The Mythmakers

CONTENTS Cover Title Page Dedication Part I Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Part II Chapter One: Martin Chapter Two: Sal Chapter Three: Moira Chapter Four: Sal Chapter Five: Moira Chapter Six: Sal Chapter Seven: Moira Chapter Eight: Caroline Chapter Nine: Martin Chapter Ten: Moira Chapter Eleven: Sal Part III Chapter One: Wesley Chapter Two: Lillian Chapter Three: Martin Chapter Four: Lillian Chapter Five: Wesley Chapter Six: Sal Part IV Chapter One: Sal Chapter Two: Moira Chapter Three: Sal Chapter Four: Caroline Chapter Five: Sal Chapter Six: Caroline Chapter Seven: Moira Chapter Eight: Caroline Chapter Nine: Sal Chapter Ten: Moira Chapter Eleven: Sal Epilogue Acknowledgments About the Author Copyright Guide Cover Start of Content Title Page Dedication Epilogue Acknowledgments About the Author Copyright I II III V VI 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 
 
 
 
 
 For my parents
 and for Dan
 
 
 PART I
 
 
 ONE
 I read the story on one of those spring days in New York when the world seems to rise out of hibernation. Music trailed from cars, pop and rap and oldies mingling with the Doppler whoosh of traffic. An early geysering fire hydrant. The chatter of starlings. The pages of the short story were crisp like new bills and my heart sped up when I turned them.
 It was Friday, and Hugh—a waft of peppermint as he kissed my temple; the click of the front door—was at work. By the time I got up, sunlight flooded our tidy apartment. While I tend to leave half-finished books butterflied on the couch and deserted sweaters over the backs of chairs, Hugh is so fastidious that a stranger might imagine I lived in the apartment alone. Being there without him, as I often was those days, made the place take on a cinematic quality, as though I actually were that alternate version of myself: single, independent.
 It was easy to slip into that fantasy, to trade the comfortable monotony of my relationship with Hugh for the solo artistic pleasures of a fellowship in Tokyo or a retreat on the Spanish coast. In college I used to picture our hypothetical life together with longing: the postcoital breakfasts in bed that have in fact happened; working together late into the night, he on his painting, I on a novel, which has not. Nearly six years out of school and two into cohabitation, I was prone to imagining us apart, so maybe by the time I boarded the Greyhound bus that summer I’d primed my brain for escape, the way tennis players visualize their backhands. I once read that the inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality is a hallmark of psychosis, but I think healthy people trick themselves into believing daydreams all the time.
 Our apartment was on a quiet, tree-lined block on the south side of Prospect Park. Hugh paid most of the rent, because he made nearly three times as much as my salary at the magazine. The year before, a clothing conglomerate bought the start-up he worked for, and something blah blah equity, et cetera. When we passed brownstones with FOR SALE signs posted in what passes for a front yard in Brooklyn, he’d started looking up the asking price on his phone.
 That past December, amid headlines about our country’s nuclear pissing contest with North Korea and a wave of sexual abuse allegations, my job at the magazine had changed. I was a decently paid staff writer straddling our print edition and the website, but the features director I’d been hired to assist soon after graduation still asked me to make his restaurant reservations, and the website had recently instituted a soul-sucking quota system—these were the primary subjects of what Hugh called my “Hamlet lite monologues” during which, wineglass in hand, I’d complain about how my job left me no time