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Note: These are excerpts from a journal written at least once a week from September 23, 2002 until September 1, 2003. Brackets—[ ]—indicate events and emotions that I have summarized for the sake of space and so that the excerpted entries make sense. I take the title from the song “Book of Love,” written and recorded by the Monotones (peak Billboard position no. 5, in 1958): Chapter One says to love her, You love her with all your heart Chapter Two you tell her you’re never, never, never, never, never gonna part In Chapter Three remember the meaning of romance In Chapter Four you break up but you give her just one more chance Over the year that I kept my journal, it took on several titles: I began with “The Husband, the Wife, and the Mistress: Journal from the First Year”; later I changed it to: “The Husband, the Wife, and the Young Woman or Aging Wife/Younger Woman.” In the summer of 2003, “Can This Marriage Be Saved?/Should This Marriage Be Saved?” became the working title; it is taken from an advice column, “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” in the Ladies’ Home Journal, which during the women’s liberation sit-in at the magazine’s offices in 1970 became revised to “Should This Marriage Be Saved?” And then as I excerpted it for publication in the fall of 2003, I settled on “ ‘Chapter Four You Break Up’: A Journal.” “Chapter Four You Break Up” A Journal OCTAVIA NEVINS 4 2 O C T A V I A N E V I N S I. Where He Tells His Wife That He Has a Twenty-five-YearOld “Girl Friend” S E P T E M B E R 22 , 2002 Our housewarming party [we had just moved permanently into San Francisco after living in Oakland for twenty years and renting in San Francisco for the last two years.]: Everyone says the apartment is fantastic and that I look happy/we look good. I was a little pissed off that I spent all the time in the kitchen and Jack seemed to be entertaining on the roof. Nonetheless, we cleaned up contentedly. S E P T E M B E R 23 Today we saw a couples’ therapist. Why? Because Jack has been unhappy lately; we have fought; one evening he cried; he seemed disconsolate. It has been a stressful summer moving both out of the apartment in Pacific Heights where we had rented for two years and from Oakland, where we have lived most of our marriage. At this first session, Jack announces that he is seeing Margaret Oyama [MO] and wants to continue and that he needs to do this for himself and “for us.” Margaret is twenty-five, his student who has just graduated from the college where he teaches history; slim, Japanese, very smart, going to grad school in history, and seemingly in need of a father. She is married; he is away in the service. She has had an affair with another professor. Her father and mother divorced while she was young. I know about her (and I might have the details wrong since I was unaware that I should have been paying full attention to her particulars) because Jack has talked about her to me over the years, as he talks about all of his students—many of whom he is close to. I cry; I have deep pain, fear, panic, shock; Jack is angry and clear that there are to be no negotiations about this relationship. That night I cry most of the night, sleeping just barely, curled up in the study. We talk a lot but none of it reaches into my panic. The rest of that week: I go to work with sunglasses on since my eyes have black circles around them; I am shaking inside; I feel so alone and scared. The job is also falling apart. I cannot hold it together. I want to put my head on my desk and cry. An older woman laid off by another department comes for an interview; she is desperate for a position, a place; I so identify with her . . . an older woman, redundant, wants me to choose her. I reject her. I do not know how to chronicle the other movement that is happening at the same time as this is wrenching me into pieces: our talking, our closeness, our intimacy. Our sexuality is very intense. Jack is quite...

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