He accepts this: “The mistake would always be his.”Įxcept, in the final paragraph, a darkness descends, and we get a glimpse at why Bud thinks this marriage will be worth it. And it seems this will be their life together: her causing problems, him covering her tracks.
We may recognize in ourselves his desire to love Arden for who she is - or, who she might be if she could cease lying - and to protect her from the suspicions of family and friends. We feel for Bud as he struggles to recast his relationship with Arden. The way Wolff navigates through Bud’s growing understanding is magnificent. He’s realizes he’s always known this, which means he’s deliberately avoided fully knowing his new wife. Which meant that his wife of six days was a liar and a thief.
He had understood, even as he used the word “misunderstanding” - always mealy on the tongue, always prelude to an alibi - that there’d been no misunderstanding. Bud knows that there was no misunderstanding. Instead, we step back as Bud reconsiders his relationship with his new wife, Arden (like Bud, this isn’t her real name her real name is the reverse, Nedra). Wolff doesn’t tell us what’s going on at this point after all, Bud himself doesn’t want to acknowledge it. O.K.?” His mouth was so dry he could hardly get the words out, and he heard the strain in his brother’s voice as they said their goodbyes. When we start, the husband, Bud (“His name was Thomas, and he liked to think of himself as Thomas, but everyone called him Bud.”) is just finishing up a phone conversation with his brother: “All Ahead of Them” is a honeymoon story that begins with the potential demise of the recent marriage and ends with an all’s-well (except it isn’t). It has taken me too long to find the time to write up my thoughts, but here they are in brief. I’ve posted about most of his books here (click here to see the posts or check out the author index here), and I’ve been tempted to go back and blog about each of his stories one at a time (someday).
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