinking back to Lara.
Hit and miss is perhaps the best way I can sum up The Twoweeks as a reading experience. Thinking back to it I alternate between frustration at the problems of plot and character development and wanting to praise the examples of fine writing. During the Twoweeks, Cal and Lara feel like real people, driven, in turn, by love, lust, insecurity, and guilt. Actions follow from their personality and their emotions. However, the practical reasoning adults that are portrayed from the start do not match the reckless and ill conceived course of action they pursue in the first chapters. At least in the throes of clichéd passion I could explain why they risked their marriages for a supposedly brief fling.
Meanwhile, their respective spouses, Ian and Lara, are relegated to the background, providing unwavering support to their wayward partners through their own cluelessness or infinite patience. Laura’s husband, Ian, can be relied on to go against the instincts of any person with even a shred of self respect. His willingness to tolerate Lara’s insecurities about the relationship is one thing, but the game reaches another level when she tells him of her plan to bunk up with another man for two weeks. Somehow, he responds by sending her to Europe to have sex with more men. Cal’s wife, Winnifred, is much more reasonable from what we see, but she barely plays into the drama at all. Winnie stays a part of the scenery for the most part, contributing only as much as to give Cal opportunities to carry out his plans with Lara—she even gets Cal to work at the gallery with Lara. Her only impact is as the innocent, being that she is unaware of the affair she is seen as a victim and elicits guilt in Cal and Lara throughout the novel.
The structure of the story, told through flashbacks and writings, tends to take the reader out of the action rather than add to the experience. The chapters that frame the story provide some resolution, revealing how the story turned out even as the frame story is left hanging. Again, it seems extraneous to have them sit down and read the journals—which have been untouched for some thirty two years—and commenting throughout. It’s a shame that a beautifully rendered passage should be interrupted by 2008 Cal remembering some impossibly trivial fact, such as the way a certain pair of pants fit Lara and of course her contesting his recollection. As the chapters are broken up by event—the Twoweeks being the longest—and then only by section breaks, these interruptions do provide some breathing room, but I think the same effect could be registered with a page break and a new chapter.
Despite these flaws, I found The Twoweeks to be an engaging read, saved largely by Duberstein’s writing. The novel is best when the author gets away from the banter and explores the inner lives of the characters as they drift ever closer to the Rubicon. In these scenes his writing is subdued, not drawing attention to itself with lofty prose or stark declarations, but it wraps you into the scene so, when your attention is finally broken by one of the intrusions from modern day you are shocked to see how long you have been gone. I would consider ripping out the section directly describing the Twoweeks and keep it as a standalone novella, but it suffers under the weight of the waste.
The Twoweeks is available at your local independent bookstore.(the Permanent Press, $28)
